Category: Nightlife

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.

Pointless Culture performs local showcase

The upcoming “Locally Sourced” show at Concord’s BNH Stage is a two-band affair. Granite Staters Pointless Culture draw from a range of influences for a sound that’s equally raucous, angsty and melodic. From Billerica, Cosmic Triumph brings full-throttled abandon to their energetic original songs.

The two groups have a history of helping each other out, Pointless Culture band members said in a recent Zoom interview. “Anytime they have a big show going on down there, they always call us,” guitarist Harrison Fantasia said. “So we make sure to call them. They go good with us, like cheese and wine.”

“We’ve played with them quite a bit,” drummer Harrison Hinman agreed. “So it was kind of a no-brainer to ask them.”

Yes, the two share a first name.

It’s something they bonded over the day Hinman walked into an Upper Valley guitar shop to buy drumsticks a few years back. Fantasia, who worked there, was strumming a tune he wrote and asked Hinman to check it out.

“You didn’t even introduce yourself, right?” Hinman said to Fantasia in the interview, who nodded in assent. “Eventually, we did. He said, ‘My name’s Harrison,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, my name’s Harrison. How can I help you?’ We didn’t know what to say. We’re like, ‘Wow, two Harrisons.’ That took us as a surprise. He played the song, and I loved it.”

The two ended up practicing together after hours in the shop — until Fantasia quit. “I’m a carpenter,” he said. “I tried working at a guitar shop and I didn’t like it, but I met this guy through it.” Sadly, they wouldn’t connect again for another two years, when he asked Hinman to support him at a festival in Acworth.

The gig went very well, as did a few jams after. In 2022 the two decided to get serious.

“We’re like, ‘We gotta make a band; I can’t believe we let that slip for two years,’” Hinman recalled. “I’d thought he didn’t like me anymore, but it’s funny — we just realized that we’re both really bad at texting people back.”

Fantasia “begged” childhood friend Ben Schultz to be lead guitarist, but it took some time for their schedules to line up.

“I couldn’t practice because I was always working at like seven o’clock at night,” Schultz said. Eventually he got a first-shift job and was able to join the band.

Guitarist Nolan Cota had played with Hinman in a “couple of failed metal bands” and really wanted to join his new one.

“I could tell he was jealous of what I was doing, and I felt bad,” Hinman said, but the multi-instrumentalist was undeterred. “Nolan was like, ‘You guys need a bass player?’”

Their first single, “Severed Ties,” came at the end of 2022, followed by “Breakfast Song,” a quirky ode to morning meal proclivities that helped raise their profile. Both were on Can’t Stand the Rain, an EP released in December 2023. Preceded by a few singles, the debut LP Better Off Dead came last summer, including the song Fantasia played in the store that day.

It’s hard to pin down Pointless Culture’s music. The playful “Little House,” from the new album, is sweet and brims with innocence, while “Warning Signs” rocks harder and comes off a bit darker, with a grungy angst, and the new “Squirrel Food” is, Fantasia said, “written from the point of view of an acorn.” Yes, the band delights in being a moving target.

“One of the biggest compliments I get at the end of the shows is people can’t compare us to anybody, and they really like what we’re doing,” Fantasia said. “It’s like classic punk and rock, but then we play a little bit of bluegrass. We play a little bit of everything. We just want to see people out having fun … come have fun with us.”

Pointless Culture w/ Cosmic Triumph
When: Friday, Feb. 27, 8 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $18 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Pointless Culture. Courtesy photo.

Get the Led Out comes to Concord

Paul Hammond has an extra ticket for Led Zeppelin’s reunion show. The caveat is that anyone looking to claim it will have to time travel. Hammond plays lead guitar in Get the Led Out, a band that outflanks other tribute acts via exacting attention to detail. One of his more memorable Zep moments, however, was as a spectator. It was a rock ’n’ roll fantasy come true.

It’s no stretch to say Zep’s one-off 2007 concert was the hardest ticket ever; 20 million fans entered a worldwide lottery to purchase a mere 18,000 seats. Hammond, however, knew someone connected to a charity run by Jimmy Page’s wife at the time, who got him in, and then some.

Prior to the show, he watched soundcheck with Queen guitarist Brian May for company, and the two enjoyed the concert from the VIP section. Also, and what explains the wayback machine requirement, Hammond had access to six additional tickets. Sadly, he couldn’t find anyone able to quickly jet to London and use them.

“I was with the top of the top rock stars, the inner circle of rock royalty,” Hammond said in a recent phone interview. He may perform the music of the gods, and convincingly, but he enjoyed the perks of one that night. “In the A100 section, with Brian May, and then three rows down in front of me was Ronnie Wood and Jeff Beck.”

