Category: Nightlife

David Wilcox performs in Manchester

A lot of David Wilcox’s fans consider him a musical minister, his songs providing spiritual grounding as they rhyme and dance.

“If I feel hollow, that’s just proof there’s more for me to follow,” he offers simply in “That’s What the Lonely Is For,” a touchstone track from his mid-’90s gem, Big Horizon.

A fitting way to describe Wilcox’s approach to songwriting is “Language of the Heart,” also a song title from his major label debut, How Did You Find Me Here? In a recent phone interview, he likened his craft to bailing water from a boat. “Because the alternative is death,” he said. “It is purely self-preservation.”

Even if the world isn’t clamoring for another song, “What I need is to check in with my heart so that I stay current with my grieving and it doesn’t build up a backlog or break the dam,” he continued. “It’s a fun excuse; I pretend I’m being an artist, but really I’m just tending to my emotional buoyancy.”

In 2016, Wilcox began helping his fans process their emotions through his music via a bespoke song service. “I’ve kind of applied my songwriting talents to other people’s hearts and stories … that’s a fascinating thing for me,” he said. “I’ve done more than 70 of these custom songs now, and they’re all so specific and unique.”

The process begins with Wilcox spending an hour on the phone talking to a prospect, who is usually looking for a unique gift.

“To see if I can get to the heart of the song, I ask quirky questions, like, ‘What are some things on your shelf that have a story that would really take a while to tell?’ or, ‘What’s a thing you’d reach for if the house was on fire?’”

Testimonials to Wilcox’s Custom Built Songs fill the service’s web page.

“David has a keen ability to take a conversation and turn it into art,” said a customer named Bob, who surprised his wife on their 17th wedding anniversary with a Wilcox-penned ode to the rainforest. “He listened to our story and turned it into a beautiful song that we will enjoy for the rest of our lives.”

Writing in response to stories he’s heard is how, as a young introvert, Wilcox began his musical journey. “Someone would say something to me, and it would take me a day of sort of gathering my answer musically. Then I would come back, and I would sing them a song that showed I was listening. I did feel what you were saying.”

The spirituality in his music is the product of a wide open and still ongoing search for meaning, and words to express it.

“What I got growing up was a mystical sense that life is more interesting than it appears,” he said. “I was trying to find language for that because I was raised with no tradition at all. And that was a great way to come up, because I got my mystical sense first before I had any dogma or any stories.”

It’s not rooted in any specific dogma or belief system.

“I speak a lot of languages spiritually, and I am comfortable in a lot of settings. If people saw me coming out of some buildings, they’d say, ‘What the hell are you doing in there?’ I have prayed at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem,” he said, adding, “The fact that three religions landed in the same city on the same rock, I don’t consider that an accident. I consider that divine comedy.”

Wilcox has made 18 studio albums, starting with the independently released The Nightshift Watchman in 1987. His latest is 2023’s My Good Friends. His creative process is a blend of self-therapy and mysticism. “I call it metabolizing old pain. You take it apart and find that it’s made of discomfort, but mostly it’s … yearning, which has a sacredness. [It] comes from an assumption that life should be better, that you’re basing on … nothing but just faith.”

David Wilcox
When: Friday, April 25, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Dana Center, Saint Anselm College, Manchester
Tickets: $45 at anselm.edu

Featured photo. David Wilcox. Photo by Lynne Harty.

Brewery concert series welcomes folk duo Hildaland

By Michael Witthaus

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A wry and oft-repeated maxim at Berklee College of Music is that booking so many gigs that there’s no time for class is a worthy goal, even if it means not graduating. That was fiddler Louise Bichan’s plan when she arrived from Scotland in the mid-2010s, but the connections she made at the Boston school changed her mind.

“I was playing in a band that were kind of doing well and taking off back home when I left for Berklee and I planned to go back and rejoin after a year,” she said in a recent Zoom chat. “It didn’t work out that way; there were so many great people to learn from and to play with … there was so much I wanted to get out of it. So I ended up staying.”

One of the musicians Bichan met was mandolin player Ethan Setiawan. The two became members of Corner House, a four-piece band that formed at Berklee and had their first gig at the 2017 Fresh Grass Festival in the Berkshires. In 2019, they spun off as Hildaland, taking their name from a Scottish folk tale about shape-shifting seals.

Setiawan, during the same Zoom call, said the intimacy of a duo appealed to them. “We can be more improvisational and spontaneous within the framework that we’ve created in these songs and tunes because there’s one line of communication.” A band, on the other hand? “It’s exponential.”

