Category: Nightlife

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.

Bobby Rush’s lifetime of the blues

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour covered less than two decades of music. For Bobby Rush a similar endeavor would need to scale up, perhaps to the Epoch level. Rush, who turned 90 last November, boasts that he’s released at least 429 albums over his career, which began in the late 1940s. Along the way he also made too many singles to count. Before long-players were a thing, he even put out a 78.

“I don’t want to talk about that … that makes it sound too old,” Rush said in a recent phone interview. “But life is like — it’s a blessing to get old. Because the only way you don’t get old, you die young. So, I laugh about it.”

Rush’s first band included Elmore James and Pinetop Perkins. In the early 1950s Muddy Waters unsuccessfully tried to recruit him to play harmonica in his band.

“I wanted my own thing,” he said. “He wanted me to play like Little Walter, because that’s what he was used to in his band. I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t want to emulate him.”

His biggest success came late in life. He received his first Grammy nomination in 2001, and won in 2017 for Porcupine Meat and in 2021 for Rawer Than Raw. All My Love for You, his latest album, is a gem, but Bobby Rush is more interested in talking about what he’s doing than what he’s done.

Case in point is a work in progress that has contributions from Kenny Wayne Shepherd and others.

“I tell you now, get on top of Bobby Rush [for] the next two, three albums going to come out,” he said. “This is it for me. I don’t mean it’s the last one I’m doing, but I’m putting everything I have into it. I think it will be the best material that I ever recorded.”

Beyond Shepherd and some North Mississippi pals, Rush won’t say who he’s working with on the new material, other than promising there are some big names.

“These guys I’m recording with,” he said, pride beaming in his voice, “they just come to play with me and hear me. They’re not really asking to bring anything to the table other than themselves.”

Rush spent most of his career based in Chicago. “I wanted to be there because Howlin’ Wolf was there, and B.B. King was there, and Muddy Waters was there, Little Walter was there — all the guys that I looked up to,” he said, adding that being in the city made it easier to “steal some ideas; I just wanted to be in what they call The Loop, man, you know?”

Over the following decades he earned the nickname King of the Chitlin’ Circuit, for his time playing the network of mostly Black clubs in the South. The moniker was cemented in Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Blues. In 1968 he connected with ex-Vee Jay A&R head Calvin Carter and made his biggest hit, “Chicken Heads,” a song he re-recorded in 2021 with Buddy Guy, Gov’t Mule and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram to mark the 50th anniversary of its release.

On the autobiographical “I’m the One” from the new album (released last November), Rush sings about how he “put the funk in the blues” on songs like “I Wanna Do the Do,” a dance-y rework of Willie Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doodle” from his 1979 LP Rush Hour.

“I tried to do that because it’s nothing new under the sun, everything’s been done,” he explained. “It’s the way you approach it, you have to modify what you do.”

Rush has longevity in his bloodline. “My grandfather passed at 107, my grandmother was 111, and my mom was 89,” he said. “My dad was 96 and he had brothers and sisters, 21 of them lived over 100.” Still, that doesn’t fully explain the fire in the blues singer, harmonica player and songwriter’s soul that keeps him walking on stage night after night, even as he enters his 10th decade.

“God gave me the strength to keep going,” he said. “I’m still enthused about the blues and the work that I do, and that keeps me motivated. I know a man can live a long time without water or food, but you can’t live long without hope. I still have hope, man. Out of all my ups and downs I’ve been through in life … I still am enthused about the things that I’m surrounded by and the things that I do, and I am just glad to be here.”

Featured photo: Bobby Rush. Courtesy photo.

Gibson Brothers bring Darkest Hour tour to Rex

If great musicians wanting to get in the studio with a performer is a measure of success, the Gibson Brothers are a breed apart. The bluegrass duo has been produced by Ricky Skaggs, Dave Ferguson, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys and most recently Jerry Douglas, on Darkest Hour, released in early 2023.

They even recorded a soundtrack album with T-Bone Burnett, a project that was shelved with the never-made movie.

“My brother says that we’re the Forrest Gump of bluegrass,” Eric Gibson said in a recent phone interview. “I mention something like that [Burnett] to people, and they look at me like I’m lying. I’m like, ‘I don’t have any proof, the record never came out.’ … but some of those records did.”

While 2018’s Auerbach-helmed Mockingbird had a burlier tone and modern touches like a cover of REM’s “Everybody Hurts” with the Flaming Lips’ Derek Brown on slide guitar, Darkest Hour featured more of the sound that’s made the Gibsons a force in bluegrass music for over three decades.

A new wrinkle, though, was a focus on the duo’s songwriting. Before starting recording in early 2020, Douglas asked them to bring their best tunes that hadn’t made it to other records. Among them was “I Feel the Same Way as You,” which became an album standout, with Alison Krauss providing a backing vocal.

