Halloween man

Currier hosts Doctor Gasp & the Eeks

In October 2001, inspired by being a moaning cowboy ghost in a haunted house, Dan Blakeslee wrote his own Halloween song and performed it a few nights later at the Press Room in Portsmouth. The moment he finished, Blakeslee apologized and promised the crowd he’d never attempt anything like it again.

The audience, however, had other ideas.

“I wrote one song, and I didn’t like it, but everyone there said, ‘man, you gotta do more of this stuff,’” Blakeslee recalled in a recent phone interview. The next year, he began a tradition that’s lasted for two decades, appearing as his spooky alter ego Doctor Gasp, with his band The Eeks — Mike Effenberger on keys, bassist Nick Phaneuf and drummer Jim Rudolf.

Blakeslee even managed to perform 10 frosty shows outdoors during the pandemic year.

“I love doing this stuff so much, it really feeds my soul,” he said. “It’s my favorite holiday, since I was a kid.”

Eighteen dates are booked for the 20th anniversary, including the first in Manchester since an early 2010s appearance at Jewell & the Beanstalk, a now-shuttered restaurant. The free show on Oct. 13 at the Currier Museum is part of the weekly Art After Work series. It will feature selections from the two Doctor Gasp & The Eeks albums, 2003’s Vampire Fish and 2013’s Vampire Fish For Two.

Setlists always include Blakeslee’s bang-up version of Bobby Boris Pickett’s “Monster Mash” and “Witchtrot Road,” the song that started it all in 2001. Always a highlight, “Teeth of Candycorn” should be a seasonal standard. It’s a hurdy gurdy howler with a haunting and addictive chorus, based on a real person.

“I wrote that about a friend of mine who I call the King of Halloween,” Blakeslee said. “Go into his place, and it’s literally Halloween year-round in there. It’s crazy, it’s awesome. Early on, when we were first starting to get to know each other, he told me he was born with teeth of candy corn. I’m like, ‘OK, I have got to write a song about this.’”

In 2012 the band mapped out a tour itinerary in the shape of a pumpkin, an effort that found him playing in a few strange places simply to connect the dots. This time around, “it looks more like a scribble” according to Blakeslee. But he did do something special for the two-decade landmark, illustrating a novella written by friend and fellow musician Brian Serven called Lore of the Jack-O’-Lantern.

Blakeslee’s reputation as an artist almost overshadows his music. He’s drawn posters for Newport Folk Festival, the iconic Hearts For Boston riff on Zakim Bridge, created in response to the Marathon Bombing in 2013, and Alchemist Brewing’s Heady Topper label, voted the industry’s best in a craft beer poll.

His pen and ink talents were a natural for the task, but it took a while to happen.

“Brian asked me if I would illustrate the book, and at the time things were just too hectic,” he recalled. “I was going on my first cross-country tour and there was a lot of activity that year, so he kind of put the book on the back burner. In 2021, he asked again if I could do it, so I carved out a good chunk of this year to make it happen, and I’m so glad I did. The book is so beautifully written, it’s super intriguing and it’s a great read for all ages.”

A first printing sold out at a Sept. 30 book release show, but Blakeslee held out hope that there may be a few copies at his Currier appearance. Barring that, the singer always has plenty of his own works of art on the merch table — lithographs, posters and other collectibles.

The tour will again end on Halloween night at the Press Room, where Blakeslee will share the stage with Soggy Po’ Boys front man Stu Dias’s band Cirque Desolate. As winter approaches, the Doctor Gasp persona will give way to Christmas — Blakeslee released an album in 2020 to honor his second-favorite holiday.

He’d like to blend both into a single show one day, sometime during the sweet spot between pumpkin spice latte and mistletoe seasons. “I did that during the pandemic, set up my kitchen with Halloween décor and then turned the camera to my living room, which is decorated completely for Christmas. We changed costumes and everything; it was pretty wild.”

Doctor Gasp’s 20th Annual Halloween Special
When: Thursday, Oct. 13, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St., Manchester
Tickets: doctorgasp.com and currier.org

Featured photo: Doctor Gasp. Courtesy photo.

Back with more

Jewel hosts Evanoff’s return to Manchester

With the February release of Singularity, Denver-based power trio Evanoff gave its signature “dream rock” sound a harder edge. Though not the stuff of nightmares, the new album reflects the many discontents brought about by technology and its ubiquity. Each track on the all-instrumental effort ends with a statement about what lead guitarist J.J. Evanoff said in a recent interview is “a very special point in humanity, where technology and us have become nearly inseparable.”