Hammond also met Page backstage that night. He had another Zep-adjacent moment, courtesy of the band he co-formed in 2003 with singer Paul Sinclair, with a mission to perform note for note songs from the iconic band’s studio recordings. It came as GTLO was preparing to go on stage at Portsmouth’s Music Hall a few years back.

After a phone call, the show’s promoter informed him she’d been speaking to Robert Plant. “He asked her, ‘What band is playing tonight?’ and she said, ‘It’s Get the Led Out,’ and he says, ‘Oh, Get the Led Out, that’s a great band,’” he recalled. “He knows us! Our sound man told us he’d come to our show in Nashville.”

GTLO delivers a concert experience that’s currently rivaled only by Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening. The son of the late Zep drummer was also behind the kit in 2007 at O2 Arena. They play the iconic band’s entire catalog, almost. A few songs just don’t translate well to their arena rock show.

“Like, ‘Hats Off To (Roy) Harper’ from Led Zeppelin III is a bizarre song with the effects, and doesn’t have a lot of crowd appeal,” Hammond said. “‘Carouselambra’ from In Through the Out Door is essentially a John Paul Jones experimental record. I don’t know what Jimmy Page was up to then, maybe hanging out in the pub … but it’s a long and a weary song.”

The good news is GTLO plays everything else in their two-and-a-half-hour show, even Zeppelin’s lone B-side, “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do.” To call the band’s approach exacting is an understatement. Songs are not only transcribed precisely, but they are also true to both key and pitch, which provides a big dopamine hit for true fans.

“It brings back that memory, that sound, because intrinsically people know,” Hammond said. “Some Led Zeppelin bands, if the singer can’t hit the notes, they’ll tune a half-step down, and it just doesn’t sound the same, and the audience knows it, whether they know it or not. Because it’s just been ingrained for so many years, hearing it the way you want to hear it.”

The band grew out of a residency at Bridgeport Rib House in Pennsylvania. Zeppelin was one band they covered in a set that included Aerosmith songs, but patrons there kept asking for a Zep-centric show.

It works because Hammond and his mates revere Zeppelin as much as their audience, and deliver accordingly.

“Basically, we want to give people all the stuff that they know and love,” Hammond said. “When we go into deep cuts, they’re deep cuts that people also would know, that true die-hard Zeppelin fans would be like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe they did ‘In The Light’ or we’ve delved as deep as ‘Sick Again.’”

Get the Led Out
When: Saturday, Feb. 21, at 8 p.m.
Where: Capitol Center for the Arts, Chubb Theatre, 44 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $45 and up at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Livery welcomes Christine Tassan et les Imposteures

With an infectious blend of swing music and jazz created by guitar innovator Django Reinhardt, Christine Tassan et les Imposteures formed in Montreal in 2003. It was a time when Reinhardt’s style of jazz had few adherents in the French-Canadian city. That none were Manouche like Reinhardt helped explain the band’s name.

There were other reasons for the moniker. Mainly, that Tassan is a woman in a male-dominated genre, and the original Imposteures were all female. “So we felt a little bit like impostors in that very man thing,” she said in a recent Zoom interview. “Also, we come from different backgrounds.”

That final one’s the rub. Tassan and her band draw from the Django canon but add elements all their own.

“We like to incorporate folk songs,” she said. “Martine, my violinist, comes from a classical background and a lot of traditional Quebecois music. So there’s that influence coming in our compositions and shows. Kind of an impostor, you know?”

Such a melting pot is reflected in the title track from their latest album, Sur la route, which translates to On the Road.

“It has the accents of Jack Kerouac, the chords of Willie Nelson and the fingers of Django Reinhardt,” Tassan told the crowd at last year’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven.

The through line is music that, as Steve Martin once said of the banjo, easily inspires a smile, with Tassan’s playful stage presence taking it home.

“We bring a lot of humor in it,” Tassan said. “When we talk to people in between songs, there’s some kind of participation.”

That an all-acoustic genre also inspires infectious toe-tapping can be traced back to Reinhardt, she continued. “Django heard swing music coming from the States, and Louis Armstrong; they were his main influences … for sure, that’s something that is really lively.”

French-born, Tassan came to Canada not for music, but as an electrical engineering exchange student in the final year of her studies. “A friend of mine was coming to Montreal, so I followed her,” she said. “I stayed one year and really enjoyed the city, and the country. I decided to migrate.”

Music came next. Tassan dabbled in a variety of idioms, beginning with classical.

“Then I did a lot of … more like folk songs, writing and singing my own compositions,” she recalled. In 1998 she discovered some of Django’s CDs and the die was cast. “I was totally blown away.”

