Category: Nightlife

Mountain Grass Unit brings acoustic brilliance to The Range

On Aug. 26, Mountain Grass Unit will make its Grand Ole Opry debut. The next night, they’ll do a release show at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville for Appalachian Smoke, their first for Dualtone Records. At midnight it arrives everywhere else. Three enormous nights, back to back, in the city that the Alabama-born bluegrass band now calls home.

It’s crazy, considering that not long ago Mountain Grass Unit had to work around its members’ college schedules.

They were spread across the country and played together sporadically. Guitarist Luke Black headed to Boston to study at Berklee, while mandolinist Drury Anderson, who’d eventually join him there, was still finishing high school. Bassist Sam Wilson was at the University of Alabama studying accounting. Fiddler Josiah Nelson wasn’t even in the band yet.

What held it together, Black said in a recent group Zoom chat, wasn’t scheduling — it was history.

“We’ve known each other forever, and we’ve been playing together forever, so we’d get a couple of rehearsals in and just feel out the groove,” he said. Though challenging, “It always ended up working out, but it was a lot of pressure, especially keeping up with emails and stuff.”

Anderson said the uncertainty was real, even if it seems easy to gloss over now.

“We got management and representation around halfway through school,” he said. “It was so relieving to have things set up once we got out. It could not have been timed more perfectly.”

Becoming full-time coincided with relocating to Nashville from Alabama, and the move has been fruitful.

“It’s kind of a second hometown,” Anderson said. Having Music City as home base makes the Opry show truly special. The only thing topping it is the way they learned the show was happening.

Del McCoury, a hero of the band, announced it from the stage at DelFest. The moment came after the bluegrass legend and his son Ronnie sat in with them. Before they began, he’d told them, “When y’all end, don’t go anywhere.” Anderson called it “every bit of an electric moment as you could think.”

Another big fan is Billy Strings, who’s praised Black’s flat-picking talents on social media after they won an IBMA award for early-career excellence. “Kinda rude of him to be this good honestly; luckily for me, we’re on the same team,” Strings wrote on Saving Country Music’s Instagram account.

Strings and MGU have jammed together, and he and Black are texting buddies.

“I chat with him every once in a while,” he said. “Mostly it’s just jokes and stuff, and then I’ll get a random text from him that’s like, ‘Hey, man, you wanna come jam?’ I’m like, ‘Shoot, I’m in freaking Idaho, and Billy Strings is asking me to jam in Nashville. I gotta get home.’”

The new album is the band’s most ambitious, using a range of instruments for the first time. For the release show, they’ll reproduce everything done in the studio.

“We’ve reached out to a bunch of our buddies to come help us really play it live,” Wilson said. That includes an electric sitar and bongos on “Eagle’s Nest,” perhaps the most rocked up song they’ve done.

That track started as a stray riff Black had been sitting on for years.

“We’ve been trying to find what to do with it forever,” he said. “When we got to the studio, we just kept adding more and more cool elements to it. It’s an art project.” Elsewhere, the songwriting turns more inward.

“Wait for Me” was born during Wilson’s days shuttling between accounting exams and gigs.

“I’d play shows and festivals all weekend, then fly back and go to the library to study for my test the next morning,” he recalled. The song, he said, was a culmination of a lot of things, including the strain of keeping relationships intact while constantly leaving town.

The album itself was tracked almost entirely live, no metronome. They did full takes, three or four per song, then vocals, with no clicking and dragging parts around afterward.

“It was way more organic,” Black said. “I loved it.” That looseness extended to working with producer Vance Powell and having a real label budget for the first time.

This was in sharp contrast to their 2022 debut, which was made entirely on their own dime. Back then, Wilson said, they didn’t even have a bank account. Gratefully, Dualtone mostly stayed out of the way while they worked.

“We just got in there, played our bluegrass licks, and called it a day,” Black remembered.

Through all of it, the band keeps coming back to the same idea: none of this is supposed to feel heavy.

“Our goal at most of our shows is to create an atmosphere of a good time where you don’t have to worry about everything going on in the world,” Wilson said. “Have a beer, party, and play some train songs. We’re goofy, you can be goofy. Come and hang.”

