Author: Michael Witthaus

The good parts of a not great year, and what’s (maybe, possibly) ahead

The year 2020 began well enough, as the ball dropped on a retro-themed party at Bank of NH Stage in Concord and a barefoot Adam Ezra once again lit up Tupelo Music Hall, an annual tradition. Headliners Comedy Club offered laughter up and down the state.

The newly opened Rex Theatre in Manchester slated a wide range of shows in its upcoming calendar; the year’s first was E Street Band saxophone player Jake Clemons. Town Meeting, one of the brightest lights in the region’s Americana scene, debuted a new album at The Rex in early February.

March looked to be even better, with St. Patrick’s Day events scheduled at multiple venues throughout the month. Former Celtic Woman fiddler Máiréad Nesbitt’s appearance at Saint Anselm’s Dana Center on March 14 was among the most eagerly anticipated, but she was interrupted by a Friday the 13^th that confirmed every horror story concocted about the date — especially for live entertainment.

Tupelo CEO Scott Hayward put it succinctly from the empty stage of his venue that night.

“I boarded a plane to come home from vacation, and arrived to find my industry gone,” he said at the time.

The pandemic has consumed every aspect of life, beginning that weekend.

Through it all, however, there have been more than a few so-called Covid silver linings. Foremost among them was the rise of livestreaming. Concord native Dan Zanes launched a daily Social Isolation Song Series with his wife Claudia, a kid-centric effort. Lucas Gallo’s Local Music Quarantine Video Challenge invited musicians to record themselves at home.

There were many, many more, and the best part was hearing original songs from performers best known for playing covers in restaurants and bars. It was a gift that kept giving. When places began reopening in May, patrons were more receptive to local musicians, who were at that point the only game in town. It became a cultural renaissance, born from crisis.

Venues presenting national acts faced a bigger challenge. They responded ingeniously, with drive-in shows at Tupelo — the effort received national press — and at the Cheshire Fairgrounds in Swanzey, which kicked off its effort with rock tribute act Echoes of Floyd and offered a massive capacity of 750 cars.

Miraculously, the weather was mostly kind at these and other pop-up events throughout the region. Honking horns took the place of applause from early spring to late summer. The Music Hall booked shows into the streets of downtown Portsmouth, while Concord’s Capitol Center for the Arts took over Fletcher-Murphy Park, and Manchester’s Palace Theatre ran a series of summer events at Delta Dental Stadium, including one starring the Beatles-esque Weaklings.

Plenty of restaurants added tents and used live music as a lure for business. Local promoter Paul Costley saw his bookings spike as a result. “In normal times, I usually have 60 to 80 events a week,” Costley said in September. “I was up to 135.”

Indoor venues offered socially distanced shows, with comedians like Juston McKinney leading the charge by playing multiple sets to reduced crowds. Before returning to the stage, McKinney was playing to a crowd of family members and the ether. “I never thought I would look forward to having four people in an audience so much in my life,” McKinney told the Hippo in June for a Comedy After Covid story. “I would kill for four people right now.”

With new movie releases experiencing a drought, Chunky’s Cinema & Pub welcomed Rob Steen’s comedy acts.

Economically, it can’t sustain.

“Being open is one thing and being able to stay open is another thing,” Hayward said in mid-autumn. “If we don’t have the capacity to do the shows we normally do, it doesn’t work. A good show for us is 500 people. … A big show for a small club is 60 people … but I can’t live on 60 people.”

There’s hope on the horizon. Congress included $15 billion in recently passed legislation to help independent venues, theaters and talent agencies weather the crisis, prodded by the live music industry’s Save Our Stages effort. Though most regional venues are currently closed, live shows are scheduled to resume mid-winter at some of them. A few venues are sticking with more vague reopening plans. Tupelo, for example, sent out an update at the end of November saying that challenges with lower capacity shows in 2020 and shows scheduled for 2021 “are causing all sorts of problems for the artists, patrons and venue,” and it is “all but guaranteed that we will be closed through February of 2021 at least.”

