Category: Nightlife

Revamped, Jason Spooner Band hits Concord

The Music in the Park concert series sponsored by Concord’s Capitol Center for the Arts in nearby Fletcher-Murphy Park continues on June 13 with Jason Spooner Band. The quartet rose to prominence in the mid-2000s and became a fixture on the New England festival circuit with five studio albums, most recently Chemical in 2014 and 2019’s Wide Eyed.

Dan Boyden took over on drums a few years back, but the band’s lineup remained constant otherwise, until original bass player Adam Frederick and keyboardist Warren McPherson left for family reasons in the days just prior to the pandemic. London Souls bassist Stu Mahan and Dawson Hill, a keyboard player with a perfect swampy touch, joined in early 2020.

“We had this tectonic shift … but it’s led to really good things,” Spooner said in a recent phone interview. “It was very, very nerve-wracking when it happened because it was like two pillars of the table coming off.”

The new crew made for “a re-energized band,” Spooner said. “Everyone’s equally fired up [and] rowing in the same direction; it’s amazing how far that goes. You get into a rehearsal and feel like everybody’s pumped to be there, to work on stuff and grow. Coming out of last year, we’re playing a lot more theater shows, bigger venues and cool openers.”

The fresh start included revisiting tracks initially done one to two years ago to give them an extra sheen; Spooner hopes to release them as singles. The process was refreshingly unrushed.

“This latest effort feels like it’s a little more marinated, we had time to make it … the songs feel comfortable in their own skin,” he said. “We did it in such a relaxed, unfettered way, there were just no limitations.”

One standout is the slow burner breakup song “Wanted to Say,” evoking Aja-era Steely Dan with help from horn players Phil Rodriguez and Brian Graham, who’ve toured with Sister Sparrow and The Dirty Birds.

“They just came in and we all wrote the lines on the spot,” Spooner said. “It was a super collaborative effort; I love the vibe they contributed.”

The new members joined organically. Boyden and Mahan are longtime friends.

“He’s kind of the alpha bass player around Portland,” Spooner said. “Stu also played and toured with Eric Krasnow, who of course is kind of royalty in the jazz, funk and jam scene, so he’s a monster.”

Finding Hill was pure serendipity.

“We were down at Sun Tiki Studios in Portland, a cool little studio with neighboring rooms where bands play simultaneously” — and the walls aren’t super-soundproofed, Spooner recalled. “We were packing up after a three-hour rehearsal, and all of a sudden we heard this other band. Dan looked at me with this stank face he’s pretty famous for and said, ‘Who the hell is that over there?’ We heard this real nice Little Feat, Dr. John playing — just, you know, a guy who had done his homework.”

Along with lineup changes, Spooner is taking a fresh approach to recording. “I’m hopefully getting a little wiser in terms of how records are made, what my best practices are, and how to do things effectively,” he said. “I’ve been known to be OCD from time to time. I’m the eldest child; I’ve always been kind of the point person on things.”

Lately, writing in the studio has replaced Spooner’s old habit of bringing the band well-formed songs, forging a fraternal bond and shared purpose.

“Skin in the game is big with bands,” he said. “A lot of the rifts happen if two guys are on one page and the other two are on another … whatever the dissonance may be, it’s never a good thing. It can lead to like bigger rifts and breakups and things like that. So now it’s feeling really good. Everybody contributes and has a role.”

Jason Spooner Band
When: Sunday, June 13, 2 p.m.
Where: Fletcher-Murphy Park, 28 Fayette St., Concord
Tickets: $12 at ccanh.com ($8 livestream available)

Featured photo: Jason Spooner Band. Courtesy photo.

Texan guitar ace Chris Duarte returns

Born in San Antonio and a fixture in Austin’s music scene, Chris Duarte is thoroughly Texan — but he’s always called New Hampshire his other home state. In the early 1990s he lived here for a year after moving north at his brother’s behest to battle drug addiction.

Before relocating, Duarte was a rising star with glowing press, the lead guitarist of Junior Medlow & the Bad Boys. He arrived in Plymouth near broke.

“All I had was my guitar, one amp and my briefcase, which had a couple of pedals and stuff,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I lost everything to the pawn shop.”

After stocking shelves at a summer camp for a bit, he edged back into playing, first at the Down Under in Plymouth, then an open mic at Manchester’s now-defunct Boston Trading Co.