Bichan, a native of Scotland’s Orkney Islands, and Indiana-born Setiawan carry on a lovely musical conversation. In 2019 they recorded an EP, less a debut than an attempt at defining themselves.

“We don’t really sound much like that anymore,” Setiawan said. “It was very experimental … just kind of us playing around.”

Synthesizing those rough beginnings with a few years playing together led to Sule Skerry, an 11-song album that includes reworked traditional tunes like the lovely title track, and uplifting originals. “Silver Dollar,” Bichan’s instrumental tribute to her aunt and uncle’s 25th wedding anniversary, is a standout.

Another gem is Setiawan’s “Weezy & Vera,” with ebullient interplay between the two. There are also covers of Gillian Welch’s “Everything Is Free” and “Fall On My Knees,” a standard that’s been done by Red Clay Ramblers, The Freight Hoppers and others, along with a lush interpretation of the 19th-century Scottish love poem “Ettrick.”

“Our main inspiration comes from my Scottish roots and Ethan’s roots in old-time American and maybe a little bluegrass — and Ethan also is a great jazz musician,” Bichan said. “And the more we’ve worked up new material and played together, the more we’ve refined what our sound is.”

Innovative Celtic harpist and Berklee instructor Maeve Gilchrist was a helpful mentor early on. They worked together in the studio on Corner House’s debut LP.

“Maeve is such a complete musician; we talked about many different aspects of tune writing,” Setiawan said. “She has such a grasp of harmony, and a great sense of playing a melody.”

Hildaland will perform at Blasty Bough Brewing in Epsom on April 18, part of the ongoing Blasty Trad roots music series spearheaded by brewery head Dave Stewart. Bichan performed there a few years back with another band. Surprisingly, she learned about the local series, which began in 2018, while playing overseas.

“David’s daughter Madeline is a great fiddle player; we met in Glasgow, where I used to live,” she said. “We did a live session at BBC Radio Scotland. It was four of us, each in a corner of a big studio; we went around the room and everyone played something. That’s how we met.”

Bichan and Setiawan, who live together in Cornish, Maine, are working on an EP to follow up Sule Skerry.

“It goes back to our tune playing roots,” Setiawan said of the songs, which have developed during their live shows. “That will be coming out later this year. Then we definitely have an eye towards the next sort of full record that will have some more songs and a mix of things.”

Hildaland

When: Friday, April 18, 7 p.m.
Where: Blasty Bough Brewing Co., 3 Griffin Road, Epsom
Tickets: $30 and up at cocoatickets.com

Featured photo. Hildaland. Courtesy photo.

Friends and bandmates to perform tribute show

By Michael Witthaus

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The New England music scene suffered a huge loss last October, when Brooks Young was killed in a car accident. The guitarist, singer and songwriter was celebrating a wave of success that included tours with George Thorogood, Sammy Hagar and Three Dog Night, and shows sharing the stage with stars like Bryan Adams and B.B. King.

Young’s career was fueled equally by talent and tenacity.

“If someone called and wanted him for a good gig, he was saying yes,” Mike Liane, a bandmate of Young’s organizing a memorial show in Concord, recalled recently. “He didn’t care, and I say this in a loving way, if the group of people around him were going to be able to do it. He knew he was going to do that gig.”

Occasionally, he’d book a show and learn some members of his band had prior commitments, Liane continued. That didn’t matter; Young would put together a quick pickup group or, failing that, do the show solo. “Brooks wasn’t going to lose an opportunity for anyone … he just had this confidence and bravery. ”

Young was a genre-bending rocker who began in the blues. He met B.B. King in his late teens, after the legendary guitarist performed in Manchester on September 11, 2001. Eight years later Young’s band opened for King in Concord. Over his career Young would range into rock and pop, without losing his early inspiration, Liane recalled.

“The thing that paints an accurate picture in my mind of what he really liked to do is when we’d play ‘Hoochie Coochie Man.’ The reason I say that is because it has very true, deep blues roots, but we’d do it in a way that was muscular and a little rock … he would take all his influences and combine them into every performance.”

The April 13 event at BNH Stage is a fundraiser to benefit Young’s three children. House band performers span the Brooks Young Band’s history, including drummer Blake Wyman, a member of the group’s first incarnation. Three other drummers will be on hand as well: Adam Soucy, Rob McCarthy and Dave Lombard, who was behind the kit longest.