Meanwhile, is still scheduled at Portsmouth’s Music Hall on Feb. 13, along with Vapors of Morphine Feb. 19 and Livingston Taylor Feb. 20. The Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, which announced just before Christmas that it was extending its “pause” and canceling all live shows through the end of February, has comic Juston McKinney set for March 28, followed the next night by Celtic Woman Celebration.

Until then, January is Virtual Month at Manchester’s Palace Theatre, with three Thursday shows: a Carole King tribute on the 8th, local rocker Brooks Young on the 15th and Piano Men which offers classic songs from Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Elton John and others, on the 22nd. Actor and musician Jeff Daniels streams an acoustic concert on Jan. 12, with a Q&A following.

Featured photo: A teddy bear audience at Headliner’s Comedy Club helped facilitate social distancing. Courtesy photo.

Three comedy shows celebrate New Year’s Eve

Most years Headliners Comedy Club is a many-headed monster on New Year’s Eve, with shows all over New England. 2020, however, is anything but normal. Maine has a 9 p.m. curfew, and performances are banned in Massachusetts. New Hampshire is still on, though it’s scaling back to three socially distanced affairs at different Chunky’s Cinema Pubs.

Only one event, in Manchester, includes a midnight countdown.

Amy Tee, among a trio of comics appearing in Pelham, is glad for a chance to perform.

“I’m gonna look at the glass half full,” she said in a recent phone interview, “just embrace it, be appreciative of the people that are coming out to celebrate New Year’s Eve, and put 2020 behind us. I’m looking forward.”

Comedy began as a bucket list item for Tee over a decade ago, “something I’d always wanted to do since watching Stand Up Spotlight on VH1,” and grew quickly from there. “That very first time on stage I felt it in my soul … that’s what I was supposed to be doing.”

Tee’s career has two parts; for the last 10 years, she’s been sober. Soon after quitting drinking, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She found the news liberating and wove it into her act.

“By diminishing the stigma of what mental health looks like, I had an opportunity to show people that it looks very different from what people think,” she said. “It was also cathartic. … I created a lot of damage in my earlier years [and] confessing and talking about it felt almost like amends.”

This calling extended beyond the stage, becoming a second career for Tee with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, where she works with dual diagnosis patients.

“I do motivational speaking on behalf of mental health and substance abuse,” she said. “So that was kind of the trajectory. It changed drastically, and actually gave it more passion and purpose.”

Her act is honest and revealing, yes — but also hilarious. Dressed in a tie and suit jacket, she begins most shows by poking fun at her androgynous appearance.

“You’re probably wondering what bathroom I’m gonna use,” she said. “It’ll be the one with the shortest line, I guarantee you that.”

She’ll riff on married life — and being openly gay in her act has never been a big issue for Tee.

“Though in the last four years, I’ve had this sinking feeling of things being mean,” she said. “I’m able to make people feel comfortable about gay people on stage because I joke about it in a stereotypical way. Also, me being married is not a lot different than other people being married. It just happens to be two women. We still have the same challenges.”

Although it’s unclear how long live performances will continue, Tee prefers even smaller crowds to the Zoom shows she did during lockdown. Ever the optimist, she managed to find a bright side to those.

“I had no commute, I was dressed from the waist up, and nobody knew if I was wearing a bra or not. … I almost enjoyed it sometimes,” she said.

Tee credits Headliners CEO Rob Steen for keeping the scene alive.

“With the challenges he’s had, he’s done a really good job … letting us perform, whether it’s been outside this summer, or now as we’ve moved into some of the indoor venues,” she said. “Comedy is my passion and where I get my joy — I need it for my mental health. So it’s been nice to still be able to perform amongst the challenges. The audiences that are coming out are appreciative, and they also need it for their mental health and a night out.”

Amy Tee, Jim Colliton, Jason Merrill
When: Thursday, Dec 31, 8 p.m.
Where: Chunky’s Cinema Pub, 150 Bridge St., Pelham
Tickets: $30 at chunkys.com
Also: Drew Dunn, Jody Sloane, Paul Landwehr at Chunky’s Manchester – 7 and 10 p.m. (w/ Dueling Pianos & Ball Drop)
Kyle Crawford, Matt Barry, Tim Mckeever at Chunky’s Nashua – 8 p.m.

Featured photo: Amy Tee. Courtesy photo.

