Author: Michael Witthaus

The Music Roundup 24/09/26

Local music news & events

• Native sons: With their doom-y anthem “Life Underground,” brother duo Hobo Wizard ushered in summer last July. Built on a thick rhythm spread under guitar riffs that equally evoke Sabbath and surf bands, it’s a smash, paying tribute to the local basement music scene. Get your taste at a show that also includes Trading Tombstones and Connecticut band VRSA. Thursday, Sept. 26, Feathered Friend Brewing, 231 S. Main St, Concord. See facebook.com/VRSAband.

• Healing music: A few years ago, Mary Gauthier published her first book, Saved by a Song. It served as both a guide for the aspiring songwriter and a personal chronicle of how the craft kept her alive after she got sober. Gauthier walks the walk as an artist; 2017’s Rifles & Rosary Beads was drawn from Songwriting With Soldiers, a project she launched to help veterans cope as civilians. Friday, Sept. 27, 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $29 at palacetheatre.org.

• Big soul: Called “the greatest blues singer of her generation” by the Washington Post, Shemekia Copeland performs in support of her latest album, Blame It On Eve. The new release features a who’s who of the roots music scene, including backing vocals from Alejandro Escovedo, dobro master Jerry Douglas and DaShawn Hickman on sacred steel guitar. Friday, Sept. 27, 8 p.m., Rochester Opera House, 31 Wakefield St., Rochester, $38 and $42 at rochesteroperahouse.com.

• Drifting back: Since winning American Idol and charting with the song “Home” a dozen years ago, Phillip Phillips has risen steadily in the pop music world. He considers his most recent release, Drift Back, “a love album,” while adding the qualifier, “it’s not all happy.” Saturday, Sept. 28, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $45 and up at tupelomusichall.com.

• Afternoon songs: One writer enthused that Andrea Paquin’s voice “goes down like red wine over good conversation.” She once had an epiphany listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Helpless” and spent days learning it note for note. Her folky music has been compared to Joni Mitchell and Indigo Girls. The singer-songwriter performs an outdoor show at a bucolic winery. Sunday, Sept. 29, 1:30 p.m., Averill House Vineyard, 21 Averill Road, Brookline, $5 at eventbrite.com.

A joyful place

Concord Chamber art exhibit

The Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce’s downtown Visitors Center is an oasis for art lovers. New Hampshire Furniture Masters and the New Hampshire Art Association both display works there. Currently, sculpture and otherworldly tables and chairs built by Jon Brooks are streetside, while 11 paintings from Yildiz Grodowski adorn the back wall.

Grodowski was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and studied there before moving to New England; she’s lived in the Boston area for most of her life. Speaking by phone recently, she described herself as “a semi-abstract artist, because there are always recognizable elements in my paintings.”

These include scraps of text: handwritten or from newspapers, magazines or sources, like the Viking cruise ship brochure found in the lively “One Step at a Time.” The latter work is part of a series called “Into The Woods,” which occupies the first half of her exhibit, “Where Will I Take You.” Its four pieces — there are more, she said — are evocative, playful and joyous.

The first, “Ménage a Quatre,” has a bird with bits of sky in its wings rising toward three Dali-esque windows capped by a staircase to the stars. Below this raucous activity is a street scene that looks cribbed from a mid-20th-century European fashion magazine. The next two, “Her Hands Were Watching Me” and “One Step at a Time,” are colorful and animated.

The final painting of the group, “Take Me to Where the Wild Things Grow,” is subdued. It’s also beautifully textured, another characteristic of her work. It’s an important reason why looking at photos of her art online can’t do them justice.

Her overall selection of works for the exhibit, which ends in early November, was done in hopes of holding onto summer as it fades away.

“I like warm weather, I don’t like winter, I don’t like cold,” she said. “That’s the reason I wanted to bring some color, something happy, something joyful, something optimistic.”

That said, Grodowski stressed that her art isn’t born from crunching around in the autumn leaves, even if it arrives in a bucolic place eventually.

