Category: Cover Stories

O’Neil Cinemas returns to Londonderry and we check in with Red River Theatres in Concord PLUS A look at the summer movie schedule

As summer movie season begins, we take a look at a few local theaters. O’Neil Cinemas expands — and returns — to Londonderry. We also check in with Red River Theatres, which is now the only movie theater in Concord. And we take a look at the summer movie schedule. Grab some popcorn and get ready to go to the movies.

O’Neil Cinemas returns to Londonderry: The newly refurbished theater will include a full service bar

By Zachary Lewis

zlewis@hippopres.com

The brand new O’Neil Cinemas in Londonderry is expected to hold its grand reopening July 1.

O’Neil Cinemas is family-run and also has a theater in Epping, as well as one in Littleton, Mass.

Dan O’Neil spoke to the Hippo about the grand reopening and how this family business, led by his father, Dan O’Neil Sr., has been in the movies for decades.

“I’ve been in this business since I was a kid, helping out my brother in the business. Tim O’Neil. He’s also in the business. He’s years younger than me. We did everything. I was a projectionist. We cleaned the restrooms, sold concessions, things like that. So after college, we got in the business,” Dan O’Neil said.

According to a recent press release, O’Neil Cinemas was founded in 1982 and was operated by the O’Neil family before leasing the Londonderry facility (at 16 Orchard View Dr.) to AMC Theaters in 2014.

“We have a legacy of about 40 years in New Hampshire,” Dan O’Neil said. “So we leased this theater in Londonderry for 10 years to AMC. We own the real estate in the building. They decided after 10 years — it was a 10-year term — that they would not renew. And we thought the Londonderry market was a great market. It’s a wide open market, it’s a growing market and we’re very, very positive about the industry going forward. So we decided to invest in this location.”

They had built an eight-screen theater in Littleton, Mass., which is a model for what they are bringing into Londonderry. (O’Neil Cinemas also operates a theater at Brickyard Square, 24 Calef Highway in Epping. See oneilcinemas.com.)

“We got into the food and beverage business in that theater. It has a lounge. It has a full-service bar. So that’s kind of our model going forward now, is to bring in upgraded amenities, making it more of an experience for people to come out of the house. We have a full kitchen. We sell good food,” O’Neil said.

They’ve made a lot of fun changes.

“So currently, before we started renovation, it was a 10-screen complex. The new renovation will have nine screens. And we’re renovating one of the auditoriums into what we call the Backstage Lounge. It will be a full-service bar plus a lounge atmosphere. And we’ll have a full kitchen in the complex where we’ll sell upscale food and beverage. So you can get a meal before the movie, or after the movie, or a drink, a crafted cocktail,” O’Neil said.

“We also will be delivering directly to your seat,” he said. “So if you want to order through an app, you’ll be able to get it to your seat. If you’re buying tickets and you want to order your food, you can ahead of time. When you get to the theater, you scan your ticket in, it will fire that food to the kitchen, so you won’t have to stand in any lines. You can just go directly to the seat, and it will be delivered to you.”

Image and sound are priorities for O’Neil cinemas.

“Two of the auditoriums in this complex are premium large-format auditoriums. We call them the Grand DLX. At the premium large-format auditorium, they’re all state-of-the-art laser projection, Dolby Atmos sound, which are a 64-speaker surround sound system. It’s advanced object-based audio technology, so the speakers are strategically placed throughout the theater. You have overhead speakers for three-dimensional sound. It’s basically a precise sound positioning capability so that if a helicopter’s flying over your head, it’ll feel like you can hear the helicopter above you. And it’s more of an immersive experience,” O’Neil said.

Moviegoers in the Grand DLX auditoriums will experience ‘Buttkicker’ heated recliners with swivel tables that will synchronize vibrations with the film’s soundtrack.

“We’ll have one auditorium that has D-box motion seats,” he said. Luxury D-Box Motion seats use haptic technology, according to the press release. “Those seats actually move and synchronize to the soundtrack or the action on the screen. So it physically engages the viewers by creating synchronized movements to the action on the screen.”

Moviegoers will be able to opt out or control how much of the feel they get. “You could turn it off. You can lower the sensation so it’s not as high of a movement. Or you can go full blast with that thing,” O’Neil said.

No matter the theater, the seats will be comfy.

“The rest of the auditoriums will have full reclining heated seats. We’re really trying to make this a first-class viewing experience. The brightness on the screen will be fantastic.”

Londonderry will have revival screenings of cinema classics, and more than films will be screened.

“We can actually now with the digital technology, as long as we have licensing rights, we can stream live events, like currently we’re doing UFC fights down in our Littleton and Epping locations. We showed the Metropolitan Opera live from New York. So you can actually come to our theater if you’re into the opera, Metropolitan Opera, and view it live,” O’Neil said.

Movies have always held a special place for Dan O’Neil.

“I was about seven years old in ’77, so I was a big Star Wars fan. That movie was incredible to me…. We actually opened the theater in Londonderry during 1983 after construction and the first movie we showed was Return of the Jedi. I just remember the line going down the middle of the parking lot. Of course, back then we didn’t have reserved seating. But yeah, it was a fantastic experience being in the pack. You know, those movies were always sold out. And just being in there and experiencing it with other kids and people was amazing,” he said.

He mentioned why he believes people still get excited to go out to the movies. “I think we’re communal creatures, and we like storytelling, and when you can do it with other people it just adds to the emotion of it. That’s what makes memories in my mind is the emotions you feel with other people. I think that’s why after 100 years, the business is still around.”

There will be a community open house at some point before the grand reopening in July.

“We’re shooting for July 1, and that’s right before the Fourth of July weekend and there’s supposed to be some … big movies opening, Jurassic World being one of them, so we’re trying to hit that for a big grand opening,” O’Neil said. “I think that once the community sees what we can offer for out-of-home entertainment, I think it’s going to be a real positive thing for the community.”

The city’s theater: Red River is Concord’s only movie house

By Zachary Lewis

zlewis@hippopress.com

Red River Theatres is a community hub in Concord.

“We work as a full-time movie theater; we also are mission-based,” said Angie Lane, Red River’s Executive Director.

“We serve by providing space to other nonprofits to show films that speak to their mission. We do some of our own programming based off things that we believe that our community wants. It could be sometimes that we show a documentary, but it could also be a sing-along or a Rocky Horror Picture Show.” The venue’s concessions include local sweets from Granite State Candy and local beer and wine, Lane said.

Lane and her crew are still coming back from Covid closures.

“For us, coming out of Covid, we were closed for over a year,” she said. “It’s funny, because people are like, ‘Oh, you’re still talking about Covid,’ but ultimately we’re still feeling the impact of that. We’re working to get back up to full speed.”

“I can be honest and say we’re not even fully staffed to where we were pre-Covid, so we have a very tiny team in the background managing everything, and this year we’ll be turning 18, so there’s so many things that are kind of like intersecting at the same point for us,” she said.

Now that Red River is the only movie theater in Concord, it has access to more films, including more mainstream movies and kids’ films like Snow White.

“With the closure of Regal and just the way that movie distribution has changed so much, especially in post-Covid world, we have been able to actually acquire those films. So for a very long time there were a lot of barriers for us to bring in films like that. It’s not that we are necessarily saying, ‘Like, OK, we’re going to expand to this,’ it’s just that we never quite had the availability that we do now. So we are excited to be able to offer a diversity of film that’s a little wider than we have before. You can’t please everyone, and so of course some people want more straight what they believe are independent films and don’t love it when we show Snow White. But what’s lovely is we’re able to bring in new people to Red River,” Lane said.

There are other obstacles to overcome with film selection.

“To be a working movie theater in this time and reality is really challenging. So we’re excited to be able to show a wider variety of films, but the reality is that distributors are just not producing as many films as they did pre-Covid…. So a lot of times we do consciously choose and curate the films based on what we believe align with who we are as a movie theater. On the other hand, sometimes there’s a limited amount of movies that we can choose from, so we try to do our best to pick the films we feel that our audiences want to see and hopefully expand our audiences at the same time.”

Lane described how an independent movie theater chooses a film for screening.

“… [W]e work with a film broker who manages the bookings for hundreds of different cinemas similar to Red River. Then we internally, as the team, also talk about what’s being offered to us. These films are what we would consider ‘first run’ and we sell the tickets and we do just a straight ticket split. For our own programming we book them as one-offs and we pay either a fee or a ticket split or both. … ,” Lane said.

For new films, typically 50 to 60 percent of ticket sales head back to the movie distributor, so theaters need people in the seats to keep bringing magic to the community.

“We book out films on pretty short notice, so maybe a month out,” Lane said.

“We’re excited to get the new upcoming Wes Anderson movie The Phoenician Scheme, and … No Other Land, which is the Oscar-winning documentary that has not really been getting as high distribution,” she said.

Red River also gets support from memberships. “You can become a member and you can get benefits,” Lane said. It costs $65 for an individual membership and there are other options as well. Membership fees helped keep Red River afloat during Covid. “A lot of people during Covid still kept their membership going…” Lane said.

Look for some outdoor screenings this summer. “We are planning on doing our free outdoor movies with Parks and Rec, and we’ll probably do some other partnered outdoor movies,” Lane said. This summer’s titles are not decided yet.

Lane reflected on Red River’s role in Concord, saying, “We’re about to turn 18, and we’ve become a vital, valued community organization. We show movies, but we also provide … a space for [people] so they can rent this theater for their own movies. We work a lot with different partner organizations to bring different programming….”

