Tag: 250612

Making lemonade

Country singer Annie Brobst stays positive

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

There’s a timeless adage both revered and reviled among songwriters. Essentially, it says that any misery is mitigated if it produces a song. Shawn Colvin once responded to this sentiment with terse words. “I’d rather do anything,” she sang back in 1992, “than write this song for you.”

Annie Brobst can look at it from both sides.

For more than a decade, Brobst has been a big part of the region’s country music scene. The single “Red Wine On Mind,” from 2021’s Where We Holler, netted her latest in a string of New England Music Awards. The album is packed with gems like the popgrass rocker “Little Girl Dreams” and the blues-inflected “On the Record.”

Brobst didn’t set out to be a singer. She found her talents belting out her favorite hits in Boston karaoke bars, and followed her muse after meeting songwriter Roger Hagopian. He encouraged her to channel the elements of her life that resembled a country song into her own music.

Her first song came after a breakup. Brobst had followed her boyfriend from Ohio to Boston, where the romance faded. In response, she wrote “Ghost,” and won her first NEMA. On the other hand, she’d be content with skipping the experience that produced her second drawn-from-life composition, “After the Rain.”

Eighteen months ago, Brobst and her husband and creative partner Ryan Dupont returned from an out-of-town trip to find a burst pipe in their third-floor bathroom. “The place was ruined,” Brobst recalled in a recent phone interview. “We were displaced from our home for about a year.”

Initially, she didn’t feel inspired to write something like When We Holler’s charming “Make Lemonade,” however fitting that might have felt.

“I was just in this mind space,” she said. “I didn’t feel super creative in the time. Once we started to get on the other end of that, I did write a song about that. And then we have a couple more that we wrote and recorded.”

She’ll perform those and others from her debut EP and two albums — the other is My First Rodeo, released in 2018 — when she appears at Lost Cowboy Brewing Co. in Nashua on June 13. It’s one of a few shows Brobst has coming up in New Hampshire, a state she’s played infrequently, though she and Dupont were married in the White Mountains.

On June 28 she’ll headline an early evening show at Stone Church in Newmarket, backed by singer/songwriter Keith Crocker and special guest band Punktry Bumpkins. On July 12 she opens for country rapper Big Murph at The Flying Monkey in Plymouth, and she returns to The Range, a buzzy outdoor venue in Mason, on July 17.

Though the new song was inspired by Brobst’s own tragedy, its message is universal.

“It’s for anyone in that moment of limbo,” she explained. “There’s sun that comes out after the rain; you just can’t quite see it yet. That’s definitely what the song’s about. I think it can apply to so many people and so many situations that they’re just pushing through.”

“After The Rain” and a few others that have been polished in the studio will make their way into a future album.

“Yeah, we’re going to release some singles, and definitely keep writing now that we’re in a better space,” Brobst said. “I definitely always like to have my singles live on an album at some point. That’s kind of always been my M.O. “

Brobst, who’s spent close to 15 years in New England, is resisting the pull of Nashville as her next career move.

“I’m happy here,” she said. “My husband and my stepdaughters are here, so I do have our life rooted…. We’re going to be ourselves, write our music, play our awesome shows out this way, and see if at some point we can’t gain some traction or attention. I don’t see moving in our future anytime soon — not to say we wouldn’t if the opportunity was a great one.”

Annie Brobst

When: Friday, June 13, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Cowboy Brewing Co., 546 Amherst St., Nashua
More: anniebrobstmusic.com

Also Saturday, June 28, 5:30 p.m. at Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket ($15 at stonechurchrocks.com)

Featured photo. Annie Brobst. Photo by Liza Czech.

The Music Roundup 25/06/12

Local music news & events

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

• Enduring: A band that grew out of jazz’s rising popularity in the late ‘70s, Spyro Gyra broke through with the crossover hit “Morning Dance” in 1979. The group, formed in Buffalo, got its name from a type of algae that founding member Jay Beckenstein learned about in college. They’re currently touring in celebration of their 50th anniversary last year, with an upcoming stop in Derry. Thursday, June 12, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $57 at tupelohall.com.

• Gathering: In its first socially distanced iteration, the Northlands Festival was a creative way to offer live music during the pandemic, with a series of pod seating shows. Now in its sixth year, it’s grown to three days, with the cream of the jam scene headlining each night. This year includes String Cheese Incident, Cory Wong, moe., Umphrey’s McGee and Lotus. Friday, June 14, through Sunday, June 15, Cheshire Fairgrounds, 247 Monadnock Hwy., Swanzey, $99 and up at northlandslive.com.

