Category: Nightlife

Stephane Wrembel brings Triptych to UNH

By Michael Witthaus
[email protected]

Triptych is the latest album from French guitarist Stephane Wrembel. The expansive 20-song collection is a meditation on life, represented in three musical movements. It’s a collaboration with pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, which came together after Wrembel’s manager suggested that the two connect. Initially, Wrembel was reluctant.

“Piano and guitar are very difficult to marry,” he said by phone recently. “It’s a difficult match because we kind of occupy the same space, and it’s very easy for tones to clash.” He decided to give it a try anyway, and quickly became enamored of the pianist. Pilc is renowned for his improvisational skills and has an impressive resume. His credits include time as music director and pianist for Harry Belafonte.

At the time, Wrembel had a concert series at Joe’s Pub in New York City coming up to celebrate the release of Django l’impressionniste, a collection of 17 preludes for solo guitar.

“Django is also influenced by Claude Debussy, so I wanted to do something around him,” he recalled. That’s when Pilc’s name came up; the two had not yet met.

He was recruited for the shows, and “the chemistry was immediate and so powerful that we decided to record together,” Wrembel said. “I had the instinct that we needed to go to the studio and record a triptych. I had the vision of a triptych. I didn’t know why, but I could see that it was the right thing to do.”

It’s a true collaboration, with both Wrembel and Pilc contributing new songs. Overall, the album is anchored by selections from Django Reinhardt like “Douce Ambiance,” which is transformed by Pilc’s piano flourishes in the intro before settling into a joyous jazzy rhythm familiar to fans of Reinhardt.

Wrembel is a devotee of the legendary guitarist. As David Fricke wrote in 2009, he “studied Reinhardt’s fleet precision and soulful swing the hard way — playing in actual Gypsy camps.” He lived in the Paris neighborhood where Reinhardt spent his final years and considers him an essential musician.

“Django is to the guitar what Bach is to the keyboard,” he said. “When you practice Django, you become a better guitarist; it’s automatic. You will understand the guitar better, you will see things better, you have a better technique, so everything about your playing is going to be better. Django is an archetypal source like that.”

Triptych’s first movement begins with “Ecco Homo” — an introduction, Wrembel explained. “It means ‘here is the man,’” he said. “It’s the birth of the triptych.” The next section starts with “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” a Wrembel composition that provides insight into what informs him beyond gypsy jazz.

The first song Wrembel recalls hearing as a very young child is Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” He’s progressed past rock, but “those sounds are still there, I make no difference between Debussy, Pink Floyd, Chopin,” he said. “All that’s the same for me.”

There’s a link to the ’70s literary touchstone in Floyd’s song “Echoes,” Wrembel continued. “It’s about an albatross hanging motionless upon the air,” he said. This led him to Richard Bach’s novel, and “the idea of a floating seagull that tries to find what’s noble in its own nature rather than just finding food. It’s a beautiful tale.”

The third section of Triptych is its most ambitious, beginning with “Life In Three Stages Part I: The Child and the Desert,” continuing with “Part II: Building a World” and concluding with “Part III: Old Age, Grace and Wisdom.” The last offers an elegiac cadence that’s gorgeous and haunting, with Wrembel and Pilc the only musicians.

The final movement’s tone reflects Wrembel’s own sentiments.

“I’m 50, I’m entering old age,” he said. “That’s the third stage, where I believe that as an artist, if you keep working and concentrating and studying philosophy, it’s possible to reach very high levels of consciousness. You don’t think the same when you are 50 than when you are 20, and probably you don’t think the same when you are 80 than when you are 50. Every time there is more and more wisdom coming.”

Triptych – Stephane Wrembel Band with Jean-Michel Pilc
When: Friday, Sept. 13, 8 p.m.
Where: Johnson Theatre, 50 Academic Way, Durham
Tickets: $10 and $12 at stephanewrembel.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Rocking up the blues with Anthony Gomes

Anthony Gomes stands where many tributaries meet to feed a river. “Painted Horse,” originally released in 2009 when the guitarist was a member of Nashville-based New Soul Cowboys, is indicative of this. The power trio paid tribute to country music in a decidedly rocking way, while keeping the blues influence front and center. In late 2021 he revived the song for a new album.

Gomes, in a recent phone interview, remembered a time when detractors from both sides called him either too rock for blues or too blues for rock, and deciding then to use that to his advantage. Now he’s signed to a new label that includes several heavy metal bands. To celebrate, he went into the studio with Korn’s drummer Ray Luzier and Billy Sheehan, a bass player whose resume includes David Lee Roth, Mr. Big and The Winery Dogs.

