Paul Hammond has an extra ticket for Led Zeppelin’s reunion show. The caveat is that anyone looking to claim it will have to time travel. Hammond plays lead guitar in Get the Led Out, a band that outflanks other tribute acts via exacting attention to detail. One of his more memorable Zep moments, however, was as a spectator. It was a rock ’n’ roll fantasy come true.
It’s no stretch to say Zep’s one-off 2007 concert was the hardest ticket ever; 20 million fans entered a worldwide lottery to purchase a mere 18,000 seats. Hammond, however, knew someone connected to a charity run by Jimmy Page’s wife at the time, who got him in, and then some.
Prior to the show, he watched soundcheck with Queen guitarist Brian May for company, and the two enjoyed the concert from the VIP section. Also, and what explains the wayback machine requirement, Hammond had access to six additional tickets. Sadly, he couldn’t find anyone able to quickly jet to London and use them.
“I was with the top of the top rock stars, the inner circle of rock royalty,” Hammond said in a recent phone interview. He may perform the music of the gods, and convincingly, but he enjoyed the perks of one that night. “In the A100 section, with Brian May, and then three rows down in front of me was Ronnie Wood and Jeff Beck.”
Hammond also met Page backstage that night. He had another Zep-adjacent moment, courtesy of the band he co-formed in 2003 with singer Paul Sinclair, with a mission to perform note for note songs from the iconic band’s studio recordings. It came as GTLO was preparing to go on stage at Portsmouth’s Music Hall a few years back.
After a phone call, the show’s promoter informed him she’d been speaking to Robert Plant. “He asked her, ‘What band is playing tonight?’ and she said, ‘It’s Get the Led Out,’ and he says, ‘Oh, Get the Led Out, that’s a great band,’” he recalled. “He knows us! Our sound man told us he’d come to our show in Nashville.”
GTLO delivers a concert experience that’s currently rivaled only by Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening. The son of the late Zep drummer was also behind the kit in 2007 at O2 Arena. They play the iconic band’s entire catalog, almost. A few songs just don’t translate well to their arena rock show.
“Like, ‘Hats Off To (Roy) Harper’ from Led Zeppelin III is a bizarre song with the effects, and doesn’t have a lot of crowd appeal,” Hammond said. “‘Carouselambra’ from In Through the Out Door is essentially a John Paul Jones experimental record. I don’t know what Jimmy Page was up to then, maybe hanging out in the pub … but it’s a long and a weary song.”
The good news is GTLO plays everything else in their two-and-a-half-hour show, even Zeppelin’s lone B-side, “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do.” To call the band’s approach exacting is an understatement. Songs are not only transcribed precisely, but they are also true to both key and pitch, which provides a big dopamine hit for true fans.
“It brings back that memory, that sound, because intrinsically people know,” Hammond said. “Some Led Zeppelin bands, if the singer can’t hit the notes, they’ll tune a half-step down, and it just doesn’t sound the same, and the audience knows it, whether they know it or not. Because it’s just been ingrained for so many years, hearing it the way you want to hear it.”
The band grew out of a residency at Bridgeport Rib House in Pennsylvania. Zeppelin was one band they covered in a set that included Aerosmith songs, but patrons there kept asking for a Zep-centric show.
It works because Hammond and his mates revere Zeppelin as much as their audience, and deliver accordingly.
“Basically, we want to give people all the stuff that they know and love,” Hammond said. “When we go into deep cuts, they’re deep cuts that people also would know, that true die-hard Zeppelin fans would be like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe they did ‘In The Light’ or we’ve delved as deep as ‘Sick Again.’”
Get the Led Out When: Saturday, Feb. 21, at 8 p.m. Where: Capitol Center for the Arts, Chubb Theatre, 44 S. Main St., Concord Tickets: $45 and up at ccanh.com
• Metal moments: The weekend starts early with four bands on the heavier side gathering at Showcase 603. Abel Blood, from Manchester, brings the dirge-y, 11-minute epic “Mental Note” and the sinister “Keeping Pace With the Elephants.” Next is Nashua quartet Stoned Shadows; the bracing “Losing My Mind” is a standout. Rounding out the bill are Mercury Burns First and Project H. Catch them all Thursday, Feb. 19, at 8 p.m., Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester, abelblood.bandcamp.com.
