Category: Nightlife

Slim Volume on the rise

Blending elements of alt country and harmony-rich classic rock, Slim Volume is a breath of fresh air on the local music scene. At the core of the four-piece band is the songwriting team of Trent Larrabee and Jake DeSchuiteneer, who met as coworkers at SNHU’s Manchester campus, bonded over a shared love of ’60s bands, and found their mojo at Strange Brew Tavern’s open mic night.

With the addition of Mike Morgan on guitar and, soon after, drummer Jonny Lawrence, they picked a name and began playing whatever bar, basement or party would have them, polishing their sound while writing a growing list of original songs. Their sound isn’t easily pinned down — the Jake-written “It’s Been Sweet” echoes “Take It to the Limit” from the Eagles, while Trent’s composition “Talk it Over” is a lovely slice of dream pop wrapped in Tom Petty jangle.

Ever present, however, is the pair’s lush harmonizing. This comes through in the covers they choose. A mid-February listening room show at The Livery in Sunapee included no fewer than four Beatles tunes — “The first song we learned together was ‘This Boy,’” Trent said from the stage — and “Dream” from the Everly Brothers.

Other influences include Wilco and Pavement, along with contemporaries.

“A lot of local bands inspired me the most,” Trent said in a recent phone interview. He specifically cited Evan Benoit and his band Badfellows, now called Happy Just to See You, and Great White Tourist. “Just the whole Manchester music scene from 2015 to 2017 was super influential on me because I was still living in a Beatles/Bob Dylan paradigm that I had not really broken out of yet.”

The duo’s vocal connection began with Trent teaching himself Ricky Skaggs’ “You’ve Got a Lover” and Jake deciding to come in on top of the vocal. “I remember we noticed that it worked, and Trent being like, ‘You should do more of that type of thing,’” Jake recalled. “My voice does things Jake can’t and he does things mine doesn’t really do,” Trent agreed. “They definitely complement each other in that way.”

Trent had played in a few other bands before meeting Jake, who was just starting to explore taking his interest in music to another level. Working together on Trent’s 2021 solo album Billions of Musics helped Jake’s songwriting to grow. It’s led to a collaborative process that usually starts with one or the other writing a nearly complete song and then taking it to the band for fine tuning.

“I was inspired by the fact that Trent seemed to be finishing songs [that] had something to say and were interesting from start to finish,” Jake said. “That kind of helped me to see my way toward doing more, because a lot of what I’d done at the time was just writing stuff on my own, with really no intention of any audience hearing it.”

They’ve released one EP, Staring at the Sun, and a handful of singles. They have two more finished EPs, set to drop later this year. Each represents a different side of the group, Trent said. “One is more indie rock, and the other is our indie soul folk kind of sound. So that’s going to be a great display of, I don’t want to say the polarities of our music, but the range and spectrum of what we do.”

They’re also at work on their first full-length album with, noted Trent, an embarrassment of riches facing them.

“We have so much material, it’s really become a problem,” he said. “We can keep doing singles and EPs forever, but putting 10 or 12 songs together is really more important. It’s helped us focus [and] filter songs through the lens of what’s going to be good on an album, what’s going to fit together sonically, and what’s going to be the most accessible to an audience.”

Jake agreed. “I think we’re really starting to circle the target on what our sound, Slim Volume original music sounds like,” he said. “It’s a little bit indie rock, a little bit folk rock, sometimes it’s a little pop, sometimes it’s soulful. I think the album is gonna really show in a cohesive way what that range is.”

Slim Volume
When: Saturday, March 2, 5 p.m.
Where: Twin Barns Brewing, 194 Daniel Webster Hwy., Meredith
More: slimvolumeband.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

MILF Life Crisis explores life after divorce

Life keeps handing Anne Marie Scheffler one-woman shows. In her early 30s she did Not Getting It, a sendup of the dating scene. With marriage and kids came Suddenly Mommy! Scheffler’s recent divorce produced MILF Life Crisis, which arrives at Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Feb. 24.

In the new show, Scheffler and several of her alter egos explore re-entering a social fray made even more baffling by dating apps and age. Ultimately, though, it’s a celebration of the new freedom her new life offers. Flipping the acronym to (M)others are (I)ncredible, (L)ovely and (F)antastic, a derogatory fetish term is recast as a way to see female 40-something singlehood through a hopeful lens.

