Category: Nightlife

Hayley Jane Band grooves into town

As the Hayley Jane Band’s third show of a tour-opening weekend began in Delaware in late March, the group played their leader to the microphone, and she began “Daydream,” a perfect choice. The singer danced dervish-like while belting out lyrics with celebratory verve, lost in a moment of ecstasy.

This happens every performance, dating back to when she fronted Hayley Jane & the Primates, a band born in her days at Berklee College of Music. She hypnotically sways, twists, throws her long hair to the sky, then grooves to the microphone, channeling rock and soul standard bearers like Janis Joplin and Lydia Pense.

“In these moments, I’m awash in pure unadulterated joy,” she wrote in February 2025. “Letting the music flow through me. Nothing can touch me when I’m in that enveloping womb of frequency. I couldn’t care less what it looks like to anyone. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

Hayley Jane and her current lineup of guitarist Jackson Bower, keyboard player Parker McQueeney and the combo of Sam Lyons and Tom Gladstone on drums and bass return to Shaskeen Pub on April 11 for a show with Espejismo Band opening. It’s a hometown gig for Hayley Jane, who moved to nearby Litchfield a couple of years ago.

Their most recent album is 2021’s Late Bloom, and the single “One More Day” arrived in late 2024, but there’s new music on the way. “The first song we put together is called ‘Origami Ghost,’” Hayley Jane said. I got to paint this beautiful picture over this awesome funk song … there’s a lot of funk.”

She described another new one called “Hope” as big and anthemic. “It’s got a late 2000s emo, Dashboard Confessional vibe,” she said. “I don’t know how to explain it because I’ve never been good at describing genre. I should take a music history class or something.”

Or probably not. The charm with her music, both in the Primates and in her new band, is it’s a moving target.

“I love rock ’n’ roll, I love exploratory jams, I love letting the boys cut loose,” she said. “I love storytelling, old blues, Taj Mahal and I love drama. So I don’t know how to talk about genre, because that’s not where I’m coming from.”

When Hayley Jane and the Primates reunited for the 2022 Northlands Festival, it was a one-off show.

“We’ve all got lives and babies, everybody’s in their 40s now,” she said. “They were kind of like, ‘Hey, we’re not really looking to tour,’ and I said, ‘That’s fine.’ So I found some guys that were really looking to get out there.”

The Hayley Jane Band will return to this year’s Northlands Festival at the Cheshire Fairgrounds in Swanzey June 19 to June 21. They’re also at another familiar gathering, Strange Creek Campout in rural Greenfield, Mass., May 22 to May 25. Fans will hear some older material originally meant for her old band, due to appear on an upcoming record by her new one.

“Justin Hancock of the Primates was my co-writer for years; I didn’t want these songs to disappear, so it makes me really happy that they’re going to be going on this album,” she said. “I’ve been touring with this band now for two years, and so we’re finally getting into that comfort zone.”

At one point while she was swaying, shouting and singing her way through “Daydream” that Sunday in Delaware, Hayley Jane quoted a line from the Monkees hit “Daydream Believer.” It was a fitting nod to a time in music for which she has a clear affinity. When compared to a dancer at a tie-dyed Grateful Dead concert, she took the compliment with glee.

“I carry that spirit and the energy of the ’60s and ’70s,” she said. “It’s in me, just embedded. My parents listened to the music, like my dad was really into CCR and Janis [and] that whole time always called to me. I always feel like maybe in a past life I was there.”

Hayley Jane Band
When: Saturday, April 11, at 9 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $15 at ticketleap.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Jon Butcher and Diane Blue join together at Tupelo

Collaborations make the rock and blues world go ’round. Like Shades of Blue, led by psychedelic guitar hero Jon Butcher and singer Diane Blue, also a talented harmonica player. The band includes a rhythm section of AJ Vallee and John Ryder on drums and bass, along with guitarist Chuck Farrell.

Farrell, the force behind revival band Once An Outlaw, made the group happen.

“He put together a combo and said, ‘I’d like to have you and Jon Butcher featured in front,’” Blue recalled recently. “The first time we performed together, it was undeniable chemistry on stage. We were like, ‘We should make this a thing.’ Now it’s a thing.”

