Tag: 250123

Music meld

Co-bill promises collaboration

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

An upcoming show at Exeter’s Word Barn features a pair of unique performers both collaborating and performing their own music. Nate Sabat is an upright bass player who transforms his rhythm instrument into something all-encompassing. Rakish, the duo of Conor Hearn and Maura Shawn Scanlin, weds traditional Celtic music to modernity for a fresh sound.

The show is part of a four-date mini tour. “We’re really excited about it,” Hearn said, along with Scanlin, in a recent Zoom interview. “Nate’s going to play, and then we’ll play with Nate on his music, and Nate will play with us on our music…. it’s sort of this integrated thing that we’re trying to pull off.”

Rakish released their second-full length album, Now, O Now, in October. It’s a rich and varied work that kicks off with “Lonely Hotel Room,” a buoyant yet bittersweet ode to road weariness. The title track follows, one of two James Joyce poems set to music by Hearn, something he also did with W.B. Yeats’ “The Stolen Child” on their eponymous debut EP.

Hearn, a literature major at Tufts, delights in detecting song patterns in poetry. “Joyce was very interested in music, but we don’t necessarily hear the music that they had going on in their head when we read their poems except to the extent that we have their rhyme schemes and their meters and such,” he said. “To take a text like that and infer what a new melody could be lets us use some of our compositional muscles.”

The two took artistic risks on the new disc, like the Jamie Oshima-produced “765,” which echoes Natalie MacMaster’s 1999 crossover hit “In My Hands” with its fiddle electronica dance beat. It’s also the only track not helmed by Hearn and Scanlin, who elected to self-produce after working with Solas’s Seamus Egan on 2022’s Counting Down the Hours.

In addition to being lyrically compelling, with standout songs like “Island in the Sea” and “Lightly Come or Lightly Go,” Now, O Now stands out for another reason, Scanlin pointed out.

“The entirety of the album is all original musically, even excluding those two James Joyce poetry pieces,” she said, adding that she’s pleased to have it as a unifier, “instead of trying to come up with a thread about how JS Bach relates to this other old Irish tune relates to a tune that I wrote yesterday or something, which was the case on the previous album.”

Scanlin hails from Boone, North Carolina. Despite growing up in the Appalachian region, she initially studied classical music, but repeated trips to folk festivals with her parents got her interested in fiddlers like MacMaster, Hanneke Cassel and Liz Carroll. Hearn grew up in Washington, D.C., and got into Celtic music at summer camps and other places.

The pair met while both were attending different colleges, Hearn at Tufts and Scanlin at the New England Conservatory. Mutual friends and shared interests brought them together. They’d jam at Irish sessions at clubs like The Burren and The Druid; later they were in a band called Pumpkin Bread, before pairing up to focus on their shared favorite music.

One of the duo’s earliest supporters was Brian O’Donovan, a major force in New England’s Celtic music community and beyond before his death in 2023. “Brian was definitely the first to really elevate us and what we were doing and give us a platform and throw gigs at us,” Hearn said. Scanlin concurred, saying, “in a more tangible sense Brian literally did give us our very first gig together as Rakish, so our relationship as a band goes back all the way.”

Recently Rakish was named as the inaugural Brian O’Donovan Legacy Artist, part of an effort to memorialize the man who, here in New Hampshire, regularly hosted events like Celtic Christmas at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy. The weekend after this interview they served as resident artists at the Boston Celtic Music Festival, which featured a musical tribute to O’Donovan along with the awarding of six $2,500 grants in his name, with Rakish being among the recipients.

“Brian brought so much to Celtic music,” Scanlin said, from connecting people Stateside to folks back in Ireland as well as bringing the Northeast community and the rest of the U.S. together. “We’re really grateful to him, and also honored … to be stepping foot into this Brian O’Donovan Legacy role for its very first year. We’re so excited to see where that fund goes, and just totally excited to be the first in that role.”

Rakish and Nate Sabat

When: Thursday, Jan. 23, 7 p.m.
Where: Word Barn, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter
Tickets: $16 and up at portsmouthnhtickets.com

Featured Photo: Rakish. Photo by Sasha Pedro.

The Music Roundup 25/01/23

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

• B.I.G. Dead: Preposterous though it may look on paper, the sound of Grateful for Biggie makes sense. A melding of the Dead and the late Notorious B.I.G. interjects songs like “West L.A. Fadeaway” and “Eyes of the World” with lyrical flow from the late rapper, as jam band chops meet urban poetry. Watch two very different eras join together for a singular sonic experience. Thursday, Jan. 23, 8 p.m., Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket, $20 at portsmouthnhtickets.com.