“I think now more than ever a lot of people want something, not necessarily to escape to … But I think that people really want to engage in different ideas or other realities and kind of dream about something that can be different and better,” Lane said.

Red River Theatres is at 11 S. Main St. in Concord. See redrivertheatres.org.

Summer of movies! Remakes, sequels, Marvel and more summer movies

Compiled by Amy Diaz

adiaz@hippopress.com

Another first Friday in May, another Marvel movie.

Except everything about movies is so much weirder than in, say, 2017 when the summer movie season kicked off with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. But there are definitely promising films on the schedule — a new Wes Anderson movie, a new Celine Song movie, a new Ari Aster, and Kristen Scott Thomas is directing a movie. Here, with guidance from IMDb on dates and casts, are some of the movies slated for release in theaters this summer.

Thunderbolts Can Marvel’s quippy Suicide Squad-y gang get us all excited about Marvel again? The first trailer at least had me hopeful. (May 2)

Fight or Flight Josh Hartnett is an assassin on, as the trailer says, a plane full of killers. (May 9)

Friendship Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd make casual male friendships super weird in this movie whose trailer gives dark comedy vibes. (May 9)

Juliet & Romeo It’s a musical, Rebel Wilson plays Juliet’s mother. (May 9)

Final Destination: Bloodlines LOL to these people in the trailer enjoying a backyard barbecue unaware that they’re in a Final Destination movie. (May 16)

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning These movies are all about Tom Cruise doing crazy stunts and we in the audience thinking “wheeee!” So, in that spirit, I’m excited about The Final Reckoning, I enjoy saying “wheeee!” to a motorcycle jumping onto a moving train or whatever. Also, Angela Bassett is here. (May 23)

Karate Kid: Legends Jackie Chan reprises his role from 2010’s The Karate Kid and Ralph Macchio, fresh off the All Valley over on the Netflix series Cobra Kai (watch it!), is Sensei Daniel LaRusso. (May 30)

The Phoenician Scheme The trailer for Wes Anderson’s latest is exactly what you’d expect with its studied symmetry and its retro, tactile settings and its familiar roster of players: Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jeffrey Wright and Benicio Del Toro. (June 6)

Ballerina “From the world of John Wick” might be all you need to know about this movie starring Ana de Armas and bringing back many Wick Universe faves (Ian McShane, Anjelica Huston, the late great Lance Reddick and Keanu Reeves himself). (June 6)

I Don’t Understand You Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells have promising chemistry and comedy chops in the trailer about a couple in rural Italy who are awaiting the birth of their baby and maybe also accidentally do a little murder. (June 6)

Materialists Writer director Celine Song (of Past Lives) offers this movie, billed as a rom-com, starring Dakota Johnson as a matchmaker, with Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal. (June 13)

28 Years Later There’s no discharge in the war. The eerie trailer for this third movie in the series that started with 2002’s 28 Days Later was probably the first trailer I saw that got me excited for a 2025 movie. Director and co-writer Danny Boyle is back along with co-writer Alex Garland for more zombie terrors. (June 20)

Elio The Disney Pixar movie I feel like I’ve been watching trailers for for years is slated for summer release. Elio is a human boy who accidentally is labeled as the leader of “uh, Earth” by visiting aliens. (June 20)

F1 Brad Pitt is a retired Formula One racer mentoring a rookie played by Damson Idris — which kinda feels like a plot to one of the Cars movies. The trailer suggests that this one is hoping for your IMAX dollars with its “you are there” driving scenes. (June 27)

M3gan 2.0 There’s a lotta “slay, b—-” energy in this movie’s trailer. Maybe a little too self-aware but I guess in this movie environment we take our cheap, silly thrills where we can get them. (June 27)

Jurassic World: Rebirth This franchise reboot does at least offer a trailer with fun Indiana Jones adventure-y vibes, what with the sneaking back to an island for dino DNA. (July 2)

Superman I mean, he gets to have his dog in this one so that’s nice. Director James Gunn and Superman David Corenswet give the Man of Steel another go. (July 11)

Smurfs Apparently this is a new Smurfs, not related to the 2010s Smurfs movies. “Rihanna is Smurfette”; also promising is the cast that includes John Goodman, Natasha Lyonne, Nick Offerman, Sandra Oh, Octavia Spencer, Amy Sedaris and Billie Lourd. (July 18)

Eddington Ari Aster (of Hereditary and Midsommar) writes and directs this movie about a New Mexico town during the pandemic — are we, like, ready for that? The trailer stressed me out, in a good way I think. Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Austin Butler star. (July 18)

I Know What You Did Last Summer New kids, new summer but Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. also return, which feels fun. (July 18)

The Fantastic Four: First Steps This Fantastic is, according to Wikipedia, the beginning of the MCU’s Phase Six. The Tomorrowland look is fun, at least. (July 25)

The Naked Gun I am in for this Liam Neeson-fronted remake (I guess he’s supposed to be the Leslie Nielsen character’s son). The trailer has that promising “stupid fun” vibe. (Aug. 1)

The Bad Guys 2 The animated book-to-movie series gets its second feature installment about Bad Guy animals turned Good Guys but roped, as IMDb says, back into one last Bad Guy job. Unlike some of the direct-to-streaming specials, we get the original voices: Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Awkwafina and Anthony Ramos. (Aug. 1)

Freakier Friday Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan return as a mother and daughter who once body-swapped to learn valuable lessons — and now it happens again with two extra kids in the mix: Lohan’s character’s daughter (Julia Butters) and stepdaughter-to-be (Sophia Hammons). The trailer made me kinda hopeful? (Aug. 8)

My Mother’s Wedding Kristen Scott Thomas directed and co-wrote this movie where she also stars as the mother of three adult daughters (one of whom is Scarlett Johansson) gathering for the mother’s wedding. According to Wikipedia the film had a 2023 premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. (Aug. 8)

Nobody 2 The 2021 “what if John Wick but suburban dad Bob Odenkirk” action movie gets a sequel. (Aug. 15)

The Roses Billed as a remake of 1989’s The War of the Roses, this comedy stars Olivia Coleman and Benedict Cumberbatch — both of whom appear skilled with the dark comedy in the movie’s trailer — along with Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg. (Aug. 29)

The Toxic Avenger Wikipedia describes this movie as a reboot of a film series that started in 1984 and had sequels and Marvel comic books and played some film festivals in 2023 before it languished for a while without a distributor due to gore. And it stars Kevin Bacon, Peter Dinklage and Elijah Wood. Trailers look gross and fun. (Aug. 29)

Caught StealingBased on the book of the same name by Charlie Huston, this Darren Aronofsky-directed movie Has A Cast — D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs’ Bear), Vincent D’Onofrio, Regina King, Bad Bunny, Matt Smith, Zoe Kravitz, Liev Schreiber and Austin Butler. The plot description says it’s set in 1990s New York City — OK, I’m in. (Aug. 29)

Veggies, flowers and trees for a low-effort gardening season

Alright, if one more person tells me they’re not a gardener because they don’t have a ”green thumb,” I’ll scream.

Anyone can grow veggies and flowers, and even plant a tree. Let’s look at 10 plants that will grow for you, regardless of your previous experiences. Just remember, the plants you start will need your attention daily until they have established a good root system and can get enough water in dry times. But if you can brush your hair and teeth daily before going to work, you can visit your seedlings every evening and give them a drink of water if they need it. Once established, they won’t need so much attention.

1. ‘Sungold’ cherry tomatoes

This is a fantastic producer of one of the best-tasting tomatoes in existence. Buy plants from your local nursery. Like all veggies, it needs six hours of daily sunshine or more, average to good soil, and a little water when first planted and in times of drought. It is a big, tall plant, so plant it with a metal cage around it to hold it up, the biggest you can find, preferably 54 inches tall. One plant can easily produce 100 to 200 tomatoes over a long season. I’d suggest two plants minimum, as they taste so good you will eat many on the way to the kitchen. Plant 24 to 36 inches apart. They are relatively disease-free.

2. ‘Bolero’ carrots

This is the gold standard of carrots. Tasty, productive. Its only flaw is that the seeds are tiny so people end up planting them too close together, and then not thinning them by the Fourth of July as they should. One solution? Buy pelleted seeds. They are coated in clay so they are the size of BBs and easy to plant where you want them. Plant in full sun and an inch apart, then thin to 2 inches. Improve your soil with compost — one bag will do for an average seed packet. Carrots need plenty of nitrogen, so add a little organic fertilizer, too. Water daily until the carrots come up, and then weekly in dry times.

Although carrots come in many colors, I like the taste of conventional orange ones best. They certainly have more beta carotene than yellow or white ones. I had great luck with purple carrots last summer — they grew straight and gorgeous, but I found them a bit stringy. All carrots are a great source of vitamins B, C and K and potassium, fiber and antioxidants. Let your kids eat them right out of the ground, just wiped clean or sprayed with the hose.

3. ‘Black-seeded Simpson’ lettuce

Another workhorse readily available in six-packs from your local garden center. Much easier to buy small plants than to start seed. Full sun or light shade, decent soil. Pick leaves for sandwiches as they grow, or wait until they are full-sized and harvest the entire head of lettuce. If you buy seed, you can replant more lettuce every two or three weeks all summer. Be sure to thin out — lettuce seeds are small and it’s easy to plant seeds too close together.

