Author: Michael Witthaus

Americana band Raid the Larder performs

Raid the Larder perfectly illustrates the intersectionality of Concord’s music scene. At its core are Taylor Pearson and Brian Peasley, two friends who started playing punk rock together 10 years ago in high school. When Pearson introduced Peasley to the Grateful Dead and its all-acoustic cousin Old & In the Way, he picked up a mandolin and the two morphed into a younger version of Jerry Garcia and David Grisman.

They called themselves Hometown Eulogy. The moniker came from a song by Tristan Omand, a local rocker turned folkie who inspired their rustic turn.

“His albums seem to come to me in certain places in my life where I need it the most,” Peasley said in a recent phone interview. “Me and Taylor were really loving that first album of his. We’re like, ‘Hometown Eulogy just sounds like a badass name.’”

A couple of years ago Peasley heard Ryan Nicholson playing with a band called Oddfellows Way at a craft beer festival. Learning the guitarist also played banjo, he suggested an impromptu jam session; the two clicked immediately. Later he discovered that Nicholson would soon be moving to Concord.

Peasley connected with guitarist Mac Holmes after watching him play in Plymouth, where he lived.

“I was like, ‘This guy’s amazing — I need him. I wanted a full bluegrass band,” he said.

Holmes ended up traveling to Concord so frequently that he eventually relocated to the city.

“The bass player was the hard part,” Peasley said.

He knew Scott Heron and his wife, fiddler Betsey Green, from their time jamming with singer-songwriter Will Hatch.

“Will was starting to get a band together when he moved back up here from Virginia and he found Scott and Betsy.”

As the two grew occupied with their own project, Green Heron, Hatch cast about for new players.

“Me and Taylor were playing in a band called the Graniteers with our friend Nick Ferrero from high school. … We ended up playing shows with Will,” Peasley said.

He suggested a jam session with Hatch.

“Will’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that’d be fun,’ and it ended up being a Pizza Tapes kind of thing,” he said.

They became friends with Heron and Green in the process. So, when an upright bassist was needed, Heron agreed to join. Raid the Larder played its first show in December 2018, with Green guesting on fiddle. Travel to and from Kingston made it too much for the couple. Heron left, and Nicholson recruited Adam Martin, who’d just left Oddfellows Way to take his place. The band’s lineup now consists of Peasley on mandolin, guitarists Pearson and Holmes, Nicholson playing banjo and Martin on bass.

For now they’re all about playing together whenever they can, and haven’t made a record — yet.

“I want to get together and play these songs that I’ve been covering for years, but with a full band,” Peasley said. “We do everything from old Carter Family tunes to Modest Mouse to Jimmy Buffett. I would love to do a recording because we all bring originals from the different bands we’ve come from; it’s a big collaboration. I think Mac doesn’t care if we recorded or anything. He just wants to play.”

Peasley also hosts the weekly open mic at Penuche’s, where Raid the Larder will perform two days after Thanksgiving. He and Pearson also appear regularly at another Concord hub for local music, Area 23. They two co-led a weekly songwriters night a while back, inviting local performers over to play their originals.

Pearson and Peasley always join in, and the evenings often provide a full flavor of one of the state’s most burgeoning and enjoyable scenes.

“Me and Taylor, learning people’s songs,” Peasley said. “It’s just what we do.”

Raid the Larder
When: Saturday, Nov. 28, 8 p.m.
Where: Penuche’s Ale House, 16 Bicentennial Square, Concord
More: facebook.com/raidthelarder

Featured photo: Raid the Larder. Courtesy photo.

Fools duo play intimate Manchester show

November is a time of year when Mike Girard is usually getting ready to star in the annual Christmas Buzz Ball or doing shows with either his longtime band The Fools or the oversized side project, Mike Girard’s Big Swinging Things. Since the pandemic put the kibosh on most live music last March, however, he’s done exactly one gig: an early August drive-in Fools show at a Manchester by the Sea fitness club parking lot.
Girard’s performance output will double when he and Fools guitarist Rich Bartlett play an intimate show at the Rex Theatre in Manchester on Nov. 28. They’ve done the duo act once before at a house concert, “and we really had a terrific time,” Girard said in a recent phone interview. “The songs were stripped down, with lots of stories in between. We called it the Naked and Afraid Tour; this is a continuation of that.”
The setlist will include favorites like “Life Sucks, Then You Die” and “It’s A Night For Beautiful Girls,” reworked for the spare performance.
“I guess the words are going to be a lot more audible, for good or ill,” Girard said. “If you don’t like it, you’ll know why. There’s [one] song in particular, a slow one called ‘Just Give Up’ — it’s kind of an inspirational song about just quitting.”
A natural raconteur, Girard is more than ready to perform, despite the time off. He’ll share tales of his band’s beginnings in the late 1970s, when hits “She Looks Alright In The Dark” and “Psycho Chicken” were all over Boston radio, and talk about international tours opening for Van Halen and The Knack.
Fans will also gain insight into his songwriting process, Girard promised.
“For instance, ‘Night Out’ occurred to me in a dream — it really did,” he said. “In the dream, we were playing in a small club, doing this song. I woke up and wrote the verse and chorus. I knew where it was going and I went back to bed.”
In the morning, Girard finished the song.
“I called up Richie and said, ‘I had this dream we’re playing this song in a club; I wrote it down and I want to play it for the band.’ He said, ‘How many people were in the club?’ I said, ‘Not too many.’ He said, ‘Call me back when there’s more people in the club.’”
For his part, Bartlett is always ready to hit the stage, Girard said.
“I could show up at his place pretty much any hour of the day and he’ll be sitting on the couch playing guitar into his headphones while watching one TV show or another,” he said. “I tell him, ‘Your life hasn’t really changed at all; we’re all [not used to] staying at home, but that’s just what you do.’”
The upcoming stripped-down show will be The Fools’ second at the Rex; they were there last Feb. 22, a few months after Girard published a new book, A Fool In Time. Like 2010’s Psycho Chicken & Other Foolish Tales, he admits that it’s loosely a memoir, quoting Bartlett’s response to Psycho Chicken in the preface: “The story is pretty much true, even if the details aren’t.”
The Fools have a long history in Manchester, dating back to the raucous mid-’80s days of The Casbah Club, when they and performers such as GG Allin, Jim Carroll and The Ramones would frequently visit.
Girard is looking forward to playing at the city’s newest venue again.
“We’re going to add to the foolish population of that town,” he said with a laugh. “I love the Rex, the place is great. It’s got that feeling of history about it, being an old theater. Nice high ceilings, lots of space.” And it’s ideal for a safe, socially distanced evening.
“We won’t be selling merch, or hanging out with the audience after or whatever, all the things that we would normally do,” Girard said. “We’ll have our own separate entrance, everyone will wear a mask when they’re out of their seat, you know? But once we start, it’s going to be fun — that’s the whole point of every show.”