“We’re gonna make it fun and sexy, we’re gonna put on our leopard print,” Scheffler said in a recent phone interview. “You guys, just don’t worry about yourself, because we’ve got it covered.” It’s a powerful response to the idea that ending a marriage at a certain age is a death sentence.

“It could be the end of the world, but what if we decide it’s not?” Scheffler continued. “What if we decide we’re like George Clooney, and we only get better with age? This is the best time to be single because your kids are out … when you’re dating and you don’t have some part of your brain that’s like, ‘must procreate, must procreate’ — that’s really freeing.”

She’s egged on by fictional friend Kendra, whose airy attitude toward relationships aligns with Sam Malone from the ’80s sitcom Cheers; “let’s just go to bed, we don’t need a relationship” is her credo. Other characters in her journey from marriage to divorce to dating are friends offering sympathy and encouragement. Even her ex-husband appears, with his identity shrouded — apparently, he knew what marrying a comedian might portend.

“In our divorce agreement,” Scheffler said, “it’s literally in the legal document that I’m not allowed to use his real name.”

While MILF Life Crisis isn’t a show that Scheffler wanted or expected to make, she has a natural talent for mining laughs from her adversity.

“We can either be oppressed and sad, or laugh at it, shine the light in the dark corners and point out the silliness,” she said. “One of my strengths is I don’t put other people down; my comedy is very self-reflective, making fun of myself. What am I doing in my life that’s ridiculous? There’s a strength to making fun of what you’re supposed to take seriously.”

Scheffler always knew she would be a performer, but originally had her sights on being a serious actress. However, fate intervened.

“I went to theater school thinking I was going to be the next Meryl Streep, thinking, ‘I cry all the time, I’m sure I’ll be dramatic,’” she said. “I ended up being told, or it was very clear to the world, that I was good at comedy.”

She trained and toured with Second City and studied at the now-defunct Theater Resource Center. She also learned the mask-based style of clown technique created by Richard Pochinko, and studied with Phillippe Gaulier, who also taught Sacha Baron Cohen; Gaulier told her she was bound for great things.

“I thought that was probably a good sign,” Scheffler said. “With Second City, improv, the ability to write my own material and the Pochinko clowning, life is the best when I’m laughing.”

It’s led to a steady stream of success, despite the curveballs.

“I thought Suddenly Mommy! was going to be the thing that got me my TV series and put me on the map, but sadly, I got divorced; then my manager was like, everybody wants to know what your next show is,” she said, adding that she has a follow-up in the works called MILF & Cookies. “Who knew that I was going to be the poster child for divorce? I didn’t want that particularly… you wake up in your early 40s and you’re like, ‘I’m supposed to be married forever; now I have to start dating again?’”

MILF Life Crisis
When: Saturday, Feb. 24, 8 p.m.
Where: Bank of NH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $43.75 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Anne Marie Scheffler. Courtesy photo.

Kathy Griffin’s ‘My Life on the PTSD List’ hits Portsmouth

Every comic has their story about a joke that didn’t land, and the heckler or projectile that resulted. For Kathy Griffin, an ill-considered attempt to riff on Donald Trump’s “blood coming out of her whatever” comment about debate moderator Megyn Kelly was more consequential. She lost jobs, lost friends and, worse, unleashed a federal investigation — all because of a photo of her holding a ketchup-soaked mask.

It turned out that was just one of many setbacks for Griffin. Along with repeatedly being detained by Interpol during a world tour documented in the film Hell of a Story, she lost her sister to cancer, her mother and longtime foil died at the start of the Covid pandemic, and Griffin herself battled both a pill addiction and lung cancer.

Beyond all that turmoil, she found a way to laugh, even at being the target of a weaponized government.

“I make fun of all of it,” Griffin said by phone from her home in Malibu. “After this long and storied career, to think that I was under investigation by the DOJ and then diagnosed with PTSD, like I’m a combat veteran or something? You have to laugh at it. There’s too much comedy there.”

For example, her cancer, which resulted in the removal of half a lung. “I’m cancer-free, and I’m a proud member of the one-and-a-half lungs community, which needs a face for the brand,” Griffin said. “I’m doing it for free, gratis and happily, and I don’t appreciate you flaunting your two lungs in my face.”

There is, however, one topic she’s trying to steer clear of. “I will say — shocker — as of this moment, I don’t mention Trump at this new show. It’s not like I’m afraid of him or anything because he can’t really do anything worse than he already has.” She polls the audience at most shows to gauge whether they’re interested in the political or personal and goes from there.