Lettuce comes in many colors and textures. Your vegetable garden will come alive if you plant reds and greens or frizzy leaves and smooth leaves in patterns. Alternate them, planting seedlings 6 inches apart. Think of your garden as a painting, the plants as the colors and shapes that please your eyes.

4. Bush beans

Plant seeds in average soil in full sun after soil warms and there is no chance of frost. Bean seeds are big, easy to plant. Plant seeds 2 inches apart, thin to 4 inches. Rows 8 inches apart. Bush beans come in three colors: green, yellow and purple. The yellow ones have a distinct taste, but the green and purple taste the same to me. Purple beans turn a tepid gray when cooked, so serve them raw in salads when having guests. All freeze well.

Pole beans are easy to grow, too. ‘Kentucky Wonder’ is an old favorite. There is some extra work in growing pole beans: You have to build a trellis or cut some poles for a tripod they can climb. The rewards can be big: So long as you keep picking pole beans, they will keep or producing more beans. Not so for bush beans — they produce for three weeks and are done.

5. Verbenas

These are annual flowers that bloom all summer. There are many named varieties sold as plants ready to bloom at garden centers, all good. “Superbenas” are hybrids that are worth the extra price. They take hot and dry better than many annuals.

My favorite verbena is unusual: Brazilian verbena (Verbena bonariensis) is 4 to 6 feet tall on thin strong stems that need no staking. Monarchs love them for their pollen and nectar in late summer.

6. Marigolds

Marigolds come in a dozen sizes and colors — or more. They are a classic flower that loves hot, sunny places but will take some shade. They are quite fragrant. Great in containers or in the ground. Buy plants in six-packs to have plenty. Some people plant marigolds around their tomatoes to keep away insect pests. I’m not convinced that they really do that, but the color is a nice addition to the vegetable garden.

7. ‘Prairie Sun’ Black-eyed Susan

These flowers are a perennial that keep on blooming from July to Halloween. In Zone 4 or colder it is not fully hardy, so I buy some every year. Some survive my winters, some do not. It’s a great cut flower. Likes sun, but will take some shade. It isn’t really a black-eyed Susan, as the center eye is green. Another really hardy black-eyed Susan is called ‘Goldsturm.’ It blooms nicely, year after year, in late summer.

8. Catmint

Catmint (Nepeta faassenii) is a perennial that loves hot, dry locations. It has light blue flowers that bloom for a long time. Not to be confused with catnip; your cat will leave it alone — and so will bugs. Bees and hummingbirds like it, but deer and rabbits don’t. ‘Walkers Low’ is a good one, 24 to 30 inches tall and wide.

9. Fothergilla

This is a native shrub that blooms early in the season with white bottlebrush flowers. Its best season, however, is fall. It has great fall foliage with red, orange, yellow and purple leaves all on the same bush. Relatively slow growing, doesn’t require annual pruning. But that also means buy the biggest plants you can find. It takes time to get to full size — about 6 feet tall and wide.

10. Oaks of all sorts

These are the best trees for supporting pollinators as their caterpillars feed on the leaves. Caterpillars feed our baby birds, providing about 90 percent of their diet or more. Doug Tallamy, a Ph.D. entomologist in Pennsylvania, determined that a clutch of chickadees consumes between 6,000 and 9,000 caterpillars from hatching to fledging. If we don’t provide enough native plants like oaks, we won’t have food for our baby birds. You can help.

The pin oak (Quercus palustris) is one of the most used trees in the Northeast: it is fast growing and tolerant of pollution, compacted soils, road salt. A small one will grow 12 to 15 feet in five to seven years.

Think about planting an oak in the middle of your lawn as a specimen tree. It will attract birds, pollinators, and the acorns will feed wildlife. You don’t have to buy a seedling. In the spring look under an oak tree and try to find an acorn on the ground that has sprouted. Plant it where you want a majestic tree. Water weekly the first summer. Oaks are some of our most long-lived trees. I saw one in Pennsylvania at a Quaker meeting house that was said to be 300 years old.

Over the past 55 years I have planted more than 100 kinds of trees and shrubs in my 2-acre yard, and probably even more kinds of flowers. I eat veggies from my garden all year as I freeze and store them. Not everything works 100 percent of the time for me, but plants have evolved to succeed. So try planting some this summer. In the ground, in a pot or in a window box. You’ll be pleased and proud when your efforts succeed. I know I am.

The art of supersizing your favorite treat

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

If you buy a cookie from a bakery, chances are you’re getting a cookie considerably bigger than you’d get from a supermarket box or even than you’d make at home.

For Kat Forkey, a pastry chef at The Bakeshop on Kelley Street in Manchester, even the “little” cookies are still pretty substantial.

“We [bake cookies] that are 5 to 6 inches across,” she said, “but we can make much bigger ones for cookie cakes. Those are a little bit thicker and we decorate them kind of like the old like Mrs. Fields cookies where you get them decorated with ‘Happy Birthday.’ They’re a good height, so they can be sliced like a cake. So if people don’t like cakes they can have cookie cakes.”

Forkey said the cookie cakes can be as wide as or wider than a traditional birthday cake.

Baking a cake-sized cookie

Kat Forkey advised against trying to bake extremely large cookies on a traditional sheet pan. She generally bakes them in a cake pan or in a spring-form pan.

“We don’t like our cookies thin here,” she said, “so [a cake pan makes them] nice and thick like a good 1 or 2 inches.” The other secret to baking a super-large cookie, she said, is giving it plenty of time to cool before removing it from the pan.

“Usually we try to let it cool overnight if we can. Because what really happens is the chocolate gets all gooey. You don’t want the frosting to melt on there because then it’s just a big hot mess.”

“We can do different sizes,” she said, “so for us, because a lot of our cakes are by the amount of people you want to feed, we can do them different sizes too, like a 6-inch, an 8-inch, a 10-inch or even bigger.”

Forkey said that, big or gigantic, her most popular cookies are the traditional ones.

“I would say chocolate chip or M&M cookies are the most popular,” she said. She only bakes — it’s tempting to say a handful, but even one big cookie is a handful — a modest number of cookies each day. Most customers buy one at a time, she said, and six to 12 of each variety are enough to sell in a day. By baking small batches, she said, she can rotate through her stock quickly and ensure each cookie is fresh when she sells it.

Brett Fleckner has a more stripped-down approach. He owns Bagel Alley in Nashua and focuses most of his energy on bagels.

“The cookies are a side thing that we do,” he said. “We make them big and that’s why they sell. The customers like them big. If they weren’t big, we wouldn’t sell as many.”

Fleckner only makes one kind of cookie. “We just do chocolate chip,” he said. “We used to do three kinds, but now we just do chocolate chip, nice and simple. We made it from scratch, with a traditional recipe, with shortening, brown sugar, and eggs.”

The dough for Bagel Alley cookies spreads out in the oven as the cookies bake. That’s on purpose, Fleckner said.

“They’re not real thick, because then they’d be either doughy or cakey. So I don’t want them to be thick. You want a little chew in the middle, and you don’t want it to fall apart.” Each cookie is 5 to 6 inches across, he said, and weighs about 7 ounces. He uses an ice cream scoop to measure the dough into 7-ounce portions. And, of course, they are thin, chewy in the center, and crispy on the edges.

Lighthouse Local in Bedford follows a different path. While not as wide as some other big cookies — maybe 4 inches or so across — theirs are about an inch thick. Trina Bird is the head baker.

“Our cookies are big,” she said. “We don’t skimp. They’re all thick. They’re all handmade.”

Brett Fleckner’s cookie advice

The only ingredient Fleckner uses in his cookies that you might not have in your pantry is cake flour. Just as bread flour has a high protein content to make bread chewy, cake flour — sometimes called pastry flour — has a low protein content to make baked goods tender.

He also advises keeping an eye on the cookies as they bake.
“Go by the look,” he said. It might be a good idea to take large cookies out of the oven just before they look dark enough.
“They’re going to keep cooking after they come out of the oven,” he said. Big cookies have more mass and hold onto residual heat more than little ones.

Bird and her staff spent a lot of time developing their cookie recipes to make sure every batch is nearly perfect. As long as conditions are the same and the recipes are followed to the letter, Bird said, the cookies are consistently excellent.

“All of our cookies are made in advance,” she said. “We scoop [the dough] out with ice cream scoops, and they go into the freezer. So that way, when they bake, they’re right from the freezer. So we have convection ovens, and they bake the perfect amount of time and they come out perfect.” Not only does freezing the cookie dough ensure that every cookie starts baking at the same temperature, she said, but it also keeps the dough from spreading too quickly in the oven. “You have to chill. Some cookies you can get away with not chilling, but most cookies you need to chill. You can kind of get away with it if you’re a home baker and you’re putting cornstarch in the dough [to stabilize it]. A lot of times those ones, they do it on purpose so you can bake them right away. But we don’t use cornstarch in our cookies. I have nothing against cornstarch. I love it. But not for cookies.”

Lighthouse Local bakes its cookies “low and slow”, Bird said. “At 300 degrees and for something like 15 minutes. Some cookies take a little longer, but most of them are right at around 15 minutes.

Bird said making her cookies big enough to share has been a priority from the beginning. “Everywhere I looked,” she remembered, “and every cookie that I wanted to eat was big. Bigger is always better for me and I can share it. I have a lot of children and they always want cookies, so I can buy less and then feed more.”

One of Bird’s standout big cookies is a thumbprint cookie the size of a tennis ball.

