Musicians who keep coming back to the scene that gave them their start
On every highway, from I-95 to Route 66, there’s a car towing a trailer full of dreams, a van packed with guitars, amps, an electric keyboard and a suitcase stuffed with notebooks. Every musician with a shred of ambition hears the call to Mecca.
Not all have the gumption to take flight. Those who do usually find a way to hold on to their hometown. More often than not, a round trip is a necessity. Landing in a new place means finding gigs, not always an easy task.
“This city ain’t your throne, like it was back home,” singer-songwriter Amanda McCarthy wrote about the challenge. She considers herself fortunate to quit a day job after less than a year in Nashville to play music full time, but her calendar still includes several months in New Hampshire, working at her old haunts.
Tom Dixon’s country music dream eventually wore him down to just a handful of hometown shows a year, but he’s proof that though the grind may get old, the pull remains.
“The reason I come back? One answer is the fans, really,” he said. “As long as I can do it, and as long as they want me to do it, I will.”
In 2002, guitarist Brad Myrick left his home in Hopkinton on a whim to try his luck in Los Angeles. There, a chat with a fellow music school student launched him on a journey to Italy, where he met Italian musician Nicola Cipriani and began a collaboration that led him around the world.
A decade later, however, he’d returned to his foundation in the Granite State, even as he continued to travel to Europe to tour. Myrick currently runs Lakes Region recording studio The Greenhouse, and leads NH Music Collective, which fosters talent and books shows throughout the region.
“It’s beautiful when I can incorporate what I’ve learned in other music scenes into the great scene we have here,” Myrick said in 2014. Eight years later, he feels validated. The need to go through a crucible like L.A. isn’t hard to understand, but there’s no reason it can’t also be done here.
“We have the technology to make New Hampshire the next Seattle,” he said. “The people with something to say are going to find a way, and most take off for that reason. I just want that opportunity to be bigger here, and that’s a big part of why I stick around.”
Amanda McCarthy: The Long Haul
For Amanda McCarthy, leaving New Hampshire was always the dream. The singer-songwriter began looking at Nashville apartments when she was 20 years old, stopping only when she learned she was pregnant.
“That changed everything,” she said. “I won’t say that set me back; I mean, everything happens for a reason. I love my daughter, but it definitely made my approach very different.”
McCarthy has been a working musician since her high school days, playing throughout her home state. Her biggest local moment came when she performed at Salt Hill Shanty in Sunapee. Steven Tyler, a personal hero of hers, was there that day, so she boldly decided to cover an Aerosmith song. He reacted favorably, leading to a weeks-long media splash.
Soon after, she made the move to Music City with a singular goal in mind.
“I really wanted to explore the world of writing music for other people,” she said. “Writing songs that might not necessarily be my style, but knowing they still have a life somewhere else.” A good example of this is “The Long Haul,” a song McCarthy wrote in the early 2010s that became the title track of fellow New Hampshire singer April Cushman’s debut album.
There are only a few places left to follow such a dream, and Nashville tops the list. That said, it’s a crowded and often daunting place to stake a claim, but the young and hopeful artist managed to find her way.
“I was a little nervous that it would be hard to break in, that people might be mean, because it’s a big city, but people are genuinely nice, accepting and welcoming,” McCarthy said. “By the time Year 1 wrapped up, I’d pretty much found who I consider to be my circle, my tribe of people who I collaborate and play shows with.”
Helping her crack the code was a realization that hosting song pulls — events where writers share their work with audiences and each other — was a great way to network.
“I got the opportunity to book some shows, and rather than billing it under Amanda McCarthy … I chose to bill it under a company that I started called Nashville Writers Collective,” she said. “I think that’s attracted a lot of people because it sounded more like an entity and an experience rather than just another songwriter.”
Currently, McCarthy has been readying a new album, Don’t Stop Me, due for release soon. All the while, she’s kept one foot in New England, traveling back to play gigs. Her next hometown appearance will be at Exeter’s Sawbelly Brewing on April 29. Initially she did it to survive; now it gives her a way to check in with home that’s not an economic necessity.
“When I got here … I didn’t have a professional network, and I didn’t really have a way to make money, whereas now I kind of figured that out,” she said. “It’s less of a crutch for me and more enjoyable… I can treat it more like a working vacation.”
Tom Dixon: Gone to the Dogs
For Tom Dixon, the road out of New England led to some great memories, but not enough to sustain a career in music.
Dixon hit Nashville in 2013 after establishing himself as a solid draw in his home state fronting an eponymous band, but had no illusions about taking the town by storm.