There is inspiring give and take between the fiery Stratocaster playing of Butcher, a New England Music Hall of Fame inductee, and Blue’s soulful singing. The two move between blues rockers like “Born Under A Bad Sign,” Bill Withers’ soulful “Use Me” and a blistering rendition of Hendrix’s “Red House.”

Another set highlight is a revved-up duet of the ’60s nugget (later a Grand Funk hit) “Some Kind of Wonderful.” Butcher will use the song to introduce Blue on harmonica and ask her how she learned to play it. “Nothin’ to it, you just suck and blow,” she’ll reply with a laugh, adding, “that’s what an old blues man told me, anyway.”

The real story about that goes back to Blue’s beginnings as a performer, singing in her living room with guitar player Paul White and later cutting her professional teeth in Newport, Rhode Island, venues like the Blues Café. She took up the mouth harp at White’s behest.

“‘Honk on this and see what you can do,’” she recalled White telling her. “‘Because there are a lot of chicks who can sing, but you’ll differentiate yourself from the crowd if you have something special that you can offer … see if you can get good at it.’ So I tried, and I just kept trying. I’m still trying.”

Blue got a big boost when Ronnie Earl caught her in a coffee shop in the early 2010s and invited her to sit in at his shows. In 2014 she became the first female member of the Boston blues legend’s band.

“What struck me was her ability to sing anything, from Sam Cooke to blues,” Earl said in a 2025 Blues Blast story. “She has a natural voice, a beautiful voice.”

She’s still with them, but performing with Shades of Blue is different.

“My job is to sing and to make sure that he’s OK on stage,” she said of Earl. “John Butcher and I have a mutual respect; we egg each other on to really strut our stuff. This is a chance for me to shine with a very strong backing band and all the encouragement to be the star of the show.”

Some of Blue’s solo cuts are in the set, like a rocking cover of Carol Fran’s Louisiana jump blues nugget “Knock Knock,” from her 2019 LP Look For The Light. The high points, however, happen when Butcher and Blue trade off. Bo Diddley’s “Mona” and “Spider In My Web,” a growling blues song written by Alvin Lee of Ten Years After, are good examples.

After doing just a few shows last year, Shades of Blue’s calendar is filling. A Tupelo Music Hall show on April 4 will be a twofer, with high-kicking harp player and singer James Montgomery sharing a band.

“James and I have co-billed on some of these Chuck Farrell productions in the past,” Blue said. “What usually happens is I do a set, and then he’ll do one.”

Shades of Blue w/ special guest James Montgomery
When: Saturday, April 4, at 8 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $45 at tupelohall.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Rocking up a staid stringed instrument

According to common wisdom, one way to deal with stage fright is to imagine the audience is naked. But what if they’re in the buff already? That’s what cellist Rebecca Roudman and her bandmates in Dirty Cello were thinking when they played at a nudist resort a few years back.

The Northern California quartet has toured the world with a revved-up brand of rock, blues and bluegrass that’s driven by Roudman’s cellist talents. Songs like “Dream On” by Aerosmith and AC/DC’s “Long Way to the Top” are transformed into grassified booty-shakers, and their originals are also stellar.

Luckily for the naked crowd that day, Roudman was the opposite of shy, as she worked her carbon fiber cello like Hendrix on a Strat. Nonetheless, guitarist Jason Eckl, who’s also Roudman’s husband, recalled in a recent Zoom interview with the couple that the gig was still a bit distracting.

“We’re playing our groovy music and people are dancing, which is funny,” he said. “Then all of a sudden without thinking about it I call out a very fast bluegrass song, and the dancing just kicks into high gear. The hula hoops are coming out, and Rebecca’s giggling through the whole thing.”

The gig was one of the few available during the social distancing days of the pandemic, but it put Dirty Cello on a special speed-dial list.

“We keep getting hired to go play at naked people places,” Eckl said. “But we always like to say we keep our clothes on.”

Roudman had a lifetime playing classical music in symphony orchestras when she decided to push the cello’s boundaries.