• Rolling: New Hampshire drivers should check their mirrors twice as Laconia Motorcycle Week is back for nine days. The oldest bike rally in the United States always has a lot of live music. For the past five years, an AC/DC tribute act has held forth, with guitarist Jonny Friday as Angus Young and Dean Celisia doing the late Bon Scott and his replacement Brian Johnson. Saturday, June 14, 8 p.m., The Big House, 322 Lakeside Ave., Laconia, more at laconiamcweek.com.

• Jamming: Named after its front man, a Senegalese rhythm guitarist, Mamadou is strongly influenced by West African music, along with reggae, salsa, merengue and Cubano. All lyrics are sung in Wolof, Mamadou Diop’s native language. Sunday, June 15, noon, Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, mamadou.com.

• Honoring: Led by 2016 American Idol alumni Tristan McIntosh, The Linda Ronstadt Experience offers an enjoyable re-creation of the singer’s prime era. Ronstadt’s longtime producer Peter Asher gave McIntosh a thumbs up for her solid work interpreting songs like “You’re No Good,” “That’ll Be the Day,” “It’s So Easy,” “Heat Wave” and “Just One Look.” Wednesday, June 18, 7 p.m., Town Common, 265 Mammoth Road, Londonderry, londonderryartscouncil.org.

Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream, by Nicholas Morgenstern

Madeline Hill wasn’t looking to expand her family when a stranger in a PT Cruiser pulled up to her farm stand in Tennessee and announced that he was her half-brother. At 32, she’d settled into a life she’d built with her mother after her father left them 20 years earlier with no explanation and no future contact. Maybe it wasn’t her best life, but it also wasn’t a bad one. They ran an organic farm that had won acclaim for their meat, eggs, produce and cheese, and had even been featured in magazines. True, it was a largely solitary life, but Mad, as she was known, was comfortable in it. A sibling was not part of her life plan.

Enter Reuben Hill, or Rube, as he is known. The stranger in the PT Cruiser tells Mad that they shared a father, and he had a whole other life in Boston before he ran out on Rube’s family and took up with Mad’s mom. As an adult, Rube wanted to learn more about his father, and so he hired a private investigator who found a mysterious pattern: The man that Rube knew as Chuck Hill, a New England insurance salesman and author of detective novels, had reinvented himself as Charles Hill, a organic farmer in the deep South. But he hadn’t stopped there. There were, apparently, other families that their dad created and left.

In another writer’s hands, this storyline might be overwrought, but in the hands of Kevin Wilson, it’s comedy gold. In Run for the Hills, Wilson’s sixth novel, he sends Mad and Rube on the world’s weirdest road trip, in which they trace their father’s domestic settlements from Tennessee to California and meet their other half-siblings, in the hopes of figuring out what, exactly, their father was thinking, as he continually reinvented himself at the expense of others.

It’s an absurd story, as absurd as the PT Cruiser that Rube showed up in for a road trip. (It’s what the rental-car company gave him, he explains to a bemused Mad.) But it has a raw and poignant center — how this man had shaped his children’s lives, not by his presence, but by his absence, as Wilson writes.

Mad and Rube had built successful lives for themselves, despite the trauma that their father’s abrupt disappearance had inflicted upon their families; Rube had even followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a mystery writer. Another sibling that they tracked down was a star college basketball — in the iteration of himself that the father gave that family, he had been a basketball coach who went by the name Chip Hill.

Curiously, despite the coldness of his departures, when he was living with the families their father was, by all accounts, a good father. Which made his willingness to abruptly remove himself from his children’s lives all the more a mystery.

What caused him to behave that way — and where he is now — are the central questions driving the narrative of Run for the Hills, but it’s the blooming relationships between the quirky half-siblings that give the story its heart. Mad at first is suspicious of Rube and his motives, and reluctant to even invite him into her house as a guest. Guests, she thinks, are an inconvenience: “They showed up and created work for you. They asked about your feelings, your day. They asked if maybe you had a beer in the fridge.They asked if you could adjust the air-conditioning just, like, two degrees. They asked if you knew the location of any legal papers that might speak to the true identity of the father you had not seen in over twenty years.”

Rube, whose mother recently died, is an excruciatingly polite and lonely man who wears his longing for a family on his Oxford shirt sleeve. He is gay and has been in relationships, but like Mad, had never married and is afraid of being left again. “Half of it is that Dad messed me up by leaving. And half of it is that my mom messed me up by staying but being so damn sad that I never forgot about it,” he tells Mad. He is hoping that he can make some lasting connection with these half-siblings, while Mad is hoping just to figure out the mystery and get home to her real life as soon as possible.

They track down the third child, Pepper (who goes by Pep — their father was very fond of nicknames) at the University of Oklahoma, where she was about to play in a championship game. Then it’s off to find a son in Salt Lake City, before the crowded car ultimately crosses into California, where they hope to find the father of them all.