“Our thumbprints are huge,” she said. “We make them with almond flour, because it keeps them super moist and it’s just better that way. We already had our base cookies and we wanted something new. We actually bought a giant box of almond meal by accident. We didn’t want it to go bad, so I was like, ‘Let’s make a thumbprint.’”

For Bird, one of the best things about the thumbprint cookie is its versatility.

“We can use rotating seasonal jams,” she said. “We’ve been doing raspberry and strawberry for a lot of the winter but now we have guava because we’re getting into the spring. We can do blueberry or we can do lemon curd — we can literally fill it with anything. I just wanted them big. They’re just awfully perfect.”

The thick chocolate chip cookies at Lighthouse Local use two different chocolates. “Inside, chocolate chips,” Bird said. “On the top, chunks of dark chocolate. So it’s semi, it’s dark, it’s milk, and it’s salted.”

The most popular cookie with children, she said, is the Pop Tart Cookie.

“We order Pop-Tarts in bulk and we just crumble them up and we put them in the base cookie with sprinkles, and kids love it. It’s actually one of my favorites too. It’s a fun one. We rotate out cookies. Our really popular one at Christmas is the molasses cookie. That’s my personal favorite, but that’s a winter thing. And we have to phase out snickerdoodles too.”

Because the cookies are so beautiful and look so good, Bird said, many customers buy them as gifts.

Getting thick, flat cookies

Trina Bird advises keeping a close eye on the butter and sugar as they blend together at the beginning of a recipe — a process called “creaming.”
“We are really careful not to over-cream our butter and our sugar together, because sometimes when you do that it melts the butter, so then when you bake the cookies they’re runny. Are they still delicious? Yes. But is it what I want to see? Absolutely not.”

“People can order them in advance, however many they need. So these 4-inch cookies are our standard size but a lot of times people will be like, ‘I do love them, but I don’t want them that big,’ so we can halve them or quarter them. We can make mini cookies or we can do half sizes and we do a lot of that for corporate events weddings, but like when they’re for gifts, yes, we’ll take them and we’ll put them in the individual sleeves and people will give them as gifts.”

“We label each of our batches with the name and who did them and the date so if somebody gets a cookie that’s not up to our standards, we know what went wrong,” Bird said. A well-made cookie will stay fresh for a surprisingly long time, though.

“I’d probably say you were looking at four days before they go stale,” she said. “And if you keep them in a bag, like a Ziploc bag, you’ll get over a week out of them. Anyone who’s keeping a cookie longer than a week has amazing amounts of self-control and I need to know how to do it because it’s not happening in my house.”

Maggie Josti is the owner of Maggie’s Munchies, a retail cookie manufacturer in Nashua. Her cookies, which are sold individually, are substantial.

“They’re all a quarter pound,” she said, “and we like them to be thick and chewy, so the girth is there, with a toasty outer layer. The width is anywhere between 4 and 5 inches, depending on how much they spread.” Because they are thick, the cookies are chewy in the middle but crispy everywhere else.

“The way that we describe it for people,” Josti said, “the best way to describe it, is thick and chewy with a toasty outer layer.”

Josti said the size of her cookies was a secondary consideration when she and her husband started the business.

“Anything that we’ve ever made from our bakery,” she said, “—because we used to make whoopie pies to start — but anything that we did, we made it large enough that you can enjoy it and feel satisfied and not feel like you need to eat like 20 cookies. Because of the quality of the ingredients that we have, it doesn’t weigh you down so much that you can’t enjoy another one. Size wasn’t the main focus to begin with, but it’s just a pleasant characteristic of the product that we created that people seem to enjoy.”

Process versus ingredients

Maggie Josti said that a baker can use identical ingredients in two batches of cookies but end up with completely different products. Even if you don’t melt the butter by over-creaming it with sugar, it will add more air to the dough and change its texture.

“The difference between a cookie and a cake is that you just want to mix it until it’s combined, at least for the kind of cookies that we prefer. If you mix it too long, it aerates it too much and will give you an airier, lighter cookie, which is not what we would prefer. Also, when adding dry ingredients to wet ones, don’t over-mix the dough, which will develop gluten and make the cookies tough.”
“Always mix just to combine,” Josti said.

More important, Josti said, was perfecting the cookie-to-chocolate ratio.

“Anything that we make, I want to make sure it is something that I would want to eat myself,” she said. “So, when it came to the chocolate chips, I wanted to make sure that you had chocolate chips in every bite and not have any bites where there were no chocolate chips. So we basically just took a traditional New England recipe and we added a little bit extra.”

Maggie’s Munchies has five core cookies, with a seasonal sixth flavor.

“That way,” Josti said, “If you get a six-pack you can get one of every flavor. The five core flavors are chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, molasses, double chocolate peanut butter, and sugar cookies. Those are the ones you can always find from us and we’ll be rotating through different seasonal ones depending on the season.

One of the things Josti likes about cookies of any size is that they are an expression of culture.

“The cool part about being in New England is that it’s a melting pot, right?” she asked. “So you have everyone’s backgrounds coming together. And I think that’s what makes this so fun is that yes, we have our classic flavors that are traditional to New England, [and] there are so many different kinds of cookies and you can enjoy them all.”

Do an internet search for “BIG COOKIE, NEW HAMPSHIRE”, and you are likely to fall down a rabbit hole of food blogs, discussion boards and even conspiracy theories. But dig deep enough and you will find the Ogre Chip 1000, arguably the platonic ideal of a Big Cookie.

Made and sold by Lickee’s & Chewy’s Candies & Creamery in Dover, the OC1K weighs half a pound and contains a staggering number of chocolate chips per cookie.

Chris Guerrette is the owner and operator of Lickee’s & Chewy’s. He said the goal was for the Ogre Chip 1000 to be a symbol of his candy shop.

“We wanted to develop a very large cookie that was just a chocolate chip cookie,” he said, “but that kind of represented all the cool flavors we are able to create here. We decided to use what are called 10,000-count chips. These are extremely tiny chocolate chips and that resulted in well over 1,000 chocolate chips in every single cookie. Each one of them is about a half a pound and about an inch and a half to 2 inches tall because of the way we bake them.”

Unlike many Big Cookie bakers, Guerrette is a fan of a domed cookie.

Chris Guerrette’s tip for making the best chocolate chip cookies

Use the highest-quality chocolate you can find.
“The chocolate that we use is a premium top-of-the-line chocolate,” Guerrette said. “It’s not just a generic chocolate chip. It’s actually the same chocolate we use to make all of our gourmet chocolates here. We actually use two types of chocolate in [the cookies]. One of them is a semi-sweet with a cocoa percentage between 50 and 60 percent, and a second one that’s a little bit darker and a little larger. That one is 65 percent.”

“They’re tall; they kind of look like muffin tops. A lot of people ask if there’s something in the center. We cook them to look like that,” Guerrette said. His goal was the elusive tender-in-the-middle-crispy-along-the-edges texture.

“We spent maybe two months testing different recipes, making samples, and then finally settled on this recipe and we’ve been making it ever since. It got to the point where I didn’t want to try a single other chocolate chip cookie because I was tasting two or three batches a day at one point. I mean, the slightest thing, butter, sugar, refrigerated, non-refrigerated, as far as before baking, all sorts of testing until we were really happy with it.

Roan Brantley is a professional cook and a passionate home baker. She sees big cookies as something quintessentially American.

“I feel like Americans are just kind of generally drawn to big things,” she said. I feel like people are impressed by the sheer size of things”

Although she likes big cookies, size is not as important to Brantly as consistency.

“Uniformity is big,” she said. “I would recommend weighing the dough to make sure that you’re getting similar sizes. There’s really good hacks on getting them all nice and round if that’s a problem. I envy the people who manage to make extremely tall cookies. I can’t figure it out, so unless you’re sticking a marshmallow in the middle or something, I don’t know how we’re getting all that height in cookies.”

Brantley sees cookies as a glue that strengthens relationships between people.

“I really enjoy making snickerdoodles,” she said, “because that’s all of my friends’ favorites. So every time I’m making a few trays of them I know I’m about to make like 20 people really happy. I think that we should be sharing more of them. Bake more cookies. Bring them to your neighbors. Bring them to your friends.”

Roan Brantley’s cookie hack

“Chill your dough for 24 hours. It makes a world of difference. A lot of people don’t really acknowledge quite how much of a difference it makes, but your cookie’s just going to have such a better texture if you chill it and wait the full day. I think it definitely gives everything a chance to blend a bit more, to meld those flavors together as well, along with letting the dough hydrate and that gluten give it that chew and hold it together nicely.”

A Cookie Recipe to Build Friendships On – Butterscotch and Potato Chip Big Cookies

This is a recipe adapted from one by Christina Tosi of Milk Bar.

150 grams (about 90 percent of a 7-ounce bag) of salt and pepper kettle chips, crushed into cornflake-sized pieces – so, eat a handful of chips, then pour the rest into a bowl and crush them lightly with your fist

1 cup (two sticks) butter

1¼ cups (247 g) sugar

2/3 cup (132 g) brown sugar

1 large egg

1 Tablespoon good scotch – I like Glenlivet

1¾ cups (210 g) all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder – this is a very small amount; these are going to be large, thin cookies

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1¼ teaspoons coarse salt

1¼ cups (125 g) mini marshmallows – about half a bag

2/3 cup (122 g) mini chocolate chips

10½ ounces (300 g) butterscotch hard candies

Break up the butterscotch candies. This will be the most tedious part of this recipe. After a lot of experimentation I’ve found that the most efficient way to do this is to lay five to 10 of the wrapped candies on your counter and tap each of them with something heavy — in my case the pestle from my largest mortar and pestle, which is the rough size and shape of a billy club. The idea here is to break each candy into three or four pieces, not to crush it to powder. Empty the pieces from their wrappers into a cereal-sized bowl. If you have a young but greedy child, offer to pay them one cent for each wrapper they empty. This will speed things along, and if they have the attention span to stick with it, it will set you back about three bucks.