“My expectations were low, but my hopes were high,” he said. “If you go into something like this expecting to be a star, you’re a fool; you hope that you will, and get as far as you can.”
Undeterred, Dixon worked to break into the scene there, beginning with his aptly titled album, Kick Start This Party, made with producer Kent Wells.
“We got that out and hit the road with it as soon as possible,” Dixon said. “Of course, my first trip was back to New England — I knew I could play there.”
Soon, he was booking tours that led from Nashville to New England, playing bars, barbecue joints, and anywhere else he could. It was lucrative, and when he arrived in New Hampshire he’d play for a large chunk of the summer. All the while, he was checking off items from his professional bucket list.
“I played all over the country,” Dixon said. “I didn’t play in all 50 states, but I played in a lot. I was able to do some big things, play some big stages, play on national television, get on radio … I wanted to do everything.” His biggest moment came after he was inspired to write a song for a veterans organization called Coalition For The American Heroes.
Eventually, though, it got old.
“I began to feel like a truck driver who stops in different towns to play music,” Dixon said. “All I do is drive and then I stop, put on a show and drive again. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve driven 10 hours, played a show, slept in a hotel for four hours, got up and drove 10 hours back. I ended up having some issues. My career kind of slowed down, it’s not on fire like it used to be. I’m in pain literally and I’m tired of not being home and it just wasn’t fun anymore.”
Despite that, Dixon travels home each summer to play a handful of shows for his still dedicated local fan base. He’ll be back in April at Manchester’s Bonfire and Stumble Inn in Londonderry, a New England run he’s dubbed The Good Times and Bad Decisions Tour.
Before he decided to play music full-time, Dixon had seriously considered a profession centered on his love for dogs. He’d trained his own, helped friends with theirs, and claimed it was a coin flip that led him to music. He decided to contact the Animal Behavior College to learn his options and was stunned by what the person on the other end of the phone told him.
“He said, ‘Funny story, you’re in my system already, in New Hampshire… you and I talked 10 years ago,” Dixon said. “It was a real thing that long ago, when I hadn’t started playing music full-time. The weird thing is that I’m still following a dream, but now I can follow two dreams. My career’s gone to the dogs.”
MB Padfield: California Dreaming
When MB Padfield moved to Southern California, she didn’t receive a golden reception.
“I got broken into, and all of my songwriting notebooks were stolen,” the New Hampshire native recalled recently. “On impact, that was brutal; but since then things have been really great.”
Driven to perform from an early age — she enrolled at Berklee at 16 — Padfield traveled between coasts a lot before packing a U-Haul in early 2018. At home she gigged constantly, but playing covers wore on her.
Padfield’s songs were getting played on the radio when she was 16. Her first single, “Silly Boy,” featured Greg Hawkes of the Cars on ukulele. Her anti-bullying original “You Can’t Break Me Down” showed a maturity beyond her years. A next stop at the world’s entertainment hub was a natural choice.
“New England has really amazing players as far as musicians, and the talent there is top-notch, but there’s a mindset in Los Angeles that you want to push yourself to do more,” she said. “I don’t think moving away is for everybody, but I do think if you feel a call of an artistic vision that you don’t seem to be surrounded by currently, then it might be an option.”
For Padfield, the level of talent in L.A. is the opposite of intimidating.
“There are people that exude creativity; it’s so inspiring and motivating to be around. … That’s honestly my favorite part,” she said. “I’m not looking to be a big fish in a little pond. I want to be able to play shows and make music … representative of the person I am, [and not] a different mindset of, ‘Oh, I gotta be the best in the room.’ If you’re the best in the room, you aren’t in the right room.”
She’s currently at work on a new EP called Surface and has launched a Kickstarter campaign to cover distribution costs.
“It’s sonically very modern; I guess you would call it in the indie pop genre,” she said. “I wrote all the songs myself, and I’ve been working with an amazing team out here that’s kind of helping me bring those songs to life.”
Padfield heads back to New England in the summer and around the winter holidays to play shows but doesn’t plan on being bicoastal forever.
“Three or four months out of the year until I’m able to be full-time in Los Angeles,” she said, adding that returning to SoCal can be jarring. “There is a switch that has to be flipped, and it’s so hard sometimes.”
For Padfield’s long-term goals, her new home is an ideal fit.
“New England has such an amazing strong backbone, of cover gigs and working-class musicians,” she said, “but in Los Angeles there’s something to be said for creativity and innovation, and propelling culture. It just feels like you’re part of something bigger.”
Senie Hunt: Dividing the Time
Senie Hunt first left his New Hampshire home for another Tennessee music mecca, Memphis. After a few months there he returned, following a breakup with his girlfriend. Heading south was always part of his long-term plan, and Hunt made the move to Nashville in April of last year.