“I wanted to let my hair down, do something else,” she said. “I’d started performing with a blues band, and one day they asked me to solo and improvise on the blues. I didn’t know how, and I realized this is a skill that I wanted to learn.”

While her cello-playing stays front and center, Roudman has a powerful voice, one reason why Dirty Cello convincingly rocks songs like Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” But she never planned on being a singer, and deflected a compliment that compared her vocal style to Heart’s Ann Wilson.

“I always consider myself just a cellist but thank you very much,” she said, explaining that the band hired a singer or two, but none of them could keep up. “Jason encouraged me. He said, ‘Look, you can sing, you should sing with the band.’ I was very stubborn, but after a while I was like, ‘OK, well I guess I’ve got to do it.’ … Now I’m very comfortable.”

Beginning with the 2018 release By Request, Dirty Cello has made five albums; the latest, By the Seat of Our Pants, came out in late February. Cello-fied covers include a version of “Sympathy for the Devil” with a female Lucifer, Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine,” and “Run Through the Jungle,” a Creedence Clearwater Revival deep cut.

They balance the record out nicely with solid songs of their own. Despite its title, “Go Slow” moves along at a heady clip, while “Feelin’ Frisky in Frisco” is a nod to the band’s home base. “Further Down the Road” closes out the album. A blues rocker that also ends many of their shows, it’s a barn-burner.

Though cellists like Rushan Eggleston and Ben Sollee have redefined the instrument in the recent past, Roudman didn’t look to them for cues when pivoting from classical to more raucous, rousing music. “I wanted to be completely different,” she said.

With Dirty Cello, Roudman decided to “focus more on rock and blues, and maybe throw in some bluegrass and Americana … be the Swiss Army knife of cello-playing. So when people come to our shows, they’re going to hear a whole bunch of stuff reimagined on the cello. We wanted to stand out and be unique, and it’s been working for us.”

Dirty Cello
When: Sunday, March 29, at 3 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $34 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Dirty Cello. Courtesy photo.

James Fernando Trio swings into Concord

Piano player James Fernando believes improvisational jazz is a conversation between musicians that begins before the first note is played. Parameters are established, relationships understood. It’s similar to two friends meeting for coffee — there’s no agenda, but they both know their talk will be more genial than a chat about the financial markets.

“I think improvisation is misunderstood, largely by people who aren’t really in the jazz world,” Fernando said in a recent phone interview. “They think there’s nothing to it because they’re just making it up as they go along, and that’s true, to an extent … but you know who you’re talking to.”

Chord changes, an established tempo and a song’s key are among the elements that provide a jumping-off point, he continued.

“The melody that we played before we begin the improvisation is the same, and all of these contextual elements make it so you’re not just starting from absolutely nothing,” he said. “There’s a lot of information surrounding it, and that makes your decision-making a little bit easier.”

Even so, one of Fernando’s most memorable shows was performed with musicians that he barely knew.

For years the pianist had wanted to start a dedicated jazz trio. Many of his favorite pianists had led their own trios, and the piano-bass-drums format is an enduring configuration in jazz. Though he’d performed with trios many times, he’d never built one of his own.

The chance came in late 2023, with an invitation to play at the Kennedy Center.

“I was asked on very short notice,” he said. “I think some Irish band had their head person get Covid or something like that … obviously, very unfortunate for them, but it was a nice opportunity for us.”

Though long based in Washington, D.C., Fernando had relocated to Philadelphia when he got the call. So he decided to kickstart the project with musicians from his new hometown.

“I called some strangers, really,” he said. “I even met the drummer on stage at the Kennedy Center that same evening.”

The show was a solid success.

“We got a nice recording and video of us at the Kennedy Center, which was very useful in booking more shows,” he said. “I was able to leverage those videos into more performances, and it went so well that I kept working with the same guys … and the rest is history.”

Earlier this year, the trio released Philly 3. Their first album together consists of eight Fernando compositions and a cover of Erroll Garner, one of his key influences.

“I composed with this band in mind, playing to their strengths,” he said, “We performed and rehearsed and kind of developed the music through live performances.”