Mountain Grass Unit
When: Friday, Aug. 15, 7 p.m.
Where: The Range, 96 Old Turnpike Road, Mason
Tickets: $42, etix.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Senie Hunt plays through pain before surgery

Well-known for getting a lot from his guitar, by picking and strumming while also tapping out djembe-like rhythms on its surface, around a year and a half ago Senie Hunt learned his instrument was taking its own toll. As Hunt held a bag of groceries in his left hand, he reached for the doorknob with his right, and felt a sharp, wrist-to-elbow pain.

“I couldn’t even open my door,” he recalled. “I had to use my left hand.”

The source was an old injury, likely dating back to his college rugby and football days, aggravated for years by the demands of his playing. Tissue had been tearing and self-repairing, building up scar tissue that doctors now need to remove and seal back into place.

“It was either that or let it develop into chronic arthritis,” Hunt said. “I’d rather lose a little bit of motion and not have pain than not lose motion and have pain.”

The surgery will happen in Nashville, Hunt’s home for the past five years, right after he does a run of local shows. That means the guitarist is, for now, playing through it, shortening sets and adding breaks as needed. A recent gig finished with his hand wrapped in gauze.

“I just had to play a little differently through certain songs that were maybe a little less percussive,” he said. “The pain leveled down and helped me keep doing all the shows without having to cancel one because of it.”

There’s no paid time off for it, either. “I have insurance, but I can’t give myself that,” Hunt said. “So I recoup — I try to save as much as I can, especially during the tours, like any musician finds ways to.”

That makes this month’s homecoming swing, which ends Aug. 22 at Concord’s Barley House, something like a last stand before he heads South. His trio includes drummer Rory Walsh and bassist Tom Martin, who he’s built a tight chemistry with, and he’ll play several shows solo.

One big night is Aug. 14, when his trio is at the Concord basement bar where he often played before leaving New Hampshire to build a career in Music City.

“Penuche’s is one of those spots where anytime I come back, it’s like home for me,” he said. “It’s the family crowd, everyone we know.”

Hunt is plugged in for the trio shows, playing a Fender Stratocaster he repainted himself in the colors of the flag of Sierra Leone, the country he emigrated from as a young child before settling in New Hampshire.

“I wanted to pay homage to that in any way I could,” he said.

Surgery will align with another milestone for Hunt. He recently finished mixing and mastering his first full-length album, tentatively called The Journey. It’s been in the works since before the pandemic, and the plan is to release it during his recovery, to fill the gap in live shows.

Its title is a reflection of Hunt’s path in leaving his war-torn home country for the U.S., and his life in music.

“The songs try to tell a story of that,” he said. They include a reworked version of “Songbird,” one of the first songs he ever released, that now leans harder into the percussive, West African side of his playing. There’s also “Farewell, New Hampshire,” written when he first left for Nashville.

His new home has been good to him, Hunt said, primarily because he did his homework ahead of moving there.

“It could be a total train wreck if you’re trying to just jump in,” he said, adding he’s found a community beyond the country-leaning masses on the mile-long stretch of Broadway. “You’ve got hip-hop, hardcore metal, blues, jazz … I think the town is slowly starting to recognize all the other scenes.”

One thing missing from the current swing is the Concord Multicultural Festival. Hunt has played it multiple times, but surgery scheduling and September shows with his band back in Nashville mean he’ll bow out from this one. “I really had to focus on planning around my hand surgery this year,” he said.

He won’t have to miss out on seeing family. Nieces, nephews, his brother and sister-in-law, an older sister visiting from Massachusetts, and his twin sister are all in town during what’s also the family’s birthday month.

“Family first,” Hunt said. “Then, boom, all these friends from the years come out to the shows to hang out.”

Senie Hunt Trio at First Fridays: Dog Days of Summer
When: Friday, Aug. 7, at 6:15 p.m.
Where: Bicentennial Square, Concord
More: seniehunt.com
Solo in Concord at Rollins Park (33 Bow St.) on Saturday, Aug. 8, at 10 a.m. and at Sunfox Farm (Gully Hill Road) on Sunday, Aug. 9, at 5:45 p.m. Senie Hunt Trio at Penuche’s (Bicentennial Square) on Friday, Aug. 14, at 9 p.m. (21+)

Featured photo: Senie Hunt. Courtesy photo.