• Modern country: With a new album, Oklahoma Stars, due in days, Houston Bernard plays at a Nashua craft brewery. The title song is a power ballad sweetened with love and honeysuckle, but when the NEMA-winning country singer gets rocking, he’s even better. Friday, Feb. 20, 7:30 p.m., Lost Cowboy Brewing, 546 Amherst St., Nashua, houstonbernard.com.
• Comedy tonight: A local brewery with a nice saison collaboration hosts a comedy show headlined by Corey Manning, a motivational speaker who helps others beat challenges by day and keeps it funny when the sun goes down. Joining him is a deep lineup of area comics including Mona Forgione, Bill Douglas, Joe Nahme, Ryan Ellington and Nathaniel Allen. Saturday, Feb. 21, 7 p.m., Sunstone Brewing Co., 298 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, $15, eventbrite.com.
• Classical beats: Their 2020 release Take The Stairs earned Black Violin a Grammy nomination. Led by Kev Marcus on violin and Wil Baptiste on viola, the group mashes up classical music and hip-hop. Saturday, Feb. 21, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $57 and up at nashuacenterforthearts.com.
An upcoming weekend of short plays in Nashua gives aspiring playwrights, directors and actors an opportunity to dip their toes — and pens — in the water. The yearly Celebration of One-Acts has six works, each ranging from 20 to 45 minutes long, the fruits of a community-wide call that went out last August.
All six one-acts will be performed each of the three days. Evening shows happen Friday, Feb. 20, and Saturday, Feb. 21, and a Sunday matinee closes out the event, presented by Nashua Theatre Guild. Catherine Sweet, the show’s producer as well as a writer of one play and an actor in another, promises lots of variety.
“It’s been a blast to watch six directors bring six very different original pieces to life,” she said recently. “I know each writer is proud to see their work on stage — I know I am! Every performance you will get to see six original, completely unique shows. You’ll be crying one minute and laughing until your stomach hurts the next.”
Sweet, also an NTG Board member, wrote Here Come the … Baby? Directed by Miah Rhodes, the play centers on best friends Carol (Liz Ronai Fontanella) and Susan (Pamela Thornhill) and their conversation at a family wedding, where “they excitedly spill some hot tea, trying to weave together the tangled web of gossip, as one does.”
“Humor and heart” guide Tess Hodges’ What Comes Next. Directed by Paige Lucier, it reads like a twist on the ’90s movie Ghost. As four people, including Sweet as Saidee, cope with the death of a loved one in offbeat ways, the deceased, Sarah (Morgan Mierzwa-Winters), watches from above with her “personal well-dressed grim reaper,” played by Emily Soleil.
Such Dreams as Stuff is Made On, written by Dan McGeehan and directed by Colleen Deitrich, stars Chris Hoffman, Lindsay Garneau, Bryan Hebert II and Max Von Markgraf. Its description sounds caper-ish: “How far would you go to prove that your house was the best place on the block to rob? A couple gets some sage advice straight from the experts.”
Written by Kade Shea and directed by Katie Sibley, My Better Half looks at the dating travails of May (Milo Kruczynska), who’s ended a relationship and is uncertain about the new one she’s in with the lovely Megan (Danielle Chisholm). When best friend Anna (Nicole Straussberg) becomes May’s roommate, she has a moment of truth.
Too many adverbs and plenty of laughs characterize Story Time by, written by Brian Daly and directed by Vicky Sandin, who just finished directing Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson, Apt. 2B for Community Players of Concord. In the comedy, three students conspire to frustrate a pompous writing teacher by interpreting his class outline very literally.
The elements of New Adventures in Air Travel, written by Bruce Kalter and directed by Steve Kalter, will be familiar to anyone who’s ever booked a budget flight and regretted it later. There’s an internet video with a plane full of passengers asked to pay an upgrade fee to fly around turbulence from a while back — it sounds a bit like that.
