Category: Nightlife

Sons pay tribute in Ricky Nelson Remembered

Matthew and Gunnar Nelson formed their duo Nelson as the MTV era crested. Their video “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love And Affection” was ubiquitous when it came out in 1990, but like their father, Ricky Nelson, whose string of hits was cut short by The Beatles in 1964, his twin sons’ ascent was also stymied by a musical movement — Nirvana and grunge.

The brothers were accustomed to uphill battles, though. It took years for Geffen Records to take them seriously.

“We call it the world’s longest overnight success,” Matthew Nelson said in a recent phone interview. “We were the kings of waiting and starting and waiting.”

Even with a record deal, they received scant support; once, they busked in front of an elevator at a radio convention because the label wouldn’t spring for a hotel suite.

So the pair pressed on, touring with their hard-rock blood harmony sound and making new music. They’ve recorded six studio albums since their multiplatinum debut After The Rain, and a country rock project, First Born Sons, is currently in the works. But an evening playing their father’s songs wasn’t something they considered doing until a Japanese promoter suggested it in the early 2000s.

Initially they were skeptical about performing for U.S. troops at Yokosuka Naval Station.

“No one at that time knew who we were, let alone our dad. He said, it’s Japan, it’s for a good cause, and nobody’ll know if it’s horrible,” Matthew Nelson said. “This is pre-internet, so there was truth to that. We put together a little rockabilly show and by the first number my brother and I felt like idiots that we weren’t doing it sooner — the kids loved the music.”

Two decades later, they’re still doing Ricky Nelson Remembered; it hits Manchester’s Palace Theatre on Oct. 7. The show has evolved from its protean origins into a multimedia affair, an evening of music and storytelling. Hits like “Hello Mary Lou,” “Travelin’ Man” and “Garden Party” are mixed with Matthew and Gunnar’s memories, along with filmed interviews from artists who were influenced by their dad, including Paul McCartney and Chris Isaak.

Ricky Nelson starred with his family on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, a sitcom that ran from 1952 through 1966; the show launched a music career that sold half a billion records. His pivot from teen idol to singer-songwriter inspired a bevy of SoCal folk rock performers, from the Byrds to the Eagles.

“He was definitely in a very cool place at a very cool time,” Matthew Nelson said. “If he had any kind of albatross, it was that he was impossibly handsome with a television show [and] I think he came to represent something that had passed by.”

Undeterred, the elder Nelson formed the Stone Canyon Band in the late ’60s and kept playing, releasing “Garden Party” in 1972 with the wonderfully dismissive line, “if memories were all I sang, I’d rather drive a truck.”

Matthew and Gunnar were 18 when their father died in a plane crash, on New Year’s Eve 1985; two years later he was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Matthew recalls a “great relationship” with their dad, marked by music, love and laughter. The tribute show reflects that.

“The best part about it is frankly representing our dad and honoring him — I still miss him every day,” Matthew Nelson said. “So for me on the selfish front, I get to visit with him whenever I do the show and relive some of those memories that are personal to me. We get to talk about him on stage.”

Ricky Nelson Remembered draws a multigenerational audience; some come to relive their past, others to discover a bygone era. However, the show goes beyond family nostalgia, insists Matthew Nelson.

“It’s especially a journey through music that wasn’t computerized or fixed in the mix … it’s live. I think that going back to basics is important for everybody — especially for musicians that can slap on a plug-in and tune their voices. You couldn’t do that back then. … People get something real, and that’s the most important thing.”

Ricky Nelson Remembered
When: Thursday, Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St., Manchester
Tickets: $45 to $55 at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Gunnar and Matthew Nelson. Courtesy photo.

Gin Blossoms-Vertical Horizon twin bill hits town

Gin Blossoms singer Robin Wilson knows his band’s odds of making the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame are slim — “There’s a pretty deep bench you gotta work your way through before you get to us,” he said in a recent phone interview. It’s OK, though; the music HoF in Wilson’s home state of Arizona inducted them in 2017. Better still, the ’90s band is buzzing in the current zeitgeist.

They were name-checked on the season opener of Apple TV+’s hit show Ted Lasso and drafted into a Twitter war during the Phoenix Suns’ NBA playoff run. The Lasso mention was especially gratifying for Wilson. “‘Hey Jealousy’ is the best Gin Blossoms song,” the American football turned English soccer coach played by Jason Sudeikis said, “but ‘Follow You Down’ is my favorite.”

