Category: Nightlife

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.

Eclectic music slate precedes Nashua fireworks

This Fourth of July will mark 250 years of U.S. independence, but Eleanor Luna’s American roots run deeper than that.

Her ancestors came to Maine from Scotland in 1648, eventually making their way south to Nashua. A few centuries later, give or take, she followed them there. Upon arrival, Luna embraced her new community as a resident, and she became a force behind reshaping the city’s alternative arts scene.

New Hampshire Underground, founded by Luna a few years ago, regularly hosts shows at Terminus Underground on Haines Ave., along with downtown Nashua events. The next one happens ahead of the Independence Day fireworks at Holman Stadium. Eight acts will appear, ranging from rock to country, hip-hop and experimental art rock.

Headlining is Dead Harrison, the doom metal band led by Andre Dumont, who’s Luna’s partner and, more recently, her husband. It’s the third year for the event honoring veterans, part of NH Underground’s ongoing support efforts, which include a “Buy Dinner For a Vet” program and collaborations with groups like Nashua Veterans Promise.

The veterans focus isn’t incidental; along with Luna’s DAR lineage, Dumont comes from a military family. His father was a Marine, his sister serves in the Army, and Andre himself is a Navy veteran.

“We just really have very strong core values for the people that fought for the country,” Luna said by phone recently. “That’s why we do what we do.”

The event has evolved since it began at Nashua’s Liquid Therapy in 2024. This year it happens closer to Holman Stadium, on a community stage near Centennial Pool. Last year Dumont equipped it with sound to make it attractive for rentals, but only the city has used it thus far.

“We decided to set an example,” Luna said, “and take advantage of the stage.”

Timing alleviates any potential issues with the show’s beneficiaries, she continued. “Before … this was done in a different area because a lot of the veterans that we were serving had PTSD and didn’t want to be around the fireworks, and they can still do that, because we stop right before the fireworks … they can leave right after the show.”

The lineup reflects a curatorial philosophy — book acts broad enough to pull in people who wouldn’t normally go to a rock show, but still please regulars. Nashua rapper Six Minds Combined opens, followed by Aaron Bolido, who Luna worked with in the studio when she fronted Eternal Embrace. “People think he’s metal, but he’s really alt art rock,” she said.

From Boston, psychedelic rock band Superchild and alt hard rockers Born Fools perform. Sunset Electric are a regular at Terminus, while country rockers Shotgun Alice were booked for their accessibility. They’re friends with NHU mainstay Lone Wolf James.

“We try to get bands that won’t hit those pinch points of being too dark or too heavy,” Luna said.

Headlining is Dead Harrison, Luna’s favorite band for obvious reasons. She describes them as “spooky doom metal” in the same breath she calls them “enjoyable to everybody, if they can understand that it’s not going to be scary.” It’s a pitch that sounds like early Black Sabbath landing at a community Fourth and somehow making it work.

Between sets, flow artist Nicolette Reed Gracey will perform AirFlow Projection Art around the stage, combining dance, movement and light as she twirls and spins flags with designs projected onto them. During daylight hours she will work in color. As it gets darker, her projections will shift to images of America and veterans, timed to the music.

Hiring the unique Nashua-based visual artist Gracey is the kind of touch that fits Luna’s instinct for spectacle without provocation. The national semiquincentennial celebration may be fraught with partisanship, but she’s not here for that.

“We’re not political in any way,” she said. “We just want people to get together and have fun.”

Beyond the Fourth, Luna is eyeing a larger downstairs space for NH Underground that would add disability access and room to grow. She’s also working on a Porch Fest, a Misfits Farmer’s Market featuring alternative acts, a night market for artisans, and a winter market; all are events the city hasn’t provided space for, so she’s building them herself.

“I personally don’t like roadblocks,” she said with certainty in her voice. “I want to be able to do things that I know are good for this community without having to jump through hoops or red tape.” Her Scottish ancestors, one suspects, would recognize and approve of the attitude.