“I love nature. I respect it so much, but it’s not my inspiration for some reason,” she said, explaining that the series’ title is “about discovery of a space, of a person, of oneself.”

For Grodowski, the creative process is as kinetic as her works suggest. The first stage, which she calls “the play,” always includes music played at full blast, and a lot of movement. “I don’t even think about creating movement,” she said. “It’s so intuitive, it comes from within, you know? I’m a dancer, so I guess my brush dances on the substrate as I’m painting.”

She often layers on an already prepared surface.

“I start with either collage or my own writings on the substrate,” she said. “Collage pieces can be almost anything. A lot of them have also numbers and writings … or I write myself. If I’m listening to a song, maybe I’m just writing the lyrics, or whatever happened the day before, or what I’m feeling.”

The middle stage is the longest, one she calls The Ugly. “Which is the struggle,” she wrote for artsyshark.com, leading to “refinement — the home stretch. With the exception of the last stage, during which I need absolute quiet, I blast the music, singing and dancing … and of course, painting.”

At that point, after the pasting, the painting and occasionally the sanding of surfaces, Grodowski can bond with the piece and sign her name to it.

“Connection is everything; that’s the foundation of my art, really,” she said. “Connection means … there’s nothing more I can add; it’s all I could give to that piece. Although many artists and many masters say, and it’s true, that no art piece, no painting, is finished … there comes a moment that you know — this is it.”

Hopefully, the viewer will be similarly lifted.

“I want to create something so they can find their own place and connection,” she said, noting that the exhibit title is a question, not an answer. “Rather than giving it to them, saying ‘Here it is, take it,’ I want to ask them what they see.”

‘Where Will I Take You’ – Yildiz Grodowski
When: Through Nov. 10, artist reception Saturday, Nov. 2, 6 p.m.
Where: Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center, 49 S. Main St., Concord
More: nhartassociation.org

Featured image: Works by Yildiz Grodowski. Courtesy photo.

Last chance

Three area shows before Senie Hunt returns to Nashville

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

Since moving from Concord to Nashville a few years ago, Senie Hunt has found a lot of opportunities to grow as an artist. What was hard in New England, like driving two hours to pitch his percussive guitar skills to a new venue, is a lot more manageable in Music City.

“In Nashville, you walk down the street and find a place, and if they don’t get back to you, it’s just another walk down the road to go back and try it again,” he said by phone recently. “Trying to stay consistently active, but also trying to find gigs that I want to be doing more, is … easier.”

It’s also a hub to other Southern cities; Hunt has played in New Orleans and in Tennessee cities like Gatlinburg, Knoxville, Murfreesboro and Pigeon Forge, home to Dollywood. He still makes time to return home to play, and when he does it’s often to do a special show. That’s the case with a few upcoming gigs, his last in New England until next spring.

The biggest is a triple bill on Sept. 20 at Rockingham Ballroom in Newmarket. Hunt will perform backed by Amorphous Band, a venerable Seacoast group, with fiddler EJ Ouellette joining in. He has a full band, the electric Senie Hunt Project; it played last June at Concord’s Bank of NH Stage. But this will be the first time he’ll be backed by a band while playing his acoustic guitar and djembe.

“I’m really excited about that,” he said. “Normally if I do an acoustic song with my band, I have them step off and they come back for the electric set.”

However, those looking for a taste of Hunt’s blues rock material can see a trio version of his Project on Thursday, Sept. 19, at Penuche’s Ale House in Concord. Finally, Hunt will play an afternoon solo set at the Concord Multicultural Festival on Sept. 22 in Keach Park.

It’s a regular annual event for Hunt, who built his current schedule around it. When the festival debuted a few years ago, Hunt came away impressed. This year’s lineup includes Nepalese dancers Barranquilla Flavor, Suri Wang performing traditional Chinese music, Irish step dancers, Ruby Shabazz’s old-school soul and R&B, Bollywood from Varnika, and hip-hop and Afropop from Martin Toe, as well as Israeli dancing and Japanese Taiko drumming.

