Author: Michael Witthaus

Faith Ann Band celebrates new album

As it touches on a myriad of musical moods, from tuneful grunge to full-throttle rockers and tender ballads, there’s a clear thread running through In Bloom, the second album from the Faith Ann Band: raw, naked emotion. More precisely, it’s a crackling live wire, shooting furious sparks and sparing no one.

Two minutes of rage, the breakneck-paced “Miller Time” exemplifies this, as a would-be suitor is sneered away with a dismissive line. “I wouldn’t be you for all of the sh-t you could possibly shove in my face,” band leader Faith Ann Mandravelis sings.

Another standout, “Jungle Law” is a credo of sorts. “I ain’t no live-in house pet,” she sings, “I don’t sit pretty.” Odious corporate dronage is drubbed on songs like “Songbird” and “Reaper,” a backward glance at the singer-songwriter’s entrance into music; she quit a job as an engineer to become a math teacher.

“I saw like what day-to-day life was doing to people in an office environment,” she said in a recent phone interview.

One of her students had a band, which inspired her to start hitting the open mic scene around Manchester and Concord.

“As I was writing my songs, I found a lot of healing,” she said. “Giving myself permission to speak up was huge, after having been kind of in the shadows of my musician boyfriend and not really ever feeling like I was worthy enough.”

Buoyed by this newfound courage, Faith Ann hit the road for shows in the South and headed west to play in Arizona. The response to her music led to an epiphany.

“We can focus on not just fixing things that are broken but things that are not … that have just never been used,” she said. “Brushing those off, as a way to bring ourselves back to being inspired by life.”

Her first album was 2020’s Long Last — “Which is pretty much a statement: Finally, I’ve broken out of my shell,” she said. “I’ve stopped letting myself be contained, pushed down and ashamed for my past, and as soon as you own it, you find an acceptance of yourself.”

The only musician from the debut still in the band is bass player Alfredo Benavides. Concord guitarist Mike Stockbridge and drummer Alex Hershman helped make In Bloom, but someone new will take over the drum kit soon. Axile Beighley, who plays with Benavides in Manchester band Dank Sinatra, serves as a fifth member at live shows, like the release party coming up on April 16 at Strange Brew Tavern.

“Feral” is one of the words Faith Ann uses to describe her approach to music.

“I mean it as a way to staying true to the parts of ourselves that are unclaimed territory, that haven’t been cultivated,” she explained. “It’s the parts of us that are the most raw. Whatever you might say unkind about yourself, these are part of the things I do that I enjoy. I don’t need to justify them to anybody.”

As a relative newcomer to the local scene, she finds the New Hampshire music community a welcoming one. She’s paired up with many local bands, and has several shows on the horizon. She’ll support Andrew North & the Rangers at Penuche’s in Concord on May 7, and play at the Market Days event the following month. In July she and her band host a festival of her own called Level Up Get Down at Auburn Pitts. It will include Big Sandy, Chodus, Tumbletoads, The Humans Being and Dank Sinatra.

“Everyone I have played with is super-supportive, and everybody wants to see everyone succeed,” she said. “I don’t think I have ever really heard of anyone bashing on any other musician, because there’s just this understanding of how much guts it takes and how vulnerable you are to do it. People don’t always go out of their way to invite you in their little realm, but once you’re in there, everyone wants to help you out.”

Faith Ann Band
When: Saturday, April 16, 8 p.m.
Where: Strange Brew Tavern, 88 Market St., Manchester
More: thefaithannband.com

Featured photo: Faith Ann Band. Courtesy photo.

Kevin and Michael Bacon perform in Plymouth

The Bacon Brothers are a prolific band — 11 studio albums since forming in the late ’90s, a live record and a hits collection — but there’s really not a Bacon Brothers sound. Kevin Bacon, who writes most of the band’s lyrics, attributes this to their being lifetime students at the College of Musical Knowledge.

“We’ ve lived long enough to have absorbed a lot of different … styles that have continued to grow through the years,” the actor and musician said in a recent joint interview with his brother Michael, a composer. When writing, he said, “We’re thinking about the way the song could sound, as opposed to thinking of a way to fit the song into the Bacon Brothers.”

Thus, there’s a world of difference between the Opry-ready “Picker” and “British Invasion,” which sounds plucked from a 1964 episode of Shindig. Both are from 2020’s The Way We Love, a record that is musically diverse but is also a concept record about love in its many forms.

“Our concept is usually do we have enough songs that we really like to make a 10- or 11-song record,” Michael said.

“Most bands have a certain kind of consistency, but it’s just not what we do,” Kevin added.

One of the best tracks on the new disc “Corona Song,” a tribute to their parents that’s both sweet and humorous; Kevin sings about missing them, while also being grateful they aren’t around to see the pandemic’s dumber moments.

“People get awards and they’ll say, ‘I know my dad’s up there watching, and he would be so happy for me’ — but there’s got to be other times,” he said. “Nobody ever says, ‘I’m so glad my dad’s not up there watching me as I get hauled off to jail.’”

After a handful of one-off gigs over the past two years, The Bacon Brothers are at last back on the road with a tour that stops at Plymouth’s Flying Monkey on April 14. The show will span their catalog and offer a few new selections.

“We have a really nice five-song EP coming out we’re really excited about,” Michael said. “Everything’s sort of falling into place again for us, which is a great feeling.”

One of their few appearances was Sept. 11, 2021, where they performed the moving remembrance song “Unhappy Birthday” in front of New York City’s Freedom Tower.