“Painted Horse” was one of five old songs that Luzier and Sheehan helped rock up for High Voltage Blues, though Gomes chose to leave in the banjo — twang on that! Last year Gomes’ new label, Rat Pak Records, remixed 2018’s Peace, Love & Loud Guitars, adding three bonus tracks. The guitarist is wrapping up work on a new album called Praise the Loud.

There’s a rocking message behind all of this, and Gomes delivers it on tracks like the AC/DC doppelgänger “White Trash Princess” and “Fur Covered Handcuffs,” though the latter, a chugging boogie punctuated by fiery solos, provides clues to the Toronto-born blues rocker’s origins.

His big break came when someone from B.B. King’s staff heard Gomes playing at an open mic where good players were given a beer, and invited him to meet the blues legend. “It was a two-beer night, I was playing really well,” Gomes said. “This guy came up to me and said, ‘Who’s your favorite guitar player?’ I could have said Jeff Beck or Jimi Hendrix, but I just said, ‘Oh, that’s easy, B.B. King.’ He said, ‘I thought so. I’m his bus driver.’”

Given the locale, Gomes was a bit skeptical, but he went to the show and found four front-row tickets waiting for him and his friends. He was prepared to meet his idol after. “I made business cards; I wore dress pants and dress shoes. It was like I was going to meet the Pope,” he said. King would become a lifelong mentor. “He was so gracious with his time, such a gentleman, so humble.”

At the time, Gomes was attending the University of Toronto, completing a master’s thesis on the racial evolution of blues music that was later published as “The Black and White of Blues,” but the next day he quit school, telling his parents that he wanted to be a professional musician.

He discovered music via Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, but songs like “Train Kept A Rolling,” “Whole Lotta Love” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” only made him more interested in the music that informed those classic rockers.

“I started to go back to Stevie Ray Vaughan, then to B.B. King, then Muddy Waters,” he said, adding that this experience was leading him to where he’d end up eventually, straddling both genres.

“In some ways, I felt like if I listened to blues, I was only getting half the picture. If I listened to rock, I got the other half,” he said. “Both these musics coexist and have a shared DNA, but oftentimes there’s a strict line dividing them. Maybe that was based on marketing to a certain race initially. To me they’re just two sides of the same coin.”

That’s one reason why Gomes was drawn to Rat Pak, which is based in New Hampshire.

“The president of the label heard our stuff and said, ‘Hey, I know this is blues, and you’ve been marketed [that way], but I really feel that there’s a wider audience here in rock. How would you feel about that?’ I was like, ‘Throw me in, coach, let’s go!”

From his 1997 debut, Primary Colors, to High Voltage Blues, which spent 58 weeks on the Billboard charts over 2022 and 2023, Gomes has successfully blurred the lines between traditional and contemporary blues and rock, purists be damned.

“What I’ve come to realize is that what you may perceive as a liability is actually your superpower, and the more I focused on being who I was and less interested in fitting in … it resonated true to people and to our audience,” he said. “It’s been an interesting journey, and by doing this we’ve created our own lane — and it’s an open road, which is a lot of fun.”

Anthony Gomes
When: Friday, Sept. 6, 8 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $39 at tupelomusichall.com

Featured photo: Bees Deluxe. Courtesy photo.

Bees Deluxe return to New Hampshire

Guitarist Conrad Warre calls the music of his band Bees Deluxe “acid blues for the 21st century.” It’s one way of saying that their hyphenate sound is hard to pin down, like catching a honeybee bare-handed. Some say it’s too rock for blues, others flip that analysis upside down, while more than a few detect jazz lurking between the bars.

“In the Venn diagram of those three genres, we’re right in the middle where no one else wants to be, where we overlap and are denied access by all the neighbors,” Warre said by phone recently. “Occasionally, we’ll throw them a bone and we will do something in 1/4/5/4/1 and confuse them, because they didn’t expect it.”

Music writers have a lot of fun with them. One called it “what might happen if Freddie King took a lot of acid then wrote a song with Pat Metheny and asked a strung-out Stevie Ray Vaughan to take a solo” and another likened their most recent album, Hallucinate, to “what Steely Dan would sound like if they played the blues.”