“It really opened my eyes up to how much diversity is in Concord that’s just kind of tucked away,” Hunt said. “Just to know that there’s so much diversity and culture around in their home neighborhood, bringing out the music and food and dancing all in a public space really gives anybody the opportunity to come up and really see for themselves how vibrant the community can be.”

Hunt will wrap up with shows in Rhode Island and Newburyport, Mass., before heading back to his new home. While here, he’s also adding guitar and vocals to “Harmony,” a song by his longtime friend Hank Osborne, at Rocking Horse Studio in Pittsfield.

“I’ve worked with Hank since pretty much Day 1 when I moved to Concord,” Hunt said. “When I heard Hank’s music, there were so many similarities between his and my style of playing. I’m a little rougher on my guitar than him, but he’s one of the few musicians in the town that plays a similar style.”

Then it’s back to Nashville, where Hunt’s original music is getting much-deserved attention.

“I get to play my own style, my own thing,” he said. “That’s something I didn’t know I would find while I was down here, because you go downtown and it’s all covers. But there are certain places that are a lot more open, not the country or rock scene, and they want to hear your own original stuff. I’ve been pretty well off with being able to find enough places that are interested in that … it’s keeping me active, that’s a big upside. I’m able to play the music I want to play.”

World Music for Peace – The Meter Maids, Amorphous Band w/ Senie Hunt & EJ Ouellette, and Big Blue World
When: Friday, Sept. 20, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Rockingham Ballroom, 22 Ash Swamp Road, Newmarket
Tickets: $20 at coastalsoundsnh.com (21+)

Senie Hunt Trio appears Thursday, Sept. 19, at 9 p.m. at Penuche’s Ale House in Concord, and Senie Hunt plays solo at the Concord Multicultural Festival in Keach Park on Sunday, Sept. 22, at 3 p.m.

Featured photo: Senie Hunt.Courtesy photo.Photo by Christine Torrey (Birch & Fern Photography)

The Music Roundup 24/09/19

Local music news & events

S• Helping hands: A local woman’s battle against breast cancer is the impetus for a benefit that has Frank Viele playing solo acoustic atop the bill, with Lisa Guyer kicking things off. Viele, a past NEMA Performer of the Year, has an album in progress that he’s been slowly releasing over the year. Its latest single, “Necessary Evil,” is a solid hybrid of classic rock and modern country. Thursday, Sept. 19, 5 p.m., Auburn Pitts, 167 Rockingham Road, Auburn, $25 at eventbrite.com.

• Willie big: The upcoming Outlaw Music Festival is a solid slice of Americana, with John Mellencamp and breakout twang hero Charley Crockett each playing 90-minute sets as a prelude to national treasure Willie Nelson & Family taking the stage. Recent reviews of the tour note that Mellencamp is playing a lot of his big hits like “Jack & Diane” and “Hurts So Good.” Friday, Sept. 20, 5 p.m., BankNH Pavilion, 61 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford, $89 and up at livenation.com.

• Rock revival: For those too young to remember The Who at Woodstock, there’s The Sixties Show, a multimedia tribute to music’s (arguably) greatest decade. The setlist ranges from The Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday” to selections from the rock opera Tommy, with a couple of songs from left field like “Wichita Lineman,” a classic written by Jimmy Webb for Glen Campbell. Saturday, Sept. 21, 8 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 22 Main St., Nashua, $39 and up at etix.com.

• L.A. farewell: The remarkable, nearly five-decade career of X ends next year with a Little Steven’s Underground Garage cruise, but not before they barnstorm the country one final time. They also made a final album, Smoke & Fiction, with the single “Big Black X” providing a look back at how the Los Angeles band’s lives have changed since they — and punk rock — broke out in 1977. Sunday, Sept. 22, 7 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $45 and up at tupelomusichall.com.