“I wanted to be in a place that was more diverse both in terms of music and in terms of culture and race,” Hunt, who is Black, said in a recent phone interview. His new home offered the bonus of being “the least furthest away, so I’m still able to visit with my family and friends, and also stay down here.”
Hunt is an acoustic guitarist with a unique percussive sound produced by tapping the body of his instrument as he plays it. The urge to move was spurred by a need for both “a change of scenery” and a change from what had become a limiting gig schedule.
“I didn’t want to end up playing the same places to the same people all the time; I wanted to branch off,” he said. Nashville had “hundreds of places either doing live shows or open mics, showcases, recording, all of that … built into one city block. At almost every show I played, I’d meet an entirely new audience.”
Another factor that helped was having a musical style that diverged from the sound the city was primarily known for.
“Despite Nashville being a very heavy country scene, it’s starting to evolve because a younger generation is coming in,” he said. “Right now is the perfect time if you stand out in a different style. … People just create music here.”
Along with success that finds him able to book shows months in advance in his new home, Hunt stays connected to his old digs, regularly returning for area gigs. Camaraderie with the local scene was vital when his car caught fire on a recent tour, resulting in a total loss of Hunt’s vehicle and much of his equipment.
Area musicians quickly organized a benefit for him at Area 23 in Concord, a place Hunt played frequently when he lived there.
“A lot of my friends decided they wanted to pitch in and help me kind of get back on my feet and get back on tour regularly,” he said. At the show, Hunt played a Zoom set for the crowd there. “It was nice, even just briefly, to share a few songs with the folks up north.”
Resupplied with assistance from his pals, Hunt is headed back at the end of the month to play some shows; he’ll be around until the end of May. Fans can see a new side of him on April 23 in Concord, with the debut of the plugged-in Senie Hunt Project at Bank of NH Stage.
“I have always loved blues and electric, and since it is very different from my normal stuff I decided to make a new band to not throw too many people off,” he said, noting he’d begun on electric guitar in grade school. “I really only switched back to acoustic when I transferred colleges and needed to find a solo alternative, which then brought me back to my percussive guitar playing, which filled the void of not having a band around.”
Gracie Curran: Point of Departure
In 2014, Gracie Curran moved to Memphis after experiencing the city during the International Blues Competition. She found it welcoming, both for the music and for its central location, which made touring a big chunk of the country easier.
“After the awards, we were starting to get calls to play in Omaha, in Chicago,” Curran said in February. “Mapping from Boston was a scary thought, but I realized we could reach 70 percent of our markets within an eight-hour drive from Memphis. … It was a good jumping-off point for us to put our feet in the waters and start touring.”
Soon after, Gracie Curran & the High Falutin’ Band scored a residency at a Beale Street nightclub called Rum Boogie. The singer shared cramped quarters in a city apartment, but it didn’t bother her.
“It was worth living with four other band leaders,” she said. “I was with such talented musicians that put so much work and effort into their craft.”
Another reason Curran settled in Memphis was that the band she’d formed in 2010 with bass player Geoff Murfitt was at a crossroads. Murfitt had a family, which didn’t fit well with spending time on the road, while guitarist Tommy Carroll had grown tired of touring.
“So I came down to Memphis initially to kind of start and grow the band,” Curran said, something she found easier said than done. “There are a lot of amazing musicians here in Memphis, but all the great ones are usually on the road.”
She recruited veteran Boston guitar player Chris Hersch and coaxed Murfitt back into the band with an offer to fly them from New England to wherever their dates are, while ending the Rum Boogie residency. The band is rounded out by keyboard player Scott Coulter, who’s also in Hersch’s band Say Darling, and drummer Terrell Reed.
“That’s what we’ve been doing ever since,” Curran said. “It’s been great to be able to play with them. Memphis was really everything I expected it to be; it’s truly a great musical family here, a really supportive, welcoming community … and not only that, musician supporters.”
Curran’s connection to her old home is unwavering; she returns whenever she can, and always on her birthday. She’ll be at The Bull Run in Shirley, Mass., on May 16 for an ensemble show that includes Toni Lynn Washington, Diane Blue, Gina Coleman and Erin Harpe.
“I really feel like I have the best of both worlds right now,” she said. “I have a great community here… but also in Boston. I was very spoiled in that when I first started testing the waters, we had Ronnie Earl, Mike Welch and Roomful of Blues, Toni Lynn Washington and all these amazing musicians. To have both those perspectives from musicians that played with all the greats, to be able to pass on stories and tips … these are valuable things that I am so grateful for.”
