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News & Notes 26/02/26

ICE facility

The Department of Homeland Security “will not move forward with a proposed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Merrimack,” according to a press release from Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s office on Feb. 24. “I thank [DHS Secretary Kristi] Noem for hearing the concerns of the Town of Merrimack and for the continued cooperation between DHS and New Hampshire law enforcement to secure our northern border, keep dangerous criminals off our streets, and ensure our communities are safe,” Ayotte said in the statement.

New library

The Daland Memorial Library in Mount Vernon is in its new home at 8 Lilac Lane in Mont Vernon after a grand opening on Feb. 22, according to the library’s Facebook page. The new library will be open Tuesday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday from 2 to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 10 to 1 p.m., according to a post. The new library replaces the 1909-built original library and is a 7,600-square-foot facility, according to a press release from Mont Vernon Library Charitable Foundation. See dalandlibrary.com.

Memorial

Swim With a Mission, “a New Hampshire-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting veterans through fundraising, community engagement, and grants to local veteran service organizations,” has awarded a $15,000 matching grant to support the “Gulf Wars and War on Terror Memorial being developed by the Manchester Veterans Council. This permanent memorial will honor the service members, civilians, and family members from New Hampshire who were impacted by the conflicts spanning from 1990 to 2021,” according to a SWAM press release. “To help complete this important tribute, SWAM is partnering with the Manchester Veterans Council to raise the remaining $30,000 needed for the project. Through SWAM’s matching grant, every dollar donated will be doubled, up to $15,000,” the release said. The memorial is slated for a Memorial Day 2026 dedication in Veterans Park in Manchester, according to SWAM. See the Manchester Veterans Council’s Facebook page for more information on recent donations and images of the planned memorial.

Parenting help

The Upper Room Family Resource Center, based in Derry, will offer a virtual class, “Managing Emotions in Children (ages 3-12),” on Wednesday, March 25, from 10 to 11:30 a.m., according to a press release. The free class “will help parents learn new strategies to understand and handle a child’s strong feelings such as fear, anger, sadness, disappointment and anxiety,” the release said. To sign up, call 437-8477, ext. 126, the release said, and see urteachers.org for more on the organization.

Barn assistance

April 15 is the deadline to apply for Historic Barn Assessment Grants, meant to help preserve privately owned historic New Hampshire barns, according to the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance. The program offers $400 or $250 grants (coupled with some matching funds from the property owner) to hire a barn consultant to “inspect the barn, determine its age and key construction features, [and] assess what’s required to stabilize, repair, and reuse the structure. Grant recipients will receive a written report; that can be used as a valuable planning tool that identifies problems, proposes specific preservation strategies, and offers cost estimates for the needed repairs,” according to nhpreservation.org, where you can find a list of participating towns and details on how to apply.

Shamrock Shuffle

The Northwestern Mutual Shamrock Shuffle, rescheduled after Manchester’s St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled for the year, will now take place on Saturday, March 14, at 11 a.m. with Lil’ Leprechaun Runs for kids starting at 10:30 a.m. The 2-mile run/walk on Canal Street will begin and end at Harpoon Brewery and the first 1,000 registrants will receive kilts, according to millenniumrunning.com/shamrock.

Night out for a cause

The Pinnacle Foundation, an organization “formed to positively impact chronic homelessness, build a bridge to homeownership through financial literacy and education, and support our communities’ veterans’ immediate needs in the greater Manchester community,” according to pinnaclefoundationnh.org, will hold its winter fundraiser on Wednesday, March 4, at 5:30 p.m. at the Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St. in Manchester. The event will feature live music by the Chad LaMarsh Band, a silent auction, keynote speeches and more. See pinnaclefoundationnh.org/2026-winter-fundraiser for tickets.

Jazz for a cause

Concord Community Music School, 23 Wall St. in Concord, will hold its annual Jazz Night Fundraiser on Saturday, March 21, at 7 p.m., with a pre-show reception starting at 5:30 p.m., according to a post on the school’s Facebook page. The evening will feature the James Fernando Trio and proceeds will benefit the school’s Financial Aid Fund. Seats cost $80 each or $300 for a table of four, the post said. Call 228-1196 or go to ccmusicschool.org to order tickets.

“Through the Trees,” an exhibition featuring the works of Amira Nguyen-Hasoon, Kate Knox, and Rebecca Desrochers, is on display through March 1 at See Saw Art, 66 Hanover St., Suite 201, in Manchester. The gallery will be open Friday, Feb. 27, from 2 to 6 p.m.; Saturday, Feb. 28, from 1 to 4 p.m. and Sunday, March 1, from 1 to 4 p.m., according to seesaw.gallery.

Cue Zero Theatre will hold auditions for adults for its June production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company on Sunday, March 15, with callbacks on Thursday, March 19, at the Arts Academy of New Hampshire, 19 Keewaydin Drive in Salem, according to a press release. See cztheatre.com for character details and audition information.