Alyson Galipeau is in the cast of the farce about paying “optional” travel costs that most would consider essential. In a recent email Galipeau said she was thrilled to be on the stage. Also an NTG Board member, she sees the Celebration of One-Acts as “a great way to showcase the talents of our community and give regional writers a chance to shine.”
It’s also a great way to recruit reluctant thespians.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity for new actors to give theater a shot,” she said. “The plays are shorter in duration, which can be less daunting for people who want to try acting but might feel overwhelmed by learning the many lines of a full production.”
She’s enjoying rehearsals for her play, about the cleverly named Icarus Airways.
“Steve Kalter finds new ways to insert jokes and humor,” she said. “My castmates are particularly good at acting via facial expressions. It’s been difficult not to break character and laugh witnessing these expressions. I think the audience will crack up as much as we have been.”
A Celebration of One-Acts When: Friday, Feb. 20, and Saturday, Feb. 21, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 22, at 2 p.m. Where: Janice B. Streeter Theatre, 14 Court St., Nashua Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door, nashuatheatreguild.org
Featured photo: New Adventures in Air Travel rehearsal. Courtesy photo.
SEE Science Center Celebrates 40 years of hands-on exploration
The fun at Manchester’s SEE Science Center is multigenerational. A 30-year-old marketing professional who now lives in East Boston recently visited and remembered taking the bus to SEE as a middle schooler from Claremont. She marveled at many new additions and recalled older ones.
Becky Mayhew is SEE’s Finance Director and its longest-serving employee — she joined 35 years ago. On any given day, someone will tell her about coming as a kid on a field trip.
“They’ll say, ‘I’m bringing my kids now,’” Mayhew recalled. “Kids that came to us as campers … come back as teachers and bring their classes.”
Humble beginnings
In April 1984, Douglas Heuser, SEE’s Executive Director until he stepped down in 2016, wrote and received a starter grant of $40,000 from New Hampshire’s Department of Health and Human Services to create a science discovery center, using space in an old mill building donated by inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen.
It opened in April 1986. Though it then had a big name, Science Enrichment Encounters, there were very tight quarters for the two-person staff. Tours of the Manchester Mill District museum were by appointment during weekdays, with the public visiting only on weekends.
A dozen years later it shrunk its name but moved to a larger space on the third floor of 200 Bedford St.’s mill building.
“We probably could have fit three of our old offices into one of our new ones,” Mayhew recalled recently.
Despite having gone from 4,500 to 15,000 square feet, growth didn’t stop. SEE expanded to a lower floor and doubled in size. Plans began for the Lego Millyard Project, a Guinness World Records-recognized replica of the Mill District at the turn of the 20th century that opened in 2006.
The structure won a historic preservation award, SEE’s Executive Director Shana Hawrylchak noted during a recent tour of the facility. Several important buildings that were part of the landscape of the time no longer existed, so they were created using old photos and postcards provided by the downstairs Millyard Museum.
Model of DNA Sequence. Photo by Michael Witthaus.
Specifically, according to a 2008 article in the Lego fanzine BrickJournal, the Manchester Train Station had a lot of pictures and postcards available, but there was just a single drawing of the Franklin Street Church, “so several ‘artistic liberties’ were taken to create the final product.”
“It’s all Lego, three million bricks, and seven to eight thousand minifigures, and all the buildings are from 1900 to 1910,” Hawrylchak said — except for a suspension bridge from the 1930s. It’s there because “it was such an interesting engineering challenge, and as a science museum we had to respond to it.”
SEE Deputy Director Pete Gustafson remembers the day trucks arrived.
“I went down with a pallet jack and loaded off 15 pallets of bricks,” he said. “There’s the idea phase of ‘We’re going to build a Millyard of Lego’ and it sounds like a great idea, but when 15 pallets of Legos get here, you know it’s happening.”
It took two years to complete everything, and it transformed SEE’s profile in the process.
“It really put us on the map, because it had that unique flavor, an item that no other museum has,” Gustafson said. “There are other Lego installations, but this is the Amoskeag Millyard, right? It’s unique to Manchester.”