Dan Blakeslee celebrates Christmas LP with show

It takes real Grinch-iness to resist the ebullient charms of Christmasland Jubilee, the new holiday album from Dan Blakeslee. From the Dixieland-themed opener “Mister Candy Cane” and its story of a “boogie woogie Santa Claus … bouncin’ on the keys, makin’ you believe” to his sincere reading of the disc-closing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” it’s irresistible, one of the best in the genre to come out of New England.

Blakeslee celebrates the release with an afternoon outdoor show at Stone Church in Newmarket on Dec. 19, backed by his three-piece band and plenty of portable heaters. Senie Hunt will open.

A big reason the new record works so well is the way Blakeslee created it. In mid-December 2019, the Seacoast-born and -raised singer-songwriter decided he’d waited long enough to unleash his inner Bing Crosby — and he wanted to do it during the season. Dover producer Chris Chase offered him five hours of time at his Noise Floor studio in the days before Christmas, and the project was set in motion.

“I came in the studio, and I decorated the place like crazy,” Blakeslee said in a recent phone interview. “I feel it reflects in the audio somehow; I get inspired looking at the stuff, it just makes me happy. Then my band came in and we recorded … throughout the winter, while there was still snow on the ground.”

Backed by his longtime group The Calabash Club they produced an ebullient mix of classics and originals that dated back to when Blakeslee began making Christmas songs as presents for his family. One of the first was “We Three Kings” — his version takes the line about “westward leading” musically to heart, giving the song a gentle twang.

The musicianship is stellar; keyboard player Mike Effenberger is especially good, and the vintage rhythm team of bassist Nick Phaneuf and drummer Jim Rudolf is in the pocket throughout. A guest list including Soggy Po’ Boys horn players Chris and Eric Klaxton, New Hampshire pedal steel legend Bruce Derr and string players Tim Moore and Dave Talmadge — among others — provided stellar support.

“I love the guys in my band,” Blakeslee said. “I’ve seen them in so many different musical acts through the years and I’m still blown away whenever I see them play. And whenever I play with them, I feel like I’m in awe the whole time. … I can’t focus sometimes on playing the songs.”

Blakeslee’s timing in making the record was ideal in more ways than his good luck having a winter wonderland to work in.

“We had two things left to record when the pandemic came,” he said. Thus, Derr’s contribution was done in his home studio, and backing vocalists emailed their tracks. “We got most of it, though.”

Other standouts include the whimsical originals “To Be An Elf” and “The Somerville Lights” — the latter provides a nice counterpart to “Silver Bells,” which also appears. The rollicking “Reindeer Boogie” is a nugget Blakeslee unearthed from a Hank Snow Christmas album made in the 1960s.

“Over the past two years I’ve been obsessed with that song,” he said, noting that an alternate take was his template. “It has such grit to it. … I was literally playing it every single day throughout the holiday season.”

A bonus track, “Let’s Start Again” is one of the record’s most endearing. It’s an optimistic ode to better angels, and though it’s over a decade old it fits perfectly with the times.

“Awaken with hope and forgiveness, surprise us with news that is good,” Blakeslee sings. “Together let’s move towards a difference, whether you work in policy or wood.”

The song was born after a painful breakup found him wandering around Somerville on New Year’s Eve in 2009. He ended up at the Lizard Lounge, a Somerville music hub where Tim Gearan was appearing.

“Every time he takes the stage it’s like it’s New Year’s Eve. He just has this delivery on all his songs,” Blakeslee said of Gearan.

Blakeslee taped the New Year’s countdown on a recorder he carried in his pocket.

“It was the most moving thing,” he said. “Sometimes you can listen to a song for two minutes and have your outlook changed; that’s what happened at that show. Then I walked outside and this girl shouts out, ‘2010, let’s start again!’ It just kinda happened. She gave me a hug, and I wrote the song that night.”

Dan Blakeslee & the Calabash Club Christmas Show
When: Saturday, Dec. 19, 1 p.m.
Where: Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket
Tickets: $60/table of 4, $90/table of 6

Featured photo: Dan Blakeslee and personally bedazzled stockings done for his crowdfunders. Courtesy photo.