Tag: 250116

Honky tonk highway

Modern Fools take a country turn

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

The idea for Clearly Country, the new EP from Modern Fools, came from a sign spotted by songwriter Josh Blair at a yard sale in Peterborough. He couldn’t shake it from his mind, so he returned to make an offer. “I didn’t know why I bought it,” he said by phone recently. “Then it just kind of dawned on me that it was going to be the cover of a honky-tonk album.”

The result is a gem, born as much from Blair’s love of purists like Hank Williams and Buck Owens as from his affinity for cosmic cowboys such as Gram Parsons and the Byrds album on which he served as a guiding light, Sweetheart of the Radio, an effort many point to as key in launching country rock as a genre.

Standout tracks on Clearly Country include “Ballroom Bender Blues,” a song about a guy whose drunkenness doubles for dancing; it rollicks like The Band with a pickup pedal steel player. “On My Mind” has guest vocals from Rachel Sumner and could be a cut from John Prine’s In Spite of Ourselves, while the high lonesome ballad “Eastern Standard” evokes the Everly Brothers, another big influence. Its supple harmonies are complemented by Braught’s spare, elegant soloing.

The Keene/Peterborough band — Blair, drummer Justin Gregory, Jon Braught on guitar, keyboard player Nick Hayes and Ian Galipeau on bass — will celebrate the seven-song collection at a release show in Concord on Jan. 18. The BNH Stage date includes support from indie rockers Slim Volume and singer/songwriter Rachel Berlin.

The group began over a decade ago with a different lineup and sound.

“We played a lot of local shows and kind of fizzled out around 2016,” Blair said. During the pandemic he and Gregory began working on ideas, later recruiting Braught, and Galipeau a while after that. The band released the introspective LP Seer in 2020 and Strange Offering in 2023.

Neither of those efforts bears much resemblance to Clearly Country.

“It’s a bit of a tangent … a departure from our normal sound,” Blair said of the new EP. “This is a concept album of sorts.” He’d kicked around ideas for a twang-forward effort soon after releasing their last album, including teaming with their friend Sumner.

“I wanted that old country duet sort of thing, like Johnny Cash and June Carter sort of thing; we all unanimously thought about Rachel,” Blair said. “She really liked the song and absolutely delivered … she sent us a quick demo back, and she just nailed it.”

Blair has significant roots in the Concord music scene dating back to playing psychedelic blues at Penuche’s with Ghost Dinner Band, and later in the supergroup Band Band. He immediately thought of the BNH Stage for the concert, reaching out to John McArthur at New Hampshire Music Collective, which books a lot of original bands there.

With NHMC on board, they began looking for bands to share the stage.

“Slim Volume was the first pick for everybody in the band; we just love their sound, it’s very complementary,” Blair said. “Then we thought of Rachel Berlin, she’s from the Concord area and just a great singer/songwriter with a great voice. It’s a really solid lineup and a really solid venue.”

The show is a solid reflection of the Capitol City’s continuous support for local artists. Even though Blair isn’t a resident, he feels an affinity from his years playing in the city, with so many different musical projects.

“Concord always felt like home in the music scene,” he said, “and it’s always kind of felt like a home away from home for me.”

Modern Fools with Slim Volume and Rachel Berlin
When: Friday, Jan. 17, 8 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $18.75 at ccanh.com

Featured Image: Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 25/01/16

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

• Get laughing: A solid lineup of standup talent is on hand at the monthly Comedy On Purpose showcase. Musical comedian Dave Andrews mixes self-deprecating humor with seasoned guitar skills to crowd-pleasing effect. Other comics include Ren Marquis, Jeremy Cangiano, Anthony Eugenio and host Alana Foden, who also books the show and has a fun side hustle. Thursday, Jan. 16, 7:30 p.m., Soho Asian Restaurant, 49 Lowell Road, Hudson, $18 in advance (320-5393), $20 at the door.

• Have yachts: Though Steely Dan is considered a significant yacht rocker band by Boat House Row, a subgenre tribute act making an upcoming area appearance, Donald Fagen had a curt, unprintable response to the notion when interviewed for a documentary. Whatever, it’s still entertaining, and this group’s sax player sparks a yearning for “Caribbean Queen” and “Baker Street.” Friday, Jan. 17, 8 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $29 and up at etix.com.