This year SEE Science Center celebrates its 40th anniversary, while its plastic mini-city marks 20years. Both milestones will be observed in a variety of ways. For the week of SEE’s official birthdate, April 1, entry charge drops to the same price as it was in the 1980s. It’s both a gift to patrons and a way to shine a light on Museums for All, a national effort offering $3 admission to EBT, WIC and SNAP card holding families. SEE was the first museum in New Hampshire to participate in it.
“We’re trying to bring awareness to that program while celebrating the year,” Hawrylchak said.
Though not due for completion until year’s end, the efforts of SEE’s first-ever capital campaign, Science For All, are already on display. Launched in 2023, the campaign’s goals included innovating exhibits, along with improving accessibility and inclusion.
The Millyard Design Zone was launched to make the giant model interactive.
“It’s one of the biggest things we have on display, but you can’t touch it, and we’re a hands-on museum,” Hawrylchak said. “We’re taking a bunch of those hands-on elements and connecting them to how cities evolve through time.”
Budding city planners are offered a variety of tools for designing a city, she continued, pointing to one of the kiosks that have already been installed. Its goal is to determine what problems are faced at certain points in time by a city that need to be re-solved as it changes.
“Kids make cost-benefit analysis decisions about what to include in their city and what’s important to them, with three different challenge levels,” she said. “You can build a city with a blank slate, or with a green space preserve that you have to build around, or we’ve got our historic Millyard that you have to incorporate.”
Another exhibit focuses on adaptive reuse of buildings, such as converting an old mill into a restaurant, office or science center. It benefited from input provided by visitors who were offered a chance to test it out, which is done frequently as part of SEE’s development process.
There’s an interior design component, and a few caregivers and grandparents described difficulty seeing into the rooms. Automatic lighting was added to make it friendlier. “That was a very interesting change we had not thought of when we were doing the initial design,” Hawrylchak said.
Events at SEE Science Center Sunday, March 8: Ralph Baer Celebration Day. Baer was a Manchester resident and electronics pioneer whose “brown box” controller became the original prototype for the first video game, Pong. Though his engineering career began in New York, Baer moved in 1955 to Manchester, where he lived and worked for the remainder of his life. His awards and honors include the United States National Medal of Technology, and his workshop is on display at the Smithsonian. Tuesday, March 10: Science on Tap, at Bo’s Lounge (Stark Brewing Co., 500 Commercial St., Manchester), a discussion on game design. “Whether they are played with dice and cards on a board or with our hands and fingers with game controllers and screens, every game begins as an idea before it goes public. Learn how apps and games become reality and how some games last and others fade away.” Saturday, March 14: Pi Day, celebrating the world’s most famous irrational number, π, 3.14159…. A video on SEE’s website, starring their intern Travis, shows an experiment that demonstrates how to discover it for yourself. The link is tinyurl.com/4wefyrub. Wednesday, March 25, and Thursday, March 26: The 25th Annual Champagne Putt, an 18-hole minigolf tournament to benefit SEE. A winning team will be crowned both nights, with an overall tournament champion announced March 26. The event runs from 5 to 8 p.m. each night and includes food, drinks, the tournament and contests. There is also a raffle, and the event is 21+. For details, go to see-sciencecenter.org/champagne-putt. Saturday, March 28: Rube Goldberg Machine Regional competition, a renowned STEM event that challenges students to innovate, collaborate, and bring engineering concepts to life. The event at SEE is a stepping stone to the prestigious Rube Goldberg Machine Contest World Championship, and the lowest-cost STEM contest in the nation. For details, go to see-sciencecenter.org/rubeg-contest. Sunday, March 29, through Saturday, April 4: Science for All Week. SEE Science Center will be charging the Museums For All admission price of $3 for all visitors, no card required. Wednesday, April 1: SEE’s official 40th birthday Sunday, April 5: SEE closed Monday, April 20: Park to Park Community clean-up. SEE photo contest starts on social channels. Mondays, April 20 and April 27: special Monday hours 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. during school vacations, with Earth Day pop-up activities.
Something for everyone
There are a myriad of exhibits beckoning beyond the SEE Science Center’s first-floor entrance. Every activity has an explanation of the science behind it and offers visitors ways to make hypotheses or connect it to their lives. Topics covered include force, light, sound, electricity, momentum and simple machines (like pulleys).
Kitchen Science. Photo by Michael Witthaus.