“I started to jam there, and they liked me so much they gave me a night; I would host the jam,” he said. “Then … this club out of Concord called Thumbs started booking me [and] it got to the point where I was selling out that place.”

The experience “revitalized my career and got it back moving again,” Duarte said.

Still reeling from native son Stevie Ray Vaughan’s death in 1990, Austin was hungry for guitar heroes when Duarte came back. In short order he signed with Silvertone Records and released Texas Sugar/Strat Magik in 1994. The album earned him Best New Talent honors in the Guitar Player magazine readers poll.

Though Duarte is passionate about the blues — he remembers seeing Vaughan perform at Austin’s storied Continental Club in 1981 as a “hair-raising, jaw-dropping phenomenal” experience — he mixes the tone of that genre with the discipline of jazz. His unique alchemy is bringing a rock edge to those two diverse elements as he races up and down the neck of his Fender Stratocaster.

Early mentor Bobby Mack pointed him toward the “Three Kings” — B.B., Albert and Freddie — to learn the elusive blues sound. When he joined Mack’s Night Train Band, Duarte “knew nothing about tone. I just had these naive notions of what that music shouldn’t sound like. I was so condescending to it at the beginning.”

Duarte soon found his playing lacked “any type of emotion … so I really went to school,” as Mack fed him masters’ licks to learn note for note.

“It took a while, but I finally got in the groove of trying to really be like these guys,” he said. “Bobby made me love the music.”

Though inspired by guitarists like Mahavishnu John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola, Duarte is quick to point out he’s not trying to emulate them.

“I am not like those guys; I’ve got, like, three or four jazz licks, and I play them in the first two songs,” he said, calling his approach more aggressive and emotional, “with dynamics and, I hope, some kind of musical integrity, so somebody would hear me and say, obviously this guy’s studied and knows more than just the old pentatonic box patterns.”

After more than a year of isolation, Duarte is back on the road, and after a spate of Texas dates, he’s more than excited to return to the Granite State, a stop on every East Coast tour since his star rose in the mid-1990s. He first played KC’s Rib Shack in the late ’90s and will return on May 30 for an intimate outdoor show.

“I truly consider New Hampshire my second home,” Duarte said. “I love New Hampshire right now, and I will love New Hampshire till the day I die.”

Chris Duarte Group
When: Sunday, May 30, 7:30 p.m.
Where: KC’s Rib Shack, 837 Second St., Manchester
Tickets: $20 at eventbrite.com

Featured photo: Chris Duarte. Courtesy photo.

Shaskeen comedy returns with Shane Torres

Comedian Shane Torres avoids politics in his act, even though the native Texan has strong personal opinions about, say, Ted Cruz (“I think he’s the biggest POS on the face of the planet”).

“I don’t think I’m good enough, and knowledgeable enough, to pull it off,” Torres said in a recent phone interview. “I don’t even care if I upset people that much, but I don’t know if it’ll be that funny.”

Torres is, however, a big advocate for the Mayor of Flavortown, Guy Fieri. He went viral in 2017 defending the shock-haired star against a tide of what he viewed as undeserved derision.

“All he ever did was follow his dreams,” Torres said on Late Night With Conan O’Brien, as he provided a list of the celebrity chef’s good deeds. “But because he has flames on his shirt, everybody s**ts on him like he’s a member of Nickelback.”

His bit became comedy’s version of “Uptown Funk.” Likes, shares and retweets blew up the internet, and Patton Oswalt declared it to be the one joke he wished he’d written.

For Torres, though, being known as the Fieri guy is a double-edged sword.

“I’m worried I might be a one-hit wonder,” he said. “I think I’m good enough not to be, but I’m afraid I’ll end up like … one of those YouTube stars, who does one thing and people freak out, and they never hear from them again.”

That’s unlikely. Torres’s stories about weird baby names, the mystery of why everything bagels cost the same as regular ones, or his clumsiness at sexting are as relatable as the hint of a drawl in the voice he tells them with. His talent landed him on Comedy Central, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Last Comic Standing — the latter “just barely,” he notes with self-deprecation.

“I don’t want that to be the only thing I’m known for,” Torres said finally of his famous Conan set. “But I also did do something that most people haven’t done, which is cool.”

Stellar standup instincts coupled with a rigorous work ethic — one reason he moved to Brooklyn a few years back was to be able to perform at multiple comedy clubs in one night — point to a solid future for Torres. After a pandemic that slowed everything down, he’s back to his old pace, and not a moment too soon.

