Author: Michael Witthaus

Live Free Fest offers music and more

Longtime music fan Dylan Williams is a DIY kind of guy, so when he became frustrated with traveling to Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont for concerts, he decided to launch his own festival.

“I always have to drive an hour and a half to go to any show I want,” he said by phone recently. “It’s really annoying.”

A New Boston native, he was also looking to draw attention to his favorite local music. Williams began last year in his backyard, with four bands performing. There were also games, including a pie eating contest, relay races and something called Beer Olympics. Sixty people, close friends or part of Williams’ extended social circle, came to the party.

The experience gave Williams the confidence to scale up to the local fairgrounds and stage the first annual Live Free Fest. It happens on Saturday, Aug. 3, with a dozen acts performing: Sotah, Just For Kicks, Somewhere In Between, Girlspit, Animatronic The Abolisher, Pointless Culture, The Forest Forgets, The Knightz, Lacquerhead, Cozy Throne, Mugshot Monday and Recession.

Williams is connected to his home state’s music scene through his work as a videographer, and he designed his festival to focus on the creative diversity that he feels is close to home and is sometimes overlooked. Thus, the acts on the bill range across the musical spectrum.

“I want to reflect New Hampshire’s sound the best I can, so everything about this is in-state, and we have something for everybody,” Williams said. “There’s alternative and indie, rappers, metal, punk and a cover band. It’s not a blues festival or a rap festival; it’s literally everything. I chose them because it reflects the state well, and I just think they’re good.”

One of the sets he’s looking forward to is The Forest Forgets, an edgy punk metal band that grew from the breakup of the Manchester group Afterimage. It’s fronted by that band’s former singer, Griffen Romprey. “They’re on the experimental side of things … progressive, longer form,” Williams said. “They only have demos right now, so I’m very excited to hear what they’re going to have at the festival. I think they’ve only played one show so far.”

Rapper Animatronic The Abolisher is another act that Williams expects the crowd will enjoy. He saw him open for The Knightz at a show he was filming in Manchester.

“I didn’t know him at all until he came up; I was shooting him anyway because I was already there,” he said. “And I was just really impressed. He’s got really good lyrics, he’s very quick with the flow and just a very humble guy.”

The Knightz are a favorite, and friends. “They’re a rap group that I’ve worked with probably for about two years now. And they’re just great guys. They flew me out to San Francisco one time; we did a video there. They have such good charisma, and they’re just really good guys.”

Finally, there’s Lacquerhead, “definitely the loudest and heaviest band we have,” Williams continued. “They have really good energy, and I would say if there’s anyone that I feel like is going to really maybe make it, I can see them making it in music in the coming years.”

With help from his partner Justin Kaminsky, Williams is going out on a limb to stage Live Free Fest — “It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done,” he said — but he has high hopes it will strike a chord and hopefully draw a crowd in the hundreds. After years spent experiencing and documenting area music, he feels it’s the next logical step.

“I don’t go to as many festivals as I’d like to, but I go to a bunch of shows, and a lot of them are in Boston,” he said. “So I [thought], let’s try something here. We don’t have anything like … a Lollapalooza or Boston Calling. Because Manchester doesn’t have a super big scene, we all know each other in a way. It just kind of worked that I was able to grab a lot of these people that I already kind of know. That was cool.”

For his New Boston Calling to be a success, Williams continued, “I would love it if for all the bands this was maybe their biggest show ever, and I want all the crowd to have a really good energy with them. Also, I want all the games to go really well. I want to walk around and feel like this is a big community … I just want everyone to have a good time, honestly.”

Live Free Fest
When: Saturday, Aug. 3, noon
Where: Hillsborough County Youth Center, 17 Hilldale Lane, New Boston
Tickets: $15 at eventbrite.com

Featured photo: Cozy Throne at Bank of NH Stage. The band is slated to play the Live Free Fest. Photo by Jaki Gerulskis.

With new music, MB Padfield returns to New England

It’s a quiet Monday for musician MB Padfield — she has only two shows. The New Hampshire-born singer, songwriter and guitarist is back for her summer sojourn, something she’s done since moving to Los Angeles a while back. This season, she’s booked 130 dates, including a run of 11 gigs over six days at the end of June — a personal record for her.

“I’m not far off from being an endurance athlete,” Padfield said by phone. “I’ve been doing a lot of physical training outside of music to be able to make these shows happen. Doing a lot of nutrition, learning so much about just the body and health and science and how it relates to live performance.”

Though Padfield plays mostly covers at places like The Goat, Wally’s and Margaritaville in Boston, such rigor extends to her original music. Take the video she made for “Waverider,” released earlier this year and part of an upcoming EP. In it, Padfield sang in an ice bath, and she had to repeat the process three times to get the right take.

At the end of the clip, she’s visibly quaking from what looks like hypothermia.

“Yeah, that was an experience … it was great and horrible at the same time,” she recalled. “I filmed over the winter in New Hampshire, in Bedford with my friend Ben Proulx, who is a really incredible videographer. He’s worked on some massive projects. He’s Grammy nominated.”

Impossibly, she managed to lip-sync all the song’s words. “That was a really tricky part … but I drilled it so many times,” she said. “I started with cold showers, and I did cold baths. Then I found a cold plunge in Los Angeles, and I’d sit there the whole song. I just tried to keep my head on straight.”

