Author: Michael Witthaus

Hard work and tenacity define Jordan Quinn

Settling behind an electric keyboard to play covers for the dinner crowd at Fratello’s in Manchester on a frigid Saturday night, Jordan Quinn is logging a few more of the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in his book Outliers. Since mid-2021 the 23-year-old singer has done more than 300 gigs, and her calendar remains packed.

Most sets are like this one, with lots of soulful ballads — Whitney Houston is a favorite. She’ll make multiple tables look up and take notice when she hits the key change on her rendition of “I Will Always Love You.” Quinn also can make a song all her own. Her take on Al Green’s playful “Let’s Stay Together” is reinvented as a plaintive plea to a distancing lover.

Occasionally, like during a recent set with her band at Hennessy’s in Boston, Quinn will dip into a growing catalog of originals that started with the easygoing “Dream World” about a year ago. Her latest, “Can We Become Friends,” shows Quinn’s growing maturity as a songwriter. It’s a response to the war in Ukraine, but addresses problems closer to home.

Inspired by Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song,” it’s boosted by an angelic choir that’s almost entirely Quinn. “I was supposed to have a few buddies in the studio to do the choir part and everyone canceled on me,” she said in a phone interview. “So it’s actually 13 tracks of just my voice, with the exception of one, which is my bass player.”

Quinn released the video for the song early, spurred by a recent shooting outside a Manchester nightclub; the victim was a casual friend of hers. “To just see that some random person was able to take his life so easily, it just really affected me,” she said. “This needs to be done, the whole violence thing … life is precious.”

The title cut of her debut album in progress is about striving to become and belong. Quinn wrote “Somebody” while in Los Angeles preparing to meet with a potential manager.

“I’ve had a lot of hard times with self-confidence, figuring out the path that I want to be on,” she explained. “This was a reminder to myself that everything will work out — you’re where you’re supposed to be, things will get better. Then I was like, why not share this message with other people? Because I know I’m definitely not the only person that feels this way.”

Quinn penned a lot of songs on that West Coast trip. She found being in a place where so many performers are looking for a foothold very inspiring.

“I definitely liked being out there and seeing all the talent and everything; it motivated me to just push,” she said. “All these people are trying to be somebody … it doesn’t need to be the entire world, where everyone knows your name. Just one little thing to make a difference.”

Born in Manchester, Quinn relocated to Connecticut with her mother while in fourth grade. “This whole time, my dad still lived in New Hampshire,” she said. “I would do the trip twice a month to see him on the weekends.” After high school, she went to South Carolina for a year, then returned to move in with him and enroll in the theater program at UNH.

Her father encouraged his daughter’s creative urges, taking steps to help her find her way.

“My dad is the sole reason that it all happened,” she said. “He knew [local musician] Chad LaMarsh and kind of took it upon himself to see what would happen if he introduced us…. I’ve been on this path ever since.”

She eschews many modern artists, calling her singing range similar to Ariana Grande’s, but adding that she’s not a fan of her music. “I used her vocals as influence for mine,” Quinn said, but “instrumentally, I’m really into rock like Queen, and then Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. I try to incorporate their styles along with everyday pop.”

She’s sung “Somebody to Love” with tribute act Queen Flash on a few occasions, and will open for them later this year.

For now Quinn stays on her Gladwell path, night after night. “My goal is to continue to find myself,” she said. “Testing my abilities … seeing how far I can go. I don’t really have any career goals [beyond] improving who I am as an artist, and really seeing what I’m capable of.”

Jordan Quinn
Next show: Saturday, Feb. 18, 6 p.m.
Where: Homestead Restaurant & Tavern, 641 Daniel Webster Hwy., Merrimack
Full calendar: facebook.com/jordan.quinn.7106

Featured photo: Jordan Quinn. Courtesy photo.

Singer-songwriter kicks off concert series

A three-weekend original music concert series at a Hopkinton art gallery offers buoyant pop, jazz-infused Americana and bluegrass. It kicks off Feb. 11 with Ariel Strasser, a Boston by way of Minnesota singer, pianist and guitar player with influences ranging from Carole King to Rufus Wainwright. The Honey Bees — chanteuse Mary Fagan and guitarist Chris O’Neill — arrive the following Saturday, with the all-acoustic Hydro-Geo Trio closing things out Feb. 18.

With light refreshments and soothing ambience, the two-hour events are presented by Two Villages Art Gallery and NH Music Collective. Strasser is returning, having performed there last year.

“It’s a really warm and inviting space,” Strasser said by phone recently. “Acoustic music is well-suited to it, and they’re really great people. I’m excited to be back.”

Strasser has released two albums. 2013’s Crooked Line featured duets with fellow songwriter and mentor Chris Trapper. Motivation came out in 2018 and led to a pair of New England Music Awards nominations the following year. She’s assembling material for a third long-player. Among the new songs is “Small,” a gentle ballad about putting things in perspective.

“I’m not sure yet when that one’s going to land, but hopefully soon,” she said. “It’s about staying grounded and remembering that the little things you agonize over sometimes don’t have as much power as you believe that they do, and understanding that we’re really just a small piece of this large universe, and remembering that when we get bogged down.”

The singer-songwriter came to New England to study musical theater at the Boston Conservatory, now a part of Berklee College of Music. There she “found a love of songwriting and sort of latched onto that even more, but my theater roots definitely feed into my songwriting, in terms of lyrics and things like that.”