“Kevin and I both spent more of our lives in New York than out of New York, and that was a special experience,” Michael said. Kevin wrote it at the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. “I think it’s the best 9/11 song, and it’s also eminently updatable. Because we’re always living with that.”

During lockdown, Kevin and wife Kyra Sedgwick had a novel way of maintaining harmony in their three-decade-plus marriage. They’d each retreat to separate areas of their Connecticut home, meeting around noon and again at day’s end.

“It’s a very high-class problem when you have enough rooms in your house that you can go off and be in your own space, come back together for lunch and then say goodbye until cocktail hour,” Kevin said.

Michael stays busy with his film scoring business, and he continues to provide the music for Henry Louis Gates’ series Finding Your Roots, which he’s done for 15 years — including a 2012 episode where his brother and wife learned they were distant cousins.

“It’s a dream job, I’m very lucky to have it,” he said. “It’s an incredible show.”

On the segment where Kevin and Kyra discovered their genealogical connection, the two also learned about a history of abolitionism in their family — along with an opposing fact.

“They also found out that we had a slave owner, and what was shocking to me is he was a Quaker,” Kevin said. “We’d always thought of the Quakers as leaning towards abolition [and] an understanding of the horror of slavery.”

Kevin’s busy acting career continues apace.

“I just finished up Season 3 of City on a Hill, which is on Showtime,” he said. “I think we’re going to be on in June, although I’m not exactly sure of the date. I did a film with Kyra in Rhode Island [Space Oddity] that’s hopefully coming out soon. It has a nice New England angle.”

The Bacon Brothers
When: Thursday, April 14, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Flying Monkey Movie House & Performance Center, 39 S. Main St., Plymouth
Tickets: $65 and $69 at flyingmonkeynh.com

Featured photo: Michael and Kevin Bacon. Photo credit Charles Chessler.

Heart By Heart hits Cap Center

Among tribute bands, Heart by Heart is unique in actually having original members in its lineup. Bassist Steve Fossen joined Heart when it was a Pacific Northwest club band banging out Zeppelin and Deep Purple covers. Drummer Mike Derosier played on a pair of tracks from their 1976 debut album, Dreamboat Annie, then joined full-time.

Compare that to what’s these days officially advertised as Foreigner — only guitarist Mick Jones was part of its best-known hits, and he tours with them for maybe half the year.

With singer Somar Macek and guitarist Lizzy Daymont performing the roles of Ann and Nancy Wilson, Heart by Heart is a facsimile, but one with real cachet.

“We have to call ourselves a tribute act, because people understand what that means,” Fossen said in a recent phone interview. “At the same time, Mike and I helped write the material, and we toured with it. … Actually, we’re kind of a tribute to ourselves.”

With the rhythm section at the core of hits like “Little Queen,” “Straight On” and “Barracuda,” Heart by Heart provides a faithful version of what Heart sounded like in its heyday. Though Fossen no longer dons a unitard as he did in his twenties and Derosier keeps his shirt on, the overall vibe is solid throwback.

“We try to recreate what it would be like to see a band in the late ’70s and early ’80s,” Fossen said. “The guitar players were out there doing double leads together, harmony solos, there’s keyboards blaring, drums and bass are loud. … That’s our goal.”

Fossen and Derosier were pushed out of Heart together in 1982, after the Private Audition album failed to sell as hoped. In the decades that followed, Fossen mostly stayed away from music.

“I was more into mountaineering,” he said. “I spent a lot of my time going up and down mountains, and driving all around Washington state to different wilderness areas.”

In 2008, Derosier and fellow Heart alum Roger Fisher invited him to play a few Heart songs with Macek at a Seattle party. It was the first night he met the woman who’d become both a music and life partner. His first impression was off, though, because he assumed she spelled her first name like the season.

“I thought, oh, here we go; she’s going to come in with the tie-dye dress, hairy armpits, smelling of patchouli oil, a classic hippie chick,” he said, noting that while there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, he was totally off base. “She spells her name S-o-m-a-r, she’s highly educated, and she’s been singing her whole life.”

Macek and Fossen bumped into each other a few more times and became friends.

“She had a band at the time, so I would go out and see her play,” he said. “They would invite me to sit in on Heart songs; the friendship turned into a romance by Christmas.”

He laughed at the observation that unlike Heart, whose romantic entanglements could rival those of Fleetwood Mac and then some, they fell in love before starting a band.

The two began playing as a duo at social gatherings, creating enough of a buzz that they were invited to open for Dwight Yoakam in Anchorage, Alaska. They decided a bigger sound was needed and brought on Derosier and guitarist Randy Hansen. The Yoakam gig ended up getting canceled, but the group enjoyed rehearsing enough to carry on anyway.

Their first official show was a breast cancer awareness benefit. When Daymont joined two years later, the doppelgänger effect was complete with her solid guitar skills and vocal support.

Their sets span all of Heart’s catalog, even songs Fossen and Derosier weren’t on, like “Alone,” “These Dreams” and “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You.”

“We look at Heart songs that are popular, that people want to hear, and we tried to learn those in the beginning,” Fossen said. “Obviously, with a band like ours, we want to please as many people as possible. There’s a lot of fans of that era of music, so we [play] those too.”

Heart By Heart
When: Saturday, April 2, 8 p.m.
Where: Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $25 and up ccanh.com

Featured photo: Heart by Heart. Photo by Bill Bungard.