Cream the butter and sugars together, then whip on high speed for several minutes, until the mixture is light and fluffy. These cookies are going to spread out very thin, so beating air into the dough will help equalize things.

Add the egg and the scotch, and whip on high speed for another few minutes. You will probably want to scrape down the sides of the bowl at some point during this process. These cookies are complicated enough; they don’t need the emotional bitterness of cookie dough that got stuck to the side of the bowl and felt left out.

Mix in the dry ingredients — the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Start slowly, or they will puff out and cover you and your counter with flour, leaving you looking like a character from a classic Warner Bros. cartoon. You’re mixing this until it just barely comes together into a “shaggy” dough.

Mix in the butterscotch pieces, the marshmallows, the chocolate chips and the potato chip pieces. If you have a modest-sized mixer, the bowl may come alarmingly close to being completely full. Don’t panic. Mix things together as well as you can.

Form the dough into 2-inch balls and place on a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat, then flatten them slightly into small mutant hockey pucks. Cover them with plastic wrap and chill them for at least an hour.

(At this point, you might have some leftover debris in the bottom of your bowl that wasn’t doughy enough to form into balls. You can bake this at 350°F for about 10 minutes to make a crumbly topping for ice cream. You won’t be sorry.)

Place four or five cookie pucks on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat, spread as far apart as possible — they will spread a great deal. Bake at 350°F for about 12 minutes. When you take them out of the oven, they will look like a mess. Don’t panic. Let them cool entirely before removing them from the pan. If, unlike me, you don’t own an unreasonable number of baking sheets, when the cookies have cooled for 10 minutes or so, gently slide the parchment paper onto a cool counter, and lay down a new piece of parchment on the baking sheet.

These cookies require a bit of effort to make the first time around, but they are totally worth it. They are outrageously thin, yet chunky; crispy along the edges, but bendy and chewy. The butterscotch is shockingly good but totally works as a baked good. Making these will become an event.

Mentioned spots offering a big cookie

The Bakeshop on Kelley Street (171 Kelley St., Manchester, 624-3500, thebakeshoponkelleystreet.com) is open Thursdays and Fridays from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Bagel Alley (1 Eldridge St., Nashua, 882-9343) is open Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Sundays from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Lighthouse Local (21 Kilton Road, Bedford, 716-6983, lighthouse-local.com) is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and weekends from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Maggie’s Munchies (therealmaggiesmunchies.com) cookies are available online and at events.

Lickee’s & Chewy’s Candies & Creamery (53 Washington St., Dover, 343-1799, lickeesnchewys.com) is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sundays 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. According to Owner Chris Guerrette, customers will soon be able to order the Ogre Chips 1,000 cookie from his new website, ogrechocolates.com.

Attention bookworms of all stripes! This weekend features book fun for everyone. At the Derry Author Fest and Exeter LitFest, hear authors discuss their works and process — and maybe even get some tips on putting your own stories on paper. At the Old School Comic Show in Concord, enjoy the rows of comic books and meet some comics creators. And the Kids Con New England has chapter books, graphic novels and comic books — and artists and authors — to help younger readers grow their enthusiasm for books. Looking for some new reads? Check out this weekend’s many celebrations of stories, their creators and their loyal readers.

Derry Author Fest – Dive into the craft of books

By Zachary Lewis

zlewis@hippopress.com

Erin Robinson is a genealogy and reference librarian at Derry Public Library (64 East Broadway, Derry) and has been part of the Derry Author Fest since its inception almost 10 years ago. This year’s Fest, with the tagline “Community. Collaboration. Confidence,” is happening on Saturday, April 5.

“It’s a full-day lecture series,” Robinson said. “The idea is that people who are interested in writing or illustrating can come and they can learn about the craft and business of writing.”

Gibson’s Bookstore will be providing an all-day book sale, and a door prize is being offered by New Hampshire Writers Project.

“We have a variety of different levels of writers that come to the program. Some are authors who’ve been published, some are writers who maybe published once and they’re working on new projects, and some who’ve never been published. We try to get an array of different levels,” she said. Robinson is an author as well but publishes under the name Erin E. Moulton. She recently came out with a fun guide on exploring cemeteries called The Beginner’s Guide to Cemetery Sleuthing.

Laura Knoy is the keynote speaker of the day. Knoy is a journalist who founded and was the host of The Exchange on New Hampshire Public Radio before she “stepped down from the host’s chair to pursue other interests, including writing fiction,” according to her bio.

“Our whole theme is community, collaboration, and confidence,” Robinson said, “and of course, Laura’s got that in the bag. That’s a huge theme for her…. She’s always talking about local New Hampshire books. She’s going to bring some of her years of storytelling to the table for us.”

Knoy is excited for the day.

“I spent my whole career in journalism trying to create community around ideas and problems and solutions,” Knoy said, “and collaboration was definitely a part of that as you try to bring people together in a talk studio and hoping that people can not only discuss the issues and maybe their differences but collaborate on possible solutions for New Hampshire. But my speech is really about the third word in the conference title. I want to talk about confidence and how that’s played a role in my own career as a journalist and how it’s now playing a role in my efforts to become a published author.”

Her book, The Shopkeeper of Alsace, “is historical fiction that starts in World War I and ends in World War II. It’s heavily based on a true story that was shared with me by a French family who I met 30 years ago when I lived in France. The heroine of the story is the mother of the family,” Knoy said.

Knoy expands on the deep connection between the two globe-stretching events. “That’s the thing that I think makes this book so different. I mean, yes, there are tons of World War II stories, but Alsace’s experience during World War II was unlike any other region of France…. They were annexed. They became part of Germany again. They were part of Hitler’s Reich and their men had to fight for Hitler so their experience is completely different from any other region of France and nobody writes about that,” Knoy said.

Knoy will spend most of her time speaking on the conference’s themes.

“I won’t be speaking that much about my specific book. I’m definitely going to talk about the role of confidence in my earlier career and how I’m kind of working,” Knoy said. Among Knoy’s other pursuits, she hosts a couple of podcasts. One is called ReadLocalNH and can be found on Spotify and other places where podcasts live.

“Once a month I interview a local author, and I’ve met some great authors … and I just feel like there needs to be more platforms for New Hampshire authors to shine. I’ve been running ReadLocalNH for two and a half years and I’ve met some incredible people. I’ll probably see some of them down in Derry,” Knoy said.

Knoy believes many paths exist to the land of writing.

“There’s no one right or wrong way to do it. And I’m kind of suspicious of anybody who says this is the right way. That works for them, but maybe that doesn’t work for you. … There’s the people who say, ‘Sit down every morning and write for four hours’ and that’s great for some people but that’s not my lifestyle,” Knoy said.

Robinson discussed other presenters on the schedule.

“Then we’ve got, of course, Gina Perry. She is doing a picture book process and she has multiple picture books. She writes and illustrates. She does a wonderful job. Terry Farish and Sara Leslie Arnold, that’s like an author librarian team, and they’re going to talk about author visits, presenting your stories to diverse students,” Robinson said.

Robinson hopes writers from around the state are able to go to the event.

“I think we do find that writers are often quite introverted, so it can be a challenge to find those groups to talk to and mingle with and connect with, so they’re going to be discussing that, Susan Drew and Scott Gray. Then the one I’m also really looking forward to is Sarah Lamagna. She does these New England hiking books, which I just love,” Robinson said.

With the event being free it will be hard for writers to pass up.

“Registration is recommended. We wouldn’t bar anyone from going if they showed up but it’s recommended just so we make sure we put out enough tables and chairs and get ample room for everybody,” Robinson said.

“It’s really for every level and it’s wonderful too because it really is a wonderful writers community and people come from Massachusetts and New Hampshire so I think the second best part besides being, just being a really enriching experience is the community that comes together. All the writers come out of their quiet little houses and come and collaborate and communicate for a day and it’s really nice to see. Some people honestly just come because they want to hear interesting speakers. They might not even have a project in the works yet, and they’re welcome to come too. It’s not just about that, you know, really strict group who, you know, call themselves writers. It really is open to all, anyone who’s interested. Great for teachers too,” Robinson said.

Derry Author Fest

When: Saturday, April 5, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Derry Public Library, 64 East Broadway, Derry
Free (registration encouraged)
More: derryauthorfest.wordpress.com/schedule

Schedule
10–10:05 a.m. – Welcome
10:05–10:50 a.m. – Keynote with Laura Knoy
11:10–11:55 a.m. – Picture Book Process: From Your Light Bulb Moment to the Bookshelf with Gina Perry
12:15–12:55 p.m. – Lunch break
12:55–1:40 p.m. – Author Visits: Presenting Your Stories to Diverse Students with Terry Farish and Sara Lesley Arnold
2–2:45 p.m. – Get Out of Your Spare Bedroom and Find Your People with Susan Drew and Scott Gray
3:05–3:50 p.m. – Plot Twist: You Don’t Need an English Degree to be an Author with Sarah Lamagna
3:50 p.m. – door prize by New Hampshire Writers Project

Meet-and-greet and book signing will immediately follow each session.
All-day book sale provided by Gibson’s Bookstore.