The 2023 album ranges across the spectrum. “Queen Midas” begins with gentle acoustic guitar, then shifts gears into a straight-up rocker. “When Is Yesterday” falls squarely into classic blues territory, though its lyrics sound like Warre was reading a Robert Heinlein novel when he wrote them. The spooky “Houdini” approximates the aforementioned Dan with a swampy undertone that keeps listeners guessing while they groove.

In New Hampshire, bikers seem to really enjoy the band, which consists of Warre, keyboard and harmonica player Carol Band, drummer Paul Giovine and a rotating cast of bass players — usually Adam Sankowski, but at an upcoming show in Laconia, Kevin Tran. The biker love has been around since Warre’s time coming up as a musician in England.

“I once played a castle in Austria, it was in a ruined courtyard,” he recalled. “The audience were all on Harley-Davidsons. To show their appreciation, at the end of every song they flicked their headlights at me.” At a recent gig at the Hawg’s Pen in Farmington, a bar owned by a guy who also runs a Harley dealership, the regulars told him Bees Deluxe played the kind of music the place needed.

“So that was nice,” Warre said. “What we do is we hit that sweet spot of the kind of tempos and keys and moods of people like the Allman Brothers but without playing covers or ‘The Thrill is Gone’ or ‘Mustang Sally.’ They like the groove and it’s a novelty to them, because they never heard Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland or wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him.”

Don’t ask Warre to name any influences.

“I don’t listen to the kind of music that we play; I’d rather listen to Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bach,” he said, adding keyboard player Band has a similar story. “She’s a classicist; I met her when she was playing jazz at Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge, she’s a real book player. I don’t suspect I’ll find her listening to Led Zeppelin when I come in the room unexpectedly.”

There are a few guitarists that Warre admires, including Jeff Lee Johnson, who played with The Time and appeared in the Prince movie Purple Rain. Another favorite is New Yorker Wayne Krantz. “His philosophy is, ‘Don’t play anything you’ve ever played before’ and I kind of liken that to what I try to do,” he said. “Like Jackson Pollock once said, ‘If you recognize something in the painting, blur it out.’”

Bees Deluxe
When: Saturday, Aug. 31, 1 p.m.
Where: Tower Hill Tavern, 264 Lakeside Ave., Laconia
More: beesdeluxe.com

Featured photo: Bees Deluxe. Courtesy photo.

Skynyrd and ZZ Top hit Gilford

The canon of classic rock has two songs on its Mount Rushmore. How to fill out all four spots is an endless discussion. “Johnny B. Goode”? “Hotel California”? Every track on Dark Side of the Moon? Forget it, there will never be consensus. However, to question the placement of “Stairway to Heaven” or “Free Bird” would be so lame.

The Lynyrd Skynyrd song’s been shouted out at cover bands and more than a few headliners over the years. Jason Isbell may someday even perform it — he and his band played its wild tradeoff jam outro every night during rehearsals for their Weathervanes tour a few years back.

Fun fact, though: The song that most fans know by heart almost never was. More precisely, it began very differently, and became timeless almost by accident. At least that’s the story Johnny Van Zant told in a recent phone interview. Since he’s the younger brother of the guy who wrote it, Ronnie Van Zant, there’s reason to believe him.

The original demo of “Free Bird” was a four-minute ballad. “It’s one of the few love songs that Skynyrd had,” Van Zant said. “Duane Allman had died during that time, and one night when Ronnie had a sore throat, he said, ‘Hey, man, let’s do the song ‘Free Bird’ and then at the end, y’all play out for Duane Allman.’ That’s how that baby was born.”

During concerts in the mid-’70s, Ronnie would dedicate the song to Allman and Berry Oakley, the Allman Brothers Band bassist who died a year after Duane. Then in October 1977, a tragic plane crash killed Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup singer Cassie Gaines, along with the band’s assistant road manager. The plane’s pilot and co-pilot also perished.

Six members survived the crash, and in 1980 four of them reunited — Allen Collins, Gary Rossington, Leon Wilkeson and Billy Powell — as the Rossington Collins Band. With a female lead singer, Dale Krantz, it wasn’t a Skynyrd revival. They made two albums before breaking up.

A full-scale tour with five members of the original band –—Rossington, Powell, Wilkeson, Artimus Pyle and Ed King, who’d left two years before the crash — happened in 1987. That’s when Johnny joined, and he’s been carrying Ronnie’s torch ever since. Early on, however, he wouldn’t sing “Free Bird,” letting the band play an instrumental version instead.