Independence Day Rock Concert
When: Saturday, July 4, 2 p.m.
Where: Centennial Park, Sargents Ave., Nashua
More: newhampshireunderground.org

Lineup:
Daytime Stage, 2-5 p.m.
6 Minds Combined (alt hip-hop)
Aaron Bilodeau (experimental art rock)
Superchild (psychedelic rock)
Sunset Electric (alt rock)

Evening Stage, 6-9 p.m.
Shotgun Alice (country rock)
Born Fools (alt hard rock)
Lone Wolf James (hard rock)
Dead Harrison (doom metal)

Featured photo: Dead Harrison performs last year. Courtesy Photo

Martin Toe brings activism and Afrobeats to BNH Stage

There’s no line between work and music for Martin Toe, the organizer and hip-hop artist behind albums like Civic Leader and last year’s Love Is Godly. Alongside fellow New Hampshire artists B. Snair, Vincent Tesoro and Marxo Phenix, Toe performs in Concord on June 27 in a show that’s both a homecoming and a statement about the state’s music scene.

Toe has been organizing for over a decade, first as an intern with American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker social-justice group. Later, he co-founded Change for Concord (later rebranded as Hope Project New Hampshire) and eventually landed at the Granite State Organizing Project, bringing together faith leaders and communities of color across the state.

In a recent Zoom interview, he described the connection between his day job and performing as natural and vital.

“It’s super authentic for me, it doesn’t feel like work,” he said when asked how organizing feeds his songwriting. “What I say in my music doesn’t feel forced. I have an endless pool of inspiration to pull from because I am interacting with that world every single day.”

The BNH Stage show won’t be Toe’s first time in the Concord listening room. He headlined a Black History Month Unity concert there in February 2023 with friend and collaborator Destin Boy. He said this lineup came together through a series of Zoom calls among artists who’d long wanted to work together but hadn’t had the chance.

“The music scene can seem very scattered here in New Hampshire, but I think the state’s working very hard to pull artists together and highlight … a very talented pool of artists that we have,” he said, adding that despite sharing a stage, the three acts don’t sound alike, and that’s the point.

“These guys pull from all different sorts of creative spaces, and the music is not the same, which is awesome,” he said. “Phenix might throw some R&B stuff in there, more of the funk vibes. B. Snair comes in with a fusion mix of rock and hip-hop. Then you got me in there with the Afrobeats and hip-hop.”

What unites them, he said, isn’t genre but geography and circumstance, a shared expression of having grown up in New Hampshire, and an instinct to write about real life.

“Whether it’s the cost of rent or groceries,” he said. “We’re trying to paint a picture of, yeah, we can have fun. At the same time, we can feel what’s happening emotionally across the state.”

History and hope permeate many of Toe’s songs. On “Free,” a standout track from Love Is Godly, he sings “Can’t you see, 1847 we’re free,” referencing Liberia’s declaration of independence — the African country was founded that year by former slaves from the United States.

The song then gently moves in a meditation on what that may have felt like. “Sweet Liberty Bell is ringing from the high seas, whistling through the high trees,” he continues. “Let them know for sure that I am free.” And for Toe, freedom isn’t an abstraction, it’s something he’s writing from memory.

When he was 7, Toe and his family were forced to flee when civil war fighting reached his Ivory Coast town, part of the broader Ivorian and Liberian conflict that displaced hundreds of thousands.

“It was very difficult,” he recalled. “The sound of gunshots, seeing smoke billowing in the air, and fleeing, not knowing if you’re ever going to go back.” He still carries that experience vividly, and it shapes how he talks to his American friends who grew up without knowing war firsthand.

“War leaves a wound, and whenever specific stories come up, it festers that wound again,” he said. “Then, you have to sit with it … let it heal.”

Music is, for him, part of healing, and a reminder — to fight for peace and be sure that life’s beauty isn’t taken for granted. That spirit continues with a forthcoming album, The Gaffa, due to drop on Aug. 28, the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. It opens with MLK’s voice, saying he’s tired of marching for what should have been his at birth.

What follows are fierce lyrics, about “boardrooms that feel like a battlefield” and a generation organizing for a seat, or as Toe puts it, deciding to “move the whole table” instead. It’s a fitting next step from an artist who’s spent a decade learning that the fight for dignity and the urge to make music have never really been separate.

Martin Toe, B. Snair & Vincent Tesoro, Marxo Phenix
When: Saturday, June 27, 8 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $18, ccanh.com

Featured photo: Martin Toe. Courtesy photo.

Northlands Festival returns

As John Shields begins a phone interview, he’s also readying a jagged week of travel, a mini-tour that includes a quick show in Wisconsin, followed by his band’s first Bonnaroo, and concluding with the fifth annual Northlands Festival in Swanzey.

“It’s wonky,” he allowed with a laugh, “but the money’s good.”