“Usually the hardest band member to find is a good drummer, but in this instance we’ve got four that raised their hand,” Liane said. “But outside of the drummers, the lineup’s pretty consistent. Charles Mitchell’s on bass … there’s myself and Mike Gallant on guitars, and Jeff LeRoy, who played keys with Brooks basically his entire career … a great band.”

Also performing is Charlie Farren, who contributed to Young’s second album. “They had a relationship since then, and we’re delighted that he’s going to play,” Liane said. “He’s going to do a few songs, and hopefully I can get him on stage to sing some harmony with us or something like that during the set with the Brooks Young Band.”

Also appearing are Hank Osborne, Dakota Smart and Valerie Baretto, and there will likely be additional guests.

Liane was a band member late in the game, accompanying him on Three Dog Night and George Thorogood tours from 2016 to 2020, but he’d known Young since high school. He recalls when the two enrolled in an introductory guitar class, even though both were pretty good players at that point.

“We just wanted to play guitar, but we also knew we could get a really good grade,” he recalled. “While everyone else was learning ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ he would show me a Clapton lick, and then I would show him an Angus Young lick. We did that during class.”

His old friend never lost the joy of being a musician, Liane continued, recalling another memory that happened a lot.

“Every night standing side stage, he’d put his hands on my shoulders right before we walked out and he’d look me right in the eye and he’d say, Mike, we’re going to have a good time tonight,” he said. “Every single time that he did this, and it was hundreds of times, but every single time he did this, he was excited, he had a huge smile on his face, and it’s the only place on Earth he wanted to be in that moment.”

Memorial Concert for Brooks Young

When: Sunday, April 13, 4 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $20 and up at ccanh.com
Appearing are Brooks Young Band, with Charlie Farren, Hank Osborne, Dakota Smart, Mikey G and Valerie Baretto

Featured photo. Brooks Young. Courtesy photo.

Superfrog in Dover ahead of big Concord show

By Michael Witthaus

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When Nate Proper and Shane Comer formed Superfrog in 2006, it was a trio. At the time, Comer recalled in 2010, the two high school pals hoped it would eventually become “a large, boisterous family band.” It grew into a six-piece, and while a few members came and went, for the past 15 years, the jammy Seacoast band has been a tight-knit crew.

A rhythm section of Proper and Comer on bass and drums is rounded out by Phil Poggi and Jeremy “Fuzz” Grob on guitars, vintage keyboard whiz Max Chase and percussionist Adam Vinciguerra. Poggi left after contributing to their eponymous 2014 album but returned later and is now locked in with the others.

There’s clear chemistry as the six players trade licks on the aptly named “Years,” one of four new songs the band started releasing last fall. First Grob, then Poggi crank out crackling solos, then the band ticks up the tempo to set up a heaven-sent run by Chase on his Hammond B3, as Proper, Comer and Vinciguerra keep it chugging along rhythm-wise.

Proper wrote the song, and said during a recent joint interview with Comer that “Years” was built for jamming. “We definitely can stretch that one out and do,” he said.

The three other new tunes were written by Poggi. “Battle of Blair Mountain” is about a 1921 incident in West Virginia described as the largest labor uprising in American history. “It was a bunch of coal miners going on strike and fighting Pinkertons,” Proper said. “I’m a union rep at my job, so I was all about it.”

A tune about new beginnings and grace, “Sinner” has a gospel feel, while the latest single, “Honestly,” has a solid, driving beat and is very danceable. This tunefulness is something all of Poggi’s songs share. “Phil,” observed Proper, “has been on an awesome songwriting kick lately.”

There are always a few tasty covers in shows. A Chase lead vocal makes Bill Withers’ “Kissing My Love” a real treat, and the Lionel Richie hit “All Night Long” is also wonderful. A standout and longtime set closer is “Shakedown Street,” with the Grateful Dead boogie gem augmented by a snippet of Deodata’s rock take on “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”

When time allows, work continues on a full-length album, but the focus remains on playing shows like the one upcoming at Auspicious Brew, their first at the Dover kombucha brewery. The following weekend they’ll return to Concord to share the BNH Stage at JamAntics’ JamAnnual GetDown reunion show.

The two bands have a shared history.

“We played with them first way back, I don’t even know when, and we have played with them here and there throughout the years,” Comer said. JamAntics bassist Eric Reingold agreed. “Superfrog members are longtime friends and excellent musicians,” he said.

Reingold added that after a two-year hiatus the now almost traditional regrouping gig will be extra sweet.