Aaron Berg brings his take-no-prisoners act to Moka Pot

Watching Aaron Berg walk on stage at a comedy club, two thoughts compete for space in one’s head at the same time: he’s either going to make people laugh or totally destroy them. The truth, as Berg tells it, is that he’d really like to do both, metaphorically speaking.

The second thought makes sense because Berg is a competitive bodybuilder, who created his physique the way he builds a set — obsessively, with no shortcuts. He looks less like a comedian than something that wandered off a movie poster, thick-necked, broad-shouldered, all traps and forearms. Along with punchlines, he probably has a deadly right hook.

“I wanted to murder these people,” he said by phone recently, hearkening back on the mentality he brought with him from bodybuilding in his 20s to the comedy stage. “I wanted these people to laugh so hard they were crying. There’s definitely a kill-or-be-killed mentality up there; that does come from bodybuilding.”

Physical conditioning is the throughline in Berg’s career these days, on stage and off. He recently returned to competition, and talks openly now about training, TRT, and the discipline of prepping for competition. His days start at 4:30 a.m. with a quick posing practice, 45 minutes of cardio, a training session, followed by six or seven meals during the day.

“I go all the way in on everything,” he said.

Subject matter that would have seemed like a novelty act a decade ago now resonates with an audience increasingly fluent in peptides and gym culture. Fans now show up specifically for the gym material, then stick around for the rest. Berg keeps busy, doing roughly 20 stand-up sets a week around New York City.

That all-in ethic extends to Berg’s family.

He and his wife, comic Christine Berg, are raising an 8-year-old daughter, Piper, who is now a black belt in taekwondo and, apparently, a fairly sharp critic of his material. “She’ll come to a set, and she’ll go, ‘Dad, that was really offensive,’” Berg said. “And I go, ‘Yeah, but the audience was laughing.’ And she’s like, ‘It doesn’t change the fact it was offensive.’”

Christine chimed in partway through the conversation with her own assessment. Her husband, she said, is “very odd, but very lovable,” and added that there’s no malice behind his material, however far it pushes.

“I’m a very kind person that says horrible things,” Berg said, agreeing with her.

That balance between provocation and warmth is something Berg has had to recalibrate over the years. Roughly a decade ago, around the time he wrote his second book, American Etiquette, he found himself drifting toward overtly political material and a podcast built around it — an effort he now describes as a “grift” that curdled.

“The dog-whistle mentality would allow for fans to basically embrace it just for the purpose of, ‘Oh, they’re saying racial stuff,’ which would then turn into racist stuff,” he said. He walked away, though he did worry about supporting his family. He found assurance from comic friends who insisted he’d land on his feet.

He did. These days the material comes from a more current, more personal place — marriage, fatherhood, and his return to bodybuilding. However, Berg’s stated goal hasn’t changed.

“I want 99 percent of people to love what I do, and I want one percent to be like, what the hell is this?” he said. “And I accomplish that.”

It’s a needle he’s still actively threading on stage, not a settled formula, he continued, and the difference between an edgy joke landing and just being mean is something he checks himself on set to set. The stories he tells trace back to an instinct he found in childhood, that comedy is both a weapon and refuge.

Berg’s best-known feat remains 25 Sets, the 2015 documentary chronicling his attempt to break the record for most stand-up sets performed in a single night. The plan was to hit 26 clubs across New York City, but a car breakdown forced him onto foot and into cabs and cost him a set in Times Square. It left him with 25, still a record, and a title for his movie.

He’s about to make his first appearance in Manchester, at the Moka Pot. Fittingly for the all-or-nothing comic, it’s a two-night run. Berg is learning more about the city and the newly relocated venue, which has several summer shows booked.

“I know the Moka Pot is supposed to be a great little spot for comedy, and there’s a thriving local scene there,” he said. “Everybody seems so excited, but I have no idea where it is. I don’t even know how far the drive is going to be — or if I need to fly or take a small boat.”