An Intimate Evening With A Couple of Fools
When: Saturday, Nov. 28, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $29 in advance at palacetheatre.org, $39 at the door

Featured photo: Mike Girard and Rich Bartlett. Courtesy photo.

Fogelberg tribute is a gem

A careful return to concerts at the Franklin Opera House includes a hybrid live and livestream show on Nov. 14, with Maine singer-songwriter Don Campbell playing the music of Dan Fogelberg. Employing a voice that closely resembles the soothing tenor that propelled hits such as “Leader of the Band,” “Same Old Lang Syne” and “Go Down Easy,” Campbell will perform both solo on piano and guitar, and with an expanded band.
For Campbell, hearing Fogelberg’s Souvenirs album as a teenager in the early 1970s was a transformative experience.
“It made me want to become a songwriter,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It felt like he was singing directly to me. A common thread with fans that I meet is it’s almost like you knew him through his music.”
Campbell has had a lot of success with his chosen craft. He’s a six-time winner of the Maine’s Best Singer-Songwriter poll and took top honors at a Grand Ole Opry competition of original artists that earned him $50,000 and a Gibson Les Paul custom guitar. He’s made 14 CDs of original music, including a pair of Christmas albums. His most recent release is 2014’s The Dust Never Settles.
It’s Campbell’s tribute act that’s getting the most notice in recent years, however.
When prostate cancer claimed Fogelberg in 2007, Campbell began recording his favorites to memorialize him, ultimately releasing a double album in 2012, Kites To Fly – The Music of Dan Fogelberg. Its title is a metaphor, not a lyric reference.
“His songs are like beautiful kites that you take down from the wall and outside to fly a little bit,” Campbell said. “That’s the only way I can describe them for someone who doesn’t know Dan’s music.”
The tribute was noticed by the Fogelberg Association of Peoria, Illinois (the singer’s hometown). The family trust invited Campbell to perform at their annual Celebration Weekend in 2013 and endorsed his act on its website.
“I got to speak to his mother through the foundation president, who put me on the phone with her,” Campbell said. “It was really quite an honor.”
The upcoming Franklin show will be Campbell’s first livestream, and he said he’s relieved to be performing for an in-person crowd at the same time.
“We like to play for people, not at people, where you can talk to the audience,” he said. “So I love opera houses. They always sound great, and they were built for carrying sound. We’re not a loud band; we’re more about playing the parts.”
He’ll bring a seven-piece band that includes fiddle and mandolin players for the evening. It will span Fogelberg’s career, from his gentle, semi-confessional early work to mid- ‘70s jazz rock and the 1985 bluegrass classic High Country Snows, a record Campbell names as one of his most beloved in the catalog.
“It was a special project,” he said.
Over the summer, Campbell and his band did a few outdoor, socially distanced shows. One memorably happened in the parking lot of The Clambake, a favorite seafood restaurant in his hometown of Scarborough, Maine; he and his band played atop a flatbed truck.
“People got lobster rolls and sat in lawn chairs between each car or in the back of a pickup truck,” he said. “We put on a three-hour concert and it was really great. I’ve always said, ‘Evolve or dissolve.’ Everybody’s had to evolve in 2020 to keep things going.”
Asked what he’ll remember most about this challenging year, Campbell answered quickly.
“Playing in close proximity to people,” he said. “Being able to play in venues where there are dancers right in front of you, it’s hard to replace that.”

The Music of Dan Fogelberg – Don Campbell Band
When: Saturday, Nov. 14, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Franklin Opera House, 316 Central St., Franklin
Tickets: $18 & $20 ($17/livestream) at franklinoperahouse.org

Featured photo: Don Campbell. Courtesy photo.