“I’m extremely excited to get the band back together, as I love playing with all of these guys collectively and individually,” he said; Reingold’s latest band, Up, includes JamAntics guitarist Freeland Hubbard. Regarding Superfrog, “We always love sharing the stage with our friends, and can’t wait to blow the doors off this year.”

Having multiple creative forces can sink a band, but Superfrog stays a musical democracy.

Drummer Comer believes discipline plays a big part; the group practices regularly. “I know Max will say we’re one of the most consistent, and he’s in like 80 bands these days,” he said. “We try to be … diligent, getting together once a week. It makes performing live easier when you’re just consistently trucking along.”

Summing up, Comer alluded to his early idea about the band.

“It actually goes to fundamentals,” he continued. “It’s just really knowing each other and learning how to get through those tense moments, because it is like a six-person family. It’s not always easy to navigate, but we have a lot of respect for each other and get through those moments pretty easily.”

Superfrog

When: Friday, April 4, 8 p.m.
Where: Auspicious Brew, 1 Washington St., Dover
Tickets: $12 at auspiciousbrew.com ($15 at the door)
Also at JamAntics reunion on Friday, April 11, 8 p.m., BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $21 and up at ccanh.com

Featured photo. Superfrog. Courtesy photo.

Young Dubliners return to Tupelo

In the world of classic rock, there’s a lot of love for the Young Dubliners. One reason perhaps is Keith Roberts, who co-founded the band with a fellow Irishman in the early ’90s, grew up watching Top of the Pops, and decided that home country bands like Big Country and Boomtown Rats were more interesting to him than traditional Celtic reels.

The biggest factor, though, is the number of rock stars who love them.

After Bernie Taupin watched the Young Dubs (what most fans call them) light up L.A.’s House of Blues in the late 1990s, he gifted them with the lyrics to “Red.” It became the title track of a 2000 album, one of their best. However, a certain Sir Elton almost kept that from happening.

Roberts wrote the music quickly, and Taupin loved it, Roberts recalled by phone recently. “Then right as it was recorded and ready to go, Elton suddenly tells Bernie, ‘I’m working on something for that song.’ Bernie said, ‘no you’re not, Elton. I’ve given it to the boys.’ I always joke about how I’ve never met Elton John, but I’ve [screwed] with him.”

Red was helped by a tour opening for Jethro Tull, during which Tull’s front man found ways to make every press avail about the Young Dubliners. “That album blew up massively because of Ian Anderson talking about it, and everything he did. Every interview, he would make me come in and do all the media stuff.”

They’ve toured with a bevy of bands over the years.

“We just became friends with these people,” Roberts said. “Following an appearance at the Deadwood Jam in the Black Mountain Hills of South Dakota, Ed Roland of Collective Soul recruited him for a night of partying, along with Spin Doctors lead singer Chris Barron.

“Ed said to me in his southern drawl, ‘I hear you like to drink whiskey.’ I said, ‘I’ve been known to,’ and he’s like, ‘Well, why don’t we go do that?’” They headed into the Deadwood Saloon. “The girl just kept putting bottles of Jameson on the table, and we just kept going.”

The next night, Collective Soul’s road manager asked Roberts, “‘Would it be OK if I didn’t take Ed out again?,’ because he was hurting pretty bad. I’m like, oh, crap, really? Then I’m doing it again.”

In August, they will join On the Blue, a cruise hosted by the Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward, with acts like Alan Parsons, Dave Mason, Starship with Mickey Thomas and more. This year’s cruise originates in Boston; because of the city’s Irish heritage, the Young Dubliners will play the ship away from the dock and off to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

So, more than six decades down the road, this affinity for the Young Dubs’ anthem-y Celtic rock endures. This may seem at odds with their name. However, they didn’t choose it; it chose them. Roberts moved to Southern California with hopes of becoming a rock journalist, but ended up opening a pub and starting a band instead.

“Me and Paul O’Toole, who started the band, he was from Dublin and I was from Dublin, and people would say, oh, the young lads from Dublin are playing,” Roberts recalled. “They started making backdrops from sheets that they just spray-painted Young Dubliners on.”

They never dreamed of getting a record deal, but when it happened they had to agree on the fan-bestowed moniker, which needed to be cleared by Ronnie Drew, leader of The Dubliners in Ireland and a family friend. “I had to call him and ask him, was it all right, because the label wouldn’t let me change the … name.”