On Feb. 2, she opened in Des Moines, Iowa, to a decent-sized crowd, but not every market is as welcoming. With conservative celebrities like Laura Loomer working to re-ignite the outrage that derailed Griffin’s career in 2017, ticket sales are lagging for shows in red states like Texas, Kentucky and Indiana. However, less than 100 or so seats remain for her “My Life on the PTSD List” tour stop in New Hampshire.

Many likened the backlash she received to The Dixie Chicks in the aughts — even that band’s singer Natalie Maines reached out to Griffin to offer support. “That was so cool,” she said. “We were going to get together, then something happened, and we couldn’t. But I want to find her number again and say, remember me? Let’s do it.”

Still, the band now called The Chicks was able to go on tour and make an album with Rick Rubin. Griffin lost much more, for a longer time. Comparisons to Lenny Bruce’s obscenity battles in the 1960s also miss the point, she continued. “He had cops arrest him, not the feds. I even called Kelly Carlin, George’s daughter, and she said the same thing … ‘My dad never had the feds.’ This was a full investigation, testifying under oath, and the no-fly list.”

The comedian famous for never meeting a line she wouldn’t cross eventually learned to lean into the firestorm she’d created.

“I don’t care if you’re a stay-at-home mom or you have an office job, but to then not be doing that which you do for six long years, and to have it come at the behest of the f-ing president, that was the awful part,” she said. “The phone not ringing, the people turning on me, the networks telling me, ‘We love you; we think you’re funny, but you’re too toxic for Middle America’ is of course something I took as a challenge.”

Ironically, Griffin’s number is on a special kind of speed dial list.

“I’m the patron saint of celebrities who’ve gotten canceled for screwed up reasons, and so I will get called,” she said. “Bette Midler called me one time during the Trump’s administration … he was mad at her about a tweet, and she got a call from the Secret Service. She wanted to know what to do and I’m like, do this, this and this, and you say this, and don’t say this.”

On the other hand, “Don’t talk to me about the people who deserve to get canceled,” she continued. “The ones who pissed off the previous administration, I know how to handle those calls. Like, Rudy Giuliani’s daughter … she contacted me and she’s like, ‘I’m so embarrassed about my dad, what do I do?’ I said, ‘You’re stuck with him, honey, just smile and stay gay.’ She’s like, ‘I love you!’ So, I never know about what kind of calls I’m going to get.”

Did any positives come out of her ordeal? “Honestly, I don’t have a lot of good news to report except that it gave me clarity,” she said. “Most of the people that turned on me are still turned against me … it’s particularly people in my industry. I’m just going to call it out, and of course I’ll get in trouble for this as usual, but it was old white guys who identify with Trump far more than they identify with me.”

Griffin is excited to be back in front of audiences. Much of her new cadre of material sticks to the celebrity-dragging and barbs that helped feed her success.

“I’ve always been a magnet for crazy, that’s a gift that I’ve accepted and no longer fight, so, I go into certain situations sometimes, and I just know they’re going to be comedy gold,” she said. “I have a whole new half hour about going to Paris Hilton’s Christmas party that I cannot wait to talk about in Portsmouth. Because it was like a time capsule. First of all, she looks exactly the same, she still wears the pink sparkly dresses and such. It was like going back to 2003. Nothing has changed. I went with Rosie O’Donnell, so it was like the Rosie O’Donnell show was still on daytime, My Life on the D List was still on TV, it was hilarious…. I also like that Paris didn’t let us in the house, which is my favorite thing about when rich people have parties, they have police caution tape, like don’t even think about it. I don’t blame her; she’s been through hell herself.”

She’ll also riff on a certain pop singer but may go a bit gentler on her.

“We can’t not talk about Britney!” she said. “I feel very maternal toward her, I certainly went in hard on her in the ’90s and 2000s, because at that time I was making fun of a young lady that was a multi-multi-multi-millionaire as a teenager and was behaving in ways that sometimes were unique, but no, I’m not making fun of her mental illness. But am I gonna talk about her Instagram? Yes, I am. Can I look away from it? No, I can’t.”

The gloves are off for her former Hamptons neighbor Kanye West, now remarried and causing international incidents with his new wife. “Getting kicked out of Italy, I’ve never heard of that,” Griffin wondered. “I can see getting kicked out of an Italian restaurant but getting kicked out of the entire country because you’re walking around with a pillow and plastic heels? I’ve got to get to the bottom of it.”