Tassan began to transcribe and practice Reinhardt’s solos with a small group of fellow acolytes, later launching her own band.

“From then I saw that there was really something happening with that music, we were really having some success,” she said. “So it started from there and never stopped.”

The Imposteurs lineup has changed over the years, but the one constant is violinist Martine Gaumond. “She’s been with me nearly since the beginning,” Tassan said. “We do a lot of arrangements together, and we are the heart, I would say, of the band. She plays the violin beautifully, and she writes all the little vocal harmonies we sing.”

The current lineup is rounded out by upright bass player Mathieu Gagné and his longtime compatriot, guitar player Francis Tetu, who brings a unique approach to their music. “Not exactly a traditional way … but he is a very, very virtuoso guitarist,” Tassan said.” Both joined in early January.

After playing at Wolfeboro’s Friends of Music to start February, Tassan and her band will perform at Sunapee’s Livery to follow a sit-down Valentine’s Day dinner. It’s Tassan’s first show at the historic venue. After, they’ll head home.

“We’ve been playing several times in New Hampshire, it’s fun,” she said. “It’s a beautiful place.”

Christine Tassan et les Imposteures – Dinner & Show
When: Saturday, Feb. 14, at 5:30 p.m.
Where: The Livery, 58 Main St., Sunapee Harbor
Tickets: $50 at thelivery.org

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Jazz guitar accompanies art opening

Art and music go together like chardonnay and a fine brie. The pairing of jazz guitarist David Newsam with an exhibition by a group of regional painters opening Feb. 7 promises to be equally satisfying. Explore, Express: Painting with Purpose offers works from a New England College class led by Bedford artist Patrick McKay that’s met for the past 15 years.

“Someone like David is ideally suited for this kind of thing,” Rick Lugg, Exhibition Chair at Two Villages Art Society, said recently. “We’re trying to generate traffic, so we want a lot of people in there, and we want something that at least loosely complements the theme or the work of the show.”

Newsam has performed at Two Villages openings before. In a phone interview from his home in Raymond, he said he’ll play jazz standards and American Songbook selections this time.

“In the past, I’ve done a lot of open, free improvisation,” he said, adding, “I feel that a really important element is to try to shape the music to match the vibe of the artists.”

He’ll play solo on acoustic and electric guitar, eschewing the pedals, loops and other sound-scaping tools other musicians often use to augment their sound.

“I think it’s much more of a challenge to be able to do it all live without any kind of effects,” he said, pointing to guitarist Tommy Emmanuel’s approach as an ideal.

“He can present and portray an entire band just by himself, with the mechanics of the instrument,” Newsam explained. “I heard him answer this question once at a clinic, and he just said, ‘I hear the bass, I hear the piano, I hear the vocals, and I just try to play it all.’”

Born in Connecticut, Newsam attended Berklee College of Music and returned later to teach. He also taught at Dartmouth College and at UNH, where he founded their jazz guitar program.

“I always joked that at Berklee I was one of 50 guitar faculty, and at UNH I was the entire guitar program,” he said.

In high school Newsam listened to Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, and guitar-based bands like the Allman Brothers; then he found jazz at Berklee. During his senior year he spent a lot of time in Hyannis, Mass., while taking care of his grandfather and got even deeper into the genre.

“Cape Cod was really a hotbed of amazing jazz players like Dave McKenna, the pianist, and Lou Colombo, the trumpet player,” he said. “I mean, these were some of the best players in the world, and they all were based in Cape Cod, so I had a ton of opportunities.”

Newsam continues to teach at Berklee and perform as well as occasionally record music. He and sax player Bobby Tynes recently released an instrumental EP, Kindred Souls. It includes a lively rendition of “Fishin’ Hole,” the theme song from 1960s sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, and a scintillating version of “The Very Thought of You.”

The two became friends in 1983.

“I had an opportunity to play a summer job, so I moved up to the Lake Winnipesaukee region,” he said. “Bobby’s uncle had a cabin. We met at a jam session and we’ve been playing music ever since … partners in crime for over four decades.”

The record is their first together. “It’s a collection of things we either did in the studio or did live that Bobby took into his recording studio,” Newsam said. “Some of the recordings are probably 20 years old…. It’s not like we went in as a project and recorded all that in one day.”

The five-track effort is available on streaming services for now.

“It’s really been fun listening to that, reminiscing about the music that we’ve played,” Newsam said. “We really are kindred souls. We don’t play for two or three months and when we get together it feels like we’ve been playing every day. It’s just that kind of relationship.”

Opening reception with guitarist David Newsam
When: Saturday, Feb. 7, noon
Where: Two Villages Art Society, 846 Main St., Contoocook
More: twovillagesart.org

Featured photo: David Newsam. Courtesy photo.