The disc reflects Fernando’s desire to make music that’s both sophisticated and swinging, playful yet meticulous. He’s aiming for a sound that, as he told an interviewer a while back, “couldn’t have been written by just anyone with a jazz degree, and certainly not by an algorithm.”

On March 21, the James Fernando Trio will perform a fundraiser for Concord Community Music School. It’s his second visit — he did a set at the Bach’s Lunch series last April. The school, he said, “is a well-rounded beacon for music [that’s] very clearly open to people coming and expressing themselves and learning the ways that they’re most passionate about.”

In addition to performing, Fernando has taught classes for several years at D.C.-based Levine Music. He’s a frequent guest instructor, recently hosting a workshop at an Arizona high school, and he’s at UNC Pembroke for a similar event ahead of his stop in New Hampshire.

“So I’ve gotten the chance to see a lot of different programs and see the energy around the schools and whatnot,” he said. “And Concord Community Music School seems absolutely lovely.”

CCMS Jazz Night Fundraiser w/ James Fernando Trio
When: Saturday, March 21, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Concord Community Music School Recital Hall, 23 Wall St., Concord
Tickets: $80 and up includes reception, call 228-1196

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Nebraska singer-songwriter performs area show

When the time comes for career growth, most musicians from small towns move to an industry hub like Nashville or L.A., but Andrea von Kampen, who plays March 14 at The Word Barn, hardly considered it. And while she had a label deal for a while, she’s more than content to now be back in the ranks of the independents.

Born and raised in Nebraska, von Kampen makes music that is lyrically sharp, sonically ethereal, and informed by place. The latter, she believes, isn’t intentional.

“I only feel the difference when I’m with people from the major cities,” she said in a recent phone interview. “In my day-to-day, I don’t feel like it’s influencing me at all.”

The internet is one reason she stays in the heartland.

“I started to make music in the era of Spotify, so it all felt very globalized,” she said. “I was making a pretty good livelihood before I even talked to a label, and I was able to connect with artists from all over the world digitally. So it never even really occurred to me that I’d have to move.”

Family is another, perhaps more important factor.

“My brother’s a composer; he’s a huge influence on the process of our records, and he’s got a great recording setup,” she said. “So … I can make records here, I can put them out, they can be listened to by people all over the world, and I can make an income.”

Her voice has been called “soulful and worn in,” with a hymn-like quality that can be traced to her German Lutheran roots. At times, it sounds effortless. “Singing is like breathing,” she said in a 2024 interview. “I think about my voice like a wind instrument. I’m breathing through it and creating sound and I don’t want anything to obstruct the pure sound coming out.”

Hearing Paul Simon’s album Hearts and Bones at 9 years old left an indelible impression on von Kampen; she often plays the title track in concert. Later, her influences included Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James and other jazz singers: “In high school, I really got into Laura Marling and now it’s a whole bunch of different people in my genre.”

Current artists she enjoys include singer Rita Payés. “I absolutely love bossa nova kind of quiet Spanish guitar settings,” she said, and she also approves of the NFL’s Super Bowl halftime entertainment. “I’m obsessed with what Bad Bunny is doing … I think my inspiration now is very wide and broad.”

The three-song EP Before I Buy a Gun is von Kampen’s latest release, an agonized response to the last election. The title song closing out the record has a sense of hope, though. “I will find a better way,” she sings. “Before I buy a gun, I’ll get to know my neighbor; it’s a fragile thread that holds us all fraying at the seams.”

A gathering feeling of powerlessness compelled her to begin writing songs in the cold Nebraska winter.

“I sort of did the only thing I could do, which was make music,” she explained. “That can feel sort of silly at times, but it’s easy to think you’re not making a difference unless you’re really doing something.”

Sister Moon, her last full-length album, was released in March 2024. Inspired by Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory, it’s a meditation on the environment. “It’s all about trees, deforestation and humans’ impact on the earth,” she said, “and this big time crunch we have to get this figured out in some sort of way or it’s going to be too late.”