Griffin also thinks Kanye is missing his former wife, Kim Kardashian. “A couple of days ago, his pants fell down, and you could see his butt crack. Doesn’t he have a team of people to tell him, pull your pants up, get it together? That’s what I feel Kim did. She would do a little bit of Cher in Moonstruck — ‘snap out of it!’ Because he was a little bit functional then; now he’s just off the rails. I know he has a mental illness, but I don’t care. I’m going right for the misogyny.”

Whatever awaits her as she embarks on her first big domestic tour since her world came crashing down, Kathy Griffin remains defiant. “I have cemented my place in history,” she said. “Actually, as I’m getting older, I’m getting a little proud of it. The fact that I’m still out there, going to work within the same 10-day period of E. Jean Carroll getting her $83 million judgment, I’m starting to have a bit of optimism about this little divided country of ours.”

An Evening with Kathy Griffin
When: Saturday, Feb. 17, 8 p.m.
Where: The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
Tickets: $57.50 and up at themusichall.org

Featured photo: Kathy Griffin. Courtesy photo.

Guitar-forward Winter Blues Fest

To celebrate an area band’s new recording contract, the 14th New England Winter Blues Festival has a slight name change this year. It’s now A Gulf Coast Records Revue, with four acts from the venerable Nederland, Texas, label sharing the stage: Popa Chubby, Albert Castiglia, Monster Mike Welch and The Wicked Lo-Down.

The first of four shows lands at Manchester’s Rex Theatre on Thursday, Feb. 15, with the others happening across the region over the weekend. The run promises plenty of explosive guitar. Popa Chubby has been making waves in the blues world since legendary producer Tom Dowd helmed his solo debut in 1994. Castiglia is another firebrand, who one critic called the “heir apparent” to the title “America’s King of the Blues.”

Welch got his nickname as a teenager from Blues Brother Dan Aykroyd and is one of New England’s premier blues rock guitarists. He signed with Gulf Coast last year. Finally, The Wicked Lo-Down is led by festival organizer Nick David. Their lead guitarist is Paul Size, well-known for his time in The Red Devils, who worked with Mick Jagger and Bruce Willis while cementing its reputation across Texas.

The official release date for The Wicked Lo-Down’s Gulf Coast debut, Out of Line, is March 8, but the band will have advance CDs for sale and will play material from it at shows. It’s a solid collection of blues rockers, and all but two are originals. Standouts include “If I,” a love-gone-wrong burner that echoes the Allman Brothers’ “Stormy Monday,” and “The Wildest One,” a poignant tribute to Lester Butler, Size’s bandmate in The Red Devils.

“He would roll with the Stones, till that black hearted woman knocked him off his throne,” David sings, a reference to Butler’s tragic overdose death at age 38 that was later determined to be a homicide. In a similar vein, “Marchin’ On” deals with the notion that no one cheats death. Speaking by phone recently, David called it one of his favorites.

“It’s about our mortality,” he said. “No matter what, time’s gonna catch up with you and it’s just gonna keep marching on, and once you’re gone, time’s moving still.” All things considered, however, the singer and harmonica player appears to have had the most fun with one of Out of Line’s covers, a recasting of the Britney Spears pop confection “Toxic.”

“Say whatever you want about Britney Spears — it’s pop, bubblegum, whatever — but the changes in that song are cool … they’re minor and dark and edgy,” he said. “I started to hear in my head what it would sound like as a rock and blues tune. It made me think of the Stevie Ray Vaughan song “Change It.”

Unsurprisingly, David’s bandmates were incredulous. “They were like, ‘dude … what is this nonsense you’re talking about?’ I’m like, ‘man, listen, you gotta hear what I’m hearing in my head.’ I told Paul my concept; he messed around with it and he sent me a little demo of what he thought I wanted to hear, and it was exactly what I wanted to hear.”

Once in the studio, “we just turned it into this gnarly shuffle. It’s as gut bucket and Texas shuffling as you can get, but it’s a f-ing weird piece of bubble gum pop. I’m hoping it’s going to make people pay attention a little more outside of the blues world [and] redirect their attention back to the original songs that we wrote…. I think we got a bunch of killers.”