The group embarked on what was to be a final run in 2018, but fate had other ideas. The pandemic turned a Farewell Tour into “farewell touring,” and when live music resumed, the mood had changed for Van Zant, Rossington and guitarist Rickey Medlocke, who’d left Skynyrd before their first album to form Blackfoot, rejoining in 1996. Recalled Johnny, “Gary was like, ‘Man, I’ve been off for 15 months, I don’t want to freaking retire. I want the music to continue.”

Sadly, Rossington passed away last year, leaving Van Zant and Medlocke to carry on. “We’re never without him, I believe that in my heart,” Van Zant said, adding a statement also true for his brother and other fallen band members. “I know this is what he would want us to be doing. Every time I get a little tired, I feel a kick in my ass. I know it’s him.”

“Free Bird” helped launch Southern rock, though at the time, Skynyrd was one of many bands playing it. At an upcoming appearance in Gilford, they’ll be joined by two of them, ZZ Top, who brought Texas boogie to the world, and the Outlaws, best-known for their hit “Green Grass and High Tides.”

Asked what distinguishes the genre from regular rock music, Van Zant had a few ideas.

“I think it was the blues country factor, the English influence, and if you listen to a band like Marshall Tucker, hell, it’s got jazz in it,” he said. “The boys were raised on that old blues stuff, and then, of course, The Beatles came along … but it could have been in the water or eating collard greens. I don’t know what the heck it was.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, The Outlaws
When: Friday, Aug. 23, 6:30 p.m.
Where: BankNH Pavilion, 61 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford
Tickets: $54 and up at livenation.com

Johnny Van Zant and Ricky Medlocke will sign bottles of their Hell House Whiskey from noon to 2 p.m. Aug. 23 at New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlet Store No. 56, 18 Weirs Road, Gilford

Featured photo: L-R Ricky Medlocke, Johnny Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd (Courtesy Photo).

Tom Dixon Band (briefly) back in New England

Music fans scanning upcoming shows recently did a double take when Tom Dixon’s name popped up.

The country rocker and his band were ubiquitous from the mid-2000s on, but in 2013 he moved to Nashville. For a few years he’d come back for an occasional mini tour. However, by 2018 he’d hung up his guitar and pen to become a dog trainer.

Dixon has been dipping his toes back in musical waters of late. A show with his band at a campground in Hohenwald, Tennessee, in June, a couple more at a Virginia brewery and a winery in Lewisburg. He even dusted off an old song of his, “Truckin’” — not the one by the Dead — and made a dozen ballcaps to celebrate.

He’s excited, he said by phone in early August, because now playing is a choice, not a job. Dixon is also stoked to finally be back in New England for a few shows with his old band mates.

“That’s what’s fun about this part of my career; I’m not rushing to have something new and stay fresh,” he said. “When I make music, it’s what I want, or what my friends want.”

He’s headed back, for the first time in two years, to play some shows in his old stomping grounds. There’s a sentimental trip to Salisbury Beach, Mass., where he introduced line dancing to a bar called Surfside over a decade ago, and a couple of shows at the Caledonia Fair in Northern Vermont, one with his band and another with Saving Abel’s Jared Weeks and Big Vinny of Trailer Choir.

In New Hampshire, he’ll do a full band show Aug. 17 at Stumble Inn in Londonderry, a roadhouse where Dixon spent a lot of time before heading south.

“We used to play Slammers out in Bedford, that was our place,” he said. “It disappeared, and Stumble Inn became the place … as many venues as I’ve played anywhere, that’s always kind of home. I go back, and I always go there.”

When his clients asked about him taking time off, Dixon joked with them.

“They’re like, ‘what are you doing, going on vacation?’ I said, ‘No, I’m going to go pretend to be a rock star again, get back on the road and play some music.’ We’ll see how it goes. I’m looking forward to seeing so many people. That’s the best part.”

Even if Dixon isn’t quitting his day job, he’s more focused on making music. Along with updating “Truckin’” he recorded a song called “We Used to Be Rock Stars” with Ben Kirsch. “It’s not about being a musician, but about getting older,” he said. It continues an effort that began with “The Weekend,” released in early 2020 — no, you don’t need to remind him of the timing. The song was an affirmation and actually got a decent amount of pandemic streams.