Leigh Gibson wrote the song in 2000. Eric remembers wondering, “Why the heck did we wait so long to record that? Then I thought, if we’d done it earlier, Jerry Douglas wouldn’t be playing Dobro on it, and Alison Krauss wouldn’t be singing harmony … it was meant to be later.”

The Dobro master’s presence spurred the two to reach musical heights, as on “Dust,” when Eric follows Douglas’s soaring solo with a blistering banjo run. “You cannot help but be inspired,” he said, calling it “a pinch-me moment — that’s Jerry Douglas, and we’re playing with him right now.”

A big chunk of the LP was done live in the studio.

“We had some separation; if we messed up, we’d go back and fix it, but he’s about capturing the feeling and capturing the moment,” Gibson said.

“What a Difference a Day Makes” was the first track recorded. Gibson called it “real meat and potatoes bluegrass … kind of a Jimmy Martin-feeling kind of song.”

A Northeast tour in support of the album kicks off Jan. 13 in Manchester.

The brothers will be joined by Mike Barber on bass and drummer Sam Zucchini, with Eric O’Hara on Dobro. O’Hara was their first music teacher while the two were growing up on a dairy farm in Ellenburg Depot, in upstate New York.

“He’d just graduated from college, we were 12 and 11, and he started showing us how to play the banjo and guitar,” Eric recalled. “All these years later, he’s playing music with us.”

There’s more history in the onstage configuration. Their longtime bass player is the son of Junior Barber, who played Dobro with the Gibson Brothers when they were starting out. “Jerry went on and on about him when we recorded with him,” Gibson said of the elder Barber, who died in 2017. “He was a legend in this area, and people like that would take an interest in us.”

It’s testament to their talent that two players from a town just below the Canadian border could rise to the top of a genre dominated by Nashville pickers, but Gibson recalls a collective purposefulness in their far-flung milieu. A memory of one band preparing to go on at an American Legion years ago is still fresh.

“They took it as seriously as if they were gonna go play the Opry,” he said. “That stuck with me… wherever, whatever that stage is, you make it count.”

The Gibson Brothers released their first album in the mid-’90s; years later, Eric Gibson is happy to be part of his genre, and sees bright days ahead.

“I think the roots scene is very strong,” Gibson said. “Every so often you hear, ‘oh, bluegrass is dead.’ How is it dead when you have Billy Strings playing bluegrass? Molly Tuttle has found a heck of a big audience. Hopefully, there’s a trickle-down effect for the rest of us, but I feel like that old John Hartford song. I’m still here, we’re still doing it. We must be doing something right.”

Featured photo: Gibson Brothers. Courtesy photo.

Mia x Ally take viral act on tour

The curious lockdown revival of a 600-year-old folk tradition was the catalyst for an inventive pairing that has, among other things, produced a recasting of “Free Bird” for violin and bagpipes. In late 2020 a Scottish singer posted a pair of sea shanties — collective songs from the maritime trades — to TikTok. Another vocalist added a bass harmony layer, and soon more began stitching in parts.

It caught the attention of electric violinist Mia Asano, who dueted on a subsequent batch of videos. Bagpiper Ally Crowley-Duncan was also taken by “musicians adding their parts and creating this massive session-style experience with all this instrumentation.” She collaborated on a few with a mutual musician friend.

Out of this digital milieu the two became mutual fans and eventually collaborators. The world of rock music has never seen anything like Mia x Ally, but the duo’s unique approach to their instruments has won kudos from some of the genre’s best, including Metallica. It’s also amassed that most coveted of modern currencies, internet virality.

Before joining up, both were building big audiences on TikTok, Ally on her traditional bagpipes with a custom key-extending chanter (the note-producing tube at the bottom of the bag) that she helped design, and Mia with her seven-string Flying V electric violin. In a recent Zoom interview, the two discussed how they came to see their instruments in a different light.

Mia was classically trained from age 5.

“I had a deep love for classical music, but a deeper love for alternative styles,” she said. “In middle school I discovered electric violins; after that I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

The violin, she added, “is a really gate-kept instrument, and the classical community is really intense. Both Ally and I have a lot of similarities in those ways with our upbringing and our experience with our instruments, so we both have a deep love for showcasing everything they are capable of.”

Also the product of a musical household, Ally played multiple instruments growing up, taking up bagpipes at age 12 as a way to bond with her Scottish stepfather after he legally adopted her. “I’ve been able to see the saxophone, piano and flute transcend their more traditional and classical roots,” she said, “but there aren’t a lot of avenues where the bagpipes have been able to do that.”

In high school she transcribed Ozzy Osborne’s “Crazy Train” to bagpipes and played it with a rock band she’d formed.

“The reaction kind of flipped my brain around into wanting to see the bagpipes in that light more often,” she said. “I love that style of music, always have, and it was really cool to be able to offer it to people on an instrument that I love, but in a way that they weren’t expecting.”

After an extended TikTok friendship, the two performed together for the first time in Boston, on St. Patrick’s Day. Mia was attending Berklee, and Ally had a show sponsored by Barstool Sports. “She messaged me and said, ‘Would you like to meet up and record some collaborations together?’ and of course I said yes,” Mia recalled.