Singularity is not all techno dystopia, however, though the music is often jarring. It’s more metal than the arena rock cum jamtronica that made Evanoff a headliner in their hometown and a big draw in places like Manchester. They appear in the city for the second time this year on Friday, Oct. 7, at Jewel Music Venue.

“We need to be aware of how technology is affecting us and our perception of reality, both good and bad,” keyboard player Brennan Forrester explained as the band headed toward Ohio after shows in Chicago and Grand Rapids. “People talk a lot about how addicted we are to social media, but information has never been accessible like this. If you use it for your benefit, it’s like a superpower.”

However, their first studio effort after several live releases was inspired less by Big Tech angst than by a need to make a cohesive statement that speaks loudest as a force of musical power. Evanoff noted he and Forrester came up with the record’s spoken word vignettes during a six-hour mezcal-fueled writing session. Its songs, on the other hand, took months of development in open-ended jam sessions to find their form.

“Getting to finally create a real concept album is something I feel like I’ve dreamed of since I was 10 years old,” Evanoff, who cites the Who’s Quadrophenia and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon as influences, said. “So the fact that we were actually able to do that was extremely creatively fulfilling.”

It also spurred a burst of new music, much of which they’re playing on the current tour. Along with fresh songs is a better stage show than they’d previously been able to mount on the road. “The set we’re running has a unique, almost storyesque-like flow to it, mixing in all these monologues and different pieces from our debut,” Evanoff said. “It showcases what the album was all about essentially, in a more long-form musical piece.”

Forrester added, “we spend a lot of time just thinking about what’s going to make the show the most fun and entertaining for the audience, and for us. So we’re getting away with a lot of things that we wanted to do for a while now; it’s super fun to play.”

The new music, Evanoff said, “definitely has a more aggressive, heavy sound … but I’d say on Singularity, apart from the heavy guitars and rock elements, there’s a lot of lush spatial things. I feel like that’s where we’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from for the new stuff.”

Far from being a different direction for the group, “for us it was really going back to our roots a little bit,” Evanoff said. “We all grew up listening to heavy rock music. It was really powerful to channel where we came from as musicians.”

Headier still is merging it with their well-honed sound. Lately, the band has taken to revamping earlier songs with their newfound edge. “During our live show, it gives this beautiful contrast,” Forrester said. “It speaks to the narrative of Singularity, the dark and light side of the technological revolution that we’re all experiencing in the world right now.”

Asked about the quick return to the Granite State — the band played a sold-out show at Shaskeen in mid-April — Evanoff answered, “We can’t stay away, man. We love Manchester. It really is becoming like a second home. When we’re on the road, it’s like a little island among all of our tour dates. I know we’re going to have a great time just because of the people. They are so much fun and bring so much energy.”

Forrester agreed. “We’ve developed a real community there,” he said. “I look forward to it every single year; that’s one of my favorite shows.”

Both stressed that even local fans who’ve seen the band before will be surprised this time around. “There’s going to be parts of the show that I don’t think people will expect,” Evanoff said. “We’ve got some tricks up our sleeves Manchester hasn’t seen yet.”

Evanoff
When: Friday, Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Jewel Music Venue, 61 Canal St., Manchester
Tickets: $20 at azpresents.com

Featured photo: Evanoff.

Squeeze solo

Tupelo Music Hall welcomes Glenn Tilbrook

On the strength of songs like “Tempted,” “Black Coffee In Bed” and “Up The Junction,” the Squeeze songwriting team of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook has been likened to Lennon and McCartney. However, since Difford penned lyrics and Tilbrook wrote music, a better analogy is Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

In Difford’s biography, Some Fantastic Place, he recalled waiting giddily to hear what Tilbrook had done with his words. “Glenn sits in the middle of my life like the musical maypole,” he wrote. But it was also a fractious relationship marked by an eight-year separation, when Squeeze broke up in 1999. 

During this time Squeeze’s melody man found a way with words, starting in 2001 with The Incomplete Glenn Tilbrook. In a recent phone interview, however, the singer-guitarist recalled going solo as a less than joyful experience. “It was a bit of a nasty shock, actually,” Tilbrook said. “There were moments I thought, I’m proud of that, I think that stands out … then there are other things I wish I hadn’t done.”

He’s made three more solo albums; the latest is 2014’s Happy Ending, an effort Tilbrook is quite proud of. “It points at how Squeeze could be in some ways, and still is to me,” he said. There’s similar fondness for Pandemonium Ensues, a 2009 album that featured a surreal guest vocal appearance by Johnny Depp.