• Horror show: The outsized sideburns sported by Cancerslug front man Alex Story are one reason he’s called Werewolf by fans, while another is the band’s Misfits-inspired horror punk, though Story cites influences going back to HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe. It’s provocative music — “If I’ve done my job right,” he says, at least one thing he offers “will anger, annoy or offend.” Tuesday, Sept. 24, 7 p.m., Jewel Music Venue, 61 Canal St., Manchester, $15.75 at eventbrite.com.

Art is an open door

Bookery talk fosters appreciation

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

Visual artist and critic Franklin Einspruch will appear at an upcoming Bookery Manchester event to discuss Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art. Edited by Einspruch and written by the modernist painter Walter Darby Bannard, the book is a guide to seeing as much as a source for creating, and Einspruch’s talk will also appeal to non-artists.

Anyone who’s ever stared blankly at a wall of paintings in a gallery, or puzzled over an article packed with critical terms, will be relieved by the book’s simplicity. “Good art is good art. Period.,” it begins, followed by an explanatory page; this format continues for the rest of its 240 pages.

“Way down deep we are all the same,” Bannard writes. “Taste, if we have it, is what takes us down to where art lives.”

In a recent Zoom interview, Einspruch explained that his discussion at Bookery is a way in for anyone who’s had an unpleasant experience looking at art.

“This is for folks who’ve gone into a museum and just felt bewildered,” he said. “The refreshing message is you’re allowed to have your own experience. You must learn to trust that … because it’s yours.”

The inspiration to collect Bannard’s Aphorisms for Artists was born in the early 2000s, when Einspruch was a writer for Artblog.net, one of the first blogs about visual art. His old professor frequently responded to his articles, using an alias.

“He left all these jewels of wisdom in the comments section; I said, ‘We ought to assemble this into readable form.’” Over the years, “we went back and forth developing the aphorisms. It was all his creation, but I would give feedback on some of them and advice … once he was done, I wrote a foreword.” Sadly, Bannard, “Darby” to his friends, passed away in 2016 and wasn’t able to witness the first edition of his book sell out in 2022.

Bannard, whose works are in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, was integral to Einspruch’s growth as a painter. He came to the University of Miami in the early ’90s with a newfound interest in abstract painting, sparked by seeing a Willem de Kooning work in a New Orleans museum.

“I tried to figure out what was going on by making abstract paintings in this very de Kooning mode,” he said. “Darby, who with Frank Stella was thrown out of de Kooning’s studio as a young painter, knew this material very, very well. I’d make a bunch of paintings, and he’d say, ‘OK, well, that’s your best one, and that one’s OK, the one next to that is no good, and

the fourth one will be fine if you rotate it 90 degrees.’”

He was right every time, Einspruch added. “The manner in which Darby could troubleshoot paintings was unbelievable.”

Those who don’t spend their days with a brush in hand shouldn’t be intimidated by the depth of this knowledge, however.

“Art is,” he declares early on, and it’s for everyone. One of the book’s key aphorisms is, “An ivory tower is a fine place as long as the door is open.” By that, Bannard meant that, like all specialties, art is elitist. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” he wrote. “Art may be for the privileged few, but they have earned the privilege and deny it to no one.”

A passion for helping others find their “eye” — a conduit to beauty — drove him as a teacher and creator. “There is no way to specify what good art is or how to create it,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. There was a caveat, however. “Certain principles, like gold in a pan, eventually wash clear enough to express in a few words.”

The many nuggets sprinkled on the pages of Aphorisms for Artists are a treasure for anyone hoping to connect with art.

“This is a book written by someone who knew very well how to make art, and he knew it so well that he could help other people,” Einspruch said. “That turns out to be a very rare skill, partly because his talent was of such extraordinary degree, but also he was able to articulate what he was doing.”

Franklin Einspruch discusses Aphorisms for Artists
When: Friday, Sept. 20, 5 p.m.
Where: Bookery Manchester, 844 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: Free; register at eventbrite.com

Featured image: Franklin Einspruch. Photo from Zoom call by Michael Witthaus.

