Author: Michael Witthaus

Blues Fest debuts at Rex

The first New England Blues Festival was a modest one-off featuring regional bands, including Mr. Nick & the Dirty Tricks, led by organizer Nick David. Buoyed by its success, David brought it back the following year and soon was attracting national talent like Chicago heavy-hitter Nick Moss, and the event scaled to multiple venues.

The annual show has attracted a bevy of talent over the years, including Muddy Waters’ son Big Bill Morganfield. David’s former group Mr. Nick & the Dirty Tricks backed him up in 2018. “I get goosebumps talking about it,” David recalled in 2019, “because that’s as close as I’ll ever get to playing with Muddy.”

David always hoped the show would stop in his hometown of Manchester; that will finally happen on Sunday, Jan. 29, on the stage of the Rex Theatre. “I’ve been talking to the Rex off and on for the last few years,” David said by phone recently. “I really like the venue a lot.”

The 13th festival features four guitar heroes. There’s headliner Mike Zito, Moss, playing for his fourth time, Roberto Morbioli, and Paul Size, the latter a member of David’s latest group, and concert house band, The Wicked Lo-Down.

Size is a legend in the blues rock world dating back to his stint in L.A.-by-way-of-Texas band The Red Devils, whose early ’90s residency at the gritty King King club attracted movie stars and music legends. They made an album with Mick Jagger that was never released (one cut was on Jagger’s Very Best compilation), and backed Bruce Willis on his Return of Bruno LP. Rick Rubin produced their lone live album, in 1995.

The Wicked Lo-Down grew out of a fruitful collaboration in late 2019 between David, Size and another guitarist, later replaced by Jeff Berg and augmented by a rhythm section of Nick Toscano and Mike Law. Hobbled by lockdown, they made an album, We Hot, in mid-2020 that stayed shelved for almost two years before its release last November. It’s a barn-burner, with a churning title cut and the Blasters-adjacent “Lena” among the standouts.

They’re now gigging and shopping the record to labels, including Zito’s moniker Gulf Coast. David met the guitarist in 2021 at the White Mountain Boogie & Blues Festival. Zito passed on releasing it, even though he reportedly “loved” the album, according to David. “Nobody was willing to sign us because we weren’t out there gigging … how are they going to make money off us if we’re not playing? Who knows who we are?”

Zito has had a string of blues chart-topping albums in the recent past, beginning with 2018’s First Class Life and a Chuck Berry tribute collection that had assistance from Joe Bonamassa, Walter Trout, Robben Ford, Luther Dickinson and Sonny Landreth. Zito’s most recent disc, Resurrection, received a Blue Music Award last year for Best Blues Rock Album.

The chat with Zito did get David a headliner for his festival, which has two Massachusetts dates, Salisbury and Norwood, along with Hartford, Connecticut, before its New Hampshire finale. “Mike and I have some stuff in common,” David said. “He was into doing it, so we were able to get it together this year.”

Morbioli is an Italian guitarist who comes Stateside once a year. David met him over a decade ago when he appeared on John Guregian’s Blues Deluxe radio show. “It was on the UMass Lowell radio station,” David explained. “I was living there with my wife at the time, and she spoke fluent Italian. We went down there, hung out and played a few songs. We’ve been friends ever since.”

Finally, along with his status as a fest perennial, Moss created an interesting conundrum for David from the time they met.

“I got confused for him often; we’re both similar-looking,” he reported of the guitarist, who rose to fame with Nick Moss & the Pop Tops. “We both had big greasy pompadours, and we’re big guys named Nick. I saw a picture of him once and thought he was me. I was like, why do I have a guitar in my hand? Oh, it’s because that’s not me.”

13th Annual New England Winter Blues Festival
When: Sunday, Jan. 29, 8 p.m.
Where: The Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $23 at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Mike Zito. Photo by Scott Lukes.

Wyn Doran readies next project

Watching a private screening of Beautiful Was The Fight provided a full-circle moment for Wyn Doran. The Nashua based singer-songwriter appears early in David Habeeb’s documentary film about the challenges faced by New England’s female and non-binary musicians. A nervous Doran is seen in 2017 auditioning for an eventual role in Liz Bills’ band. Years later she’s fronting her own all-female combo.

“We were babies,” Doran said by phone recently about the clip of her and Bills. “The first day we met was basically captured in that film, and now she is one of my absolute best friends.”

The journey from jittery aspirant to confident artist wasn’t easy, but watching Wyn Doran these days, it feels complete.

While singing backup for Bills, Doran made her stirring 2019 EP Thick of It, an effort marked by medical emergencies, bouts of stage fright, even a house fire. During the pandemic she released a few singles, including a reverent cover of Amy Winehouse’s “Back To Black.” In February she’ll enter the studio to record her first full-length album.

Fans can get an early preview of the as-yet-unnamed project, to be produced by Colin Lester Fleming at Great North Sound Society in Maine, when Doran appears at Stone Church Music Club on Jan. 25, backed by upright bassist and multi-instrumentalist Lucia Jean.

Catalyzed by Covid-19, playing live has become much easier for Doran.

“After not being able to get in front of people for such a long time, the second I could, the stage fright was gone,” she said. “It was this huge shift in mindset … this is something that I really enjoy and feel like I’m born to do; why am I sabotaging it with myself?”

With only the livestreams to do, Doran spent the pandemic creating, continuing after the world began to open up. When she wrapped up last fall, she had a unified set of songs worthy of her first long-player. “It was this big piece of work,” she said. “I really do see the album as a journey. I got the band, a producer, and we started workshopping things in December; it’s the real thing in February.”