The five-piece band — David, Size, guitarist Jeff Berg (who also engineered) and the rhythm section of Brad Hallen and Nick Toscano on bass and drums — co-produced the record. Though the blues elements are apparent, The Wicked Lo-Down is looking to be more than vintage, David said.

“When people ask what kind of band we are, this is my little standard quote and I think it’s pretty accurate. We’re a very heavily blues-influenced rock ’n’ roll band. I’ll add this caveat: We’re a very, very heavily blues influenced all original rock ’n’ roll band. We’re doing our own thing.”

New England Winter Blues Festival presents Gulf Coast Records Revue
When: Thursday, Feb. 15, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $35 at palacetheatre.org
Additional shows:
Friday, Feb. 16, 8 p.m. at Blue Ocean Music Hall, Salisbury Beach, Mass.
Sunday, Feb 18, 8 p.m. at Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club, Portsmouth

Featured photo: The Wicked Lo-Down Courtesy photo.

Rex triple bill spotlights New Hampshire talent

A showcase of singer-songwriters coming up at Manchester’s Rex Theatre will depart from the more common in-the-round “song pull” format and instead will allow the three featured performers — Cosy Sheridan, Kate Redgate and Jon Nolan — to stretch out with their bands.

The show is dubbed 603 Folk, though the music ranges beyond that to roots, rock and pop-inflected Americana.

Born in Concord, Sheridan is the veteran of the evening. She came up in the early ’90s folk boom after winning both Kerrville Folk Festival’s NewSong Award and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival Troubadour Contest. She was a fixture on the regional festival circuit, appearing at Newport and Falcon Ridge, among others. After a long stint living in Utah, she recently moved back to New Hampshire.

The other two have a lot in common, in their music and life choices. Redgate made an impact in 2009 with her LP Nothing Tragic but left the business soon after to raise her two children. However, as recounted in 2023 to writer Chris Hislop, Redgate didn’t stop writing, she simply “stopped trying to have a career doing it.”

That would change when the potent Light Under the Door was released a year ago. Nolan, who’s best-known for his time in the band Say ZuZu, produced, played guitar and co-wrote all but one song on the album. He’s a close friend of Redgate’s; like her, the singer-guitarist has recently returned to making music after leaving it to focus on family.

After lots of buzz, a few near record deals and 11 years together, Say ZuZu disbanded in 2003. After that, “I’d kind of broken up with music,” Nolan said by phone recently. He built a studio, did some solo work, but otherwise, “leaned into my day job for a minute.” While writing for the now defunct The Wire magazine he launched the RPM Challenge, which asks musicians to record and release an album during the month of February; it’s grown into a worldwide effort.

In the middle of the pandemic, a label that had almost signed Say ZuZu suddenly reached out.

“It was sort of this left at the altar thing,” Nolan said of the near-miss with New West Records. Twenty years later owner George Fontaine Sr. “called us back and said, ‘Hey, sorry about that; do you want to do that now?’ We were like, ‘Yes, George, we would.’

He created Strolling Bones Records for them and released Say ZuZu’s back catalog as Here Again: A Retrospective (1994-2002). In 2023 the group made No Time to Lose, its first studio album since 2002’s Every Mile. The revival helped Nolan “fall back in love with music and find a new way to experience joy,” he said.

Soon he was writing solo songs again, many of which will be in an upcoming Jon Nolan & Good Company album. The group includes Geoff Taylor, Rick Habib (who’s also Redgate’s drummer), Zach Tremblay and Roland Nicol.

“I found sort of a creative renaissance; it really feels like it uncorked a thing I had when ZuZu broke up,” Nolan said. “I think I just needed to break through something personally, and we’re all kind of doing that together as Good Company. I turned over the soil for all of us, found some fresh roots.”

The surprising Say ZuZu reunion inspired a documentary about the band, currently being worked on by Mississippi filmmaker Christian Harrison. He’d heard about the band from Kevin Guyer, who ran beloved Rock Bottom Records in Portsmouth for a couple of decades before moving south 15 years ago.

“It’s an unheard-of story in the music industry, and it’s not born of some desire to get rich,” Nolan said. “It’s not, ‘what I need to do is call a bunch of 50-year-old guys who haven’t been on the road in 10 years, that’ll be the next hit.’”

Asked about the upcoming show at The Rex, Nolan called himself “a longtime admirer of Cosy,” adding, “she was a couple years ahead of me when I was coming up … a staple in the folk scene before she moved out west and returned. I don’t think I’ve ever played a gig with her, but I’ve enjoyed her music for decades now.”