Aaron Berg
When: Friday, July 31, and Saturday, Aug. 1, at 8 p.m.
Where: Moka Pot, 8 Hanover St., Manchester
Tickets: $25, eventbrite.com

Featured photo: Aaron Berg. Photo by David Genik.

Dwight & Nicole salute their Kings & Queens at Tupelo

When talking with Dwight & Nicole, there’s a fine line between an interview and eavesdropping.

The married couple, who’ve performed together for more than 20 years, first bonded over a love of traditional blues music, and that’s clearly endured. Answers to questions frequently veer off into discussions between the two, on subjects like whose version of “Ain’t Nobody’s Business” is the best (both agree on Jimmy Witherspoon’s).

It happens so naturally that it’s easy to wonder if their home in Burlington, Vermont, is this way every night — charming banter about clubs played back in the day, how Dwight once nearly booked a show on the Cape with Honeyboy Edwards, the night Nicole saw him open for Otis Rush at the original House of Blues in Cambridge and became instantly smitten.

The answer, it turns out, is yes.

“This is what we do all the time,” Nicole Nelson said as Dwight Ritscher laughed along.

That’s the spirit driving Kings and Queens, a tribute show to a galaxy of influences that the two will bring to Tupelo Music Hall on July 24. The night is built entirely from the songs and singers who first pulled them into blues clubs as teenagers and who, years later, pulled them into each other’s orbit.

The idea had been percolating for years, rooted in a scene the duo watched flourish and eventually fade.

“Both of us came up almost entirely out of the blues scene, which was such a vibrant, thriving thing 20 years ago,” Nelson said, rattling off the rooms that shaped her, like the Rynborn in Antrim, where she played underage, the YardRock in Quincy, which closed in 2003 and where Ritscher remembers catching Toni Lynn Washington and Ronnie Earl.

“We just kind of miss it,” Nelson said. “We’re like, let’s get people together and do that.”

Ritscher views the Derry venue as a natural home for their revival.

“I always saw Tupelo as a blues club,” he said. “Maybe if we’re lucky this could turn into an annual thing. Even if it’s just a gift we can share once a year, just to show that we can break even, I’d be glad to be part of it.”

Picking eight artists out of a lifetime of influences was never going to be an easy task. Leonard Cohen was non-negotiable, as Nicole’s take on “Hallelujah” has become something of a signature. Also in a setlist swinging from Delta grit to lyrical poetry are songs from B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Johnny Cash, Etta James, Aretha Franklin and more.

The night leans into American roots music from the ’60s and ’70s, while spanning the 20th century, with blues and jazz from the big-band era. Some choices came down to what still gives them chills, like Hopkins’ “Trouble in Mind,” a song that Nelson begins a cappella.

“One long note out into the crowd, holding it, making eye contact,” she said. “It’s so fun.”

Others arrived after years of deliberately avoiding them. For example, Nelson once sidestepped the Queen of Soul entirely.

“I always felt like everybody sings Aretha,” she said. Then a friend pushed back, telling her she had a gift not many could claim, and she relented. “The first time I sang ‘Natural Woman,’ I nearly lifted off the stage,” she said. “My whole body was tingling, and everyone felt it. Standing ovation. Now I’m like, OK, I’m going to lean into that a little.”

They won’t be doing it alone. Ali McGuirk and Jesse Dee, longtime collaborators, top a confirmed list of guests.

“Ali’s not really a blues singer,” Nelson said. “But she carries the tradition of songwriters deeply rooted in blues music; you hear it in her voice … she’s one of my favorite singers and closest friends.”

Dee, she added, is “phenomenal, a legend … anyone who knows him and has seen him is blown away.” To round out a lineup heavy on musicians they’ve shared stages and studios with for years, Ritscher invited horn player John McBride, “our brother up here” — and bandmate; when not gigging with Nelson, Ritscher plays drums in McBride’s group.

There will be more names. Pressed on surprises, the couple lit up talking about the Boston-scene elders who shaped them — Ronnie Earl, whom Ritscher has stayed in touch with, and Toni Lynn Washington, a singer Nelson suggested during the phone interview. “We can give her a call for sure,” she said. “She’s super wonderful and so inspirational.”