• Blues return: In the middle of the 2010s Delanie Pickering made a mark on the Concord music scene with incendiary guitar playing and inspired singing. Now that she’s relocated to the Cape, it’s been too long since she’s done an area show, but that changes when Johnny Hoy & the Bluefish hit town. Pickering joined the popular Martha’s Vineyard band after laying low for a bit following her arrival. Friday, Jan. 24, 7:30 p.m., BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $28 at ccanh.com.

• Metal ladies: Three female-fronted Granite State bands appear at an event dubbed Metal Queens & Burgers. Under the Horizon is a power trio led by singer/bassist Izzy McIntyre that opened for Great White at Tupelo last summer. The Saturn Cycle, the duo of Ariana Doccola and Jordan Leonard, use looping for a big sound and have a new album due next month. Vermilion recently appeared at Pizzastock. Saturday, Jan. 25, 8 p.m., BAD BRGR, 1015 Elm St., Manchester, $10 at the door.

• Comedy tonight: Steve Scarfo will deliver the laughs at Chunky’s this weekend. A native Mainer, Scarfo came up in the Boston club scene and once took part in a mashup of Survivor and Last Comic Standing that’s worth a look on YouTube. Saturday, Jan. 25, 8 p.m., Chunky’s, 707 Huse Road, Manchester, $20 at chunkys.com.

• Southern accent: After attending a weekly cumbia night in San Francisco, Chuck Prophet became fascinated with the rhythmic Colombia-based music. During treatments for a stage 4 lymphoma diagnosis, he marinated in it, which led to the making of Wake the Dead, a life-affirming live in the studio album made with his band and two members of cumbia combo ¿Qiensave? Wednesday, Jan. 29, 8 p.m., 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth, $22 and up at 3sarts.org.

Sweet Fury, by Sash Bischoff

Sweet Fury, by Sash Bischoff (Simon & Schuster, 288 pages)

Check any list of the greatest American novelists and F. Scott Fitzgerald is likely in the top 10. Few of us escape high school without reading The Great Gatsby, but not all of us go on to read Fitzgerald’s next novel, Tender is the Night, published in 1934.

That puts Tender-illiterates like me at a bit of a disadvantage going into Sweet Fury, a debut novel by Sash Bischoff that revolves around a modern, feminist interpretation of Tender.

The disadvantage is not prohibitive — you can still follow the storyline, and might even emerge with a desire to visit (or revisit) all things Fitzgerald. But a fear of missing out might hang over your reading, since Bischoff admits she embedded Easter eggs — inside jokes or references — nodding to Fitzgerald and his work throughout the book.

The story begins with the clinical notes of a psychiatrist, Jonah Gabriel, who has agreed to take on a new client, a Hollywood star named Lila Crane who is about to play the role of Nicole Diver in a modern adaptation of Tender is the Night, directed by her lover. The star and the therapist have an immediate rapport once they discover that they both went to Princeton and were both fans of Fitzgerald.

Crane had decided to see therapy because of trauma she suffered in childhood. Her father was abusive and had an alcohol addiction, and he was driving drunk, with Crane and her mother in the car, when they collided with another car, killing the father.

“I want your honest opinion,” she says to Gabriel in their first session. “If someone has done something terrible to you, can you ever truly heal? Or will you always have a scar? Is there a way to erase the scar itself — and more importantly, erase that person’s power to hurt you again?”

Since Tender also involves alcohol abuse and a car wreck, Crane believes she might benefit from working out her own issues, which also, it turns out, include a past sexual assault. She enters therapy just as she becomes engaged to the man she’s living with, an A-list director named Kurt Royall, who is a powerful, attention-seeking man 18 years her senior. Her mother, not surprisingly, has concerns, even if Lila does not.

The story swivels back and forth between the therapist’s notes, Crane’s journaling and what is happening in real time as production begins on this new, empowering version of Tender. Crane is excited about the production because, as she tells Gabriel, “Our version of Tender isn’t another tragedy of the tortured white man. It’s a feminist story of healing, of reparations.”

From the first page, we’re swimming in a story within a story within a story — Tender is about a psychiatrist who falls in love with a patient, and much of that book derived from Fitzgerald’s relationship with his wife, Zelda, who had mental health issues that required psychiatric care.

But if you haven’t read the Fitzgerald novel, don’t go down the CliffsNotes rabbit hole like I did, as it will just leave your head spinning. Better to just read Sweet Fury on its own merits. That is, if you can get past the title and cover art — a silhouette of a nude woman’s body — that makes the book look like some sort of cringe bodice-ripper. (Honestly, if I’d been reading on public transportation, I would have hidden the cover, and I’m not sure if that makes me a prude or a literary snob.)