Tilbrook came to a conclusion at the end of his learning curve, though. “I’m confident in myself now as a lyricist, and I’m also confident in the fact that I don’t really want to do solo records,” he said. “I’d like to bring my expertise to Squeeze.”

Now, he contributes more lyrically to the Difford & Tilbrook writing process, albeit from a different wheelhouse. “He’s a brilliant lyricist… such a great imagination,” Tilbrook said of Difford. “I can tie things up really in a more forensic way than Chris, and so we’re sort of combining those skills.”

The two just completed a new song, “Food For Thought,” that will be released in the U.K. to raise funds for Trussell Trust, a charity focused on food insecurity issues. 

“When we play gigs in the U.K., we funnel money to local food banks,” he said. “I’d love to be able to do that here [in the U.S.], because people need that. It’s a shame, but they do. I’ve been working with [Trussell Trust] for five years, and it seems that people need it now more than ever.”

Tilbrook was slated to play the Tupelo Music Hall in Derry on Sunday, Oct. 2, but at the end of last week Tupelo owner Scott Hayward learned that the Oct. 2 appearance was canceled: “We are so sorry for the bad news,” Hayward wrote on Facebook “We were really looking forward to this one.” As of Sept. 26, Tilbrook’s Oct. 7 stop at City Winery in Boston is still on the schedule. See glenntilbrook.com.

Although he has no plans to do more solo albums, Tilbrook enjoys playing alone; it offers a contrast to his still-burgeoning group. “Squeeze is very meticulously rehearsed, and we’re a great band; I think we’re the best we’ve ever been,” he said. “Conversely, when I’m by myself, I can improvise, I don’t work with a setlist…. I like to go off on tangents, so each night is different from the one before, and people like that.”

The shows offer an eclectic mix that touches on every stage of a career that began in the mid-’70s, along with a few tasty covers, which began with Tilbrook’s livestreams during lockdown. “I love other people’s music, and it’s really great to get inside that and do it yourself,” he said of the sessions, which grew to include his wife and son. “I had no reason to do that other than I wanted to, and to bring the family together.”

Fans at recent gigs have been treated to David Bowie’s “Starman,” the Human League dance hit “Don’t You Want Me,” and “Rocket Man” by Elton John. “What a lovely song,” Tilbrook said of the latter. “It translates very well to just me and a guitar, and it’s a tip of the hat to what a magnificent achievement Elton’s career has been. I’m full of admiration for him.” 

Squeeze will be back on the road soon enough, after doing several festivals in England over the summer.

“It was like witnessing magic,” Tilbrook said of the experience. “The sense of relief from the crowds was really palpable, the joy of being able to do something communal again. Because I’ve been gigging for a year now, I’ve got used to it, but you still see that in people’s faces when you’re playing…. It just shows you what a joy it is — not just for us, but any event that you share with people is really precious.” 

Featured photo: Glenn Tilbrook. Photo by Rob O’Connor.

10 films for $10

See movies and join the festival jury at Manhattan Short

See 10 movies and then vote for your favorite film and favorite actor at the Manhattan Short film festival, which will screen all over the world but locally at NHTI in Concord from Friday, Sept. 30, through Sunday, Oct. 2.

Admission costs $10.

The films range in subject matter from serious historical and political issues to short stories with a sense of humor that deliver almost punchline-like conclusions. The films come from around the world: Scotland, Spain, Australia, Finland, Lebanon, Czech Republic, Slovakia, U.S. and France.

Two movies use different styles of animation to examine a family’s history: In Freedom Swimmer sketch-like illustrations (often white on black or dark backgrounds) illustrate a conversation between a granddaughter, uncertain about her future in modern Hong Kong, and her grandfather, who fled China for Hong Kong in the 1950s. Love, Dad uses a style of animation that blends collage and stop-motion, with figures frequently appearing as the cut-out shape in a letter or as “animated” photos.

Another standout for me (I was able to see a screening of the films thanks to local festival organizers) is Don vs Lightning. We all have flaws, a neighbor tells Don. She has an extra toe; Don happens to frequently get struck with lightning. This Scottish movie rolls a lot of charm into his tale.

Fans of Cobra Kai will recognize Peyton List (she plays Tory on the Netflix show), who stars in the quirky violent comedy Save the Bees with Jackson Pace (whose credits include 9-1-1: Lone Star). Spanish film The Treatment is a perfect amuse bouche of cleverness ending in a fun punchline. Freefall highlights a grim moment from the book Swimming with Sharks by Joris Luyendijk, about finance bros in London (spoiler alert: the finance bros do not come off as good guys). Both Fetish and The Big Green basically use a woman’s internal monologue, with Fetish going for broad comedy and The Big Green something a little quieter and more reflective.