Everything is arranged to allow visitors, especially youngsters, to wander and land on what interests them. A lot of research has been done on display placement, but SEE’s Executive Director describes this philosophy through her own experience.
“I’m in this field because when I was younger my parents took me to the New York State Museum and I saw the mummies,” she said. “I was so excited that I spent the next however many years … studying archaeology and anthropology, and it ended up getting me a scholarship to college. But it started from that visit.”
Steering children to specific stops is discouraged.
“It can be so easy to make learning a chore, but where you really get that change and impact is when you as a learner get to decide … that’s when you become invested,” she said. “It doesn’t matter exactly what you’re learning, just that you care about it, that brings you through.”
While children are a big reason it exists, SEE’s target demographic is “age 2 to 92,” she continued, and many recent improvements reflect this. For example, more seating for older adults who can tire faster than children was added. The goal was to design the space so a whole family can experience it.
“You go to a lot of public venues, say an amusement park, and a bunch of people from the family might have to sit to the side while the rest are experiencing it, and we really don’t want that here,” she said. “We want to make sure you’re experiencing it together, because that’s where some of the interesting learning happens.”
Observing how family groups interact is also important, Hawrylchak continued. “Where do we get the most positive behaviors? Let’s say there’s an exhibit that requires a little bit more contemplation. We’re going to be shifting that around so that we can create that sort of pocket environment for that experience to occur.”
Some of SEE’s most memorable moments happen in the lab, such as the Slimy Science program, where kids make their own Silly Putty. “That’s been running for 27 years. We did a calculation a couple of years ago, and it was about 85,000 batches of putty.”
Recently the STEM Lab was overhauled.
“This one is particularly important to us because a lot of the kids on school field trips have never been in a lab environment,” Hawrylchak said. “Most of the schools don’t have specialized science rooms, so this really gets them to be able to embody being a scientist.” Improvements include full wash stations, a new floor and accessibility upgrades to accommodate different abilities and younger kids. “We had high school-sized tables, and it was really tricky with kindergartners in here doing reactions,” she said. “We’re so happy about the floor; you have no idea how much we clean off.”
A family affair
Becky Mayhew, Peter Gustafson and Design Coordinator Adele Maurier all have worked multiple decades for SEE, part of a close-knit team of nine full-timers. Everyone does a little bit of everything, like when Hawrylchak climbed into the Lego Millyard to fix a bent tower spire recently.
There’s a sense of mission that’s rare and wonderful.
“I don’t want to use the cliché of, ‘oh, we’re a family,’ Mayhew said. “But, you know, everybody is. When you’re a small staff and you have a small, small budget, everybody has to pitch in, from the top to the bottom. I like that.”
Gustafson brought an education background but was also a working musician when he joined in February 1997. He wanted a job that accommodated that.
“Going straight to a regular classroom wasn’t appealing to me at the time,” he said. “So what brought me here was a non-traditional classroom opportunity to educate.”
In his time there he’s built and fixed exhibits, written grants, worked with SEE’s marketing team, and lately manages special events. Last year the New England Museum Association honored him with its Excellence Award. Gustafson responded modestly and pointed the spotlight on his team.
“No one’s excellent alone, we’re excellent with each other, so while it is nice to get that honor, I think it’s a statement about our institution, our organization,” he said. A quote on NEMA’s website read, “I didn’t plan to be an Exhibit Fabricator or Development Director, but the organization needed it, so I learned how to do it.”
Ball track. Photo by Michael Witthaus.
Mayhew graduated from Saint Anselm College hoping to be a teacher but ended up working in an office.
“It was hard to find a teaching job,” she said. “But … just sitting at a computer all day doing data entry, it was just horrible. I just kept my eyes open, and I saw this job at the SEE Science Center.” She came on part-time and fit in immediately.
“I got pretty handy with duct tape, a paper clip and hammering wood, doing all these things,” she said. “We’d do the painting of the floor, all that kind of stuff. So it was really a different job every day, always different and exciting.”
She became Finance Director after SEE had split from its parent organization, Southern New Hampshire Services, and Hawrylchak came on board.
