Author: Michael Witthaus

Ryan Montbleau unveils first of four new EPs

On the first track of his latest record, Ryan Montbleau celebrates imperfection. “If things don’t have to be perfect, it’s a lot easier for them to be right,” Montbleau sings, quoting his therapist.

There’s a lot of self-care on the new EP Wood, the first in a series to be followed by Fire, Water and Air. Montbleau tends to look on the bright side of things, like his upcoming gig at Portsmouth’s Music Hall on March 19. True, social distancing rules will reduce crowd size, but performing in the storied Historic Theatre instead of the smaller Loft space is a big plus.

“I’ve always wanted to play there; all it took was them limiting capacity to 20 percent,” Montbleau said with a laugh in a recent phone interview.

Similarly, the Massachusetts-born singer-songwriter managed to turn his pandemic year into a growth experience.

“It kind of sped up the process of life,’ he said. “It’s weird, but in some ways I’ve almost never been happier.”

Montbleau purchased his first house, in Burlington, Vermont. He took piano lessons, did weekly Facebook Live sets and the odd solo gig, and appeared on a local music talk show.

“I’ve been very lucky through all this; it’s kind of allowed me to stay in one place for once and start to build a home life,” he said.

Spotify and other streaming services provided a cushion as well.

“I’ve been building this thing for 20 years, and I don’t have to tour my face off like I used to,” he said.

One bit of good fortune: He completed the basic tracks for the new music in summer 2019, playing with a rotating cast that included jazz jam legend Martin Medeski. Montbleau worked with producer Adam Landry (Deer Tick, Rayland Baxter) at Guilford Studio in southern Vermont.

“I had just amazing people coming in and out,” he said. “Turning it into a record [is] what’s taken the last year and a half … a lot of tweaking, taking things out and putting them in.”

He divided the collection’s 15 tracks into four themes. Wood is rustic and down to earth, while Fire rocks hard. Water is calm, reflective, with songs inspired by time Montbleau spent doing medicine work in Peru.

“I would sit in the jungle in a tent for 10 days and work with different plants,” he said, calling the experience “pretty life-altering. … It points you in a different direction. … I feel like some of those songs were gifts; that’s why they ended up on Water.”

The final chapter, Air, offers a sense of closure and peace. It ends with “The Dust” and Montbleau singing, “just know that you are not alone, and that’s all you get to know now.”

Wood, Fire, Water and Air’s songs reflect a long and sometimes difficult period for Montbleau.

“My old band split up around 2013 and I lost my management at the time; I had a long relationship end and I’d been on the road for 10 years,” he said. “I had a lot of growing to do. Since then, I’ve been searching for who I am, how to heal and how to be better.”

Wood was scheduled to be released on March 12; the others are expected to arrive over the next three to four months.

The just-released EP includes the charming “Ankles,” an autobiographical song that touches upon his first tour, where he suffered a burst appendix and a busted van. Montbleau soldiered on in spite of that nightmare, becoming a festival staple along the way.

“If I could survive this, I could survive anything,” he decided.

“On the road I found my muses, off the road I lost my mind,” he sings, concluding with, “off the road I lost my uses, on the road I found my shine.” For most touring musicians, Montbleau explained, standing still is where the trouble begins.

It’s also where his growth had to start.

“You get so used to being on stage and having people appreciate what you do… when you get home finally and you’re just sitting alone in a room, it’s really daunting,” he said. “What is my purpose? What are my uses? Back on the road, I would find my shine under the lights, and find my purpose again. So I think the years leading up to now have been me digging deep and figuring out who I am, and who I was before I started doing this.”

An Evening With Ryan Montbleau
When: Friday, March 19, 8 p.m.
Where: The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
Tickets: $38 at themusichall.org

Featured photo: Ryan Montbleau. Photo by Shervin Lainez.

Enjoy St. Patrick’s Day music virtually

A year ago Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki was heading into his busy season and primed to play traditional Irish music across the region. Following a St. Patrick’s Day weekend kickoff show, the Jordan TW Trio, including Matt Jensen on guitar and bass player Chris Noyes, would play its biggest gig of the year, to a sold out Saturday night crowd at Bank of NH Stage.

It was Friday the 13^th, however. In 2020, that cursed day delivered misery like never before.

“As we stepped off stage, I took out my phone,” the fiddler said in a recent phone interview, “and found out that we’d been canceled from that point on.”

Though Tirrell-Wysocki would resume a fairly busy schedule later that spring — Zoom lessons with cabin-fevered students were a silver lining during the pandemic — on March 17 the jigs and reels were streamed from his home on Facebook Live.

This year he’ll finally take the stage in downtown Concord. Alas, apart from a camera operator and sound engineer, his trio will play to an empty room.

He calls the situation “weirdly ironic” but is pleased nonetheless. “I’m grateful that the Capitol Center has figured out how to present quality livestream content. … I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

The March 12 show is one of four Irish-themed virtual events offered by the venue. On March 13 a late afternoon show offers We Banjo 3: Live From Ireland. An indie band with Celtic roots, they most recently performed a virtual Christmas show.

That’s followed later in the evening by the concert/travelogue Virtual Ireland with Michael Londra. A prerecorded live concert experience featuring world-renowned step dancers and musicians, Rhythm of the Dance debuted in February and will run two more times in March.

An “intermission” from live events imposed late last year has been challenging, Capitol Center Executive Director Nicki Clarke said recently. Federal CARES Act money and donations have sustained them financially.

“We’ve been taking it literally month by month, saying, ‘We’re just going to pause and look again, and pause again,’” she said.

