Category: Nightlife

The Rebel Collective welcomes fiddler

Soon after they formed a few years ago, The Rebel Collective became an in-demand band on St. Patrick’s Day. Their mix of traditional Irish music and Celtic rock rivals the Pogues or Dropkick Murphys; they’re a great fit for the annual revelry. In fact, an ex-member is currently the Dropkicks’ full-time piper.

Thus, they have multiple gigs on the big day, and a pair of lead-in dates to boot. Most were booked a year in advance.

Beyond that, the group recently welcomed a new member, fiddler Audrey Budington. A Berklee graduate with a resume that includes solo recordings and multiple collaborations, she’s injected them with new energy. This extends to sessions for a new album in the works, their guitar and mandolin player reported in a recent phone interview.

“Truthfully, she’s way too good for our band,” Ross Ketchum said, “but she wants to be a part of a group that’s playing constantly. She takes our sound to a whole new level … [and] she’s so intuitive on where to chop, where to pull out and where to really hit a good lead. It’s been unreal working with her.”

Ketchum got a tip about her from Andrew Richardson, who runs the New Hampshire Highland Games.

“He called me up on a random Thursday night saying, ‘You’ve got to get to Penuche’s in Concord, there’s a fiddle player here who is unbelievable.’ I tossed out a bunch of names and sent some pictures. He said, ‘No, it’s a completely different person.’ I was like, ‘OK, I’ll take your word.’ I live right down the street, so I walked over. Immediately, I was like, ‘Holy crap, this girl is unbelievable.’”

Budington recently performed with Senie Hunt’s band at Bank of NH Stage in Concord. One of the reasons she was keen to join Rebel Collective is she’s aiming to become a musical ambassador.

“She’s trying to get her international musician’s visa, which allows her to work in any country that accepts it,” Ketchum said. “She needs to show a panel of people who she’s playing with, her past repertoire recordings, all that stuff. This will definitely help her out.”

The band had been looking for a new fiddler since last August. At last year’s Highland Games, “we ended up flying in our cousin Brian who used to be in the band on accordion to kind of fill in the sound,” Ketchum said. “We kind of had given up hope to find someone.”

With the busy St. Patricks’ Day schedule approaching, the new arrival was timely. This year kicks off in an unlikely place, the Artisan Hotel, in Salem’s not-quite-Irish Tuscan Village. The venue’s new events coordinator had hired them for a couple of release parties when she worked at Flag Hill Winery, Ketchum explained.

They’ll perform for a dinner crowd at the event, dubbed A Celtic Celebration, which includes an Irish whiskey tasting.

“A predominantly Italian place throwing an Irish event … it’s a pretty big deal,” he said. “They’re giving the whole ballroom in the new hotel to the band to throw the dinner.”

It happens Friday, March 15. The next night they’re in more familiar confines, at Salt hill Pub’s Sunapee location, The Shanty. On the big day it’s Salt hill’s Lebanon location in the morning, then on to their Newport pub for a midday set. After that, they’ll pack up and head to Manchester, where they’ll close out the night at Shaskeen Pub.

When all that is complete, they return to work on their next album, with Budington helping to reshape their sound.

“She’s already started writing her own parts for some of the songs that we previously released,” Ketchum said, “and she’s written a bunch of new stuff. After our St. Patrick’s Day run, we’re going to get her back down into the studio and get her ripping on some of this stuff so we can get some tracks coming out.”

The Rebel Collective
When: Friday, March 15, 8 p.m.
Where: The ArtisanHotel, 17 Via Toscana, Salem
Tickets: $75 at tuscanvillage.com
Also playing Saturday, March 16, at 8 p.m. at Salt hill Shanty in Newbury, and Sunday, March 17, at Salt hill Lebanon (9 a.m.), Salt hill Newport (2 p.m.) and Shaskeen Pub in Manchester (9 p.m.).

Featured photo: The Rebel Collective. Courtesy photo.

Birds, In Theory celebrate debut album

Legend has it that Michael Clarke joined The Byrds because he looked like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, not due to his drumming skills. The similarly named Birds, In Theory, a local band celebrating their debut album at The Shaskeen on March 9, has a close but slightly different story.

Its drummer, Nick Matsis, admits that he had more enthusiasm than talent when he joined high school pals Tim Dacey and Shawn Murray to form the pop punk band Eagle Jesus. The name changed, to a riff on the conspiratorial belief that birds are fake creatures created by NASA, when Dave Maloof came on as drummer post-pandemic and Matsis moved to bass.

The band’s sound coalesced with a seasoned new member behind the kit, offering a sonic fury favorable to fans of Green Day, Blink-182 and Bowling for Soup. It was a change that delighted Matsis.

“I can’t drum to save my life and that guy is a machine,” Matsis said self-deprecatingly by phone recently. “I taught myself drums playing Rock Band on the Xbox.”

A song from the forthcoming record Aviary jokes about this, along with the dichotomy between the band’s more and less polished musicians. “Guys, Where Are We?” includes a few moves that Maloof and lead guitarist Dacey handle with ease; rhythm guitar player Murray and bassist Matsis, not so much.

“That’s the only song we really changed time signatures in,” Matsis said. “We would get lost playing it at first because me and Shawn aren’t great at changing time signatures, and Tim and Dave are classically trained. So they’re like, ‘Guys, what are we doing? Where are we?’”

Other standout tracks include the slow-burning breakup song “Cover Story” and “Tourniquet,” which builds into a rager and showcases Dacey’s shredding blended with Matsis’ chugging rhythm guitar, and Maloof and Murray locked in on rhythm. This new freedom enhanced the making of Aviary.

As a trio, “we just couldn’t get as fancy as we wanted in the writing process,” Matsis said. “Dave, he’s a big Travis Barker fan; he can get in there and play anything as fast or complicated as he wants. Having that in the recording room was amazing, because he was getting that stuff done in one or two takes…. It made it so much easier.”

Birds, In Theory cites a variety of influences. Matsis is a big fan of Balance and Composure, particularly the Pennsylvania band’s 2011 LP Separation. “Shawn’s more into pop punk and indie, Tim used to be in a death metal band,” he said. “Dave’s into anything from Blink-182 to instrumental prog metal. It’s definitely a range.”

Their lyrical mood is informed by bands like The Wonder Years and Car Seat Headrest. “‘Tourniquet’ is about watching someone you thought you knew kind of change over time, and ‘Reflections’ deals with not wanting to take your emotions out on the people around you and just trying to communicate that it’s not them,” he explained. “A lot of our songs are more down, emotionally charged. Maybe not in the most positive way, but we like to make them fun.”

With a new record to celebrate, they’ll top the bill at The Shaskeen, but they’re also part of many multi-band events in the area.

“We’re lucky that we’ve been close-knit with a lot of people over the last few years and we played so many shows,” Matsis said, “That’s fun for us because we like playing with our friends and seeing our friends play.”

Beyond that, “My only hope is more new bands come around,” he continued. “This is actually our first time playing with Promise Game, so that’s exciting … I just hope the kids keep coming out and making music because there’s only so many 31-year-olds like us that can still get out there.”

Birds, In Theory w/ Promise Game, Cozy Throne and Oziem
When: Saturday, March 9, 8 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $10 at the door, 21+

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

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.