“She noticed how organized I was,” Mayhew said. For some time, she’d been doing POs, deposits and similar tasks.
The change came at the right time. “I was getting a little burnt out on 30 years of doing programs,” she said. “So it was a way for me to stay here, help grow the institution, and still get to dabble in a little education every once in a while. But, you know, my focus gets to be a little bit different.”
Her dedication is exemplified by the fact that both of her daughters came to work at SEE. Her oldest, Jordan, spent almost seven years there, with responsibilities including demonstrating SEE’s Van de Graaff generator and Air Vortex Cannon.
When they were in grade school in Merrimack, both girls went to SEE’s summer camps, but they hadn’t been on any field trips — until mom stepped in.
“There was no way my daughters were not coming here,” she said. “So I called them up, and for my older daughter, I was like, ‘hey, I will foot the bill for your class.’”
The school loved it. “It became a regular thing. There are two other elementary schools in Merrimack; now those two elementaries come. The first-graders have been coming from Merrimack since my older daughter was in first grade. She’s 24 now, about to get married.”
Summer and fall activities at SEE Friday, June 19: SEE Golf Tournament fundraiser. Saturday, June 20 – Friday, June 26: Kickoff to Summer featuring Lego activities and Celebrating the Lego Millyard Model. Also, the Lego Collection drive starts. Monday, July 13: First day of summer camps. Friday, Aug. 14: Final day of summer camps. Tuesday, Sept. 15 – Thursday, Oct. 15: SEE celebrates scientists of Latin American descent. Friday, Oct. 16: Community Discovery Night. Monday, Oct. 19: Trick or Trash neighborhood cleanup. Wednesday, Nov. 11: 21+ fundraiser at SEE the Tinker Games, and completion of the Millyard Design Zone exhibit gallery and capital campaign improvements.
Looking to the future
One focus of late has been development of programs and experiences for middle-schoolers. “That’s when these kids start to select out of science and start to do other things,” Gustafson said. “So that’s been a new and exciting challenge for us, engaging that audience.”
To that end, SEE is working with ARMI, the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute. “We’ve developed some programs under their guidance that highlight regenerative medicine, from the basics of cells to how our body heals to how science and technology can be applied to bioengineering.”
Though the 40th anniversary won’t officially occur until April 1, SEE is already looking ahead to its 50th year. A strategic plan is underway to address the next phase and whether that means a move beyond its longtime home in the Mill District.
“I think one of our big things is, what is a permanent home for SEE?” Hawrylchak said. “We are very lucky to have this longstanding partnership with [Dean Kamen’s] FIRST, who’s been just amazing to us. But at some point we probably need a space that’s permanent for the Science Center.”
How that might be realized is under discussion. “We’re still in those early phases,” she said. “It might entail us staying here, but we’re having those conversations to say, you know, when we get to our 50th we want to make sure that we’re a permanent fixture for this community.”
Featured photo: See Science Center dinosaur. Courtesy photo.
The Livery welcomes Christine Tassan et les Imposteures
With an infectious blend of swing music and jazz created by guitar innovator Django Reinhardt, Christine Tassan et les Imposteures formed in Montreal in 2003. It was a time when Reinhardt’s style of jazz had few adherents in the French-Canadian city. That none were Manouche like Reinhardt helped explain the band’s name.
There were other reasons for the moniker. Mainly, that Tassan is a woman in a male-dominated genre, and the original Imposteures were all female. “So we felt a little bit like impostors in that very man thing,” she said in a recent Zoom interview. “Also, we come from different backgrounds.”
That final one’s the rub. Tassan and her band draw from the Django canon but add elements all their own.
“We like to incorporate folk songs,” she said. “Martine, my violinist, comes from a classical background and a lot of traditional Quebecois music. So there’s that influence coming in our compositions and shows. Kind of an impostor, you know?”
Such a melting pot is reflected in the title track from their latest album, Sur la route, which translates to On the Road.
“It has the accents of Jack Kerouac, the chords of Willie Nelson and the fingers of Django Reinhardt,” Tassan told the crowd at last year’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven.
The through line is music that, as Steve Martin once said of the banjo, easily inspires a smile, with Tassan’s playful stage presence taking it home.