The latter song came at a critical juncture in the band’s career. After their major label debut New Miserable Experience went multiplatinum, Gin Blossoms founder and creative leader Doug Hopkins was consumed by addiction, left the band, and later died by suicide. “Follow You Down” was the lead single of their 1996 follow-up, Congratulations I’m Sorry. It would be their first and only Billboard No. 1.

“That helped legitimize the rest of the band,” Wilson said. “If that hadn’t happened, we would have been living in Doug’s shadow forever. ‘Follow You Down’ and ‘Till I Hear It From You’ — those songs were our opportunity to really prove that we had what it took … then for Ted Lasso to say it’s his favorite song 30 years later, it’s pretty … cool.”

“Follow You Down” came late in the process, recalled Wilson, when their record label demanded another hit.

“They were perfectly clear that they didn’t want just another song,” he said. “That’s about as much pressure as any band can ever be under; trying to follow up a multi-platinum debut, and then being told you’re not quite there yet. … I take an immense pride in what we did … but it’s not like we cured cancer; we just wrote a good song.”

Their first two albums represented a commercial pinnacle, and the group disbanded in 1997, but a reunited Gin Blossoms has continued to make new music since the early 2000s. Their most recent, 2018’s Mixed Reality, is a gem. For Wilson the creative spark is always around.

“It’s a deep ingrained passion I’ve had my whole life,” he said. “The first time I ever wrote a song, I think I was in the third grade, writing about UFOs and stuff. … It’s easy to perform, it’s easy to write. The hard part is being in a band and compromising with your bandmates, finding the middle ground, and even that isn’t as difficult as a lot of other things.”

Wilson is working on a solo project, Poppin’ Wheelies. It’s currently a soundtrack to an animation series that he hopes to place on Cartoon Network, Netflix or a similar platform. A video for one of the songs, “Little Stars,” is up on YouTube and has an unmistakable Gin Blossoms sound.

“My vision is Scooby Doo in outer space with great humor, retro ’70s, Saturday morning nostalgia,” he said. “On top of that it would be full of just great animation, and the music video sequences would be the standout moments. I’d like it to basically be like Spinal Tap in outer space.”

Perhaps he should pitch to Apple, given the Ted Lasso connection?

“That’s definitely one of my targets, but my agent is saying he’s not sure they’re really interested in animation … but a big part of Poppin’ Wheelies is guest stars and licensed music; in that sense I think they’d really get it. Clearly they have the budget we’d be hoping for, and it’s a prestige network.”

Gin Blossoms & Vertical Horizon
When: Saturday, Sept. 18, 1 p.m.
Where: Anheuser-Busch Brewery, Merrimack
Tickets: $29 and up at ticketmaster.com
More: 16 and over unless accompanied by a parent. Children under 5 not permitted.

Featured photo: Gin Blossoms. Courtesy photo.

Yoga studio hosts music and art

As 2020 dawned, Wyn Doran was feeling the glow of her moving debut EP, Thick of It, and working on new music. Like the rest of the world, by March she was locked down and satiating her creative impulses with intimate livestreams, always thinking of bigger things.

In November she hit upon an idea that would lead to a nomination in the New England Music Awards’ new digital performance category, along with a nod for New Hampshire’s Best in State prize.

Doran released “Starry Eyes” in 2020, a duet with Justin Wiggins augmented by the Pennichuck Middle School Chorus singing via Zoom, each member on a tiny retro television. For self-described “choir nerd” Doran, the collaboration, which also included songwriters from the U.K. and Brooklyn, was a dream come true.

“To put it quite simply, it’s a really huge part of my connection to music, and for the first time, I had a song where I could actually hear a choir behind it,” she said in a recent phone interview, adding that the logistics weren’t easy. “I wasn’t really sure how to pull it off, but the choir director was really excited, because that was also a class. My heart goes out to all the students going through the BS of learning online. … For choir, there was no way to sing in a room.”

For Doran, who had a creative breakthrough working with singer-songwriter Ben Folds a few years back, working with other writers in the pandemic was an unexpected benefit in an otherwise stifling time.

“I have different collaborators from all over the globe,” she said, “which I couldn’t have done without the … pandemic.”

Being alone with her thoughts for months on end sparked a desire to dig into her local surroundings. This led to Doran’s latest endeavor, with Vibe Yoga in Nashua — a curated musical showcase preceded by an art display by the studio’s owner, Melissa Coppola. The two met and bonded over their shared experiences leaving the corporate world, and a desire to do more for their hometown.