The Wilton Actor Guild will present Moriarty: A New Sherlock Holmes Mystery, a Ken Ludwig-penned sequel to Baskerville described as fast-paced and funny, on Friday, March 6, and Saturday, March 7, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, March 7, at 2 p.m. at the Golden Brook School Auditorium, 112B Lowell Road in Windham, according to a press release. See windhamactorsguild.com for tickets.

You have until Sunday, March 1, to submit your 60-second film to the Tiny Film Festival at the Nashua Public Library, 2 Court St. in Nashua. See nashualibrary.org/tinyfilmfestival for the rules. The films will be screened at the library on Friday, March 20, at 6 p.m.

Big Fun Science — 02/19/2026

on the cover

For 40 years SEE Science Center in Manchester has made science accessible to all ages — long enough that the kids who visited decades ago are now bringing their kids. Michael Witthaus takes a look at the center’s history and its plans for the future.

Also on the cover But first, vote! Vote now! Vote in Hippo’s Best of 2026 readers’ poll, where you can tell us where to get the best ice cream, cocktails and burgers — and rave about non-food faves. See hippopress.com for a link to the survey.

Plus, Michael Witthaus talks to Get the Led Out ahead of their Led Zeppelin tribute show in Concord (page 20). And find more live music in our Music This Week listings (page 21) and our Concert listings (page 22).

Read the e-edition

News & Notes 26/02/19

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Whole Lotta Zep

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Whole Lotta Zep

Get the Led Out comes to Concord

Paul Hammond has an extra ticket for Led Zeppelin’s reunion show. The caveat is that anyone looking to claim it will have to time travel. Hammond plays lead guitar in Get the Led Out, a band that outflanks other tribute acts via exacting attention to detail. One of his more memorable Zep moments, however, was as a spectator. It was a rock ’n’ roll fantasy come true.

It’s no stretch to say Zep’s one-off 2007 concert was the hardest ticket ever; 20 million fans entered a worldwide lottery to purchase a mere 18,000 seats. Hammond, however, knew someone connected to a charity run by Jimmy Page’s wife at the time, who got him in, and then some.

Prior to the show, he watched soundcheck with Queen guitarist Brian May for company, and the two enjoyed the concert from the VIP section. Also, and what explains the wayback machine requirement, Hammond had access to six additional tickets. Sadly, he couldn’t find anyone able to quickly jet to London and use them.

“I was with the top of the top rock stars, the inner circle of rock royalty,” Hammond said in a recent phone interview. He may perform the music of the gods, and convincingly, but he enjoyed the perks of one that night. “In the A100 section, with Brian May, and then three rows down in front of me was Ronnie Wood and Jeff Beck.”

Hammond also met Page backstage that night. He had another Zep-adjacent moment, courtesy of the band he co-formed in 2003 with singer Paul Sinclair, with a mission to perform note for note songs from the iconic band’s studio recordings. It came as GTLO was preparing to go on stage at Portsmouth’s Music Hall a few years back.

After a phone call, the show’s promoter informed him she’d been speaking to Robert Plant. “He asked her, ‘What band is playing tonight?’ and she said, ‘It’s Get the Led Out,’ and he says, ‘Oh, Get the Led Out, that’s a great band,’” he recalled. “He knows us! Our sound man told us he’d come to our show in Nashville.”

GTLO delivers a concert experience that’s currently rivaled only by Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening. The son of the late Zep drummer was also behind the kit in 2007 at O2 Arena. They play the iconic band’s entire catalog, almost. A few songs just don’t translate well to their arena rock show.

“Like, ‘Hats Off To (Roy) Harper’ from Led Zeppelin III is a bizarre song with the effects, and doesn’t have a lot of crowd appeal,” Hammond said. “‘Carouselambra’ from In Through the Out Door is essentially a John Paul Jones experimental record. I don’t know what Jimmy Page was up to then, maybe hanging out in the pub … but it’s a long and a weary song.”

The good news is GTLO plays everything else in their two-and-a-half-hour show, even Zeppelin’s lone B-side, “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do.” To call the band’s approach exacting is an understatement. Songs are not only transcribed precisely, but they are also true to both key and pitch, which provides a big dopamine hit for true fans.

“It brings back that memory, that sound, because intrinsically people know,” Hammond said. “Some Led Zeppelin bands, if the singer can’t hit the notes, they’ll tune a half-step down, and it just doesn’t sound the same, and the audience knows it, whether they know it or not. Because it’s just been ingrained for so many years, hearing it the way you want to hear it.”

The band grew out of a residency at Bridgeport Rib House in Pennsylvania. Zeppelin was one band they covered in a set that included Aerosmith songs, but patrons there kept asking for a Zep-centric show.