“We bring a lot of humor in it,” Tassan said. “When we talk to people in between songs, there’s some kind of participation.”
That an all-acoustic genre also inspires infectious toe-tapping can be traced back to Reinhardt, she continued. “Django heard swing music coming from the States, and Louis Armstrong; they were his main influences … for sure, that’s something that is really lively.”
French-born, Tassan came to Canada not for music, but as an electrical engineering exchange student in the final year of her studies. “A friend of mine was coming to Montreal, so I followed her,” she said. “I stayed one year and really enjoyed the city, and the country. I decided to migrate.”
Music came next. Tassan dabbled in a variety of idioms, beginning with classical.
“Then I did a lot of … more like folk songs, writing and singing my own compositions,” she recalled. In 1998 she discovered some of Django’s CDs and the die was cast. “I was totally blown away.”
Tassan began to transcribe and practice Reinhardt’s solos with a small group of fellow acolytes, later launching her own band.
“From then I saw that there was really something happening with that music, we were really having some success,” she said. “So it started from there and never stopped.”
The Imposteurs lineup has changed over the years, but the one constant is violinist Martine Gaumond. “She’s been with me nearly since the beginning,” Tassan said. “We do a lot of arrangements together, and we are the heart, I would say, of the band. She plays the violin beautifully, and she writes all the little vocal harmonies we sing.”
The current lineup is rounded out by upright bass player Mathieu Gagné and his longtime compatriot, guitar player Francis Tetu, who brings a unique approach to their music. “Not exactly a traditional way … but he is a very, very virtuoso guitarist,” Tassan said.” Both joined in early January.
After playing at Wolfeboro’s Friends of Music to start February, Tassan and her band will perform at Sunapee’s Livery to follow a sit-down Valentine’s Day dinner. It’s Tassan’s first show at the historic venue. After, they’ll head home.
“We’ve been playing several times in New Hampshire, it’s fun,” she said. “It’s a beautiful place.”
Christine Tassan et les Imposteures – Dinner & Show When: Saturday, Feb. 14, at 5:30 p.m. Where: The Livery, 58 Main St., Sunapee Harbor Tickets: $50 at thelivery.org
Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang and Wild Cherry. There will be winery selections, a full bar with themed cocktails, beer and non-alcoholic drinks. Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7:30 p.m., LaBelle Winery, 14 Route 111, Derry, $40, labellewinerey.com.
• Immigrant songs: Though a fan-coined name reflects their country of origin, Young Dubliners owe more to Irish bands like Boomtown Rats and Big Country than jigs and reels, and classic rockers love them. Bernie Taupin wrote the title track for their breakout 2000 album, Red, and praise from Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson while opening for them on tour was a boost. Friday, Feb. 6, at 8 p.m., Friday, Feb. 13, at 7:30 p.m., Rex Theater, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $44, palacetheatre.org.
• Moody melodic: Fans of Nirvana, Strokes and Super Bowl pregame heroes Green Day will enjoy Pointless Culture, performing in the Capital City’s premier basement bar with A Moment of Green. Last summer the group, formed by two guys named Harrison, released the 15-track Better Off Dead. Standout songs include the loping, dreamy psych-rocker “Utah” and “Liftoff.” Friday, Feb. 13, at 9 p.m., Penuche’s Ale House, Bicentennial Square, Concord, pointlessculture.com.
• Movie mirth: Spend Valentine’s Day laughing with comedian Tim McKeever, the second of two nights of standup at a Manchester dine-in movie house (Kenny Rogerson performs Friday). Saturday, Feb. 14, at 8:30 p.m., Chunky’s Cinema Pub, $20, chunkys.com.
• Longhair music: Carry the Mardi Gras spirit beyond Fat Tuesday with Soggy Po’ Boys, a Granite State octet that’s been spreading Big Easy joy for the past 14 years. They now have female energy via new lead singer Shaina Schwartz. “There’s such a rich history of music in New Orleans,” now-departed founder Stu Dias said in 2024. “If you ask me, all American music came out of there.” Sunday, Feb. 15, at 7 p.m., Big Bear Lodge, 16 Route 13, Brookline, $25, andresinstitute.org.com.