“It was always in her vision to not just provide yoga to the Nashua community but also bring art and music into it,” Doran said. “We were talking about what can we do? We thought about our ideal shows outside of the city, and how they foster an environment of true listening and appreciation.”

The first show in a hoped-for series — “We’re going to hold our breath a little bit into September about lining up October,” Doran said — happens Thursday, Sept 9, and includes Doran, Aaron Emmanuel and Elizabeth Wyld.

Wyld and Doran met while both were touring in 2018, and the two will share a bill in Allston, Mass., two days before the Nashua show. The indie singer-songwriter released her debut album, Quiet Year, last May.

“I’m hoping to bring artists that I met and loved when I was on the road to my city,” Doran said. “That’s how Elizabeth came along. Aaron Emmanuel is an awesome voice from Boston that I’ve seen perform in Somerville. He felt like a great person to round out our first bill.”

The connection to Coppola’s yoga studio is rewarding for more than the community activism it’s inspired. Doran has dealt with chronic pain for over a decade, and the fitness regimen Vibe offered her was a tonic.

“Pursuing the artist lifestyle and actually writing the darn songs that have been festering in my soul, plus yoga, have been two things that have really made a difference in my life,” she said. “That’s definitely a huge piece of me being so excited to tap into the Nashua community. Ten years ago I’d never even tried it. Now I’m definitely a believer.”

Live at Vibe w/ Wyn Doran, Elizabeth Wyld & Aaron Emmanuel
When: Thursday, Sept. 9, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Vibe Yoga, 182 Main St., Nashua
Tickets: $12 — proof of vaccine required; more at VibeYoga603.com

Featured photo: Wyn Doran, Elizabeth Wyld and Aaron Emmanuel. Courtesy photo.

Concord band celebrates debut album

For Andrew North, the stage and the studio are two distinct places, with the latter a place for adventure. Phosphorescent Snack, the debut album from North and his band the Rangers, is a multi-tracked gem, with elements of funk, soulful pop and progressive jazz. It’s Steely Dan meets Frank Zappa at a 1969 Chicago Transit Authority listening party.

“Electrostatic Chills” expresses a solid groove intention, while the instrumental “Epiphone” showcases the four band members’ prowess: North on keys, drummer Dale Grant, bass player Chip Spangler and horn wizard Rob O’Brien. That the song is missing the instrument it’s named after is not lost on North.

“Yeah, there’s no guitar on the album, which has kind of become a point of pride for us,” he said in a recent interview.

Other standouts include “Down the Pipes,” with its echoes of Dixieland jazz, the can-do anthem “Dig Deep” and “Aditi,” the latter sounding like an unmistakable nod to a certain Vermont jam band.

“It’s hard to admit, because when we say we’re Phish-influenced, the reaction can go either way,” North agreed. “But there’s no question I‘ve soaked up so much of that over the decades, and it comes across in what I do. … I’ve stopped trying to downplay it.”

The connection is understandable; North moved from Burlington, Vermont, to Concord five years ago, bringing the energy of his first home along with him. Andrew North & the Rangers is a multigenerational ensemble; Grant has played drums for close to five decades, including sessions with members of Yes, Survivor and Cheap Trick, while the younger Spangler’s resume includes work in far-away places like Alaska.

Like many bands, the quartet planned to complete its debut disc in 2020, but when the pandemic ended live shows, time was used to polish it a bit more. O’Brien, who plays an electronic Roland Aerophone he affectionately calls Dustbuster that can emit a multitude of sounds, opened his laptop and created walls of horns that would please Earth, Wind & Fire.

“Covid-19 gave us a good chance to sit down and work the tracks up with some overdubbing,” North said, “and obviously, if you let Rob loose with a chance to take more than one pass at a song, he’ll take full advantage.”

North and his mates marked the record’s release with an August show at Area 23, a Concord haven for original bands like theirs. They’ll appear at Newmarket’s venerable Stone Church on Sept. 2.

“I was in a jam band in like 2006, and we were dying to get a gig at Stone Church,” North said, “and they never gave us the time of day… so I may be irrationally excited about that one.”

On Sept. 4 they’ll play a late set at the Keene Music Festival, a massive outdoor showcase of regional bands on multiple stages. Along with North’s group, Plague & Pestilence, a side project featuring Dead Harrison’s Jason Skulls and Lucretia X. Machina from Lucretia’s Daggers, will play its first public show.