Their version of “Shipping Up to Boston” was a viral smash, and they soon hit the road for a run named after the Dropkick Murphys song, their first release as a duo.

“We like to say it sold out our first tour — that’s how a lot of people found out about us, and the first time we realized how many people love us,” Mia said. An accompanying video, shot across the city at Fenway Park, City Hall and other landmarks, was “essentially a love letter to Boston.”

The current tour, which stops in Derry on Jan. 6 and includes shows in Boston and Vermont, comes in the wake of their debut, Mia x Ally: The Viral Hits. The EP includes their distinctive reimagining of the Lynyrd Skynyrd hit that’s arguably the most requested song in rock history. Both released it solo before recording it together.

“We realized there was actually an appreciation for hearing ‘Free Bird’ in that way,” Ally said. “We knew that we wanted to make it something bigger.”

Playing live, the duo is about more than classic rock covers, even playing some original songs. “Our shows have every kind of music from pop, rock and Celtic,” Mia said. “We have jazzy moments; I play a classical piece at one poin t… we throw everything in there. It’s to showcase our diversity. Music is the most important thing to us; it’s not just about the showmanship, but that’s also important. We have a lot of musical integrity.”

Featured photo: Mia x Ally. Courtesy photo.

Dawes returns to New Hampshire

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

When Dawes steps on the Music Hall stage Dec.30, it will be only their fourth appearance in the Granite State, and their first in almost five years. Taylor Goldsmith, Dawes guitarist, lead singer and main songwriter, hopes the night-before-New Year’s Eve scheduling will add to the impetus for locals to check them out.

“I’m very excited for that; I mean, obviously, it’s good to get back to anywhere we haven’t been for a while,” Goldsmith said by phone from his home in Altadena, California. “I feel like everything is kind of shut down that week, and no one ever has anything to do. So I’m kind of eager to see how that feels.”

Goldsmith is a creature of the road.

“When I’m standing still, I seem to disappear,” he wrote over a decade ago in “Time Spent in Los Angeles,” but these days that notion is tempered by new fatherhood. With his wife, This Is Us actress Mandy Moore, he has two sons; Gus, born February 2021, and Ozzie, who arrived in October of last year.

“Back in the day it was, ‘How do we stay on tour, how do we not keep a house at home?,’ and now it’s, ‘How do I make these tours as fast as possible?’” he said. “I definitely feel like an essential part of myself … only comes to life on stages [and] I’ve never had the inclination of, ‘maybe I’d like to step away from this’ — I just need to be a little more strategic. Because when I’m away from the guys, even the first hour hurts really bad.”

The change has impacted his songwriting — up to a point.

“My world is so much smaller, and that is cool; I think it’s something to be embraced rather than rejected,” he said, while noting that he’s not keen on writing an entire album about being a dad. “Even though that’s very much what I think about and deal with on a minute-to-minute basis, I definitely have to make sure that I’m thinking outside of that.”

That said, his worldview has shifted.

“When I was young … those Jackson Browne songs about heartache were all I wanted to hear,” he said. “That’s not my experience now, and it’s a little harder for me to jump into that place. Now I want to hear observations on culture, politics … the existential crisis that goes beyond romance.”

With fewer and longer songs, Dawes’ most recent album, Misadventures of Doomscroller, was a departure. Musically adventurous, it was recorded following a tour backing Grateful Dead bass player Phil Lesh. More than a few likened it to so-called jam bands, but for Goldsmith it really wasn’t that at all.

“We went in with an objective and more or less accomplished it,” he said, adding that it was different from past albums where plans for a certain mood — more ballads, a softer sound for instance — were waylaid. “I like that the record tells us what it is rather than the other way around, more or less. But with Misadventures, it was like, let’s go for one of those five or six songs, yet 45-minute, albums, like so many rock ’n’ roll bands that we love.”

Goldsmith shrugged off the label given to them by some critics. “There are bands that deserve the moniker but don’t have it,” like Pink Floyd and Dire Straits, he said. “I don’t see us as a jam band in the same way that I see the Grateful Dead…. I almost feel like that’s more of a cultural observation [that] has more to do with who shows up than what we’re doing on stage.”

Missing from the upcoming show will be founding member Wylie Gelber, who left the band last year to focus on his handmade guitar company, and keyboard player Lee Pardini, who announced his departure earlier this month.

“Things change, and I’m excited in a way about embracing this newer identity,” Goldsmith said.

It’s an interesting response from someone who wrote, “I hope all your favorite bands stay together” a while back.

“Well, people have said that to me before … so much for that,” he replied. “That song is more about the REMs and the Replacements, bands that truly are not playing shows … there’s heartbreak there. Dawes is on tour … I’m singing these songs, Griffin’s playing the drums. We were there on Day 1, and we’re still here. I think that is still the thing worth celebrating that that song tries to speak to.”

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.