Comic con fun — for kids – Telling stories, drawing pictures

By Zachary Lewis

zlewis@hippopress.com

This year is the 10th anniversary of the founding of Kids Con New England, said founder Emily Drouin.

“I’m a comic book artist and children’s book illustrator and founder of Kids Con New England. It’s a fun comic con for kids and children’s book event,” Drouin said.

The event is scheduled for Sunday, April 6, at the Sheraton in Nashua.

“We’re all about promoting art education and literacy through family-friendly comics, children’s books, art, and creative workshops, and lots of fun activities for the kids. They can meet over 130 comic and children’s book creators, exhibitors, middle grade authors, as well as lots of superheroes, princesses, pirates, Pokemon characters, characters such as Bluey, Mickey & Minnie, and Star Wars characters and more,” Drouin said.

“We do Jedi training, musical performances by the Clemenzi Crusaders and the Foo Family Band, magic shows with Sage’s Entertainment, and we have Gamers Sanctuary providing fun video games, and we also have indie game makers that do tabletop games, and we’re having Lego builds with the Lego Store, coding and robotic demos, and art contests, kids and family cosplay contests, scavenger hunt and more. So there’s a lot of things going on,” she said.

What drove Drouin to start this saga?

“I was self-publishing and started going to comic cons,” she said. “I noticed that … there weren’t a lot of family-friendly activities for the kids. I would often be next to a lot of adult-themed comics. And I wanted to create a fun event for the kids so that there’s lots of things for the kids to do, as well as to inspire them to create comics, so I started running kid zones at comic cons where I was teaching creative workshops. Then I decided to create a whole convention devoted to fellow family-friendly comic creators and children’s book illustrators to showcase their work.”

Families will feel at home at this event.

“This is a family-friendly space, all the materials are family-friendly appropriate, you know, no bloody gore and inappropriate books for the kids,” Drouin said. She hopes to “inspire them with the creative workshops and get kids excited about reading and creating art and comics.”

Drouin is creating as well as offering the space to other creators.

“I just had a new comic that came out. It’s superhero-themed about saving the environment, kind of like Captain Planet. It’s by a company that does textile recycling, Apparel Impact. I worked on their second book in this series. The first was done by another comic artist but this one is Apparel Impact Toxic Takedown and it’s about this textile production causing their waste to go into the waters and it’s creating this toxic environment for the animals and the people in the surrounding community. The superhero team, they go to put a stop to that and save the day.”

Toxic Takedown is the second story in Apparel Impact’s Team Impact! comic book series. Selections from this story as well as more of Drouin’s work can be found on her website emilyatplay.com

“I work mainly with authors. I illustrate,” Drouin said. “I also had a couple of children’s books that came out too last year, or [in the] past couple of years. I had one about adopting a puppy called Kona Finds a Family. And I did another one about the environment, Buddy the Bass and the Gooey Green Slime.” Selections from these titles and more can be found on her website as well.

Comic strips in the newspaper were a big inspiration for Drouin.

“I loved reading all those and that inspired me to start writing and creating my own comics and stories, and I also loved going to the library, all the books that I could get, and it inspired me to write and illustrate my own stories. When I was a kid I was inspired by Brothers Grimm fairy tales. I loved fairy tales, and so I would write my own fairy tales. I did co-write a comic book series called Eplis with my husband, Jeremy. I’m glad to still be doing this as an adult…,” she said.

Access to art as well is a big catalyzing factor for Drouin to put on Kids Con.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to do Kids Con New England was I wanted there to be a resource, a place for kids to learn and create comics. Through our workshops we’re hoping to inspire the next generation of creators. I wish there were more of these types of events when I was growing up … it’s a really awesome opportunity for kids to meet all these artists and authors and to get inspired … we have storytelling workshops [and] writing workshops to get kids better at how to write stories as well as creating comics.”

Many well-known and award-winning artists and illustrators will be in attendance, including Mark Parisi, Rick Stromoski, Chuck Dillon and Joe Wos.

Wos has won six Emmy awards as host and creator of PBS’ The Cartoon Academy. He is also an educator and has been the Charles M. Schulz Museum’s resident cartoonist for more than 20 years.

“He’s going to be doing a presentation at Kids Con…,” Drouin said, “teaching kids how to do cartooning, how to draw, and so it’s really a great place for kids to learn a lot. We also have several members of the National Cartoonist Society. So famous cartoonists are there.”

“I think the visual aspect of storytelling is really engaging to kids…. In the ’80s and early days, you know, there were mainly adult-themed comics, and now comics are very popular for kids. They have Dog Man and others out there. It’s just really a way for kids to get excited about reading, I think, through the visuals and the colors, and it brings the characters to life. … It’s a really fun and exciting way to create and tell stories.”

Drouin reflected on her journey running comic cons for kids.

“Since we’ve been running this for a decade [we’ve seen] all the kids that have been coming back each year to the shows … it’s really fun seeing the kids grow with us,” Drouin said.

Kids Con New England

When: Sunday, April 6, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Sheraton, 11 Tara Blvd, Nashua
Tickets: Admission costs $16. Kids under 5 get in free. Discounts for family-of-four pack, military and seniors.
More: kidsconne.com, emilyatplay.com

Nothing but comics – Little Giant show brings big-name artists

By Zachary Lewis

zlewis@hippopress.com

Jason Brodnick and his wife are hosting their Old School Comic Show at the Everett Arena in Concord on Saturday, April 5. They started the event in 2018 and typically expect to see a couple thousand comic book fans.

“So the Old School Comic Show is a true ‘old-school,’ in my opinion, what an old-school comic show was. I grew up in the ’80s in Philadelphia and I went to some comic shows back then and I remember them to be nothing but comics, artists, and art,” Brodnick said.

He’s interested in the fundamentals.

“There weren’t cosplay parades, and there wasn’t the Geico truck trying to sell you car insurance. There wasn’t a vinyl siding guy, you know? I think comic cons have become something that I don’t like, which is like a pop culture con, you know? They’re fun, but I go to shows for comic books, and I think a lot of other people do as well.”

Brodnick and his wife run Little Giant Comics in Lawrence, Mass., and they originally had a storefront at the Rockingham Mall in Salem, New Hampshire.

Their main focus at the Old School Comic Show is the comic books.

“All the other stuff kind of gets in the way for me, so I created a show how I remember them to be with nothing but comics, artists and art, and it’s resonated within the community. It’s now arguably one of the best shows in the country. We have the best vendors in the hobby — Heritage Auction House, Metropolis Comics comes and sets up. Terry O’Neill comes from California, Harley Yee, Greg Reese, these guys are legendary vendors in the hobby, and they converge on the capital city of New Hampshire at this little arena and it’s an incredible event.”

Brodnick says attendants should expect to find countless comics when they walk in Saturday morning.

“It would be nothing but comic books as far as the eye can see and comic book art. So when you walk into the arena that’s what you’re going to get smacked in the face with is some of the best comic books and comic book art that’s out there.”

Comic book artists will be in attendance as well.

“We have some of the best artists that ever worked on a book, legends in the hobby. Jim Steranko; David Michelinie, who created Venom and Scott Lang. We have Jim Shooter, John Beatty, Donny Cates. C.G.C. Grading Company is going to be on site. It’s a pretty awesome event.”

These visual stories have shaped Brodnick since he was a kid.

“I had moved from Tennessee to Philadelphia and I was kind of like a little outcast, didn’t have a lot of friends, spoke in a Southern accent. One day I was walking home from school and I found a copy of ROM #18 and I read it and it was a story about the X-Men fighting this robot alien guy, Spaceknight they call him, and I got hooked…. I had my father bring me to Comic Universe to look for the first part of the story so I could find out what really happened, and it was fun. I enjoyed it, so I started collecting comics at that point.”

The Old School Comic Show grew out of a difficult period in Brodnick’s life.

“In 2013, I lost my job and I threw my back out,” he recalled. “It was six years before I could stand upright again. I was getting shots in my back. I had gotten severely overweight and depressed. Life was beating me up a little bit. My wife took me to a yard sale event at the Everett Arena in 2013. I remember walking in and it was like the horns of Valhalla started playing and it was the perfect venue for a show. I inquired about it and the guy said, ‘We only do dry floor events three months out of the year and vendors get right of first refusal,’ he said, ‘so for something to open up, it’s really hard. It takes a while for something to open up, but if anything happens, I’ll call you.’ So I left my number, I didn’t think anything about it. Five years later, in January of 2018, I get a phone call. ‘We got one day in April, it’s a Saturday.’ I said, ‘I’ll take it.’”

Little Giant Comics Old School Comic Show

When: Saturday, April 5, doors at 10 a.m. (9 a.m. for VIP)
Where: Everett Arena, 15 Loudon Road, Concord
Tickets: $15 in advance, $20 at gate, $50 VIP (pre-purchase only, limited to 250 tickets)
More: oldschoolcomicshow.com

Exeter LitFest returns – Free panels, author chats

By Zachary Lewis

zlewis@hippopress.com

On Saturday, April 5, the Exeter Literary Festival happens at the town hall and the library. Katie Adams, the Chair of the Exeter LitFest board, spoke with the Hippo about the event.