Jake McKelvie & the Countertops, Jonee Earthquake Band, Kennedy Drive, Tyler Allgood and the Humans Being are among the New Hampshire bands represented at the event, which runs from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

“This is our first one and I’m really excited about it,” North said. “We’ve been kind of incubating in Concord for a while, and the music scene here has really started to gel in the last few years, which has been fun. Places like Area 23 really help to nurture it.”

Andrew North & the Rangers will appear again in their Concord hometown later this year, at Penuche’s Ale House on Friday, Oct. 22, and Area 23 on Friday, Nov. 5.

Andrew North & the Rangers
When: Thursday, Sept. 2, 8 p.m.
Where: Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket
Tickets: $5 – more at facebook.com/andrewnorthandtherangers
Also appearing Saturday, Sept. 4, at Keene Music Festival in Downtown Keene – City Tire Stage, 7:15 p.m.

Featured photo: Andrew North and the Rangers. Courtesy photo.

Cracker headlines Nashua mini-festival

Though he started two bands that found international renown and still tour decades later, David Lowery is an atypical rock star. He’s a trained mathematician who wrote code in Silicon Valley during its command line days, and he’s now a senior lecturer on business at the University of Georgia.

Lowery is also an erudite defender of artists’ rights who successfully spearheaded a class action suit against Spotify, and went before Congress to slam the federal government’s arcane Copyright Royalty Board, which sets streaming payments. In his view, the agency is captive to the industry it’s supposed to regulate.

“They’re saying, ‘we’re able to give music cheaply to consumers,’ but it’s literally starving the music ecosystem,” Lowery said in a recent phone interview. “Either the board that sets the rate needs to be completely overhauled, with new rules set for it, or the whole thing just needs to be abolished, because it’s what people would call crony capitalism at its worst.”

Musicians at his level, playing for 1,000 fans or less most nights, exemplify the gig economy, Lowery told the Radikaal podcast in June, cobbling together multiple jobs in the industry. His first foray as a performer was anything but ambitious; Lowery joked about Camper van Beethoven’s unexpected breakthrough in “Mom I’m Living the Life, 1981,” from his new album In the Shadow of the Bull.

“I had a band / it was a joke,” he sings, “then it was not / we got some real gigs / in San Francisco.”

Offbeat songs like “Take the Skinheads Bowling” and “ZZ Top Goes To Egypt” earned CVB a cult following that carried them away from their Northern California punk rock beginnings. It dissolved in 1990; he formed Cracker with Johnny Hickman, the name a nod to Lowery’s Georgia roots, and released a slew of country-leaning alt-rock hits led by “Low” and “Get Off This.”

Cracker tops a bill with the percussive Entrain and rootsy Muddy Ruckus at the upcoming Gate City Music Fest on Aug. 27 at Nashua’s Holman Stadium. The current touring band includes Hickman and a pair of players from their 2014 album Berkeley to Bakersfield. Lowery said recent set lists reflect a musical dichotomy.

“We are doing this tour with kind of the band that did the country disc, but they’re actually pretty much rock players,” he said. “So it goes from rock to sort of our pseudo soul or pseudo blues rock and then to the country stuff. It’s all over the place.”

The snarky definition of Cracker’s non-genre reflects “our unique stamp,” Lowery said. “We’re not trying to do exactly soul, or exactly blues rock, or any of these things. We’re borrowing parts, and bringing it into our format.”

Lately, they’ve twanged up a few songs from their nascent Bay Area days.

“Some of them fit really nicely into what we’re doing; adding the pedal steel to it, the songs are a little different,” Lowery said, adding that a reworked version of “Skinheads” will probably be ready for the Nashua show.

“The early straight-ahead simple Camper van Beethoven songs ended up being pretty interesting,” he said. “We try to play a good cross-section of stuff from across our catalog. We don’t leave out the hits.”

He’s keen to hit the road after the pandemic stopped the world for over a year, even more so because his wife is a promoter who books Atlanta’s 40 Watt nightclub and other venues.

“Here’s a lesson I told my kids — never marry someone in the same business you’re in,” Lowery said. “If things go wrong, everybody’s screwed. It was pretty crazy for us, because there were no concerts. She’s only really going back on salary Sept. 1, basically 18 months with no work. … We really had to get clever.”

Gate City Music Fest
When: Friday, Aug. 27, 3 p.m.
Where: Holman Stadium, 67 Amherst St., Nashua
Tickets: $25/reserved seat, $150/six-person pod at gatecitybrewfestnh.com

Featured photo: Cracker. Courtesy photo.