Her songwriting process varies. “Sometimes I’ll be inspired by something I see and the lyric will come from that and I’ll want to set it to music,” she said. “Other times I’ll be sitting with an instrument and the musical idea will come to me and I’ll find the gibberish that goes with it, then figure out what the song means later. It just depends on the inspiration.”

Along with performing, Strasser runs ArtsBridge, an organization that helps aspiring young performers find arts colleges. “I run programs for theater, voice, fashion students,” she said. “It’s a cool opportunity to work with high school kids who are really talented…. It’s definitely inspiring to see people at that stage of their life where they’re on the brink and excited about everything.”

The two-week summer camp has a job fair vibe. “They learn about the different programs and what works for them and also what different schools like to see,” she said. “They’re learning about the process through the eyes of these different college faculties…. It’s definitely a valuable experience for them.”

Performing, however, remains Strasser’s passion, and she’s excited about upcoming shows, both the solo Two Villages set and an in the round show with fellow songwriters Katie Dobbins and Audrey Drake at Hermit Woods Winery on Feb. 22, also organized by NH Music Collective.

“As an artist, I love so many different parts of being in this world, but I really love playing live,” she said. “I don’t know if that comes from theater or just me, but that’s definitely my favorite…. Solo shows that are real listening room type places are really fulfilling for me. I feel like you can see the songs land.”

Audience interaction, she continued, “is the one thing you can’t replace online. There’s so much we can do on the internet, but live shows … those you can only do one way and that’s to show up. So I hope to see some people out there, and I’ll just keep playing as much as I can.”

Ariel Strasser
When: Saturday, Feb. 11, 4 p.m.
Where: Two Villages Art Society, 846 Main St., Hopkinton
Tickets: Donations accepted at the door
More: arielstrasser.com and nhmusiccollective.com

Featured photo: Ariel Strasser. Courtesy photo.

Comic Cory Gee debuts at Headliners

When Cory Gee bounds onstage, he’s almost immediately mixing with the crowd. Learning who’s married, dating for the first time, celebrating a birthday. The rapid-fire back and forth helps the veteran comic size up the audience, but it’s not a call for conversation.

He’s setting up jokes, polished over time. Like the one about why asking a baby-faced cop how he caught him while riding a Big Wheel isn’t a good way to get out of a speeding ticket, or how single men shouldn’t plan bachelor parties, and the reason a VFW hall is a better venue for such gatherings than a strip bar.

Cory Gee really doesn’t want to hear about your day, but thanks anyway.

“In today’s TikTok era, crowd work is a necessary evil,” Gee said in a recent phone interview, noting that shutting down hecklers is a reliable way to get clicks. “I love to engage with the crowd, but what is frustrating for me as a comedian is when the crowd talks to me. Does that make sense?”

Sometimes, though, Gee’s high-wire act leads to comedy gold. “A perfect joke for me is the joke I never intended to do,” he said. Like when a random crowd remark sparks the memory of a long-unfinished bit. “You just start to work it, then it all starts to fall into place … and it’s like this moment. I was not meant to figure out that joke until just now.”

Gee will appear for the first time at Headliners in Manchester on Feb. 4. He’s talked for a while with promoter Rob Steen about playing there. “I pretty much know every headliner he uses on a regular basis, and they were all saying the same thing … ‘You’d do so well in New Hampshire, those crowds would really enjoy you.’ I’m really looking forward to it.”

He began doing comedy in 2002 at Comedy Connection in Providence, Rhode Island. The decision to become a standup was an evolution. He majored in theater in college, left early to find fame in Hollywood, but only got as far as his dad’s home in Georgia, where he got work in a professional theater company.

It didn’t last past a series of grueling rehearsals for Lips Together, Teeth Apart.

“I was just tired of saying other people’s words,” Gee explained. “In comedy, everything sits on you, all of the writing is you, all of the performing is you, every movement you make on stage is solely you, [and] knowing I was in complete control was probably the moment that I realized … this is what I want to be doing.”

It ended in 2013. His employer, a well-known nonprofit, gave him an ultimatum: jokes or a job. With two sons, Gee had little choice, so he quit, cold turkey. He didn’t write a bit, go to a show, or even think about comedy for five years. Then he got an offer at a new company. It was a lateral move; commuting costs actually reduced his take-home.

His wife had only one question. “She said, ‘Can you do comedy?’ I said, ‘Yeah, they told me they don’t care what I do.’ She was like, ‘We will figure out whatever financial impact this will have; you have to get back to comedy,’” he recalled.

He’s ever grateful for the boost. After shows, she helps him deconstruct and decompress. “I took it for granted the first time,” he said. “It has definitely added a wrinkle to our relationship from a support standpoint. Not that it wasn’t there before; I just I didn’t realize how important it was.”

Gee returns the favor by co-hosting a podcast with her. Ready, Set, Disney offers tips for visiting the theme parks. It helps that the manic stage prowler is already a big fan of Disney World. “If you’ve seen my act, you know I can’t stand still,” he said. “So the idea of a vacation in which I sit on a beach and just kinda throw my feet up would not work for me. When we go to Disney, I’m constantly moving.”

Cory Gee
When: Saturday, Feb. 4, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Headliners Comedy Club, 700 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $20 at headlinersnh.com

Featured photo: Cory Gee. Courtesy photo.