Lyrically, the new record “is a mix of both my personal anguish and journey, and what I see as a greater view of humanity — the cycles we’ve woven ourselves into nationally and on a global level. It kind of ebbs and flows between getting really, deeply personal, those themes, and zooming way out to the beginning of time, and kind of how we all got here.”

Her longtime band — Jean and drummer Heidi Tierney — will work with Doran in the studio. “We’re going to really try and keep it true to our trio live show, but also play with the skills that we bring to the table,” she said, noting that Tierney also plays a variety of instruments. “I’m kind of blown away to have them, and so excited about these 10 songs.”

A songwriting retreat with Ben Folds a few years back helped Doran find her voice as a songwriter, and she’s come a long way since. During the pandemic she assisted Folds with a Zoom version. “That was a neat throwback,” she said. “First, it was the scared Wyn showing up for the start of my songwriting, then jumping into this role where I wasn’t just pouring out sweat, I was interfacing with it. He’s releasing an album this year, I’ll be releasing an album this year — who knows?”

Seeing Habeeb’s documentary gave her a sense of camaraderie, albeit bittersweet.

“I don’t want to put a negative slant on this, but there are people who think we’re the bassist’s girlfriend, just carrying the amp, and we really have to step up and advocate for who we are as a musician,” she said. “One of the special parts of the film was Dave showing that experience back to back to back … these things I used to feel so alone in experiencing; all of a sudden, you realize we’re all together, going through this collective struggle.”

Wyn Doran w/ George Barber & Paulie Stone
When: Wednesday, Jan. 25, 8 p.m.
Where: Stone Church Music Club, 5 Granite St., Newmarket
Tickets: $10 at stonechurchrocks.com

Featured photo: Wyn Doran. Photo by Devin Perry.

A new hip-hop vibe from Fee The Evolutionist

Winning the Rising Star New Hampshire plaque at this year’s New England Music Awards was quite gratifying for rapper Fee The Evolutionist, but also bemusing. “I was laughing about that,” he said by phone recently. “I’m a rising star — it only took me 20 years.”

It’s actually a bit longer than that.

Bill Fee was dropping rhymes in the mid-1990s, with DJ Lyrical in the group X-Caliber. The period birthed an incredible story, when they impressed producer Ski Beatz during his visit to the radio station at UMass-Lowell. This led to an invite to Ski’s New York City studio, but their opportunity got bumped so another rapper could finish his first album — Jay-Z.

The rest is hip-hop history.

“Looking back, you know, it was probably the right decision,” Fee said with just a little irony. “We weren’t ready.” Ski Beatz stayed a mentor and produced X-Cal’s “Back in the Dayz” last year. The old-school track recounts that heady time and includes Fee’s life partner Ruby Shabazz on vocals.

Fee’s solo career is a newer development.

“I’ve always been in bands,” he said. “Playing drums, percussion, songwriting, rapping, singing … last November was my first solo release.” That would be the blistering “Go,” a two-minute sprint that evokes punk and metal with the same fervor as hip-hop.

Such cross-pollination is typical for Fee, and it’s one reason he and Shabazz have been called “King and Queen of New Hampshire Hip-Hop” more than a few times. Another is the couple’s consistent civic engagement. “We love it,” he said. “We embrace the community, and the community embraces us.”

The latest example of his genre-hopping ways will be on display Sunday, Jan. 15, in his home town of Nashua, when Fee performs with guitarist Adam Payne at Millyard Brewery. The centerpiece of the show, which will also include brief sets from Shabazz and fellow Nashua rapper Cody Pope, is an acoustic set featuring Fee rhyming and Payne’s looped playing.

It’s hip-hop, time-traveling to a ’60s jazz club. “A folk vibe,” Fee said. “I’m gonna bring my cajon and bongos, and some percussion … it’s going to be a lot of improv. Set songs, some familiar covers, but we’re also going to flip stuff, make it fresh.”

This is Fee’s first gig with Payne, who he initially saw perform at a festival in downtown Nashua a few months back. “I loved it, and I said, ‘Hey, I’ve gotta link up.’ This was the opportunity,” he said. Millyard’s a logical venue choice, he added. “I just feel like a brewery is a good place to have guitar and percussion, and kind of introduce what we do.”

The microbrewery has been a big supporter of the local arts scene, offering regular weekend events. In a Jan. 4 email, Millyard’s Dean Baxter called 2022 “a storming year,” saying “we are fast becoming a leading live music venue [and] continue to support some of the best-known musicians in New England. Fee is one of those.” 

Fee adopted his Evolutionist moniker to underscore his solo career as a step away from band days, along with the way he draws from many eras as an artist. “I’ve seen the evolution of hip-hop; I’m taking you through that,” he said. “I have soul samples from the ’70s, a little R&B, and I’ll get a little bit more aggressive … that’s one aspect; the other is the evolution of myself, and my growth as a person. I’m always evolving, and trying to learn new stuff.”

He views his NEMA win as validation for the genre in the region. “It’s flourishing; we’re in a renaissance period for hip-hop up here,” he said, pointing to the success of Pope and DJ Myth, who he also collaborates with, and other local artists, along with the excitement that surrounded the recent Hellhound for the Holidays showcase at Nashua Garden as examples.

His own brand of hip-hop is distinct from many others, Fee continued. “I consider it more of the jazz style; it’s organic,” he said, noting it attracts an eclectic group of musicians eager to work with him. “You’d be surprised how many people are open to that … they’re like, ‘Oh, I have never done this before.’ It’s new; we’re kind of making our own genre right now.”

Fee The Evolutionist w/ Adam Payne
When: Sunday, Jan. 15, 5 p.m.
Where: Millyard Brewery, 25 E. Otterson St., Nashua
More: feetheevolutionist.com

Featured photo: Fee The Evolutionist. Courtesy photo.