I’m not usually a fan of kid-in-peril short films (what happens to the kid? How do I prevent this from happening to my kid?!?) but The Blanket does a good job of giving us a little girl with her little-girl playfulness and her big-sister task to go get some milk for her family set against war in Finland in 1939. Luckily, you can calm down with Warsha, a slice of life of a man who works construction and has no space for himself in the apartment he shares with what appears to be like a dozen guys. He finds a somewhat terrifying but oddly peaceful spot to let himself relax and dream.

This year’s finalists range in length from 9 minutes (the delightfully pithy The Treatment) to just over 19 minutes, with most of them hitting the 10-to-15-minute range. I’ve seen shorts collections (think the Oscar documentary shorts in particular) with films that stretch beyond 30 minutes but the overall shorter runtimes of these films makes them an ideal experience for those who are new to short films screenings.

After the screenings, viewers will get to vote for their favorites, picking a best film and best actor. The winners, as picked by international audiences, will be announced at manhattanshort.com on Monday, Oct. 3.

Manhattan Short
Where: NHTI, 31 College Drive in Concord
When: Friday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m; Saturday, Oct. 1, at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m.
Tickets: Admission costs $10.
More info: manhattanshort.com

Featured photo: Don vs Lightning.

Conversational

Checking in with Paula Poundstone

Paula Poundstone can find something to talk about with just about any audience, anywhere; her act has a handful of jokes and a whole lot of back and forth. The reason for this becomes clear during a 20-minute interview, as the comedian easily moves from topic to topic like a Beetle at a car rally.

She begins with a quick disquisition on her Sisyphean cat litter box duties (“I’m usually sifting”). Next up is her newly found passion for hydroponic gardening, and what it says about her at a certain age. “I eat collard greens, and I’ve been diagnosed with bursitis,” she said. “I’ve become Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies.”

Poundstone lives in Santa Monica “for no good reason” and the recent California heat wave seems to have made her PA a bit mouthy, which prompts her to proclaim, “it’s assistant-firing season.” This boss/underling dynamic’s similarity to the plot of Hacks somehow leads to a discussion about why she’s not ready for binge watching in television’s new golden age.

It’s partly technology, and the rest would definitely take longer than a phone call to enumerate.

“Streaming? That’s stuff they say on Lost in Space; I don’t know how to do any of that, and I’m glad,” she said. “I have 10 cats, two big dogs, and a couple of jobs. How would I ever get anything done with something compelling me to sit down and watch it all the time?”

It’s not hypothetical. When Poundstone was starting out in comedy, she spent a lot of time on buses, rolling from town to town, finding her voice at open mics. It was the late 1970s, and an addiction to M*A*S*H reruns threatened to bankrupt her every time the Greyhound had a layover.

“Back then, bus stations had these little chairs with coin-operated televisions attached to them. I didn’t even have enough money for food, but I’d put my quarters in so I could watch M*A*S*H.” She quit when she realized it was also emotionally draining; a gut punch episode would leave her so bereft she could barely work.

So she missed Seinfeld, avoided Downton Abbey and skipped This Is Us. One exception is Breaking Bad, which she has on DVD. “I’ve watched it probably the whole way through maybe 50 times. So I don’t transition well.” She did watch The Mentalist, but as for the rest? “People look at me like I have two heads, but it’s just too much for me…. I really try to limit my engagement, because I get too upset.”

In her 2017 book, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness, Poundstone used a made-up metric of “heps and balous” to rate experiences that varied from driving a rented Lamborghini to getting tidy and taking dancing lessons. Asked about her current supply of the units — a bunch of heps adds up to one balou — she admitted she hadn’t been counting lately.

“Like many of us, I feel like I’m just putting one foot in front of the other these days,” she said. “But this last year, I’ve been able to work steadily, and I’ll tell you that really lifts your spirits, being with audiences. I tell my little jokes and … people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, thank you for coming, I haven’t laughed this hard in’ … whatever span of time. It’s funny, because they thank me, and the truth is they were the ones who paid to be there. So the thanks go the other way.”

Growing up in Massachusetts, Poundstone began as a standup in Boston before moving to California and finding success. “I had a feeling that life could be different in a different place,” she said, adding, “In Boston I did a substantial amount of bombing, because everyone does, because that’s how you learn.”

She still thinks of New England as home, and is hoping that her upcoming run there will coincide with the autumn colors, though she’s unwilling to refer to that experience as many New Englanders often do. “The phrase ‘leaf peeping’ has come in my absence, and it makes it sound sort of sinister.”