Brooks Hubbard: Back Home Again
From the moment he left New England, Brooks Hubbard knew he’d be back. In fact, that was his goal.
In early 2015 Hubbard set out for Los Angeles to grow his music career, but a stop to visit a friend in Nashville changed his mind.
“It offers the same opportunities and cuts out all the Hollywood stuff that I don’t need,” Hubbard said in early March. “Nashville welcomes you with open arms, whereas L.A. or New York seem to be closed off. … You have to work the networks to get on stage.”
Hubbard managed to leverage the West Coast connections he did have. A drummer he knew who had played with Robert Cray had introduced him to Jackson Browne’s guitarist Val McCallum during a visit there the previous year. In summer 2015, the two played together in White River Junction, Vermont, at a release party for Hubbard’s album Start of Me.
McCallum agreed to do the show via text, based on a misunderstanding that turned out well.
“He thought it was a bar gig, but it was actually a ticketed show, and I was playing all original music,” Hubbard said. “He didn’t know any of my songs, but he’s one of those players that can play anything — he has a great ear.”
After the show, McCallum was insistent that they should “do something together,” Hubbard said. “That was where the seed was planted to make a record, which we eventually got to do in 2017.”
As Hubbard had made the move right after earning his bachelor’s, he approached his new home as a learning experience.
“The first couple of years I was there was just an extension of school,” he said. “This is what I really want to do, and this is where I need to learn what people do in this industry do to make a living.”
He found that opportunity did not equate to success.
“I always say it’s the home of the greatest and the worst musicians in the world,” he said. “If you want to be one of those great artists or performers, you gotta put in the work. It’s really tough to make a buck in town there, because there’s just so many people that are doing the same thing.”
Hubbard uses the past tense because he recently re-settled in Etna, the New Hampshire town where he grew up and began playing music, inspired by his father, also a musician. He’s now married to the girlfriend he decamped with to Music City seven years ago; they’ll welcome their first child in April.
The move back came a bit sooner than expected, but the timing turned out for the best.
“It was something that my wife and I had always talked about eventually doing, but the pandemic for sure sped up that plan,” Hubbard said. “Doing livestreaming and even co-writing through Zoom made me realize that you don’t have to physically be in some of those places. If you go there and make the corrections and then keep those connections, it doesn’t really matter where you base yourself.”
See the musicians
Amanda McCarthy just released “Don’t Stop Me” co-written with fellow expat Ty Openshaw; the track will appeal to fans of Marren Morris and Kacey Musgraves. She’ll be home in late April for a round of New England shows, though her only Granite State gig is Friday, April 29, at Sawbelly Brewing (156 Epping Road, Exeter). Visit amandamccarthy.com.
Tom Dixon made his final single, “The Weekend,” in 2020, a raucous call to party that will please fans of Luke Bryan and Rascal Flatts. Though he officially retired from the music business, Dixon heads home occasionally to play for his hardcore fans. He’ll do a full band show at Bonfire (950 Elm St, Manchester) on Friday, April 23, at 8 p.m.
MB Padfield has a four-song EP called Surfaces due later in the year. Fans of Holly Humberstone will enjoy 2020’s brooding love song “Trxst” — it’s on her YouTube page. Padfield is currently booking New England dates for summer. She’ll be at Bernie’s Beach Bar (73 Ocean Blvd., Hampton) every Saturday afternoon from mid-June until Labor Day.
Senie Hunt continues to play acoustic music in his singular percussive guitar style, but will showcase an electric side during his Saturday, April 23, appearance at Bank of NH Stage ($18 at ccanh.com). For a taste of that sound check out “Lovers on the Run,” available on Tidal and other platforms. It’s a growling blues rocker reminiscent of Gary Clark Jr.
Gracie Curran & the High Falutin’ Band is a rip-roaring combo fronted by a namesake singer who channels Janis Joplin and Brittany Howard. Their next area date is a blues showcase Saturday, April 16, at Bull Run (215 Great Road, Shirley, Mass., $30 at bullrunrestaurant.com) with Curran, Toni Lynn Washington, Diane Blue, Gina Coleman and Erin Harpe.
Brooks Hubbard is a singer-songwriter in the vein of Jackson Browne, Jack Johnson and Jason Isbell. He’s putting the finishing touches on Father & Son, a collection of songs celebrating parenthood — his first child is due in April. See him Saturday mornings at 10 a.m. at The Goat (50 Old Granite St., Manchester).
Featured photo: Brooks Hubbard. Photo by Brett Berwager Photography.