The song itself is a gem, an electronica-infused slow burn with bracing confrontational lyrics reminiscent of Taylor Swift’s recent work. It addresses the challenges of being an independent musician and facing a world where big acts have massive organizations behind them.

“It can be quite intimidating as an artist just getting started … that’s a bit of what ‘Waverider’ is about,” Padfield said. “It’s funny, everyone is asking me if it’s about a jet ski. It’s not, but I guess a jet ski wouldn’t be a bad analogy. I think everyone has their own Waverider. We all have our own ups and downs and do our best to try to navigate. It’s not necessarily about trying to keep calm waters, but just drive right in the waves where you’re at.”

Padfield’s latest release is “Into the Grey,” a song about letting go that became more poignant when her 96-year-old Meme passed away in May.

“We hospiced her at home, and I was there to the end; it was a wild experience,” she said. “There are people I’ve known who’ve had a hard time functioning through grief…. With the small experience I had, I learned that you have to pick the right memories to hold on to. That’s a big part of what ‘Into the Grey’ was about.”

Two more songs, “Lost at Sea” and “I’ll Be,” will be released in the coming months to complete a four-song EP. Padfield has a full-length album in the works as well and plans to make videos for the forthcoming songs.

“I’ve really come to see the value in communicating not only the music but also the visuals,” she said. “To explore not just what sound sounds like but also what it looks like … which has been a really fun creative adventure.”

In performance, Padfield is a one-woman powerhouse, using looping pedals and samples to produce a full band sound. It makes the most sense for her at the moment, keeping overhead low and her mobility flexible.

“That being said, I do love live looping, there’s such freedom in it,” she said. “I have my recipes for songs and how I make them. The cool part is, at least with the current setup I have, almost no two performances are identical. They’re similar for sure, but not identical, and that is a lot of creative freedom.”

MB Padfield
When: Sunday, July 28, 7 p.m.
Where: The Goat, 50 Old Granite St., Manchester
More: Full schedule at mbpadfield.com/tour

Featured photo: NB Padfield. Courtesy photo.

Lakes Region comedy show

There’s a limerick from a bygone time that begins, “there was a young man from Nantucket,” but this isn’t that kind of story. Brian Glowacki was born on the island off Cape Cod and found humor via Def Comedy Jam specials on HBO. When he realized there were clubs where comics told jokes, he decided to give standup a shot.

Glowacki soon found his secret weapon: a face that telegraphs mischief. When he pauses with a sly smirk during a joke setup, it’s like watching a Mento dropped into a bottle of Coke; audience laughter builds, anticipating what’s next. This sort of thing also happens regularly in Glowacki’s daily life. While he’s holding a microphone, at least he gets paid for it.

There’s a bit about repurposing his wife’s breast pump when their infant grows out of it, and it feels like he worked it out at the Kitchen, to let’s say mixed results.

“Everybody knows that feeling,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It’s like the next thing coming out of my mouth is either going to get me in trouble or arrested.”

The latter outcome is less likely than the first; his is a mostly “clean” set. That’s one of the reasons comedian Bob Marley picked Glowacki to open shows for him, something he did for a few years. It started when a Rhode Island club hired him to host for the Maine comic. The gig worked out, and he got the call the next time Marley appeared.

“By that time I had different material, and that showed them I could at least try to have a different set each time we came through a place, which was important to those guys,” he said. “It ended up some of their guys dropped out and I moved up the ranks with Marley. I ended up being one of their two main guys.”

These days Glowacki is hitting much bigger targets. He parlayed a successful run at Boston’s Comedy Connection into a pair of sold-out shows at the prestigious Wilbur Theatre. Glowacki attributes the event’s success to his relatability as a comic.

“I don’t scare anybody away, I don’t ever talk about politics or anything like that, I’m talking about things that we’re all living,” he said, adding that a willingness to bet on himself was a big part of it. “I say all the time, I take big swings … I don’t sulk in the failures, and I don’t get too excited over the victories. I just cross things off my list. Things that excited me as a little kid, now I do them as an adult.”

Upcoming on his schedule are headlining shows at Mohegan Sun, and the comedy club in the MGM Casino in Springfield, Mass. The night after he appears at Beans & Greens Farm in Gilford, Glowacki will play his biggest gig yet, headlining at Cape Cod Melody Tent, a legendary 2,500-seat venue.

“I’m the first local that’s ever been crazy enough to even try to sell that place,” he said. “We’re doing it all word of mouth. I don’t have an agent or credits or any of that. We just spread the word from people having a good time at a show, and they tell their friends, which is the best marketing you can hope for.”

The Gilford show offers the chance for him to prepare for the Cape show and “make sure I’m all dialed in.” Fellow comic Gary Marino co-produced the BGlow & Friends event and will serve as its host. It will be Glowacki’s first time at Beans & Greens. “Usually when I do stuff with Gary, it’s been a home run, so I was like, whatever, I’m in.”

Brian Glowacki & Friends
When: Saturday, July 20, 7 p.m.
Where: Beans & Greens Farm, 245 Intervale Road, Gilford
Tickets: $30 at eventbrite.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.