“I was afraid I was going to have to start bartending again or something,” Torres said. “I think I have three spots tonight and four spots tomorrow, which was about what I was doing before everything shut down, and that feels nice. The only thing I do is work, and drink beer.”

Torres likes to represent the downtrodden; during his Fieri bit, he also wondered about all the Nickelback hate.

“They made 40 million bros happy,” he noted. “You don’t want them pissed off. That’s how we wound up in this mess.”

It’s an instinct he extends to his profession.

“I think people look at comedy and don’t give it the credit it deserves as an art form — it’s really f-ing hard, but for whatever reason, it’s a little dismissed,” he said, agreeing that what starts as funny ultimately should speak to the human condition in some way. “I do want it to be art, I just don’t know if it is. That’s what I want to do; I am still trying. … [It] does seem to be pretentious, but I think it does deserve to be called [art].”

Shane Torres
When: Wednesday, May 26, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $30/2 seats, $60/4 seats, $90/6 seats at brownpapertickets.com

Featured photo: Shane Torres. Courtesy photo.

Blues trio goes way back

When James Montgomery arrived at Boston University in 1967 his mind was on more than the English degree he hoped to earn. Steeped in the music of his native Detroit and keenly aware of his new home’s burgeoning scene, he set out for Kenmore Square with a harmonica tucked in his pocket.

There he found guitarist Bob McCarthy playing 12-bar blues. Montgomery offered to jam; an instant friendship formed.

“Within two or three hours,” Montgomery said in a recent phone interview, “I had already found someone to play music with, and I continue to play with him to this day.”

McCarthy went on to make many Boston “best of” lists while appearing with Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Jonathan Edwards and others.

For his part, Montgomery kicked off a 50-year career by being the first Northern artist signed to Capricorn Records, label of the Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker Band. The irony of the pairing wasn’t lost on him. “Grew up in Detroit, out of Boston, but somehow we were called Southern rock,” he told one interviewer. “Go figure.”

On May 21, Montgomery and McCarthy continue the bond formed that day at an acoustic show in Laconia, performing as a trio rounded out by bass player Billy Martin — who also shares a connection with Montgomery from those days.

“He was in my first college band,” he said. “We opened up for Paul Butterfield, and Buddy Guy and Junior Wells in upstate New York.”

It will truly be a BU reunion, Montgomery added. “I mean, we all did really go to school together and everything.”

After the pandemic canceled his 2020 shows, Montgomery, whom Peter Wolf once called “the John Mayall of New England,” is eager to get back on stage.

“I’m bringing the whole band, and we’ve all been vaccinated,” he said. “I’ve got a bunch of outdoor shows. … My July and August look like any other year.”

Their first gig back was April 23 in Franklin, Mass.

“We had a ball,” Montgomery said, though “some of the songs we couldn’t remember; it was like, ‘Does the bass solo come before or after that?’ There were some arrangement changes we made spontaneously on stage.”

For anyone on the fence about getting a shot, Montgomery had an answer with “Get Vaccinated,” a redo of “Intoxicated,” which originally appeared on his From Detroit to the Delta album.

“We made it multicultural, people from across the spectrum getting vaccinated,” he said of the video, released in late April. “One of the main reasons for putting it out was to try and encourage people to hasten that process so we can get back to full-capacity live music.”

Montgomery has been involved in several film projects over the past two decades, contributing the title song for Delta Rising: A Blues Documentary in 2007, a project that included narrator Morgan Freeman and musicians Mose Allison, Charlie Musselwhite and Willie Nelson. With partner Judy Laster, who runs the Woods Hole Film Festival, he co-founded the Reel Blues Festival in 2001.

Currently he’s nearing completion of a documentary that’s close to his heart: Bonnie Blue — James Cotton’s Life in the Blues. Cotton, a harmonica legend, shared a familial bond with Montgomery.

“When I’d call his manager, Jack would say, ‘Oh, your father wants to say hello,’” he said. “I met him when I was in my teens, and we were lifelong friends. Of course, we’d done a ton of work together.”

Most of the filming is complete, with post-production and song rights the remaining tasks. The latter is currently the focus of a fundraising effort.

“It’s a music film, so there’s going to be a lot of licensing stuff,” Montgomery said.

The finished product will be a star-studded affair.

“We got Steve Miller, Jimmy Vaughan, Buddy Guy, and I think we’ll get Charlie Musselwhite next,” Montgomery said.