The publicity for Sweet Fury promises Gone Girl-like pivots and twists, and after a slow start these come fast and furious, making it difficult to talk about the last half of the book without significant spoilers. Let’s just say that more than one character is not the person they are set up to be; in fact, hardly anybody is.

Bischoff knows how to turn a phrase — my mind keeps returning to her description of an opulent wrap-around porch stretching into a “single, satisfied grin.” And she does an excellent job concealing the twists until their reveal; the story is well plotted and foreshadowing is light. She unpacks everything with sufficient depth at the story’s end.

If there’s a fault in these stars, it’s that Bischoff does not adequately convince us to love any of them as the story unfolds.

I never felt an emotional attachment to Lila, her mother, the scriptwriter, the therapist, the gay best friend or any of the myriad other characters. I read Sweet Fury as one watches the second season of a TV show you’ve never seen before, with clinical detachment. This is, no doubt, partly because I knew little about the book that was incessantly being referenced (even a cat is named Zelda — everything is Fitzgeraldized) but it’s also partly because, as I found out at the story’s end, much of what I thought I knew about these people wasn’t true. And you can’t love characters if you don’t know them.

That said, will I re-read it now to connect the dots I missed the first time? Yes, of course — somewhat grudgingly. And if I’d loved Lila Crane like I want to love protagonists, I’d probably read Tender is the Night, too. But at this point, that’s more time and energy than I want to invest in this particular fictional actress. At least until the movie comes out. B- —Jennifer Graham

Featured Image: Sweet Fury, by Sash Bischoff

Album Reviews 25/01/23

Löanshark, No Sins To Confess (Reigning Phoenix Music)

I swear I haven’t developed some weird fetish for foreign heavy metal bands, cross my heart; you may have noticed that I pick a random metal band out of my overstuffed emailbox every few weeks, and it just so happened that this week it’s yet another entry from Barcelona, Spain. I can make this short and sweet: If you ever wanted to hear what it would sound like if Scorpions and Alcatrazz had a baby, it’s this. The old-school hamster-wheel gets spinning really fast from the jump, with opener (no, I’m not making this up) “Electric Shockin’ Waves,” a headbanger that doesn’t break any new ground at all but nevertheless is a fine attempt; the singer sounds like a cross between Klaus Meine and Dio, which is about as generic as things could get. In case you’re not sure what this is about, there’s a cover version of NWOBHM cult band Marseille’s“Open Fire” that sounds a lot like a forgotten hit from Europe, come to think of it. It’s OK! A —Eric W. Saeger

The Vapors, Wasp In A Jar (Vapors Own Records)

Holy crow, stop the presses, this isn’t stupid at all! I know it must be a shock to Gen-Xers (how’s the imminent approach of your 60s feeling, kiddies?) to find that this U.K. New Wave band is still at it; you oldbies remember their big (OK, only) hit “Turning Japanese” from wayyy back in the day, but fact is, this isn’t the only album they’ve released over the decades. Anyway, what was I saying — oh yes, it’s not stupid, or at least it doesn’t start out that way, with the hardcore thrasher “Hit The Ground Run.” That one’s followed by “The Human Race,” a spazz-fest that’s their newest “Son Of Turning Japanese” entry, replete with a geeky, mildly catchy chorus. Later comes the obligato joke song, “Miss You Girl,” with a challenging but stupid bass line and purposely sloppy feedback-washed guitar line (literally every New Wave band wrote one of these during the Reagan years). Whatever, it’s a fun record, God bless ’em. A —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

• Before we get into the new releases streeting this Friday, Jan. 24, I’d like everyone in the class to please pick up your copy of the Dec. 26, 2024, Hippo and take a look at the ribbing I gave former British boyband-numbskull Robbie Williams for the soundtrack for his album Better Man (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), based on his biopic of the same name. You see, Variety just announced the numbers for the independently made Paramount-released movie (please ask your kids to leave the room, folks, this is for mature audiences only). Ahem, it was a record-breaker in the States, all right: It appeared in 1,291 movie theaters and made $1 million, which would be great if it had cost $5 to make, but guess what: it cost $110 million to make! Even overseas, where people actually even know who that dude is, it’s only made $4.9 million! Now, it might have done better if Williams hadn’t been portrayed by a digitally animated chimpanzee in the film, but you know what, I’m glad he was, because now maybe we have a new Rocky Horror Picture Show to mock and deride and laugh at. I’ll tell you, I don’t mind being right all the time, but this was like winning the Lotto!