• Fab three: Taking an inventive turn off the well-trod path of Beatles tributes, While My Guitar Gently Weeps is a trio, reimagining the harder-rocking side of the legendary band. Fans of Abbey Road’s second side (if you know, you know) will delight in versions of “The End,” along with Yellow Submarine’s oft-neglected gem “Hey Bulldog,” while marveling at their economy. Saturday, Jan. 18, 8 p.m., Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester; whilemyguitargentlyweeps.band.

• Well-rounded: Few New England musicians are as beloved as Dan Blakeslee, who performs an afternoon set at an area barbecue joint. The seemingly always smiling singer, songwriter and guitarist honed his craft busking in MBTA stations. His charming folk songs like “Wizard Nor a King” have led to bigger stages like the Newport Folk Festival (he also drew the event’s poster). Sunday, Jan. 19, 3 p.m., MrSippy BBQ, 184 S. Main St., Rochester. See danblakeslee.com.

• Scene support: Celebrating a year since forming, New Hampshire Underground hosts a grand re-opening party with live acoustic rock from Jesse Rutstein and Quincy Lord, along with art from cofounder Andre Dumont (Dead Harrison), fashion illustrator and painter Brenda Drew and artistic polymath MyArtbyKF, all in support of the Nashua underground scene. Tuesday, Jan. 21, 4 p.m., Terminus Underground, 134 Haines St., Nashua. See newhampshireunderground.org.

Anora (R)

An exotic dancer gets caught up in the rich-kid-nonsense of the son of a wealthy Russian family in Anora.

Ani (Mikey Madison), the titular Anora, dances at a strip club where one of her special talents is a working knowledge of Russian, even if her accent isn’t the best. When young Russian goofus Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) comes in, she is sent out to dance for him. He gives her his cell number and she agrees to some hang-out time outside the club. Eventually their arrangement stretches into a week-long girlfriend experience, with Ani traveling to Las Vegas with Vanya and his entourage. Vanya doesn’t want to return to Russia, where it sounds like he will have to work and won’t be able to just get high and play video games all day. He suggests that he marry Ani and thus become a U.S. citizen and thus not return. Despite seeming like she’s worldly enough to see the pitfalls in this, Ani says yes and they head to a Vegas wedding chapel.

Vanya is 21 and Ani is 23. You act 25, Vanya tells her. Really, she acts like a 23-year-old who sees a ray of economic light and he acts like a 14-year-old for whom there have never been any consequences for his careless actions. Madison does a good job of giving us this very young woman who’s in way over her head and struggling to do the best she can with what she, at least for a little while, believes could be a real marriage and a real chance at a better future for herself. In its second half, the movie does feature segments that read more as kind of a comedy of errors with Vanya’s father’s American-based henchmen trying to find and hold onto Vanya while they “fix” what they see as yet another mess he has made. This part of the movie has its charms, with Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan playing workers in this family operation who have to deal with the increasingly enraged Ani and the increasingly petulant man-child Vanya. But I don’t know that this “Chris and Paulie in the Pine Barrens” comedy entirely fits with what otherwise feels like a portrait of Ani. I will also say that, for me, this movie had expectations working against it — it has been nominated for, like, every movie award this season. I enjoyed it fine, it is worth a watch, but there are visible seams and rough patches (Vanya’s parents, when they show up, feel very underbaked) I didn’t expect based on all the accolades. B+, I guess, but credit the + mostly to Madison.Available for rent or purchase.

A Different Man (R)

Sebastian Stan plays an actor with facial differences in the at-times comic, at-times sad A Different Man.

Edward (Stan) gets a role in what appears to be a human resources video about working with employees who have differences in facial structure or appearance. It’s only about a minute of screentime, but it’s an acting credit at least for struggling actor Edward, who has facial tumors. When he meets his new neighbor, a playwright named Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), her initial reaction is a gasp, though she later becomes friendly with him. Meanwhile, he agrees to take part in a new clinical trial, taking a drug that causes extreme pain. His skin begins to slough off his face and after a particularly dramatic skin peeling he discovers that his face is now, well, Sebastian Stan’s differences-free “normal” face. Basically disowning his old self, Edward becomes Guy, a Stan-ily handsome successful real estate salesman who tells Ingrid and others that Edward is dead.