A two-day shoot had harp players from across the country reminiscing, as both Cotton’s and Montgomery’s bands joined in.

“It was completely spontaneous playing, and chatting about him, which I’ve never seen in a documentary before,” he said. “It’s really cool footage.”

Acoustic Trio – Bob McCarthy, Billy Martin and James Montgomery
When: Friday, May 21, 6 p.m.
Where: Belknap Mill, 25 Beacon St. E., Laconia
More: belknapmill.org

Featured photo: Bob McCarthy and James Montgomery. Courtesy photo.

Tupelo season continues with Truffle

Few New Hampshire bands have the longevity of Truffle; 2021 marks their 35th year. Beyond that, the quintet’s lineup has stayed intact for most of that time. Mike Gendron took over on drums 10 years in; he’s jokingly called “The Rookie” by his bandmates.

As a recent sold-out Stone Church show attests, Truffle is a mainstay at its Seacoast home base. But the rest of the state often finds itself waiting to see them play, a situation made worse by the pandemic. An upcoming Tupelo Drive-In show is their first inland gig since February 2020, when they played at Milford’s Pasta Loft.

Truffle front man Dave Gerard is stoked to celebrate his band’s anniversary with horn-honking fans, their first time in the Derry parking lot venue born out of necessity last spring, and that’s set to close when indoor events return.

“Our peeps told us they were dying for a show, and we were like, OK, here you go,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It’s our only one in May, so let’s hope there’s good weather.”

Before Covid-19 blew a hole in their plans, Truffle was set to make a new album for their big year. Main songwriter Ned Chase and bass player David Bailey had a lot of new material ready, but plans were pushed out another year.

“Whenever we all have a bunch of tunes, that’s when it tells us it’s time to do an album,” Gerard said. “but it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Instead, Gerard made his sixth solo disc, due for a June release.

“I made the call, I said, hey, you guys, OK that I’m going to do a DG album? And they were like, of course man,” he said.

He recorded at The Electric Cave in Portsmouth, “flying in tracks” from several musician connections and recruiting local scene luminaries like Yamica Peterson of Mica’s Groove Train to contribute.

The approach to recording was loose and low-key.

“I thought, if the guys can’t come in, no pressure, I’ll make an acoustic album,” he said. “The next thing I know Mike Gendron and Dave Bailey, the rhythm section from Truffle, were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll come in, absolutely.’ … I’d say at least half the album ended up full-fledged electric.”

Sound Cave engineer Marc McElroy contributed on several instruments; Gerard handled all the guitars, along with vibes and percussion. Tracking was just completed, and the new release should be out by early summer.

“I went into it thinking it’s going to be what it’s going to be,” Gerard said. “It’s far exceeded what I thought we’d get.”

Live outdoors — for now

Gerard expects to play a few new tunes at the upcoming Tupelo show. While he played similar al fresco venues last season around his Seacoast stomping grounds, this will be his first — and last — at the Derry venue. That’s because owner Scott Hayward announced the return of indoor shows in an April 28 email.

“Based on our contracts, conversations with agents, and new tours that are being booked, I believe that we will once again be hosting shows indoors in September,” Hayward wrote. “This means that we will be making some sort of transition at the end of August and probably ending our Drive-In series mid-August.”

In a phone interview two days later, Hayward said the transition may happen earlier. It will depend on whether Three Dog Night or Air Supply follow through with tour plans and perform on Aug. 20 and Aug. 28, respectively.

“Air Supply says they’re coming, and if that’s the case I have to have the show,” he said. That’s a problem if skittish fans want refunds. “We could be open and still lose money.”

It’s Hayward’s plan that 33 1/3 Live’s Killer Queen Experience kicks off the return of live entertainment in the 700-seat room on Sept. 3, followed by Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush on Sept. 9.

Hayward dangled some tantalizing names for “yet to be announced shows” waiting on contracts that are likely to happen later this year. Performers could include Chris Isaak, Rick Wakeman, Wynonna and a night co-headlined by The Fixx and The English Beat.

The path forward is by no means certain.

“There’s a real misunderstanding of what it means to say you’re open — people need to understand that few bands are touring and it pushes everything out a few months,” Hayward said. “You’re kick-starting an entire industry.”

Truffle
When: Friday, May 7, 6 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Drive-In, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $22 per person, $75 per car at tupelohall.com

Featured photo: Truffle