• If you’re old, you had a small psychological meltdown in 2021 when you were just trying to mind your own business and eat your Fiery Doritos and watch the Super Bowl halftime show and suddenly, instead of Tom Petty or Aerosmith actually playing the hits you used to listen to at keggers in 1986, there was some dude running around in a funhouse mirror-hall, lip-synching some Raffi-esque nursery rhymes, and you were like “How did this all happen?” It’s hard to say, but that was The Weeknd, and he has a new album coming out this Friday, titled Hurry Up Tomorrow, which took forever to roll out even after being postponed, and is said to be “all over the place” genre-wise. “The Crowd” is one of the new songs, an Auto-Tune fest that’s slow and foggy. “Timeless,” with a feature from Playboi Carti, is a cleverly syncopated chillout that fares a lot better. Late breaking: Oh for cripe’s sake, this guy moved the release date again, back a week to Jan. 31, for anyone who takes this ridiculousness seriously.

• Southern-roots-rock band Larkin Poe is often said to be a female version of Allman Brothers, mostly by journalists who don’t know what they’re doing. The band’s new album, Bloom, is led up by the single “Little Bit,” an unexciting slow-rock ballad that’s like Melissa Etheridge trying to be relevant to both the Billboard chart guys and the Zoomer demographic, which is obviously not something anyone should ever try.

• Lol we certainly are on a roll this week, folks, what could possibly be next, I ask you seriously, what on earth will be the next thing I’ll have to — oh look, it’s Scottish post-rock whatevers Mogwai, a band that’s famous for the horribly horrible Pavement-meets-Spacemen 3 single “Take Me Somewhere Nice,” deliver me from nonsense somebody please. Their new album is titled The Bad Fire and features a song called “Lion Rumpus,” a shoegaze-ish thingamajig with lots of guitar distortion that is, as always, its only saving grace, although the fact that there’s no singing on it is an added bonus. The video features the “lads” walking their dogs around Glasgow and asking people if they’ve even heard of Mogwai; most of them say “no” of course.

• Finally we have London-based indie-Bandcamper Anna B Savage, attempting to salvage something positive from this absolutely dreadful week of new releases, with her new one, You and I Are Earth. The single, “Agnes ft. Anna Mieke,” is basically an overacted nick of Tori Amos for Zoomers who’d secretly rather be listening to something decent (they all are); too bad about that. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Löanshark, No Sins To Confess (Reigning Phoenix Music) and The Vapors, Wasp In A Jar (Vapors Own Records)

Zen and the art of Grape-Nuts

By John Fladd

Grape-Nuts and Raisin Pie, from the 1932 General Foods Cookbook

¾ cup (100 g) Grape-Nuts cereal

¾ cup (128 g) golden raisins, chopped

¾ cup (160 g) brown sugar

2¼ cup (510 g) hot water

¼ cup (57 g) apple cider vinegar

3 Tablespoons butter

Dough for a two-crust pie (see below)

Combine the Grape-Nuts, raisins, brown sugar, water, vinegar and butter in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. As you do this, the mixture will seem far too soupy and thin to ever be a self-respecting pie filling.

The thing is, the raisins and Grape-Nuts, deep in their hearts, feel a little self-conscious. The raisins remember their grapey background and realize intellectually that they could take back all the liquid they gave up in their youth, but they feel hesitant to relax completely and suck up all this fluid. The Grape-Nuts are ever so dry and know that they too have the theoretical ability to suck up all this fluid but are bashful about it at first.

So here is what you as the Pie Facilitator will do: Take the soupy, syrupy mixture off the heat and set it somewhere to cool completely. This might take an hour or more. Because it will take a while to cool, the Grape-Nuts and the raisins will have time to relax in this syrupy hot tub and really hydrate deeply.

After the mixture has cooled for an hour or so, preheat the oven to 425°F and prepare the pie crust.

There is of course absolutely nothing wrong with using a store-bought pre-made crust. If, on the other hand, you feel up to making it, an all-butter crust will add to the flavor of the finished pie. Perfecting your own personal crust-making technique can be a long and spiritual endeavor that deserves its own discussion, but here’s one tip that has helped me greatly: freeze the butter, then grate it into the flour, to help bump up the crust’s flakiness.

At this point your pie filling might be cool. If so, pour it into the bottom pie crust, then weave the strips of dough into a lattice top. This is way easier than it looks. If you don’t know how to do it, look it up online. It’s one of those tricks that everyone wants to show off as soon as they’ve learned it, so there are a million how-to videos that will show you what to do.

Bake the pie at 425°F for 10 to 12 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake it for another 35 minutes or so, then remove it from the oven and allow it to cool completely before serving it.