A journey in music

Stephane Wrembel brings Triptych to UNH

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

Triptych is the latest album from French guitarist Stephane Wrembel. The expansive 20-song collection is a meditation on life, represented in three musical movements. It’s a collaboration with pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, which came together after Wrembel’s manager suggested that the two connect. Initially, Wrembel was reluctant.

“Piano and guitar are very difficult to marry,” he said by phone recently. “It’s a difficult match because we kind of occupy the same space, and it’s very easy for tones to clash.” He decided to give it a try anyway, and quickly became enamored of the pianist. Pilc is renowned for his improvisational skills and has an impressive resume. His credits include time as music director and pianist for Harry Belafonte.

At the time, Wrembel had a concert series at Joe’s Pub in New York City coming up to celebrate the release of Django l’impressionniste, a collection of 17 preludes for solo guitar.

“Django is also influenced by Claude Debussy, so I wanted to do something around him,” he recalled. That’s when Pilc’s name came up; the two had not yet met.

He was recruited for the shows, and “the chemistry was immediate and so powerful that we decided to record together,” Wrembel said. “I had the instinct that we needed to go to the studio and record a triptych. I had the vision of a triptych. I didn’t know why, but I could see that it was the right thing to do.”

It’s a true collaboration, with both Wrembel and Pilc contributing new songs. Overall, the album is anchored by selections from Django Reinhardt like “Douce Ambiance,” which is transformed by Pilc’s piano flourishes in the intro before settling into a joyous jazzy rhythm familiar to fans of Reinhardt.

Wrembel is a devotee of the legendary guitarist. As David Fricke wrote in 2009, he “studied Reinhardt’s fleet precision and soulful swing the hard way — playing in actual Gypsy camps.” He lived in the Paris neighborhood where Reinhardt spent his final years and considers him an essential musician.

“Django is to the guitar what Bach is to the keyboard,” he said. “When you practice Django, you become a better guitarist; it’s automatic. You will understand the guitar better, you will see things better, you have a better technique, so everything about your playing is going to be better. Django is an archetypal source like that.”

Triptych’s first movement begins with “Ecco Homo” — an introduction, Wrembel explained. “It means ‘here is the man,’” he said. “It’s the birth of the triptych.” The next section starts with “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” a Wrembel composition that provides insight into what informs him beyond gypsy jazz.

The first song Wrembel recalls hearing as a very young child is Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” He’s progressed past rock, but “those sounds are still there, I make no difference between Debussy, Pink Floyd, Chopin,” he said. “All that’s the same for me.”

There’s a link to the ’70s literary touchstone in Floyd’s song “Echoes,” Wrembel continued. “It’s about an albatross hanging motionless upon the air,” he said. This led him to Richard Bach’s novel, and “the idea of a floating seagull that tries to find what’s noble in its own nature rather than just finding food. It’s a beautiful tale.”

The third section of Triptych is its most ambitious, beginning with “Life In Three Stages Part I: The Child and the Desert,” continuing with “Part II: Building a World” and concluding with “Part III: Old Age, Grace and Wisdom.” The last offers an elegiac cadence that’s gorgeous and haunting, with Wrembel and Pilc the only musicians.

The final movement’s tone reflects Wrembel’s own sentiments.

“I’m 50, I’m entering old age,” he said. “That’s the third stage, where I believe that as an artist, if you keep working and concentrating and studying philosophy, it’s possible to reach very high levels of consciousness. You don’t think the same when you are 50 than when you are 20, and probably you don’t think the same when you are 80 than when you are 50. Every time there is more and more wisdom coming.”

Triptych – Stephane Wrembel Band with Jean-Michel Pilc
When: Friday, Sept. 13, 8 p.m.
Where: Johnson Theatre, 50 Academic Way, Durham
Tickets: $10 and $12 at stephanewrembel.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

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