A decade ago he co-founded the Charleston-based duo Little Stranger with Kevin Shields. Kevin and John aren’t related, but their shared last name has confused fans and strangers alike for years. They’re used to it, though. “Some people say, ‘I was just talking to your brother,’” John said. “At this point I’m like, ‘hell yeah, we’re brothers.’ We’re all brothers, man.”

The two did go to high school together outside of Philadelphia but ran in different circles and played with different bands. They reconnected years later, after John had attended the College of Charleston, played in a local band there, then moved back to Philly. After that, John returned to South Carolina and uncertainty.

Facing a music career playing in a wedding band or cobbling together restaurant gigs, he reached out to Kevin. A carefully composed email — John called it “romantic” — was enough to convince his friend to follow him south.

“I basically courted him to come down and join me in Charleston,” he said. “He did it, and he’s been here since.”

In short order they threw their gear in a Hyundai Sonata and embarked on a years-long grind through bars and clubs. Greg Knight saw them play for 15 fans at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory in 2021 and came away impressed. Now he’s pleased to have them near the top of the bill at the festival he and Seth McNally launched a year later.

For McNally, Little Stranger’s brand of road-tested hustle is exactly what Northlands was created to celebrate.

“Independent festivals are crucial, beating hearts for the live music ecosystem,” he said in an email. “Northlands offers artists a relaxed environment to actually hang out, cross-pollinate, and collaborate with one another in an intimate setting.”

For first-timers at Northlands, McNally promises an experience that feels less like a concert than a community.

“We’ve designed the weekend to feel like a massive family reunion,” he said, “a boutique-style gathering where community, art installations, live muralists, and eclectic local food and craft vendors share the spotlight with the big bands.”

Little Stranger resists easy genre classification. Listeners and critics have variously called them hip-hop, indie, and reggae-adjacent. Shields has come to countenance this ambiguity. “Early on, I worried it would be a liability, but I’ve come to like that, and I think our fan base really enjoys it too.”

Live, Kevin acts as emcee with John live looping on guitar and employing drum and bass pads. A sax and trumpet player joined not long ago. “To beef up the live sound,” Shields explained, adding that shows are varied. “Something funny could happen in the crowd that becomes a thread throughout … we try not to repeat the same set every time.”

A new studio album, Broken Hearted Boys Club, arrives July 17. Little Stranger’s third LP, it includes collaborations with Andy Frasco, whose band The U.N. is playing Sunday at Northlands, along with members of the band’s growing extended musical family. The title refers to how a few of the latter group became John’s roommates.

“Four years ago I went through a bad breakup, and then Damn Skippy went through a bad breakup,” Shields recalled. “I was like, come on, move in, buddy. Then another good friend went through one, so we named the house Brokenhearted Boys Club. That’s where a ton of the music was made.”

Shields believes the new record is their most cohesive to date.

“There’s maybe a little more honesty in the lyrics,” he said. “We always write better when we’re happy, but even the sad songs on this one are kind of upliftingly sad. It’s the homies helping the homies out.”

The production, he continued, is intentionally raw, with fewer vocal edits, less tuning, more first takes. The Frasco collab, “Love You When I’m Sad,” is the third song the two have written together. “We banged it out in an afternoon from scratch at the house,” Shields said. “He’s just easy to write with, always throwing out ideas. He’s a great writer.”

The release will be followed by their biggest tour yet. They’ll play 800- to 1,500-capacity venues and, a far cry from their Hyundai days, travel by bus.

“That’s a big milestone,” John said, giddy. “It’s the first time we’ve truly lined up an album drop with a tour. Our albums always take longer to finish than you’d think. We feel like we nailed the rollout on this one.”

Northlands Festival
When: Friday, June 19, through Sunday, June 21
Where: Cheshire Fairgrounds, 247 Monadnock Hwy., Swanzey
Tickets: $25 and up (single day), $269 and up (three-day pass), northlandslive.com

Festival main performers
Friday, June 19
Dirty Heads, Little Stranger, Mihali, Circles Around The Sun, Ghost-Note, Magoo, Night Zero, and Hayley Jane Band
Saturday, June 20
Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, Dogs In A Pile, Lotus, The Slip, Kanika Moore & the Brown Eyed Bois, and Caylin Costello
Sunday, June 21
Disco Biscuits, Andy Frasco & The U.N., Super Sonic Shorties, Moontricks, Jennifer Hartswick Band, Dizgo, Sqwerv, Annie in the Water and DJ Brownie.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Indie comedy grows in Manchester

When he last was in Manchester, Shane Torres appeared at Shaskeen Pub. In 2021, it was one of the few places in the city for his brand of comedy. Since then, though, the scene has grown. Comedy at Queen City Center began in April, Strange Brew Tavern’s Laugh Attic has a good groove going, and now a theater district coffee bar is in the game.