Years later, he sees a notice for an audition specifically looking for an actor with facial differences for a play called Edward, written by Ingrid. He auditions and gets the part, which he plans to play while wearing a mask that looks like his old face. But then Oswald (Adam Pearson) shows up. Oswald has facial differences similar to Edward’s but he also has the confidence, positivity and personability — and charming English accent — that Edward never did. “Guy,” the real Edward, watches as Oswald eventually plays Edward better than Edward does and then becomes the life of the afterparty as well.

Is there anything more irritating than someone who can take your particular set of lemons and make wildly popular lemonade out of them? Stan is excellent as someone who realizes the limitations of “normality” and is torn between clearly admiring Oswald and kind of hating him for how much better he is at living their life. It’s a quiet, confused rage and Stan wears it very well, simmering and boiling over in a way that makes no sense to the other characters. Adam Pearson, who does have neurofibromatosis and facial differences in real life, does a good job of differentiating Oswald from Edward. Oswald seems to move through the world matter-of-factly, presenting himself openly and then pushing people to see him fully. The movie doesn’t show us the work this takes from Oswald but that kind of fits with our point of view, which is Edward’s point of view, which is of this guy who lights up a room and gets the girl, something that even “Guy” can’t quite pull off. B+ Available for rent or purchase and streaming on Max staring Jan. 17

Flow (PG)

A cat keeps on keeping on through floods, storms and hostile lemurs in Flow, a beautiful, watercolor-esque, dialogue-free animated story.

Wikipedia says the animation was done with computer graphics, which you can see, particularly in the way water is rendered, with a look that is sometimes almost photorealistic. But the animals themselves often have a picture book watercolor-painted look — vibrant in their color and well defined but with a softness. We follow the adventures of a black cat, who at the beginning of the movie spends its nights sleeping in a bed in a house surrounded by outdoor cat statues. We never see the artist who left one statue half-finished on their workbench, nor any other people in this world full of human structures and human items, like bottles or a mirror, but that otherwise gives the sense of humans being long absent.

The cat is chased by a pack of dogs for a while, before a sudden rush of water floods the forest where the cat is living. The cat eventually hops on a boat that floats by and finds a capybara also living there. They continue to float, meet other animals along the way and run into the dogs from the beginning of the movie a few times — with one dog seeming to be particularly attached to the cat and the group as a whole.

The movie is ultimately more meditative than plot driven, with the soft music and lovely visuals taking you more to a place of float-along wonder. I don’t know that it is action-packed enough to hold a young audience but it held me through all of its beautiful scenes of watery paradises and big eyed animals. A Available for rent or purchase.

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (PG)

The cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his much smarter dog Gromit face off against the super criminal penguin Feathers McGraw in Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

Since Wallace and Gromit helped put away Feathers for stealing the blue diamond, the wordless, devious penguin has been locked in “prison” (a penguin exhibit at the zoo). Meanwhile, Wallace (voice of Ben Whitehead) has continued to invent — mostly semi-terrible gadgets like the automatic jam-on-toast applier and robotic dog-patter. But then, to “help” Gromit, he invents Norbot (voice of Reece Shearsmith), a garden gnome robot who is extremely overzealous about tidying up — he mows down Gromit’s newly planted tree and flowers and trims the hedges into squares. Gromit is annoyed but the neighbors are delighted and ask Wallace to hire Norbot out, which he does. The local news team shows up to do a story on this invention, which Feathers happens to see on TV. Feathers hacks in to Norbot’s operating system, turning his core setting from “good” to “evil.” Norbot then creates his own army of gnome robots to enact Feathers’ dastardly plan.