Hampton Beach Comedy Festival returns

Through the years, some things haven’t changed at the Hampton Beach Comedy Festival. Rule No. 1 is that every comic there has to make Jimmy Dunn laugh. Rule No. 2 is that he has to like them — after all, the whole thing began as a hang in 2009, when Dunn, a year-round beach resident, invited a bunch of his friends for a barbecue that ended with a show at Ashworth by the Sea.

It grew to four nights, with many of the same faces, and a few new ones every year working the crowds, then repairing to Playland Arcade for a highly competitive hybrid of cards and skee-ball, followed by after-hours poker — basically a comedy festival that’s an excuse for a rolling party.

“I got my crew of comics, my friends, and it’s sort of how comedy works in New England,” Dunn said in a recent phone interview as he ran down this year’s lineup. “I try and mix it up, bring in some comics that I don’t generally put on shows with me … give some other people opportunities and mix it up for the fans.”

Making their debut are John Reiman, a comedy veteran who spent several years as a writer on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

“He’s been around forever, we just never were able to get him,” Dunn said. “He’s very funny, and he grew up in North Hampton, so he’s also a hometown guy.”

Another newcomer is Peter Martin, a Boston comic whom Dunn calls “explosively funny … I did a show with him; I was watching him just destroy a room, and I went, ‘Oh, man. I don’t know if I could follow this kid tonight.’ That’s how he got my attention. Since then, I’ve seen him a bunch of times.”

Will Noonan was a newcomer in the festival’s early days who’s grown into a regional headliner. Dunn remembers Noonan as an eager-to-please youngster when he first arrived.

“He had this Elvis Costello suit on, and he went up and absolutely killed it,” he said in 2019. “I was like, ‘Who is this kid? This is awesome!’ We’ve become really good buddies.”

Among those also returning are longtime favorite Lamont Price, Kelly MacFarland, Mark Riley, Dan Boulger and Chris D, who first performed in 2019. There are seven or eight comics on each show, making for a rapid-fire night of laughs, and special guests are always a strong possibility.

As in past years, Dunn will close each night, and Dave Rattigan will host.

That the festival is happening at all is a minor miracle. A last-minute offer from Tom McGuirk, who owns the eponymous Ocean View Hotel & Restaurant, saved the long weekend.

“He said, ‘Hey, we’d love to have it down here,’ and we looked at it and said, ‘This would be really cool,’” Dunn said. “I guess he’d been to a few of the festivals in the past at the Ashworth and is a comedy fan.”

The Ashworth was “in over their heads with staffing issues and trying to get all the weddings through that they could, and they just couldn’t accommodate us,” Dunn said. “We lucked out, because I thought we were done.”

Dunn’s best friend Tony V. will perform. The two have a podcast called Two Boston Guys Whack Up A Pie.

“The premise was we’d get together and get some kind of pie, apple, blueberry, sit there and have a slice. That’s just such a Boston expression — ‘You want to whack up a large pizza pie?’ But we found out pretty quickly that people didn’t like hearing us eat at the same time we’re talking.”

The show is usually Dunn and Tony V. commiserating about current events and comedy, but recently they hosted Bobcat Goldthwait, who’s been a friend of both since their open mic days in Cambridge at the Ding Ho and other clubs.

“He eats like everybody else,” Dunn said. “He’s getting back out on the road doing stand-up and wanted to plug some dates up here in New England. We get along great with Bob, so we had him on. Technically, it was not our best episode, but he’s a really funny man.”

Hampton Beach Comedy Festival
When: Thursday, Aug. 19, to Sunday, Aug. 22, at 8 p.m.
Where: McGuirk’s Ocean View, 98 Ocean Blvd., Hampton
Tickets: $20/show at happsnow.com

Thursday
Jimmy Dunn
Chris D
Dan Boulger
Mike Whitman
Dan Crohn
Liam McGurk
Graig Murphy
Dave Rattigan

Friday
Jimmy Dunn
Will Noonan
Jeff Koen
Steve Scarfo
Tony V
Janet McNamara
Dave Rattigan

Saturday
Jimmy Dunn
Steve Bjork
Lamont Price
Dan Miller
Carolyn Plummer
Andrew Della Volpe
Don Zollo
Dave Rattigan

Sunday
Jimmy Dunn
Kelly MacFarland
Mark Riley
Jason Merrill
Peter Martin
Jon Rineman
Dave Rattigan

Featured photo: Jimmy Dunn. Courtesy photo.