It works because Hammond and his mates revere Zeppelin as much as their audience, and deliver accordingly.

“Basically, we want to give people all the stuff that they know and love,” Hammond said. “When we go into deep cuts, they’re deep cuts that people also would know, that true die-hard Zeppelin fans would be like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe they did ‘In The Light’ or we’ve delved as deep as ‘Sick Again.’”

Get the Led Out
When: Saturday, Feb. 21, at 8 p.m.
Where: Capitol Center for the Arts, Chubb Theatre, 44 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $45 and up at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 26/02/19

• Metal moments: The weekend starts early with four bands on the heavier side gathering at Showcase 603. Abel Blood, from Manchester, brings the dirge-y, 11-minute epic “Mental Note” and the sinister “Keeping Pace With the Elephants.” Next is Nashua quartet Stoned Shadows; the bracing “Losing My Mind” is a standout. Rounding out the bill are Mercury Burns First and Project H. Catch them all Thursday, Feb. 19, at 8 p.m., Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester, abelblood.bandcamp.com.

• Modern country: With a new album, Oklahoma Stars, due in days, Houston Bernard plays at a Nashua craft brewery. The title song is a power ballad sweetened with love and honeysuckle, but when the NEMA-winning country singer gets rocking, he’s even better. Friday, Feb. 20, 7:30 p.m., Lost Cowboy Brewing, 546 Amherst St., Nashua, houstonbernard.com.

• Comedy tonight: A local brewery with a nice saison collaboration hosts a comedy show headlined by Corey Manning, a motivational speaker who helps others beat challenges by day and keeps it funny when the sun goes down. Joining him is a deep lineup of area comics including Mona Forgione, Bill Douglas, Joe Nahme, Ryan Ellington and Nathaniel Allen. Saturday, Feb. 21, 7 p.m., Sunstone Brewing Co., 298 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, $15, eventbrite.com.

• Classical beats: Their 2020 release Take The Stairs earned Black Violin a Grammy nomination. Led by Kev Marcus on violin and Wil Baptiste on viola, the group mashes up classical music and hip-hop. Saturday, Feb. 21, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $57 and up at nashuacenterforthearts.com.

Album Reviews 26/02/19

The Grownup Noise, No Straight Line in the Universe (self-released)

The focus of this Boston-based act, which has had a rapidly revolving door-load of short-term members, is bridging the gap between Americana and indie-rock, which, it seems to me, has been handled quite well by Wilco to name just one band. These tunes are full of great sounds and some very deft musicianship, but there’s more twee here than indie, and not enough bluegrass to qualify as high-grade Americana. That pretty much sums up the failure — or resistance — on the part of critics to “classify” them properly, not that that’s as important as being recognized as a band that has great songs, but knowing that these guys are happily well-entrenched in the Boston scene, (still) with all its Evan Dandos and Morphines, should answer some people’s questions. Their fatal flaw is singer Paul Hansen, whose unflustered, bland tenor doesn’t do the songs much justice, but that’s a matter of taste of course. In the end it’s a Boston alt-rock band that’s a cross between Guster and, jeez, I don’t know, Yo La Tengo; I can’t feign enthusiasm for it. B- —Eric W. Saeger

Jennie Arnau, A Rising Tide (self-released)