“Nashville kept telling me who I needed to be; I was trying to reinvent who Tom Dixon was for so long, but things slowed down, and I wasn’t listening to Nashville anymore,” he said. “I took a break from things … I decided to look at the history of streams and online downloads and stuff over the years and the top ones were all songs that were my style from before moving to Nashville. It was so crazy.”

Chastened, he wrote the new tune.

Now, with songs like “Rock Stars” and the voice memos on his phone that he’s spending more time with, “I can do this my way now,” he said. “I came from Manchester; it always was a rock town. I remember having to go into rock venues to get gigs, that’s where I had to be years ago. I should have just stuck with that melding of rock and country … versus trying to reinvent what Nashville was telling me I was supposed to be. Now, I get to be me.”

Tom Dixon Band
When: Saturday, Aug. 17, 8 p.m.
Where: Stumble Inn, 20 Rockingham Road, Londonderry
More: tomdixonmusic.com
Tom Dixon also appears solo at Stumble Inn on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 7 p.m.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Barefoot Festival returns

One doesn’t need to look far to find music and arts festivals that are struggling this year. Several have been cut back or canceled altogether. So it’s heartening that the Barefoot Festival, which started in 2023, is returning for a second time. The two-day event’s philosophy is back as well: It’s about both music and mindfulness, with local acts and movement classes getting equal billing, along with a strong visual arts component.

A key difference between Barefoot and other festivals is its scale, founder Jen Bakalar said in a recent phone interview.

“We’re calling it a micro festival, kind of the sweet spot where we’re hoping for a few hundred people, everyone feeling comfortable, safe and not too overwhelmed,” she said. “It does seem like an antidote to the big festivals, having been to a couple of those this summer.”

Performing on Saturday are Freakquonox, Danny Kemps, Ian Galipeau, Yoni Gordon, Superbug, Great Groove Theory, Party of the Sun, Princess Kikou, the Evocatives, and Hug the Dog. On Sunday it’s Matt Litzinger, Andrea Paquin, Tyler Allgood, Sara Trunzo, Saguaro, Deep Seize, Kendall Row, Modern Fools, Caylin Costello Band, and DJ Flex. The lineup reflects last year’s with several returning artists.

“We kept the music pretty local; I think the farthest act is coming from Maine, and we’re bringing in some new singer-songwriters and a few new bands,” Bakalar said, adding she’s looking forward to the jammy Saguaro. “We wanted … a good mix of genres and styles so everybody had something that they would want to dance to and listen to. It was nice also to have bands returning, because they kind of know the vibes and people know them.”

Organizers also want the festival to be substance-free. There are no alcohol sales, similar to last year, but this time around the message is more forward.

“It’s about connection,” Bakalar said. “We also want to stress that the venue is a wellness retreat. … We’re not telling people they can’t bring alcohol, but we would love for people to not make that the focus.”

Opportunities for “intentional movement” abound and are included with festival admission. Bakalar hopes this will inspire participation. “The spirit of the whole thing is we’re connecting and we’re sharing,” she said. “We’re presenting things that maybe people haven’t tried yet. Maybe they’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t really do yoga’ or ‘I don’t know what that is,’ but this is a way for them to get their toes in. Maybe it’ll be like, ‘Wow, that’s something that I want to do.’”

She expects a couples massage session led by Alex Lorenz to be popular. “That’s one I’m looking forward to personally,” she said. “I think that’s just like such a cool thing to share with people. That one is probably going to be full, we’ll have to squeeze people in, but you don’t have to sign up.”

A variety of art installations are planned, including Sophie Sanders, whose work will be a stage backdrop, a new addition to the festival. Video artist Albie will project his works on a nearby screen. Adam Schepker is back to create interactive works that hew to a playful philosophy stated in his festival bio: “I feel adults lose their childhood sense of fun and joy due to their adult responsibilities and some strange code of conduct that many adults feel tied to.”

Attendees should prepare for a few things, Bakalar cautioned. “Wear your sneakers, be ready to walk,” she said, adding that last year’s “leave no trace” policy is still in effect.

“If you didn’t pre-buy your ticket and you’re not spending the night, then you’re going to park probably a little bit farther. We heard from people last year that it’s not easy to find, so we’re going to do a lot more with putting up signs to get people to the farm. But once you’re there, you’ve got everything you need.”

Barefoot Festival
When: Saturday, Aug. 10, and Sunday, Aug. 11, at 10 a.m.
Where: Bethel Farm, 34 Bethel Road, Hillsborough
Tickets: $45 to $80 at barefootmusicandarts.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.