At her Word Barn concert, von Kampen will perform with her trio, which includes Jessican Hanson, a violinist influenced by Andrew Bird and Kishi Bashi. “She’s been touring with me forever,” she said. Jonah Bennet, an upright bass player who’s appeared on several of her recordings, rounds out the group.

Following that, she’ll fly to the U.K. for her first headlining tour there, then return to write songs inspired by This Blessed Earth, Ted Genoways’ book about living on a family farm.

“I’d like to do a concept album into a stage production, but I know that’s a very long process,” she said. “That’ll be the next big project that I dive into, I think.”

Andrea von Kampen
When: Saturday, March 14, 7 p.m.
Where: The Word Barn, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter
Tickets: $25 at thewordbarn.com

Featured photo: Andrea von Kampen. Courtesy photo.

Three standups bring the funny to Barley House

There are laughs aplenty this weekend at a Concord restaurant/bar, as the Headliners franchise brings three comics to its downstairs function room: Jody Sloane, Dave Decker and Mystaru. Comedy shows are a bimonthly staple these days at The Barley House, across from the Statehouse on North Main Street.

Sloane’s entry into comedy began when she enlisted in the Coast Guard mistakenly believing it had amphibious vehicles. Upon discharge, she got a job as a Duck Tour driver in Boston. Tourists loved her humorous banter, and urged her to try standup. Though her first set was wrecked by a few of her Southie pals who were drunk, it’s been a great run since.

Decker is a 17-year veteran of the New England comedy scene and also performs in New York City clubs. He’s known for bringing “a distinct point of view to the stage in a way that both engages and charms audiences” and is a Headliners regular.

Mystaru is the performing name of Hampton comic Shawn Ruiz. It started as his rap name — he did that for a decade or so starting in the early 1990s. He’s also an actor who’s appeared on the true crime series Fatal Family Feuds a dozen times and is cast for a similar upcoming show on Oxygen TV called Accident, Suicide or Murder?

Comedy is a newer development for Mystaru — though he always wanted to do it.

“I wasn’t going to try to be a rapper in my forties, so I needed a way to get back on stage,” he said by phone recently. “I figured I’d start writing.” So he enrolled in Tony V’s 24-week standup comedy course at Boston’s Laugh University.

The school boasts that it can get a five-minute set from almost anyone, but Tony V kept it real in the classroom.

“You can come here every day for the rest of your life, but I can’t make you funny,” Mystaru recalled him saying. “I can make you write better jokes and teach you what you’re supposed to do on stage, but once you’re up there it’s up to you.”

An initial class of 165 winnowed down to three still doing comedy three years later, among them Mystaru. Since then his success has grown to include a couple of appearances at Jim McCue’s Boston Comedy Festival, where both times he was chosen from more than 700 comic hopefuls.

He admires comics like Brian Regan and Jim Gaffigan. Like both, he works clean, and quite well. There’s a TikTok reel of him entertaining a church audience that’s worth checking out. The skill makes him a good Headliners fit, where shows can happen just about anywhere there’s a stage, in front of widely varied audiences.

That includes campgrounds. Mystaru remembers the first time he performed at one, a year or two ago. His good friend and fellow comic Matt Barry was there to watch.

“He went and got a beer because he’s like, ‘This is gonna be a spectacle,’” he recalled. “He was 100 percent right.”

He performed on a pavilion to 50 mostly empty chairs.

“For about 12 people under 16 whose parents just made them get out of the pool or off the beach,” he said. “The parents all sat along the outside, drinking in their golf carts. So I’m performing to 48 empty seats and a bunch of 12-year-olds that want to go back in the pool.”

The experience was among those that made him stop fearing playing to large audiences.

“You’re thinking that you don’t want to bomb in front of a big crowd, then as you get better you realize it’s really tough to do good in front of a small crowd,” he said. “When I can get 15 or 20 people to laugh in an 80-seat room, that’s the test.”

Comedy With Jody Sloane, Dave Decker and Mystaru
When: Saturday, March 7, at 7 p.m.
Where: The Barley House, 132 N. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $20 at eventbrite.com

Featured photo: Mystaru. Courtesy photo.