Early returns are more than encouraging. The Moka Pot, near the corner of Elm and Hanover, has two shows with Seattle comic Bo Johnson on April 12. The early set sold out weeks ago, with only a few tickets remaining for the late one. Coming up are Aaron Berg (July 31 and Aug. 1), Brendan Sagalow (Aug. 8) and Robby Slowik (Aug. 21).

The Moka Pot is ready, with a recently issued liquor license and new LED lighting array. Alex LaChance is the venue’s comedy booker. With fellow comic Nick Sands, LaChance also runs the game show parody Wrong Hill to Die On at the Shaskeen, which returns for a third time on July 14. The first Wrong Hill event sold out, and the second came close.

The day after Johnson’s show, Torres will appear at Queen City Center. The laconic Texas native has had a lot of success since his last visit. His first special, The Blue Eyed Mexican, came out at the end of 2023. Vulture praised its “beautiful directness and keen sense of good storytelling,” calling it “a refreshing combination of delicate and obscene.”

Torres’s other recent credits include The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, though he didn’t get the McCartney treatment when he appeared, as Colbert was out of town that night. The host pretaped introductions for him and a few other comics. “Sadly, it was not the version I’d dreamed of,” Torres said by phone recently. “No couch, no Stephen.”

Another late-night talk show helped elevate Torres in 2017. He appeared on Conan O’Brien and went viral for defending shock-haired Food Network host Guy Fieri. It was 10 years ago, but the bit still follows him around, and he professes to be at peace with his “Free Bird” moment.

“I don’t do that bit anymore, but sometimes people will call for it,” he said. “Like, I was in Seattle doing Fremont Abbey, a really cool room, and somebody yelled something about Guy Fieri. This other guy shouted, ‘That’s how I heard about you,’ and another one said, ‘Me too!’ So I have that to be grateful for.”

He and fellow comedian Katherine Blanford’s Coastal Idiots podcast stands out in a crowded field. The two “frenemies” have a delightful Odd Couple banter well-suited to Torres’s laid back demeanor. Recurring bits include a contest to guess the sale price of various works of art, some museum worthy, others county fair castoffs.

Torres balances all this with incessant touring.

“Last year I did something like 250,000 miles, and that was just on Delta,” he said. “Not even including riding on a tour bus for a few weeks, or driving from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison to Minneapolis. The only mileage accounted for is just through the Delta app.”

He’s looking forward to coming back to Manchester, recalling doing many shows at the Shaskeen when it was booked by Nick Lavallee, who’s now in charge of Queen City Center’s comedy events, and will also be opening up his Wicked Joyful retail store in the Canal Street facility on June 20.

Torres enjoyed hanging out with Lavallee in the Shaskeen days.

“I always had fun there,” he said. “Nick is a friend; he’s an old indie rock kind of punk rock guy like me. That’s the kind of culture and stuff he came up in as a kid. So we had a little bit of that in common.”

Along with the success Torres has experienced since his last visit is a newfound desire to savor it more, including when he’s back in New Hampshire.

“I will appreciate being in this place more presently,” he said, adding, “There’s a difference between logically knowing you’ve moved forward … and feeling it, recognizing it and appreciating it.”

Torres’s next big career milestone happens after his Manchester show. In August he’ll head to the legendary Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where he’ll perform his one-man show, tentatively titled Skinned Knees. The show is about his mother’s coma and his father’s homelessness, framed as comedy about what home means and what masculinity looks like.

“It’s going to be terrifying,” he said, adding that he hopes people will find laughs among the show’s poignancy. “I’m afraid people are going to be like, ‘You’re brave!’ And I’ll be like, ‘and funny?” That’s a real fear, but also a self-deflating (and funny) joke in his statement, a combination that is the Shane Torres essence.

Bo Johnson
When: Friday, June 12, 9:30 p.m. (7 p.m. show sold out)
Where: Moka Pot, 8 Hanover St., Manchester
Tickets: $25, eventbrite.com

Shane Torres
When: Saturday, June 13, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Queen City Center, Canal Street, Manchester
Tickets: $25, eventbrite.com ($30 day of show)

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.