Poundstone will be in the region as September ends and October begins; she hopes this helps her luck. “Every year it looks like I’m going to be [there] during peak foliage,” she said. “Then I show up, and it turns out it happened earlier, or it wasn’t really that good. … I’m always seeing brown molding leaves. So I’m very much looking forward to getting there at the right time.”

Paula Poundstone
When: Saturday, Sept. 24, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $19 to $39 at ccanh.com
Also Saturday, Oct. 1, 8 p.m., The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, $32 to $45 at themusichall.com

Featured photo: Paula Poundstone. Photo by Shannon Greer.

Career in review

Marshall Crenshaw rocks The Rex

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

Calling his latest tour “40 Years In Showbiz,” Marshall Crenshaw is celebrating the anniversary of his 1982 debut album. However, he started in the business a few years before that, performing on Broadway and releasing his first single on the venerable Shake Records label.

In fact, the song that arguably launched his eponymous first platter, “Someday, Someway,” was born while Crenshaw was playing John Lennon in Beatlemania, during its run in Boston.

When the show hit the city in early 1980, Crenshaw had given notice he was leaving. The cast stayed at the Copley Plaza Hotel, and he’d walk there from the Shubert Theatre every night. “Along the way I would get ideas and energy,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It was my first time in Boston, and I loved it… it was winter, but I loved that too. I just had this great sense of possibility about my future.”

Crenshaw’s affinity didn’t end then. “I kept going back to that hotel every couple of years,” he said. “I wrote part of the songs on Field Day [his second record] there. Because it’s a lucky hotel.”

Among the many projects Crenshaw is currently working on is the reissue of those first two albums, with outtakes, bonus tracks and other rarities. The first will drop in November, on Black Friday, with Field Day due in early 2023. They will be released independently; surprisingly, it cost him nothing to secure the rights from his old label, Warner Brothers.

“God bless America,” he said. “The copyright laws allow the author of a work to reclaim that work after 35 years, if you do it in a timely manner, which I did. I claimed the U.S. rights to the sound recordings and the publishing also. That was a pretty heady day.”

So fans will hear the original versions of “Someday, Someway,” “(You’re My) Favorite Waste of Time,” “Cynical Girl” and other songs for the first time on streaming platforms. “They’re going to be amazing — not to be hyping my own stuff,” Crenshaw said, adding a plug for the physical product. “We worked really hard on going into depth with the packaging, to let your mind step inside the world of those records.”

The sophomore effort remains his favorite. “That one really is golden for me … a really vivid moment in my life, “ he said. “There was bad and good stuff going on. It was the culmination of everything, including my failed relationship with Warner Brothers.”

Late last year he released The Wild Exciting Sounds of Marshall Crenshaw: Live In The 20th and 21st Century. Gathered from 1980s radio broadcasts like King Biscuit Flower Hour and more recent shows, the two-disc set gives fans a good idea of what to expect when Crenshaw plays The Rex Theatre in Manchester on Sept. 22. For the show, he’ll be joined by Fernando Perdomo on guitar, bass player Derrick Anderson and Mark Ortmann on drums.

“We do a cross-section of stuff from over the 40 years, and some old rock ’n’ roll songs just for kicks,” said Crenshaw, who played Buddy Holly in the 1987 biopic La Bamba. “It’s just a good evening. Fernando is a great guitar player, the two of us play together really well. If you like my stuff, or if you’re interested or curious about it, I’m pretty sure you’ll come away satisfied.”

On the non-music front, Crenshaw is close to finishing a documentary film on the life of Tom Wilson. A Black producer, Wilson helmed Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” session and was crucial to the careers of Simon & Garfunkel, Frank Zappa and Velvet Underground, accomplishments that came after he’d run the influential Transition jazz label.

“It was a shock for me when I suddenly realized I was going to do it,” Crenshaw said of the project. “It just hit me like a bolt of inspiration…. I looked at the bullet points of his artistic legacy, and I saw a commonality between Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, free jazz, avant-garde and then with electric Dylan and Sounds of Silence. To me those things all fit together; what made them fit together was this one person’s vision.”

That a Black producer was so vital to white performers was secondary to Wilson’s art, he continued. “At that time, the recording session world was integrated, at least in New York,” Crenshaw said. “People are mystified by it now, but that just says more about people now than it says about people then.”

Marshall Crenshaw
When: Thursday, Sept. 22, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $39 to$49 at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Marshall Crenshaw. Courtesy photo.

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