“The group was founded by a group of people who wanted to highlight and celebrate and cultivate their long literary tradition in Exeter,” Adams said. “We’ve had so many writers here, from Dan Brown, people with a tremendous amount of success, and John Irving, to a whole slew of self-published authors who really add to that literary fabric that we all really appreciate.”

The LitFest has taken years to get to its current shape.

“When the festival began, it mainly focused on hyper-local authors, authors who were right in town or right nearby. In recent years we have expanded, and we’ve been able to balance out a lot of our homegrown authors with a little bit of a broader group from the New England area,” she said.

Two authors topping the bill this year are novelist Courtney Sullivan and historian Dr. Tiya Miles.

Sullivan “writes a lot about New England, a lot about big families, multigenerational, a lot of women’s stories,” Adams said. “She’s really wonderful, and her latest book, The Cliffs, is set right in Maine, so we think she’ll be a terrific fit for our audience.”

Miles’s All That She Carried won the 2021 National Book Award for nonfiction. “Her latest book, Night Flyer, is a kind of biography of Harriet Tubman [but] not just a straight cradle-to-grave account of her life. It is an account of her life through the lens of both her faith and her relationship to the natural world, so it’s really special,” Adams said. “We’re very lucky to be able to have these two authors who write such different books that are both so vibrant and relevant in our town.”

The fest is held on the first Saturday of April every year.

“This year we’re starting at 11 [a.m.] with our first event for adults and then our last event is at 4 [p.m.]. And we have events in the downstairs of the Town Hall as well as upstairs going on throughout that period of time,” Adams said.

“We also have a children’s event. This is our second year having a children’s event…. That is at the Exeter Public Library at 9:30 when children have been awake for many hours, as I well know.”

Aside from the featured authors, Lit Fest includes panel discussions. Four writers will join a panel about self-publishing. “We know we have a lot of writers and aspiring writers in this community, so that should be a really useful panel,” Adams said. “We have a panel on romantasy, the combination of romance and fantasy, which is one of the hottest and most rapidly growing genres for readers, so I think that will be a popular one,” Adams said.

Sports writing and baseball will be discussed too. “We have Keith O’Brien, who is a local author, who has written a great baseball book this year. He’s going to be coming back to Exeter Literary Festival this year with that book, and he’s being interviewed by Dan Provost, who both teaches English at the high school and is also a baseball coach. So I think that should be a really fun conversation,” she said.

“I like where we are right now. I like being able to be fundamentally a one-day event because the Exeter Town Hall is this really cool historic building and it’s also right in the middle of downtown where we have so many great shops, including our bookstore and restaurants. It’s great to be able to bring people here and collaborate with the local businesses and make it sort of a great community day,” Adams continued. “We have really worked on offering a variety of authors, perspectives, genres, so that we can both meet our readers where they are and also help introduce them to some new voices. That is definitely the balance I’d like to keep going forward,” she said.

Exeter Lit Fest

All events are free and open to the public.

Saturday, April 5

9:30 a.m. – Cynthia Copeland, author of middle-grade graphic novels Drive and Cub, at Exeter Public Library

​Town Hall Main Events (Exeter Town Hall, 9 Front St.)

​11 a.m. – J. Courtney Sullivan in conversation with Katie Adams
12:15 p.m. – Keith O’Brien in conversation with Dan Provost
12:15 p.m. – ​Independent Publishing in the Modern World featuring authors Renay Allen, Michael Cameron Ward, Justin Corriss and Sara North, moderated by Lara Bricker
1:30 p.m.– Damsels and Dragons: Romance, Fantasy, and Marrying the Two featuring authors Jacquelyn Benson, Laura Mayo, and Lyra Selene, moderated by Naomi Farr
1:30 p.m. – Echoes of Now: Poets of the Present Moment featuring poets K. Iver, Cate Marvin and Nathan McClain, curated by Diannely Antigua
2:45 p.m. – Family and Finding Home featuring authors Jane Brox and Alexandra Chan, moderated by Stef Kiper Schmidt
2:45 p.m. – Exeter High School Student Poetry
4 p.m. – Dr. Tiya Miles in conversation with Caleb Gale

More: exeterlitfest.com

Featured photo: Kids Con NE. Photo courtesy of Emily Drouin.

A look at the growing scene of indie music, art and style

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

On the first day of February, a packed gathering of the goth-clad, pierced and tattooed felt the rumblings of a revolution. To the untrained eye, it was a modest milieu, a back room of a Manchester American Legion Post lined with rows of booths, each offering everything from taxidermy to tarot card readings, art and apparel.

For Janelle Havens, however, the Queen City Black Market was a dream come to life.

The New Hampshire native had experienced similar events below the border in Massachusetts and at tattoo conventions. Along the way she was inspired to open a platform shoe store in Manchester, Lustshroom, Etc. She wondered why there weren’t similar efforts in her home state, and decided to launch one of her own.

Hoping for the best, Havens had scheduled an afterparty at the nearby Shaskeen Pub. The market’s success made the three-band show, organized by Aaron Shelton, that much more momentous. Shelton’s Kinetic City Events books regularly at the Shaskeen, helping to boost bands like Cytokine, who headlined the afterparty.

A slashing heavy metal band, Cytokine’s lineup includes guitarist Rob Kulingoski, another thread of the many moving this community forward. Along with Shelton, who spent a lot of time in punk and metal bands before focusing on being a promoter in the early 2010s, Kulingoski kept the fire burning after many venues closed mid-decade.

With nowhere else to go, Kulingoski repurposed the basement of his home in Litchfield for shows, and lived the metaphor for five years until the town shut him down.

“I’ve been a part of the underground hardcore and metal scene probably since I was 16, and I’m 39 now,” he said recently.

Kulingoski and many others are buoyant these days. The New Hampshire alternative scene is by all accounts thriving. Along with Kinetic City at the Shaskeen, BAD BRGR in Manchester has been open over a year and is, Kulingoski said, “a breath of fresh air for us” as it showcases original music. Over on Canal Street, Jewel Music Venue continues to host EDM, punk and other fringe events.

To illustrate the interwoven nature of the scene, Havens will be at Jewel’s Goth & Industrial Night in May, she and Shelton are at work on new projects, and Kulingoski’s Five/Nine Printcore makes T-shirts for bands and businesses like Fishtoes, a new vintage clothing store in Manchester where many scenesters shop.

“Underground” may not be the best word for this bustling community. “It’s almost misleading … it makes it sound secretive,” Aaron Shelton said by phone recently. “It’s just a broad term for things that aren’t quite in the mainstream. I mean, a band that claims to be underground could be mainstream the next day, if they get signed to a record label.”

Once upon a time, Metallica was underground. Now their logo is on premium whiskey bottles.

Shelton does allow, “it’s a term that people are comfortable with that adds a sense of belonging; this is ours, it’s not the mainstream. This doesn’t belong to Spotify, or MTV, or major record labels, this is our scene, we control it. It’s our community. We decide the successful bands, not the radio.”

It’s also not synonymous with an oath of poverty. This philosophy drives a Nashua-based organization that works with creative independents looking to make a career of their art. Clients include musicians, like Whole Loaf and 6 Minds Combined, along with graphic artist Keegan Fitzgerald’sMyArtbyKF and author Ellie Beach.

New Hampshire Underground is a micro entertainment complex that serves as a comprehensive resource for artists, musicians and writers. Founded by music business maven Eleanor Luna, it offers business guidance to creative professionals to assist with branding, marketing and financial management.

How to turn art into enterprise can get lost in the act of creation, Luna explained in a recent phone interview.

“When you’re really talented and focused on your particular passion, you might not know how to get yourself out there like a business would,” she said. “That’s what I do. I guide people.”

It’s modeled after a fitness center; Luna has also worked in that world. She acts as personal business trainer for her customers. Services are membership-based; VIP “Rockstar” level members have weekly meetings to go over topics like how to optimize an online presence and effectively reach out to industry insiders.

“These are the paths that you can go down,” she tells them. “This is the avenue that I recommend, these are the people that I would talk to. This is what I would do for your social media or your personal brand presence on the Internet.”

Like a lot of efforts to boost the independent creative scene, Luna’s started when the world started to emerge from the pandemic. Everyone was still unsure what that meant for the music business, and she saw a chance to finally use her Berklee MBA and multiple decades in marketing to make a difference.

“I sat on it for a number of years kind of wanting to do something like this, but not really knowing if there was a market,” she said. “But then I started to see lots of people asking questions. How do I copyright? How do I sign up for MusicPro? How do I navigate social media? How do I become a brand? I’m thinking, I know the answers … I literally could start a business.”

Luna picked a price point reasonable enough for the scrappy artists she hoped to mentor.

“I wanted to make it accessible to people but still be able to give them good value, and I knew a membership model would work better than an a la carte or hourly rate,” she said. “It’s more comfortable for people to say, ‘I’m going to have a commitment, and this person will provide what I can’t get on my own on the art side of it.’”

There’s also an entry-level Community Member tier that offers access to the Musician and Artist Lounge, a networking hub best described as Panera Bread for cooler people. It has a wi-fi-equipped co-working space, along with couches and other amenities. The lounge is open Tuesday through Thursday from 7 to 11 p.m. and access can also be booked for an hourly rate.

Other on-premise perks include a podcast studio, a backline-equipped community jam space, and an art gallery. Finally, there’s Terminus Underground, a performance space that serves as NHU’s public hub. It hosts regular events — the next is Night of the Fools, with Sunset Electric, Dog 8 Dog, and Questing Beast.