They received his blessings — “Keep the faith,” he said — and later got an even more satisfying validation.

“When my dad passed away, at the funeral, they took a picture of me and my brother and Ronnie Drew,” he said,. It was printed in the local paper. “It said, ‘Old Dubliner and Young Dubliner say goodbye to Charlie.’ It was the biggest gift you could give me, because that made the Irish accept the name.”

Young Dubliners
When: Sunday, March 30, 7 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $35 and up at tupelohall.com

Featured photo. Young Dubliners. Courtesy photo.

Three Sheets host stops in Henniker

For over a decade, Zane Lamprey traveled the world and drank for a living.

His pub crawl series Three Sheets ran for four seasons starting in 2006. In 2010, Drinking Made Easy launched on Mark Cuban’s HDNet, followed by the crowd-funded Chug. Lamprey’s most recent series, Four Sheets, aired its final episode in early 2020.

Since then Lamprey has done a lot of standup comedy, primarily at places like Henniker Brewery, where his Another Round tour stops on March 22. He began playing the craft beer circuit out of necessity; clubs and theatres were slow to open after the pandemic, and he needed work. He’s now done more than 500 brewery gigs, with 10 in New England on the current run.

“I have a lot of great relationships at breweries because of the shows I’ve done, and I reached out to them,” Lamprey said by phone recently. “They loved the idea of having me come in and bring attention to their brewery, fill it with people, do a night of comedy, and so it was a very synergistic kind of thing.”

Unlike many who use stand-up to launch a television career, Lamprey took an inverse route, and after he finishes writing a memoir in progress he’ll begin a book about becoming a comedian at age 49. He says it’s all a natural progression: “I’ve always been someone, in all the shows that I’ve done, who needs to understand comedic timing and how to tell a joke.”

Through his years of imbibing across the planet, Lamprey has gathered more than enough material for multiple comedy specials. His latest, The Medium Club, premiered in January. “I’ve made a lot of poor decisions that have led to some great stories,” he said.

He’s also drunk many strange concoctions in his years, like rum aged in a bottle with a drowned snake. He once knocked back 23 shots, each containing a preserved scorpion. Later he realized that “your body is not designed to digest exoskeletons.” The shoot-and-chew experience led to an excruciating, barrel-full-of-monkeys situation.

But Lamprey has never declined a proffered glass, because entertainment.

“I always said that my job in any of the shows I’ve done was creating a water cooler moment,” he said. “Doing those shots are what people talk about. For that reason, I’m happy to do it … to take one for the team.”

Non-liquid challenges can be different, and Lamprey recalled one time he did draw the line.

“The only thing that I said no to is balut.” The popular Philippines snack is a two-thirds gestated duck egg hard boiled and served with salt and vinegar. “Basically a baby duck sitting on the yolk or the amniotic sack…. I was like, absolutely not. I tried drinking enough beers to bring myself to do it, and I couldn’t get to that place. It was too vile.”

Lamprey prefers to remember beautiful moments, like the time he rented out the Eiffel Tower for a Champagne party that wrapped as the sun was rising, or filming in Croatia a decade after their civil war. “It was very eye-opening,” he recalled. “These people weren’t war-torn and bitter because of what they went through, they were … embracing life and moving on — without forgetting about the past.”

While there, he ran into a restaurant owner singing with his friends in the street, and went in for a drink.

“We weren’t even going to shoot there … and it was one of the best experiences of my life,” Lamprey said. “But you could name any episode, and I would tell you about a moment in it that I was so grateful to be doing what I was doing.”

When Lamprey is asked why he left television, his response is that it left him.

“People every night are just like, ‘Please go back and do one of those shows again.’ I would love to.” Networks that ran his shows, like Spike, Fine Living and HDNet, are long gone, supplanted by YouTube and TikTok.

“I’ve had the privilege of being able to go and do some of the coolest things ever and be followed by a camera crew,” he said. “But the landscape of television has changed. Places where Three Sheets would have fit perfectly … no longer exist. They drop the vowels in their name, and all they do is paranormal shows.”

That said, Lamprey’s not about to stop telling jokes to crowds.

“I would actually choose the stand-up over those shows,” he said. “Which is probably why now discussions to do another TV show have resurfaced; but it would have to be perfect for me to do it.”

Zane Lamprey

When: Saturday, March 22, 8 p.m.
Where: Henniker Brewing Co., 129 Centervale Road, Henniker
Tickets: $25 and up at eventbrite.com

Featured photo. Courtesy photo.