Category: Nightlife

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.

Jon Pousette-Dart plays intimate Rex show

As he walked into Quadrafonic Sound Studio to begin his band’s first album in 1972, Jon Pousette-Dart heard the strains of another session. Curious, he looked in to find Dobie Gray finishing up his classic single “Drift Away,” with a stunning group of players behind him.

Awestruck, Pousette-Dart made a mental promise in that moment to someday record with them himself.

Four decades and change later, it happened. His solo album Talk gathered together guitarist Reggie Young, who plucked the delicate chords on Gray’s song, Kenny Malone on percussion, bass player Glen Worf, and Clayton Ivey on keyboards. “All these original Muscle Shoals guys,” Pousette-Dart recalled by phone recently. “It’s got a really nice feel.”

With a roots-fueled remake of his band’s late-’70s radio hit “Amnesia” and “Invisible,” a lively rocker co-written with John Oates, Talk is also his best solo album. “The Story of My Life,” a Nathan Meckel/Blue Miller ballad that deserves to be a wedding dance standard, is another of the disc’s gems.

Alas, it’s the 21st century, where great records are born and disappear on the regular. As much as he enjoyed making Talk, Pousette-Dart wishes more people had heard the album when it came out 11 years ago. But industry economics got in the way, along with a streaming algorithm that punishes long players.

“I put a lot of work into it, and it was just typical with the way things are … it just sailed by,” he lamented. “Because the whole delivery system of records has really changed, you know?” He’s not surprised; after all, he named his 2002 album Sample This as a dare to the music business when it began to implode.

“There was an awful lot of stuff going on [at the time] that was kind of turning my stomach, so I made light of it,” he said.

So he’s adapted, releasing new music song by song. His most recent single is 2024’s “Cry No More,” with its virtual flip side, the NRBQ nugget “Only You.” His next one, “Gone,” is due soon. “It’s about the universal loss that so many people are going through right now in the world,” Pousette-Dart said.

“Gone” will have a music video, something he’s done since a film made with “Who I Am” went viral. That song, written with Dawn Young (Pousette-Dart’s wife) and singer/songwriter Jaime Kyle, addressed Young’s mother’s journey through Alzheimer’s. “That’s been in film festivals all over the world,” he said. “Because it just hits home to so many people.”

One thing he hasn’t grown weary of or cynical about is performing live. In its heyday, his eponymous band was a touring force, and since its dissolution in the 1980s Pousette-Dart has continued to play the songs that inhabited Boston radio and points beyond, like “Harder,” “What Can I Say” and “There’s Been a Mistake.”

At an upcoming show in Manchester he’ll be joined by longtime accompanist Jim Chapdelaine, who has an interesting backstory of his own. A true multi-hyphenate, Chapdelaine is an Emmy-winning composer and a producer. He’s worked with Paula Cole and Delbert McClinton, and mastered projects for Clarence Clemons with Bruce Springsteen.

They met at the Harvard Coop record store in Cambridge when both were starting out; Chapdelaine worked there, and Pousette-Dart had a deal with the store’s record buyer to trade in his used albums for new ones (side note: absolutely no one called them “vinyls” back then).

“He started a band called Mr. Right and got signed to Epic, so we were bouncing around at the same time,” Pousette-Dart recalled. “We reconnected many years later when he was playing with a friend of mine at a function. I really liked him, so I asked if he wanted to come out with the band … that’s how it started.”

Twenty-five years on, they have an easy rapport as they glide through Pousette-Dart’s catalog in a format that delights them both.

“You’re taking the songs back to where they begin … it always starts with an intimate, voice guitar setting, and that’s when you really know you have a song or you don’t,” Pousette-Dart said. “You can’t produce something into being a good song … it’s got to have it from the heart and soul.”