The animation here is fun, the usual Aardman look of clay creations in a world full of tactile items like a book with paper pages — such as Gromit’s copy of A Room Of One’s Own by Virgina Woof. Authority figures — Wallace, police chief Mackintosh (voice of Peter Kay) — are pleasantly clueless while brainier figures like Gromit and the young police officer P.C. Mukherjee (voice of Lauren Patel) know there’s trouble afoot. In Aardman style, there are “wrong’uns” and meanness without cruelty, making it very friendly for a wide range of ages, including older kids who can enjoy the overall goofiness. A Streaming on Netflix.

Featured Image: Anora

The Cure for Women, by Lydia Reeder

The Cure for Women, by Lydia Reeder (St. Martin’s Press, 286 pages)

Given some of the past practices of medicine, bloodletting and leeches and such, it’s a wonder any of us are alive today. What’s even more disturbing is how recent some of these strange medical practices are.

Take, for example, the “rest cure for women,” a protocol of the 19th century in which women suffering from a raft of maladies — but mainly being thin and “short of blood” — were told to take to their beds, sometimes for months, where they were fed milk and raw eggs, and forbidden social interaction and “brain work.”

While many women were actively harmed by such treatments, there were far worse things done to women under the guise of medicine in that era, even by physicians ostensibly devoted to women’s health. The doctor credited with inventing the speculum, for example, once wrote, “If there was anything I hated, it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis.” This physician was a showman in the vein of P.T. Barnum, performing operations in front of an enthralled audience, sometimes with the patients (often enslaved women) awake and screaming.

All this was occurring in a century in which smart and capable women were being denied entry to medical school because of the belief that they were not intellectually or psychologically equipped for the work, even though female midwives had been delivering babies for millennia.

The first woman to graduate from an American medical school, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, was admitted by mistake — her male classmates thought they were voting on her enrollment as a joke. Blackwell and her younger sister Emily, who also became a physician, are fairly well known today for their pioneering work improving the prospects of both patients and female doctors.

But Lydia Reeder argues that a lesser-known physician, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, also deserves history’s acclaim. In The Cure for Women, Reeder explains how Jacobi, a contemporary of the Blackwells, took on the established beliefs about women’s monthly cycles, which had been used as “evidence” of women’s inferiority, and refuted them with data.

The daughter of the New York publishing scion George Palmer Putnam, Mary showed her capacity for medicine at age 9 when, after discovering a dead rat in their barn, she asked her mother if she could dissect it. Her mother said no, and her father did not think medicine was a proper career for women, but he had published a book by Elizabeth Blackwell and so consented to let his precocious daughter work at Blackwell’s clinic.

Eventually Mary enrolled at one of the few educational opportunities available to her, the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, but she left “after she discovered she knew more about medicine than most of her instructors” and went on to graduate from a medical school in Paris. In one funny anecdote, her father sent her money there for a dress — she had to plead with him for permission to use the money to buy a microscope instead.

Upon returning to the States with a medical degree, Mary found work teaching at the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary and dedicated herself to evangelizing “a scientific spirit” among women. Unfortunately for modern sensibilities, that scientific spirit also included justification of vivisection, the dissection of live animals, which Jacobi would defend. It is, perhaps, the one area in which her thinking was not visionary, although it might have helped establish her as a serious medical mind at the time.

She went on to marry a widower, Dr. Abraham Jacobi, a leading pediatrician in New York, and shortly thereafter became pregnant and worked throughout her pregnancy — refuting in real time the prevailing thought that women were suited for domestic life and reproduction solely. She began conducting research to test and challenge views about women’s capabilities during menstruation, and also to counter prescriptions of “the rest cure” as well as other medical practices of the time. She was also an advocate of sports and physical activity — as opposed to rest — to improve women’s health.

Perhaps the best story about her is that she submitted a paper arguing that menstruation does not constitute “any temporary predisposition to either hysteria or insanity” to a prestigious Harvard University competition: the Boylston Medical Prize. Per the competition’s instructions, the entry was submitted anonymously. She won, beating out hundreds of men. The work was later published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons as “The Question of Rest for Women During Menstruation” and was widely praised.

Even as Mary advanced professionally, she was lauded publicly for being an excellent housekeeper, and she had three children, and suffered the loss of two — a daughter who died at birth and a son who died at age 7 from diphtheria — a terrible loss for any parent, but especially for two doctors who could not help their child and who wound up blaming each other. The death, Reeder wrote, created a “fault line between Mary and Abraham that would, ultimately, never heal.”