Socially distanced standup comedy from Juston McKinney was set to resume in-person shows on March 27, but “the board decided to stay in our ‘pause’ state,” Clarke wrote in a Feb. 25 email, so the event is postponed, with no new date confirmed. A May 14 Adam Ezra Band show is still listed on the venue’s website; everything before that is off or virtual, and the Ezra show is not certain either, Clarke said.

“Our board weighs in on the pause question the second Thursday of each month for the following month,” she said. “This means the call to go or re-schedule again will be made on or around April 8.”

Some silver linings emerged from the dearth of live events. Necessary stage repairs could be made, for example.

“In some ways being closed was a good thing, because we can get that done right,” Clarke said.

Still, livestreamed shows are no substitute for the real thing money-wise.

“We might be making like $2 for every ticket that we sell; it’s really for the benefit of giving people something to watch,” she said. “This mud season is going to be tough. We’ve got to get through March and April, then hopefully we’ll be outside and able to join up with each other.”

Tirrell-Wysocki is also willing to wait.

“As much as I’m looking forward to being able to work in a normal capacity again, I don’t want to rush it,” he said. “I have been offered indoor shows, and I honestly feel weird. I don’t blame anyone who’s willing to perform inside with distance guidelines and all of that, but a huge part of my job as an independent musician is filling a room, and I just can’t really in good conscience do that. … I want to be sure we’ve waited long enough to do it safely and feel good about it. If that means livestreaming for now, then that’s what we’re going to do.”

Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki Trio Livestream
When: Friday, March 12, 8 p.m.
Where: online
Tickets: $20 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Jordan TW Trio. Courtesy photo.

Fable finds Leaving Eden in fine form

Since forming in 2011, Leaving Eden has remained among the most dedicated bands in New England. Their latest album, Fable, shows them maturing but still delivering high-energy rock ’n’ roll. “Broken” is a floor-mopper that stands with anything on their eight previous records, but there’s also a strummy cover of “The Rose” — yes, from the ’80s movie. “Detached” has a Beatlesque jangle evoking “Nowhere Man,” and the piano-driven title track is a tuneful departure for the band.

Keyboards are a recent addition to Leaving Eden’s sound, provided by Alyssa White, their newest member. White also collaborated on songwriting with guitar player and principal lyricist Eric Gynan on the song. She also co-wrote the title track of Dream With Me, released last year, and used it for an evocative Covid-19 themed video.

That wasn’t the plan, Gynan said in a recent phone interview. Dream With Me was due to support a tour covering most of 2020.

“We didn’t have one open date, and I had to turn places away,” but the pandemic had other plans, he said. “Of course, everything got canceled.”

So the band filmed a video full of masks and dancing molecules, then set about finding ways to work — successfully.

“We were able to play different places we’d never played before, like Hampton Beach Seashell Stage; right on the sand was just so cool,” Gynan said with a vial-half-full positivity. “As one door closed, another door opened, and we went straight through November, when it got too cold because everything we were doing was outdoors.”

They used the chilly months to complete the new record, released in mid-January, and practice for a livestreamed Lockdown Series show that debuted Feb. 13. The YouTube concert will eventually become a live album.

The band’s original lineup included two women: lead singer Eve and bassist Carissa Johnson, who’s now a solo artist. So adding White is a return of sorts. They were introduced in late 2018 at a gig — sort of.

“Alyssa was too shy, so she had her cousin come up to us to say she plays keyboards, sings and wants to be in the band,” Gynan said.

He responded by giving White Eve’s cell number.

“If she calls, that’s cool, then let’s see if she shows up,” he said. “She showed up. So [then it was], let’s see if she can learn the material. … She just did it all, a check mark off of each thing.”

Rounding out the group are drummer Jake Gynan and bass player Rick Chouinard. The latter played with Gynan and Eve (Gynan’s wife) in a pre-Leaving Eden band. Their latest public appearance was at The Chop Shop in Seabrook on Feb. 20. But the livestreamed show felt like a return, Gynan said — even if the stage was a bit cramped due to camera restrictions.

“I wanted to jump around but I couldn’t because if I moved even a little bit to the right or left I’d be covering Alyssa, and if Eve moved she’d block Jake and Rick would be out of the frame,” Gynan said. “We literally had just those spots, but it still had the energy.”

A show scheduled for Feb. 27 at VFW Post 88 in Kingston has been postponed to May 22, but a March trip to Florida for a few gigs is still on. As warm weather returns, they expect their home turf to become more welcoming.

A few Leaving Eden songs have appeared in movies, including Mayday, Lockdown, Painkiller, Bloodthirst and The Penthouse, all from Italian director Max Cerchi. Seemingly inspired, Gynan wrote his own screenplay for a film called The Nitwit. Rooted in reality — “things that really happened to me or somebody very close” — it was filmed in Iowa and is nearly complete.

“We would be done if this pandemic didn’t happen,” he said. “We’ve only got to go there for a long weekend and we can finish up.”

Ten years down the road, Leaving Eden soldiers on. Is the original vision intact?

“That’s a great question,” Gynan said. “You can’t be a frustrated musician forever. I guess you can be, but it’s not fun. It’s good to set your expectations high [but] I’ve learned to be totally happy doing exactly what I’m doing right now. Every gig is just as important as the next … a big concert or a little dive, it’s still important to me. It’s all just a matter of perspective.”

Leaving Eden
Watch Leaving Eden, The Lockdown Sessions on youtu.be/N31j1cfmkQM, or find them at facebook.com/bandleavingeden

Featured photo: Leaving Eden. Courtesy photo.