Jon Pousette-Dart Duo
When: Friday, June 5, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $40, palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Nashville story has a New Hampshire ending

Amanda McCarthy is back in New Hampshire, after living and working in Nashville for the past several years. The singer-songwriter is still following her dream of music success, but she’s returning with a clearer sense of purpose, along with something she found harder to hold onto in Music City: joy.

“I’ve just been very disenchanted by Nashville,” she said by phone recently, while packing up her husband’s and daughter’s things and readying for final shows there in mid-May. After a Kentucky date on the return drive, her first Granite State gig is May 27 at Fratello’s Italian Grille in Manchester.

McCarthy said she began thinking about coming home after a harrowing moment about three years into her stay in the city. A tornado tore through her neighborhood, leveling nearly every building around her. Miraculously, her apartment was barely touched. However, she was shaken.

A 17-year-old boy was pulled from a unit that McCarthy originally was scheduled to occupy herself. That fact haunted her.

“I kind of had an existential crisis,” she recalled. “I just started thinking … music is fun, but what really matters? When I’m 80, what do I want to matter to me?”

Along with missing the ocean and the mountains, she desired the freedom to be herself and stop worrying about industry expectations. Another factor was her daughter, now in grade school. “Tennessee education is going downhill,” she said. “Opening that door allowed me to be honest with myself about myself as well.”

Still, McCarthy is clear-eyed about Nashville’s upside. Her second album, Looking for the Light, is evidence of that. The sophomore effort is a confident, layered collection of songs that swings from Nashville-flavored rockers to personal and confessional songs.

A through line from her debut LP Road Trip is both clear, and deliberate. The first record was about escaping challenges in her home town. Life ultimately worked out in Nashville, but she realized, “I can’t go back to New Hampshire until I can tackle the things I ran away from up there.”

The move, McCarthy concedes almost grudgingly, was a success. She credits the city with sharpening her craft in ways that wouldn’t have happened anywhere else.

“Even the bad parts really helped me,” she said. The relentless pace of Nashville’s live circuit, with longer sets, fewer breaks and lower pay, built a stamina she now takes for granted.

“Now, when I go home and I do a three-hour show with breaks, it’s really easy,” she explained. “I’ve always compared singing longer gigs to running. You don’t run 3 miles overnight. You start with a half mile and work your way up.”

After Fratello’s, she’s at Washington General Store for its music series May 28, and Exeter Brewing on May 30.

Her craft also evolved. Collaborating with a bevy of talented songwriters, she absorbed new techniques — sometimes at the expense of her own voice.

“At one point, I was writing with other people so much, I almost forgot to write by myself,” she said. “So I took a step back … to get back in touch with that part of me.”

When she’s back home, McCarthy is eager to rediscover something Nashville’s music economy had slowly drained out of her performing life — the simple pleasure of making people happy. She’s also eager to leave behind the Nashville norm of demanding twenty bucks to play a song request.

“At home I would just take everyone’s request and they’d probably tip me $20 or more anyway,” she said. “It really took out the joy of performing. I love making money from music, but I want it to be natural, not forced.” She didn’t comment on whether her policy applied to playing “Free Bird” or “Mustang Sally.”

Regarding whether Nashville was worth it, and if she accomplished what she set out to do, McCarthy offered an answer that reflected the work she’s done on herself.

“A lot of my obsession around trying to be famous… was from wanting to prove people wrong,” she said. “Through a mix of therapy and reassessing … it’s like none of that matters.”

What does matter, she concluded, “is what I’ve accomplished.” McCarthy is returning to where she began having bought a home with money she made as a musician. Beyond that, she’s written songs that hold up, that are true to who she is. “I do feel like I should be proud of myself for that.”

Amanda McCarthy
When: Thursday, May 28, 6 p.m.
Where: Washington General Store, 29 Main St., Washington
More: Full show schedule, including a June 3 gig at Homestead Restaurant in Merrimack, at amandamccarthy.com

Featured photo: Amanda McCarthy. Photo credit: Phil Silverberg