Asked if they were angling for a grand entrance to match Paul McCartney’s helicopter arrival to sing “Hey Jude” at Billy Joel’s final Shea Stadium show, Nelson didn’t hesitate. “That’s what we’re going for, we want some copters landing,” she exclaimed. “We’ll see what we can do.”

Kings & Queens
When: Friday, July 24, 8 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $35, tupelohall.com

Featured photo: Dwight+Nicole. Photo Credit Josh Steele.

Hell Beach / American Television mini-tour hits Shaskeen

When their debut album Beachworld dropped in October 2024, Hell Beach celebrated with a local show at Shaskeen Pub. The big moment, though, came a week later with an appearance at Fest, a pop-punk rival to SXSW, spanning the Florida city of Gainesville. It was a triumph for the Manchester band, and it paid dividends beyond validation.\

“In our genre, if you’re on a tour that includes Fest, you know Fest will be the best show,” Hell Beach frontman Jordan Hill said in an interview at the time. Connecting with other bands is one reason. Hill and his mates met Washington, D.C., punk stalwarts American Television at Fest, and almost two years later they’re joining forces.

A mini-tour — “four shows in three days,” Hill said by phone recently — stops at Shaskeen Pub on July 17. Hell Beach has a new lineup; Hill is on lead vocals, having handed bass duties to Franklin Siplas. Kory Boutin is on drums, with guitarists Brenden Meade and Tim Williams rounding out the band.

Their sound evolved as well, as the synth-rich “keytar era” ended. Megan Simon, who played the guitar-shaped keyboard, left amicably to focus her band Megan From Work.

“I’d have done the same thing,” Hill said of her departure. “This takes up all of my time outside my regular 9-to-5; there’s no way to really do a second band alongside it.”

On an album just completed for new label Counterintuitive Records, the synth of Beachworld gives way to snarl. “It’s got a much more aggressive vibe, more rock and roll,” Hill said. Some of that, he continued, reflects a decision to eschew pop instincts for a heavier sound, but the current zeitgeist is another factor.

“A lot of people are probably writing songs that maybe sound more aggressive, maybe sound darker, and I think that goes with the aggression and darkness in everyday life in the last however many years,” Hill said. “Things are highly politically charged. There’s a lot of stress for everybody, and I think that comes through in people’s art.”

The upcoming Shaskeen show is a stacked night, with Portland, Maine’s Borderlines joining after an attempted booking in Biddeford fell through.

“They’re a perfect fit between us and American Television,” Hill said, adding that their drummer is filling in behind the kit for Hell Beach at the show.

Rounding out the bill is Lovewell, whose inclusion is its own bit of reciprocity, as well as a testament to the cohesiveness that sustains the area’s pop/punk scene. “They’ve always been sweet to us and asked us to play shows, so this is returning the favor,” Hill said.

They’re looking forward to the short run, which starts July 16 in Easthampton, Mass., and ends with day/night shows in Poughkeepsie and Kingston, New York. Hill is happy to share a bill with American Television.

“They’re a punk band, but they have a lot of pop elements as well, and I think our sounds work well together,” he said.

The Manchester date falls just after Hill’s birthday, and he’s not averse to leveraging the occasion a bit. “I’m going to guilt people into coming,” he said with a laugh.

The group’s latest studio effort is a part of a voluminous Green Day tribute album. From Kerplunk!, the band’s final indie release, “Android” has been a favorite of Hill’s since middle school.

“It felt fitting to cover a song about a long stretch of a life, now that we’re all in our mid-30s,” he said. “The vibe and the lyrics made sense, and it’s just a great song.”

Curated by music blog and indie platform Punk Rock Radar and released on Coffin Curse Records, the tribute project has more than 50 bands and benefits no-kill animal shelters. It’s a color vinyl release — Dookie Color Splatter, to be precise. Hill is a big fan of the format, pointing to Hell Beach’s sold-out first pressing of their Beachworld 12-inch with pride.

For the scrappy band, that’s an important milestone, as is the new label deal. The best measure, however, is the sense that their efforts are taking hold with audiences, whatever the size.

“We can play shows and people are singing along, dancing and they’re familiar with the music,” Hill said. “That to me is a huge mark of success.”