The middle of the Americana/alt-country road — and I mean right in the middle, where it doesn’t pay to remain very still because a zillion other artists might run you over — is where this New Yorker finds her comfort zone. She’s been out of it for 15 years until this album, which is said to exhibit “southern charm meets New York grit, with a healthy dose of heart,” which might describe Sheryl Crow, to whom Arnau’s been compared, but nah, I’d say the tunes feel like a more organic Waxahatchee. The instrumentation is another matter, an all-hands-on-deck affair that runs the gamut from Sade-tinted yacht-pop (“Sail Away”) to Lucinda Williams cowboy-waltzing (“Mabel”) to Smoke Fairies banjo-folk (“The King”). “Young and Alone,” the pensive but wispy focus track, is an honest labor of love calling into question the broken system that’s resulted in countless school shootings across the country; she’ll be donating proceeds from the song to Everytown for Gun Safety. B+ —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yay, new albums coming out on Friday, Feb. 20! The new-album race is heating up as we speak, now that the holidays are over and Valentine’s Day is over and the most pathetic Super Bowl performance by the New England Patriots since their 46-10 loss to the Chicago Bears in 1986 is over, like, there’s really no days off for you slackers to look forward to until Memorial Day, unless you choose to finally surrender a few of the 300 comp days you’ve hoarded or, in the case of most workers, just quit your job and move back in with your ex! It’s all good, do whatever feels right is what I say, and maybe a few of these new albums will cheer you up, who knows, but of course the biggest “music news” of February was the Super Bowl halftime show led by Puerto Rican reggaeton-rapper Bad Bunny, because no one could shut up about it on their social media whatevers! For no reason whatsoever, it turned into a controversy, because Bunny sang and rapped in Spanish, which one would normally expect, given that that’s, you know, what he does; to me it was a cool thing for the NFL to do again, recognizing Latin culture as a major component in the country’s DNA, and that’s really about it. I didn’t find the music to be all that groundbreaking, like, there’s all sorts of great reggaeton, merengue, salsa and mambo to be found if you spend a few seconds looking, for instance there’s the five-hour ¡Con Salsa! show on WBUR radio (90.9 FM in Boston) every Saturday starting at 10 p.m. if you could use some perfect afterparty ambience (you can also stream the whole show on the station’s website), but either way the vibe is almost universally positive, so what’s the harm? Sure, some people took the halftime show as an affront somehow, but they probably didn’t mind that Chubby Checker and The Ronettes played at 1988’s halftime show or that Gloria Estefan and Stevie Wonder played 1999’s “Celebration of Soul, Salsa and Swing” halftime show, and so on and so forth. Now, one conservative buddy of mine on Facebook said he simply didn’t like Latin music and could leave it at that, which I commended him for. I mean, in the end, it’s younger people who buy albums, so trotting out the Rolling Stones again like they did in 2006 in order to trigger nostalgic feels in people who can barely remember the last time they had a legitimate Billboard No. 1 hit song (they didn’t come close that year) would be a bit of a disservice to the record-buying public, don’t you think? Whatever, I’m sure people will flip out over whoever plays next year’s Super Bowl halftime show, but for the record I’d be fine if they went country-indie-rock, like, say, with Mumford & Sons as the headliner, since they’re so much more relevant than Kings of Leon now. In fact, the Mumfords release their new LP, Prizefighter, this week, featuring the pretty-epic-pretty title track and “The Banjo Song,” which is similarly sweeping and epic. I like them, the end.

• Florida power-pop band New Found Glory release their 11th album Listen Up this week. They haven’t charted for at least six years, because boring, but the new single “Beer and Blood Stains” has a pretty filthy guitar sound and actually has a pulse.

• Also this week, electroclash icon Peaches releases No Lube So Rude, and of course the title track is awesome. It is made of dubstep, goth-industrial and diva-pop smothered in pure lunacy.

• We’ll close with Hilary Duff, aka Lizzie McGuire to people who are around 35. The new record, Luck Or Something, includes the single “Roommates,” which is pretty and pleasant, sort of like a kinder gentler Alanis Morissette. — Eric W. Saeger

NOTE: Local (NH) bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter/Bluesky (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Featured Photo: The Grownup Noise, No Straight Line in the Universe and Jennie Arnau, A Rising Tide

Chlorophyll Sour

Some drinks are worth devoting some time to.

Herbal Green Gin

2 cups (16 ounces) London dry gin
1 large handful (1 ounce)/30 g) fresh parsley

Blend the gin and parsley together in your blender, slowly at first, then working your way up to its highest setting. After 30 seconds or so cut the power and let the green gin sit for an hour or so. Pour it through a fine mesh strainer, then run it through a coffee filter.

Then, start your cucumber syrup.

Cucumber Syrup

One large English cucumber
An equal amount by weight of sugar

Wash but don’t peel the cucumber, then chop it into medium dice. Move it to your freezer and freeze it solid. Clearly this will take a few hours. If you check in on the gin you will see that it still has some time before it is completely filtered. We’ll get to the actual cocktail tomorrow.

Tomorrow

Cook the frozen cucumber pieces and the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. By freezing the cucumber, you have poked holes in its cell walls with ice crystals. As it thaws, everything will collapse into a surprising amount of liquid mush. Bring it to a boil briefly (to make sure that the sugar has completely dissolved), then remove it from heat, and let it steep for about an hour. Strain the syrup through a fine-mesh strainer, and you can get started on your actual cocktail.

Your Actual Cocktail

2 ounces parsley-infused gin
1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
3/4 ounce cucumber syrup

Combine all three ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake thoroughly, then strain into a chilled, stemmed glass.

At this point you’ve put two days into making this drink. Is it worth it?

It really is. Like many utility cocktails, this is at its best when it is skull-shrinkingly cold. It is sweet but with a complex flavor. The herbiness is there, but so is the cucumberality. Interestingly, while you can find each of those flavors — both of which go really well with fresh lemon juice, by the way — if you look for them individually, a fusion of the two is elusive. Your palate flips back and forth between them but doesn’t settle on a combination flavor — a parscumber, if you will. Nevertheless, it is delicious.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

News & Notes 26/02/26

Big Fun Science — 02/19/2026

Whole Lotta Zep

The Music Roundup 26/02/19

Album Reviews 26/02/19

Chlorophyll Sour

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