He and Redgate may join each other during the evening, he continued.

“I’m looking forward to playing in a different room; it looks charming,” he said. “I love the idea of three different writers, three different voices and three different perspectives coming at music from a similar pantry of ingredients, but each with their own distinct style.

603 Folk: An Evening of NH-Based Singer-Songwriters
When: Sunday, Feb. 3, 7:30pm
Where: Red Theater, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $29 at palacetheater.org

Featured photo: 603 Folk. Courtesy.

Lez Zeppelin plays Manchester

With eyes closed, it’s hard to distinguish Lez Zeppelin from the act they’re honoring. Throbbing rhythm, frenetic lead guitar and ecstatic vocals belie the notion that four musicians are creating this audio juggernaut. Eyes wide open, it is something else entirely; even Jimmy Page couldn’t quite believe it.

As the name suggests, the group is an all-female Led Zeppelin doppelgänger. When Zep’s guitar legend watched them in London he was an instant fan, praising their “superb musicianship” and “extraordinary sensuality.” Post-show, standing with band founder Steph Paynes in an empty arena, Page was blunter.

“He turns and goes, ‘it was so sexual,’” Paynes recalled by phone recently. “It was almost like watching us, he hadn’t even realized … because he’d never seen Led Zeppelin, he was in it. It was this weird, existential moment where he was almost shocked at how sexualized we were, and the music was.”

Paynes believes her band couldn’t exist without that.

“You’re either a sensual being or you’re not,” she said. “You can learn to act a certain way, but that’s not what was happening with Led Zeppelin, [and] playing this music will definitely sexualize you if you’re doing it right.”

What’s remarkable about this she-incarnation is how disciplined they are about Zeppelin’s music, not just their look and feel. As with the original, they are a foursome; no looping or technical tricks to add elements, or special guests. This rigor extends to the studio; in 2010, they recreated Zep’s 1969 debut album with vintage gear — along with producer Eddie Kramer, who engineered five of Zep’s albums, starting with Led Zeppelin II.

Recruiting Kramer “was me with an incredibly giant set of cojones,” Paynes said with a laugh. “Maybe he’ll produce our record, like who does that? It’s moxie, you know what I mean? I’ve been known to have a little bit of that, and it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

Like Page, who sought the band out because of its reputation, Kramer “thought we could do it; otherwise he wouldn’t have done it,” Paynes continued. “Look, I think there are lots of people who feel that they’re great musicians and they can play all the parts. Guess what? That’s not what this is about.”

What it is about is essence.

“To be at that level of musicianship … it’s daunting,” Paynes said, “but [what] underlies it — the feel, the passion, the way you can go into a song and go for it even if you’re gonna hit a million wrong notes, which believe me happens; even if you’re not gonna get the riff — that is where I think our band differs from all the others.”

The latest project for the group — Paynes, singer Marlain Angelides, Joan Chew on bass and keyboards, and drummer Leesa Harrington Squyres — is tackling landmark concerts. The first was a recreation of Zep’s 1970 Royal Albert Hall show in early January.

“Talk about challenging … they were so incredible in their musicianship and dynamics,” Paynes said. “Trying to capture that [is] crazy, but it’s so rewarding when you get close.”

When Paynes started the band in 2004, “it was just an idea to have fun and really get into the playing,” she said, but it took on a life of its own. “The way that it escalated … you can be in the music business your whole life and none of that could happen, and that’s basically the norm, but then if something is meant to be, if it’s meant to strike, then everything happens, and you don’t even know why.”

The current lineup has stayed steady for the past five to six years, though Squyres now has a stand-in due to “physical issues,” Paynes said. The temporary drummer signals a departure. “We actually have a guy, Dave Richmond. Leesa is kind of irreplaceable, it’s really hard to be John Bonham … but this guy is completely and utterly into Zeppelin.”

Such dedication is still the group’s focus.

“It’s about capturing the unknown … the passion, the fury of this music, and the dynamic of it,” Paynes said. “Without sounding obnoxious, if you’re a good enough musician to understand that you really start to get close to what Zeppelin may have done on any given night. I think that when Jimmy saw us do that in London, he wasn’t expecting it. When he saw it, he was just like, ‘Yeah, that’s it; that’s how it should be done. You get it.”

Featured photo: Lez Zeppelin. Photo by Maia Kennedy Photography.