Author: Michael Witthaus

Seventies Dead from Rainbow Full of Sound

The Grateful Dead have continued to have a rich afterlife since their final show in 1995. First as Furthur, then as Dead & Company, most of its remaining members resumed touring a few years after Jerry Garcia died. Tribute acts reinvent the group’s songs in a myriad of genres, like local jam band Roots of Creation, with its Grateful Dub franchise.

Then there are the faithful re-enactors. Best known is Dark Star Orchestra, which will pull a setlist from the vault on any given night and let Deadheads guess the time-traveling destination. Rainbow Full of Sound takes that idea a step further, taking on whole tours.

Waynard Scheller put RFoS in 2012, to recreate the Dead’s 1980 run at New York’s Radio Music Hall. It was supposed to be a one-time deal. Fans loved it, though, and RFoS became a staple in Scheller’s home base of New Jersey.

In early 2020 they embarked on their first national tour, this time doing every date from the legendary 1972 European tour — almost. “We got about nine shows in, and then Covid shut us down,” Scheller said in a recent phone interview. When lockdown ended, they were finally able to finish. “Song by song, show by show, in different cities around the country. It was a huge success.”

This time around, Scheller and his shifting cast of close to 30 musicians are stretching out even more.

“It’s evolved into retracing the ’70s,” he said. “We’re starting with Europe ’72 and ending with Terrapin Station.” An upcoming show at Newmarket’s Stone Church will have Scheller on keys, guitarists Steve Bernstein and Jim McGuigan, Alan Lerner on drums and bass player Jair-Rohm Parker Wells.

RFoS is no ordinary cover band. In their hands, songs like “Eyes of the World” and “I Know You Rider” can rise above the original versions. Scheller suggests how the Dead might have sounded if Bruce Hornsby had been in the piano seat instead of Keith Godchaux in the 1970s.

Schiller is quick to point out that Godchaux was playing in the band when he was first drawn to the Dead, and that his successor Brent Mydland cemented them as a favorite band.

“When I saw them for the first time in 1978, it was Keith,” he said. “The second show was Brent. I caught like 200 shows with him on keyboard, but Keith was my first influence.”

He is a big Hornsby fan and covers many of his songs as a solo artist. Much like the band he emulates, instinct guides Schiller when RFoS performs.

“It comes out organically,” he said. “It’s not like I plan to sound like this one or that one; I just allow my influences … between Keith, Brent and Bruce … to come out on any given night.”

This is not the first Dead tribute Schiller has been part of. He initially worked with members of venerable Long Island band the Zen Tricksters, touring as Jam Stampede. He then played with Dark Star Orchestra founding guitarist John Kadlecik. One memorable night, he did a show in a New York City crypt, and in the process met Zach Nugent, of Garcia acolytes JGB, and Kenny Brooks.

Brooks played with Dead guitarist Bob Weir in RatDog, and the introduction led to an invite for Schiller to co-produce a benefit show in San Francisco, where he played in Weir’s band. “It was definitely surreal,” he said of the night. “I was kind of in shock … I wouldn’t say starstruck, because I didn’t get his autograph. It was an honor to work with him.”

That experience with the Jerry Garcia Foundation, raising money for the Yoko Ono-founded charity Imagine There’s No Hunger, led to his path crossing with Hot Tuna’s Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, and, subsequently, to Jason Crosby and Grahame Lesh of the Lesh Family Band.   

It all rests on a love of the Grateful Dead. As to why the seminal jam band excites him so much, “it’s a combination of a lot of things,” he said. “I like the improv part, where we can create music within the music. Every night we perform, it’s a different experience, and that’s interesting and stimulating as a musician.”

Finally, Schiller said, “the songs are just amazing … country, blues, bluegrass, jazz, rock and reggae, they just mixed it all together — and the big picture is the Grateful Dead.”

Rainbow Full of Sound w/ Schells & Vine
When: Saturday, May 13, 8 p.m.
Where: The Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket
Tickets: $20 at stonechurchrocks.com

Featured photo: Waynard Scheller. Courtesy photo.

Local band adds to yoga experience

When Cassie O’Brien was in her twenties, she wrote for a Concord alt weekly and was constantly impressed by the city’s music and arts scene. When she and her husband began planning a move from Washington, D.C., back to New Hampshire six years ago, they wanted someplace with a similar vibe.

Ultimately they chose the real thing.

“Thinking about where we wanted to live, we just kept circling back to Concord,” O’Brien said recently. “A sense of community … that’s what brought us here.”

The two fit in quickly. Rob O’Brien is prominent as a musician, playing the Roland Aerophone, an idiosyncratic saxophone-cum-synthesizer, with local band Andrew North & the Rangers. The disciplined jam act has a new live album, Thanks for the Warning, Vol. 1, due on May 12, with a release show at Concord’s Area 23 the following night.

Cassie is a yoga instructor and, since September, a small business owner. She runs Worthy Mind & Movement, offering a range of classes that are almost all music-centric. That element was part of the yoga studio when Cassie worked there, before she bought it. When she took it over, she wanted to take the music up a notch or two, so she began offering Buti, a yoga practice that includes a lot of dance-like movement.

Initially EDM mixes were used for classes, but on May 5 local electronica duo Bosey Jose will play live while participants work up a sweat. It will be a Glow Yoga event, with body paint and clothing that pops under a blacklight. “I kind of equate it to like going to a rave, but without all the regrets and everything afterward,” Cassie said.

The experience is perfect for “moms who want to have that night out for themselves, have a good time and let loose,” she continued. “People can hoot, they can holler, they can swear at me … anything goes, as long as they’re being safe. It’s a good release, a fun way to move your body and still get in a workout.”