Hell Beach, American Television, Borderlines, Lovewell
When: Friday, July 17, 9 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $15

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Hejira channels the spirit of beloved Mitchell period

Guitarist and composer Pete Oxley spent decades building a solo catalog, along with a reputation as one of Britain’s most thoughtful jazz improvisers. A band dedicated to Joni Mitchell’s music wasn’t in his plans, nor a first-ever U.S. tour, yet that’s what’s happening. The story of how it came to be reads less like a career move than a series of improbable gifts.

Named for Mitchell’s 1976 album Hejira, the band was initially a one-off 2022 Christmas gig at a club in Oxford run by Oxley. The show was dedicated mainly to Mitchell’s late ’70s Shadows and Light live album, and it went well enough for Oxley to add a second date two months out and post tickets on his website.

“By 11 a.m. the next day it was sold out,” he said in a recent Zoom interview. “So I thought, maybe this is a project worth pursuing.”

Since his conservatory days, Oxley had been a fan of Mitchell’s jazz-inflected period, which ran from 1974’s Court and Spark through the extraordinary live album that captured her 1979 touring band featuring Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter and Lyle Mays.

“I had Hejira on cassette, and I played it so often that all the treble end was gone,” he recalled. “I just fell in love with it.” Shadows and Light became something of a north star for him. “It just fizzes with electricity when you put it on, yet at the same time it’s really warm, really beautifully produced. It’s always been one of my desert island discs.”

Oxley wanted a singular sonic identity rather than a note-for-note replica of source material. He put together a seven-piece band of players drawn from the British jazz world — bass clarinet, synths, percussion layered with drums.

“It’s not a tribute act,” he told them. “We want to serve the songs and reproduce the vibe … but we’ve got our own colors.”

Surprisingly, he’s found that arranging someone else’s music is harder than composing his own.

“When I’m writing, I have no constraints, but here, my challenge is to keep the melody — that’s what people know — but still make it our own,” he said. “People come up after a show and say, ‘I love the way you respect the songs, but you’ve made it yours,’ and that’s the most heartening response to get.”

Oxley’s Joni is Hattie Whitehead, a jazz singer and songwriter with a solid solo career including her highly regarded debut album, Bloom, released in 2024. She’s also the daughter of British saxophone player Tim Whitehead. The story of how she ended up in the band is its own comedy of near misses.

Three others came and went before Whitehead. One wanted to completely reframe the concept, another demanded that her boyfriend play bass, and a third asked to use her own band. Then Hejira bassist Dave Jones asked Oxley if he knew about a video Whitehead posted on YouTube of her performing songs from Shadows and Light.

“I found it, and it was just totally like yeah, she’s the singer,” Oxley said. He rang up Whitehead, who was quite happy for a chance to sing nothing but Joni. There was one hiccup; she already had a gig that night. But she found a substitute, came to one afternoon rehearsal, and the band was complete.

What she does, Oxley is careful to say, isn’t imitation. When an interviewer asked her how she could sound so much like Joni, Oxley interrupted to disagree. “She sounds like herself,” he insisted. “She sings in tune [and] she’s got a big vibrato like Joni, but she still sounds like Hattie. She’s dedicated and committed to the song, which is a beautiful thing.”

Kismet with a New Hampshire angle helped make Hejira’s American run possible. Milford resident Gary Connolly found their videos on YouTube and was so smitten that he flew to England to see them play. He even offered to drive the van if they made it to the States, and later helped book a show at Andres Institute of Art in Brookline to open the tour; it sold out.

Another crazy twist of fate came when an email arrived from the director of the Syracuse Jazz Festival, a devoted Shadows and Light fan who had also seen the videos. He offered Hejira a main stage slot and, when Oxley mentioned needing more dates to make a trip viable, doubled their fee and covered airfares.

“We kind of talked about it as a pipe dream every now and again — if we could get to America, there’s a big market there,” Oxley said. “Then there was … a ridiculous amount of luck.”

Hejira: Celebrating Joni Mitchell
When: Wednesday, July 15, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club, 135 Congress St., Portsmouth
Tickets: $23 and up at ticketmaster.com

Featured photo: Hejira. Courtesy photo.