Almost 20 years later, Mary Putnam Jacobi would diagnose a brain tumor in herself, and spent the last years of her life writing a case study on it titled “Description of the Early Symptoms of the Meningeal Tumor Compressing the Cerebellum, from Which the Author Died.”

Her life was clearly extraordinary and worthy of a biography, and Reeder’s treatment is more than comprehensive — to a fault, at times.

Going back and forth between history and inventive narrative, in which Reeder imagines what might have happened in a scene, was the wrong approach for a book about women devoted to science. Their imagined thoughts and actions — such as, “Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., paced back and forth in her drab Lower West Side apartment, stopping occasionally to glance through her parlor window at the blizzard swirling outside” — are simply unnecessary. The occasional asides into this literary construction serve no purpose other than befuddling the reader.

It is also a little odd that the central character of the book is not introduced in any substantial way until chapter 3.

The author is the great-granddaughter of a midwife who cared for women and children in rural Missouri early in the 20th century, at one point plunging her fingers down a child’s throat to remove a safety pin. That midwife, Ellen Babb, no doubt had as many fascinating stories to tell as Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, despite the vast differences in their economic circumstances and training. The Cure for Women is a tribute to both of them — and a thumb in the eye to the 19th-century male doctor who wrote, “I said I did not believe it was best either for the sick or for society for women to be doctors.”

B- —Jennifer Graham

Featured Image: Cabin, by Patrick Hutchison

Album Reviews 25/01/16

Bumblefoot, Bumblefoot … Returns! (Bumblefoot Music)

Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal is a guitarist, producer, composer and educator whose career spans more than 30 years, highlighted by collaborations with Guns N’ Roses, Asia, Sons of Apollo, and Whom Gods Destroy. In other words, you’ve assuredly heard his work but had no idea who he is. It’s been 30 years since his debut solo album Adventures Of Bumblefoot, but — and I don’t think I’ve ever used this hackneyed phrase in all my years of music-journo-ing, correct me if I’m wrong but I’m not — this was worth the wait, but only if you’re a Guitar Player-reading nerd who wants to expand your horizons past basic shredding methods. Guests on this one include Queen’s Brian May (turning in a rather pedestrian blooz-rawk performance in “Once In Forever”), Steve Vai (the far more interesting stomp-thrasher “Monstruoso”), and Guthrie Govan (the epic-metal-washed “Anveshana”), but it’s Thal’s own otherworldly experimentation on numbers like “Simon In Space” that makes this a can’t-miss for you wonks out there (don’t try this at home). A+ —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Wow, folks, it’s already Jan. 17, we’ll be past this frost-Viking weather before you know it and I’ll be in my glory again, eating overpriced clams and fish on York Beach while annoying tourists from Methuen and Allston intentionally park themselves in front of me, coagulating in beach umbrella encampments (they get sunburned anyway, every single time), just to ruin my view of Maine’s peaceful waves and yelling seagulls! If there’s a worse buzzkill than that it hasn’t been invented yet, but I’d take it over the alternative, all the silly windy Day After Tomorrow-level mega-blasts of insta-freeze North Pole nonsense that’s settled in lately, any day! Whatever, shut up, we’re supposed to be talking about the new albums coming out on the 17th, like Humanhood, the new LP from Canadian revolving-door folkie band The Weather Station, can you hardly wait! This lady-fronted outfit has won and been nominated for several Canadian music awards, which is the musical equivalent of winning the Wiffle Ball World Series, but you know what, I’ll listen to something from this new album anyway, in order to provide my frantic fans with the latest developments in obscure world music happenings! Hold it, the new single, “Neon Lights,” is very good, to be honest, sort of a cross between Loreena McKennitt and Arcade Fire, aren’t you tired of Canadian bands making very listenable music when we can’t, so annoying! There’s an urgent street-smart vibe to it, and bandleader/singer Tamara Lindeman puts her Canadian-music-award-nominated songwriting talents to the test, mopping the floor with the likes of Natalie Merchant. You’ll like this tune if you’re not in the habit of being intentionally obtuse.