Non-glow Buti classes happen during the week, along with Zumba and the more intense HIIT yoga; there’s also the meditation in motion of Primal Flow. Buti is a bit in between, Cassie explained: “There’s some cardio involved, there’s some plyometric work — planks, your holding poses and stuff like that. It’s just dynamic movement, meant to be a fun way to move your body and have a good time.”

Buti is a good entry-level yoga. “You never have to be in any pose for too long, because we are pretty much constantly moving … our movement is driven by the beat of the music,” Cassie said. For her, trading cues with live musicians will offer a new challenge. “When I want to pick up the pace and maybe do a cardio push, I’m going to have to somehow communicate to them, and I’ll also have to fall along.”

Bosey Joe once played in a barber shop, so they are a good fit for the small-business showcase. The space comes with a bonus, Rob O’Brien explained.

“I helped upgrade the studio and we have a fantastic sound system up there now with a big subwoofer,” O’Brien said. “Since these are at night and most of the offices and businesses below us are closed, we can really crank it up. I’ve been in there by myself, and it feels like a club — the energy can get really high in there.”

The volume and vibe “enhance the experience,” Cassie offered. “You get your endorphins running, it’s a rush. People after class are always saying, ‘Wow, that went by so fast! I can’t believe I’m sweating … it was so fun, I forgot I was working out.”

Buti Yoga Glow Night w/ Bosey Joe
When: Friday, May 5, 7 p.m.
Where: Worthy Mind & Movement, 8 N. Main St., Suite 1B, Concord
Tickets: $20, reserve at worthymindandmovement.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Low Lily unveils Angels in the Wreckage

On their latest album, Low Lily, the rootsy trio of married couple Liz Simmons and Flynn Cohen and fiddler Natalie Padilla, decided to be bold. Angels in the Wreckage runs an expansive 14 tracks and is full of forthright songs. An a capella anthem, “What’ll You Do” is punchy, political, ready-made for a protest march; “One Wild World” covers similar territory more tenderly. Neither song, however, shies away from their core beliefs.

“We feel a little bit more comfortable being ourselves and speaking our mind and just kind of putting it all out there, because we’re not in our 20s anymore,” Simmons said in a recent interview. “Making a 14-track album would have felt almost gratuitous when we were younger, but at this point, we just don’t care; we had a lot to say.”

The album is their first with Padilla, as former fiddler Lissa Schneckenburger departed last year. “Travel was really too much for her at this stage in her life; it was an amicable parting,” Simmons explained. In fact, Schneckenburger contributed four songs to the new LP, one a co-write with Simmons, and plays on the opening track, a cover of Shawn Colvin’s “Round of Blues.”

“It feels like she’s still kind of present in the music, in that back of the curtain way,” Simmons concluded.

Cohen met Padilla at a fiddle camp, run by Brian Wicklund, where they’d both taught for several years. Initially he thought she’d be a good accompanist for his solo gigs. “She had a lot of the same taste in multiple styles,” Simmons said. Faced with a lineup change, they realized “someone like her, with all this versatility, would be the best fit.”

Padilla was living in Montana when she joined the band, but she recently relocated to Northampton, Mass., a short drive from Cohen and Simmons’s home in Brattleboro, Vermont. “We were ready to continue to fly her out for every tour, but she actually decided of her own volition to move,” Simmons said. “Now she’s a local.”

Born into a musical family, Padilla is also a singer, songwriter and guitarist. All three talents are on display in her lilting ballad “Captivate Me,” one of the album’s best tracks. An ode to her medicine man great-grandfather, it includes a gorgeous three-part harmony, and lovely acoustic interplay between her, Cohen and multi-instrumentalist/producer Dirk Powell.

Powell mastered their 2018 album 10,000 Days Like These and was the right choice to produce this time around.

“Especially because Natalie brings some of that old-time fiddle, and Dirk is so familiar with that particular style,” Simmons said, adding, “in terms of the American roots music, him being such a kind of legend in that world, it seemed like such a natural pairing.”

Throughout the project, they worked virtually with Powell, emailing tracks to him in Louisiana. “He would pick up what we were putting down,” Simmons said. He played banjo, double bass, electric guitar and, on the superb “Lonely,” piano, triangle and button accordion. “He brings a little of that Bayou flavor, that Cajun sound, which I think works so nicely on that track.”

There are two Cohen instrumentals on the record. “Keep the Pachysandra Flying” is a full group romp. He performs solo on “Bastard Plantagenet Blues,” a tribute to his time with English guitar master Davey Graham early in his playing days.

“Flynn went to school in England in Devon for three years and had the amazing opportunity to study with him, he also even had an all-day lesson with Burt Jansch” — a gift, as it turned out, Simmons said. “Burt was like, ‘Oh, you don’t owe me anything.’ Rolling with those guys, they were just so nice. None of them are alive anymore, so he enjoys little tributes when he can to those folks.”

The record ends as it began, with a cover — Jethro Tull’s “Wond’ring Again.” Simmons considers the song apocalyptic, a reflection of the album’s overall mood. “That’s kind of where that Angels in The Wreckage title comes from,” she said. “I’m struck by how beauty and destruction can live side by side.”

For a CD release tour that stops at Concord’s Bank of New Hampshire Stage on April 28, Low Lily will perform as a five-piece, with a rhythm section of double bass player Hazel Royer and Stefan Amidon on drums. They will perform the new LP from start to finish.

“We’re really excited to go on the road and represent the album sound live in this fuller way,” Simmons said.

Low Lily CD Release Show w/ Green Heron
When: Friday, April 28, 8 p.m.
Where: Bank of NH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $23.75 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Low Lily. Courtesy photo.