You’d think that without an egg or some other binder the filling would be too loose, hydration hot tub or no, but it sets up really well. The flavor is gently fruity; the shot of vinegar has rounded out the dried fruit sweetness and given it the very subtlest tang. The interesting thing here, though, is the apparent absence of the Grape-Nuts. It seems that upon giving itself up to relaxation and hydration, the cereal has become one with the pie. Has the Grape-Nuts spread its essence, or more specifically its protein filaments, throughout the filling, pulling it together texturally? It’s a good bet.

Regardless, the Grape-Nuts, formerly the gravel of the cereal world, has, against all odds, achieved a Buddhist ideal, releasing its identity to become with the Universe. Or in this case a pie filling., then strain the syrup. This will last for a week or two in your refrigerator.

Featured Image: Grape-Nuts and Raisin Pie. Photo by John Fladd.

Kiddie Pool 25/01/23

Family fun for whenever

More winterfest

• Bedford Winterfest, hosted by The Bedford Mom, will take place over two days this weekend. Day 1, Saturday, Jan. 25, will take place on the sledding hill behind Ann DeNicola Memorial Playground and feature sledding, activities for kids, face painting and more from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; see thebedfordmom.com. Admission is free but reservations are required.

Day 2 will take place at Joppa Hill Educational Farm (174 Joppa Hill in Bedford; theeducationalfarm.org) on Sunday, Jan. 26, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free but reservations are required. Activities will include sledding, crafters, farm animals, s’mores, hot cocoa, arts and crafts, scavenger hunts and more, according to the website.

Movie morning

• Before you head to Concord’s Winter Fest (see page 12 for details) head to Red River Theatres (11 S. Main St. in Concord; redrivertheatres.org) for a screening of 2006’s Happy Feet, the animated movie (which won its year’s animated feature Oscar) on Saturday, Jan. 25, at 10 a.m. Tickets cost $5.

A happy dancing penguin from the movie Happy Feet
Happy Feet

Books!

• Annette LeBlanc Cate, author and illustrator of picture books including Look Up!: Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard and The Magic Rabbit, will discuss her new release Seven Little Ducklings at Balin Books (Somerset Plaza, 375 Amherst St., Nashua; balinbooks.com) on Saturday, Jan. 25, at 1 p.m. “When a plump mother duck awakens one morning, she’s stunned to discover that her seven eggs have hatched in the night and all of her ducklings have wandered off. Now she has to search for them out in the wild!” according to a book description in a Balin email.

Save the date

• SEE Science Center (200 Bedford St. in Manchester; see-sciencecenter.org) will hold a Community Discovery Night on Friday, Feb. 7, from 5 to 8 p.m. The event, whose theme will be “Celebrating Black Influence in Science,” will feature food, music and science activities, according to the website, where you can register for this free event so the center can plan the food.

In other SEE news, registration is open now for the Center’s summer camps. The weeklong camps begin in mid-July and have a variety of science-related focuses. See the website for details.

• The Derryfield Country Club (625 Mammoth Road in Manchester; thederryfield.com) will host a Royal Princess Breakfast on Saturday, March 1, from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Kids can enjoy a brunch, storytime and games with costumed princesses. Tickets cost $40 for children ages 2 to 12 and $55 for adults. A $65 VIP ticket for kids includes an early admission time, photo-ops and a tiara, according to the details available via the restaurant’s website.

• Middle schoolers at High Mowing School (Pine Hill Campus, 77 Pine Hill Drive in Wilton; highmowing.org/hilltop) will present The Hilltop Circus: An Unexpected Journey on Friday, Feb. 28, at 10:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. and Saturday, March 1, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. The students’ circus skills include “acrobatics, trapeze, juggling, clowning, unicycling, aerial fabric, wire-walking, trampoline, human pyramids and more,” according to the press release. Admission is a suggested donation of $12 for adults, $6 for children; bring a donation for Wilton’s Open Cupboard Food Pantry for a free bag of popcorn, the release said.

• The Nashua Historical Society will hold a Little Red Tea Party on Sunday, March 2, at the Florence H. Speare Memorial Museum library, located at 5 Abbott St. in Nashua. The all-ages event will feature tea, scones, petite sandwiches and other treats; a historical presentation about the story of Little Red Riding Hood; a STEM-inspired tea experiment; a craft; a raffle and more, according to a press release. Doors open at 12:30 p.m. and tea service starts at 1 p.m., the release said. Reservations cost $20 per person, $15 for children 12 and under, the release said. See nashuahistoricalsociety.org/events.

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