• World-, um, I mean Europe-renowned singer-songwriter David Gray has won many awards that you didn’t even know existed, but in his defense, he was also nominated for a few Grammys, including Best New Artist in 2002, obviously because the heavily medicated Grammy Award people had to fill up the nom list with nine sacrificial lambs to lose to Alicia Keys that year (private to a constant reader: naturally they didn’t take Linkin Park seriously back then, and I still don’t)! Who cares and whatnot, Dear Life is this British bloke’s new album, eh wot, and it features the single “Plus and Minus,” a duet with Talia Rae. It is a gentle AOR tune for soccer parents, comprising a chill vibe and debatable amount of mild listenability. At least it’s not annoying, eh wot bob’s your uncle?

• Lastly on the listly, it’s the second posthumous album from Pittsburg jazz-rap/alt-hip-hopper Mac Miller, aka Delusional Thomas. Balloonerism is the new album; it’s as East Coast hip-hop as you could ever want, whatever that means to you. His family handled this release, which is very important to the handful of people who care about stuff like that. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Bumblefoot, Bumblefoot … Returns (Bumblefoot Music)

Flamingos and Briefcases

zero-proof breakfast cocktail

3 ounces Ruby Red grapefruit juice

1 teaspoon dehydrated grapefruit juice powder – I use citrus powders to intensify fruit flavors in a recipe without throwing off the liquid ratios. This works really well in frostings and glazes. These powders can be found easily online. In this recipe, it’s optional, but really does dial up the level of grapefruitiness.

2 ounces alcohol-free gin – I used Free Spirits this time, and it provided a mellow backnote of juniper to the proceedings. Because it is alcohol-free, it too can be easily ordered online, or even found in some supermarkets.

¾ ounce honey syrup (see below)

1/8 teaspoon rose water

Pour the grapefruit juice into a cocktail shaker, then stir in the grapefruit powder with a bar spoon or a pair of chopsticks. Mix vigorously for 15 or 20 seconds to make certain that the powder has dissolved completely. Avoid ice for the moment; this won’t work as well in a cold solution.

Add the other ingredients, then dry shake them (this means to shake them without ice). Again, you are forcing an introduction here, and it will probably go better if the ingredients aren’t keeping to themselves in separate corners, wearing coats and huddling around radiators.

Once everything is well mixed, add ice, and shake it again. Strain into a coupé glass, and sip to some morning-themed music — Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” or Nina Simone’s cover of “Here Comes the Sun,” perhaps.

Because there is no actual alcohol involved, this is a really good breakfast cocktail.

I know, that term hurts a little to think about, but because the “gin” here is just a flavoring agent, this drink can be a very nice start to your day. It’s pink, it’s fruity but also little bracing, and there is a hint of perfume at the very end. Grapefruit, like most citrus, pairs well with almost any other ingredient, and the tiny hit of juniper from the alcohol-free gin puts a thoughtful spin on the combination. This scales up beautifully to a pitcher drink.

If the idea of a breakfast cocktail is still a bit uncomfortable, imagine this:

A team of clients is in your conference room for an early morning presentation. Your team and their team have worked together before, and they’ve been happy with your work, but you’re still getting a sense of caution from them. You know that your presentation is solid, but you need them to approach it with an open mind.

After your assistant sets up the coffee and bagels on the table at the back of the room, she walks around the conference table, and places a coupe glass in each place, then fills each one halfway with this delicate pink cocktail from a martini pitcher. After your assurance that there is no alcohol involved, the senior member of the other team takes a tentative sip, pauses thoughtfully, then with one raised eyebrow takes a deeper sip and sighs, just a little, with pleasant surprise. The rest of the client team will take their cues from her, and a few minutes later that attitude of open-minded receptiveness will pay off when your slide presentation takes a turn to the unexpected, mixing sales charts with photos of armadillos and bagpipe music.

Honey Syrup

This is probably the easiest of syrups to make. Combine equal amounts of honey and boiling water, and stir to combine. Let it cool, then use for any number of beverages. The diluted honey will mix more readily with your tea or cocktail than it would at full strength. Mixed with plain club soda it makes an unexpected and delightful soda.

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