The NHU complex is on the second floor of a suburban warehouse in Nashua. For several years it has served as a rehearsal space for Dead Harrison, the doom rock band Luna manages that’s led by her partner Andre Dumont. It grew into its present configuration when more room opened up and Dumont, experienced in construction, built out an expansion.

Its efforts to foster the underground scene extend to the Nashua arts community. NHU collaborates closely with the city, including participating in last year’s Fourth of July River Fest. They provided live music at the event and helped raise enough funds to feed 40 veterans, while drawing a crowd of 150 attendees.

Luna also serves on the Nashua Arts Commission, which meets monthly to facilitate, advocate, coordinate and educate on behalf of the city’s arts and cultural assets.

“A voice for underground or alternative music wasn’t there previously,” she said. “Now we’re bringing it to light, which is really exciting.”

All this supports NHU’s role as a one-stop shop for music professionals, Luna continued.

“People get advice on how to run their band as a business, how to do their taxes, how to market themselves, strategies for selling their products and merch branding. Anything you can think of that you can use to create a regular business, the same strategies can be used to create your music business.”

When asked to define “underground,” Eleanor Luna’s answer was as much about what it wasn’t. “Unsigned bands, independent artists, indie music, writers, anything independently driven … any genre really,” align with the term, she said. Ultimately, though, “Underground to me means anything that’s not of the mainstream.”

For the live music scene, mainstream was exemplified by venues who primarily book “cover artists that could make your club money,” she said. “Not that we’re not trying to make money … but it’s not the priority now. The priority really is to support the musicians. It’s almost like a labor of love.”

To that end, the majority of NHU shows are held at Terminus Underground, although they do promote some events below the border. The next one happens April 11, a Beats & Bridges hip-hop concert starring 6 Minds Combined at Koto Underground in Lowell.

Film from the underground

Johna Jo Toomey is a videographer, and her youtube.com/@johnajomedia archive is a treasure trove of punk and metal music, including full sets from many local shows. Toomey’s story reflects the scene’s tight knit community and the support it provides to its own.

“I got into punk rock as a teenager. I was drawn to the subversive lyrics, chaotic energy, and working-class ethos. It was also this mystical thing that I never got to experience in person because I grew up in a small farm town with no shows nearby. After high school, I moved to NorCal and earned my B.A. in photojournalism and cultural anthropology, so documenting (sub)cultures for posterity is really ingrained in me. It’s so important to have these archives to look back on, on both individual and collective levels. While living in San Francisco, I covered shows for local print media, and got to shoot some of my early favorites such as Social Distortion and Dropkick Murphys. Eventually I moved back to New England, and in 2017 I started photographing metal and hardcore shows near Boston. As a woman in a male-dominated space, I felt proud to be an active contributor instead of a passive observer (not that there’s anything wrong with that). When I started to focus more on hardcore instead of metal, I made the switch to videography, because everybody wanted to see the mosh pit, but nobody wanted to stand near it. Then in 2019 while filming a basement show in Lowell, Mass., I got punched by a crowdkiller and broke my nose and eye socket. What happened next was eye-opening (no pun intended). New England hardcore friends showed me love and support, and took care of me when I needed four surgeries in 13 months. Meanwhile, my other friends and family victim-blamed me and said, “you shouldn’t have been there, you should find better friends.” So then I doubled down and started a YouTube channel … I’ve been filming hardcore shows around the country ever since. My style is always evolving, but I’ve always been heavily inspired by gonzo journalism.

For Aaron Shelton, his business is a way to support the community he loves, not the other way around. When he began doing the emo-centric Live Free or Cry nights at Shaskeen Pub, his primary objective was to provide a gathering place for people who missed a bygone time the same way he did.

“I grew up in that community, I was in metal bands and post-hardcore bands and emo bands, so that’s where it comes from,” he said. “It’s not a cash grab for me, it is a revitalization of one of my most informative eras…. I think that for so many people, it is that same thing.”

In Shelton’s case, his evening of bands playing Get Up Kids, Taking Back Sunday and My Chemical Romance songs would turn Luna’s mainstream analogy upside down.

“A lot of these bands that play cover sets are original bands,” he said. “I’ve had bands tell me, ‘This has given us the opportunity to make extra money to pay for our recordings or meet bands that we’re playing original gigs with now.’ It still gives to the underground scene, and I think that’s one of the best parts about it.”

It’s also created a ripple effect. Down the street, smashburger restaurant BAD BRGR is offering live original music on multiple nights. Rob Kulingoski called the venue “the new saving grace for extreme music in New Hampshire.”

BAD BRGR owner Ian Tufts moved to Manchester a few years after opening in Hampton Beach just as Covid-19 upended everyone’s life. A musician himself, he held an all-ages hip-hop show in mid-2020 that ran afoul of social distancing requirements and nearly shut down his business.

His vision for the new location always included live original music.

“From the onset, we’ve totally been about embracing artistry,” he said by phone recently. “There’s such an energy that comes from original music, art, creativity. Harnessing that and allowing that to thrive, it’s so powerful.”

Tufts found help from a few area musician/promoters with shows there. Joe Chubbuck, who plays in both Ratblood and Bleach Temple, has been instrumental with booking. “He’s the most significant metal and hardcore promoter,” Tufts said, noting that he has help from his partner, photographer Ashley Seiferheld.

“I love the direction the scene is going in and love everything that Ian and BAD BRGR is doing,” Seiferheld said in a recent text exchange. She also co-hosts a podcast with Death’s Hand guitarist Ed Hamaty called Angry Advocate. “It’s about local artists and musicians, anything to bring more awareness to our scene.”

Others helping to fill the BAD BRGR calendar are Irongate lead singer Jeff Higgins, who’s booked some metal shows. On the indie/alternative side, Cade Earick, a prolific recording artist who’s also a producer and audio engineer, is doing promotion.

For many if not most, the underground scene goes beyond music and art; it’s a tool for survival.

Videographer Johna Jo Toomey, who frequently films Shaskeen shows, said that after a mosh pit injury in 2019, “New England hardcore friends showed me love and support, and took care of me. Meanwhile, my other friends and family victim-blamed me.”

Kulingoski credits the scene for helping his mental health. During his days running basement shows, he organized awareness days to support others in need.

“We would all come together and just talk about our problems and how much the scene has helped us, how much of a positive impact it’s had,” he said. “It’s so much more than just music. It’s art, it’s friendship, it’s small businesses. It really is a welcoming community that I think some people don’t know about, but it’s not hard to find out about.”

Upcoming events from the up-and-coming

New Hampshire Underground
Terminus Underground, 134 Haines St., Nashua.
Tickets: newhampshireunderground.org/shows.
All shows 21+, BYOB, $15 general admission, $20 VIPizza tickets

• Night of the Fools, Sunday, March 30, 6 p.m. – Sunset Electric (punk-flavored alt rock), Dog 8 Dog (dual female fronted indie/alt rock) and Questing Beast (concept-driven metal)
• Punk Rock Masquerade Ball , Saturday, April 12, 8 p.m. – Ragz to Stitchez (NH), Vallory Falls (Vermont), Marianne Toilet and the Runs (Mass.) and Lobotomobile (NH)
• Requiem for the Apocalypse: A Death/Doom Metal Explosion, Friday, April 25, 7 p.m. – Dead Harrison, Oxblood Forge, A World Worth Burning and Swarm of Eye
• Lily Angelique Desrochers (LAD) art exhibit, Saturday, April 26, 6 p.m. free
• Music Industry Networking Night, Wednesday, May 7, 7 p.m. free

Kinetic City at Shaskeen Pub
909 Elm St., Manchester, facebook.com/KineticCityEvents

• Saturday, April 12, 9 p.m. — Gina Fritz w/ Anaria, Proelium and Arcantica, $10 at the door
• Thursday, April 17, 8 p.m. — Showcase 603 w/ Black Hatch, 2000s, Cellar Door and Dead Time, $5 at the door
• Friday, April 18, 9 p.m. — Candy Striper Death Orgy, Psycho and Summoning Hate, $10 at the door
• Saturday, April 19, 8 p.m. — The Doldrums, Still Sleeping, Regals and Birds, In Theory, $10 at the door
• Saturday, April 26, 9 p.m. — Live Free or Cry Emo Night w/ Heely & the Moon Shoes and A Blockbuster Summer, $10 at the door

BAD BRGR
1015 Elm St., Manchester; schedule at instagram.com/bad_brgr

• Friday, March 28, 9 p.m. — Street Trash, Wrought Iron Hex, Joe Grizzly and Abel Blood, $15 at the door
• Saturday, March 29, 9 p.m. — Donaher w/ Better Sense and New Norde, $10 at the door
• Friday, April 11, 9 p.m. — Guns of Brighton (punk), Sotah and Glue, $10 at the door
• Friday, May 16, 9 p.m. — The Whole Loaf w/ Alana Corvette and Vale’s End . $10/door

Jewel Music Venue
Canal Street, Manchester; find them on Facebook

• Saturday, March 29, 7:30 p.m. — A Night of Black & Death Metal with Angel Morgue (NH), Shitangel (Vermont), Infernal Occult (RI), Commuted (Maine) and Respiratory Secretion (Mass./NH), 18+, $15 at dice.fm
• Wednesday, April 23, 7 p.m. — The Planet Smashers, PWRUP, Threat Level Burgundy, $20.77 at dice.fm