Interspersed throughout the novel are descriptions of video the father had taken of all the children — Pep playing basketball, Mad feeding chickens, Rube playing with a paper airplane. The interludes are meant to show us Hill’s loving interactions with his children, adding to the mystery, and their meaning is more clear near the end of the book. But they don’t work — they are distractions to the natural flow of the story. As is Wilson’s inexplicable fondness for the word “offered” as a synonym for “said.” There are more offerings in this book than at a tent revival in the deep South.

But these are small quibbles with a genuinely fun novel that strikes the right balance between poignancy and comedy, no small task given the subject matter. Wilson has famously written about family dysfunction in his other novels, which include The Family Fang (made into a movie), Nothing to See Here and Now is Not the Time to Panic. If Hollywood options this too, I’ll be at the theater on opening day. A- —Jennifer Graham

Featured Photo: Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream, by Nicholas Morgenstern

Album Reviews 25/06/12



Lüt, “Opp Ned” (Indie Recordings)

Well here’s a filthy, ear-grabbing burner, the final advance from this Norwegian post-emo band’s third, apparently as yet untitled LP. I’d love to tell you more about them, since I really like everything I’ve heard from them so far, but we’re in the era of Anonymous, when bands and various other artistes — Banksy, for instance — keep their identities secret, or force prospective fans to do their own research if they want to know more about them. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich loves these guys, if that’s of any import to you, and they’ve played at a good number of unpronounceable European festivals, but all you really need to do is hear one of their better songs, like this one. This song’s hook is absolutely epic, for one thing, but the ingredients list for their vibe is uniquely awesome: the attitude of The Hives, a guitar sound that binds ’80s goth-rock to no-wave (think Taking Back Sunday, for shorthand), and the boisterous energy of Dropkick Murphys. If that doesn’t interest you, go check your pulse. Seriously, give this a shot. A+ —Eric W. Saeger


Noah Haidu, Standards III (Infinite Distances Records)

One of New York’s finest active jazz pianists here, a guy on his way up, jamming his third set of standards with count-’em two different rhythm sections. A busily simmering “Yesterdays” opens the album in fine black-tie style, followed by a bustling version of Rodgers and Hart’s “Lover” that’ll make wonks’ heads spin. Of course, jazz isn’t all about showing off technical skill, so we move into slowbies at that point with a bouncily phlegmatic take on Mercer Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” and a lovingly rendered essay on Thad Jones’s “A Child Is Born” that reveals Haidu’s boundless capacity for turning melodies inside out. The more melodically sticky things come from the pop world, with the appropriately soulful “Stevie W,” and then from Chappell Roan’s (yes, that Chappell Roan) “Casual,” which is presented not as the stunning park-and-make-out mega-anthem that it is, but yet another scalar place to explore surgically (interpret that as you wish, but, reluctant as I am to admit it, sometimes Taylor Swift-flavored bubblegum is its own guilty reward). A —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Nothing like a Friday the 13th, am I right guys, and as far as the new albums that are coming out that day, what could be more apropos than a new album from Van Morrison, my least favorite fedora-wearing pop musician, not that there are any fedora rockers that I’ve ever liked in this life? Yes, it’s as if I walked under a ladder and had five black cats cross my path on my way to my house, where I promptly opened an umbrella when I walked in and then broke a mirror, because I know there’s like five of you who’d flip out and message me on Facebook, yelling misspelled epithets in ALL CAPS if I neglected to mention this dude’s new album Remembering Now, so save it, I was already prepared for this disaster, because I was in the Mahket Basket the other day buying my week’s supply of Cheetos when there it was, assaulting me over the store’s evil loudspeakers, the song “Mister Jones,” which I’ve always hated, not because I thought it was a Van Morrison song (which it isn’t, it’s actually the biggest hit by Counting Crows) but because it makes me want to join the marines and volunteer to sweep for forgotten landmines in Afghanistan just so I’ll never hear it again. Whatever, I think I’ve heard a couple of Van Morrison songs that were OK, so I shall sally forth and click the clicky to hear — let’s see, the first song, “Cutting Corners,” I do these things only for you people. Oh, this isn’t all that bad if you like country music that sounds like it’s being sung by a mechanic from upstate New York, because that’s what it sounds like, there’s Slim Pickens-style dobro and fiddle, and at least it doesn’t sound at all like “Domino,” the dreadful Van Morrison song that obviously inspired “Mister Jones,” nor does it sound like the even-worse “Brown Eyed Girl,” which, as I’ve mentioned before, is the national anthem for accountants who can’t dance. So carry on with your sort-of country music, Van Morrison, until we meet again or whatnot.

• Now that that’s over with, we can turn our attention to my literal favorite Australian band, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, whose name takes up almost a whole line of column space, thanks for being insane, guys! Phantom Island is the name of this month’s King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard album, just in time, because I’ll tell you, I’d actually been worried for a few weeks that they weren’t going to put out an album like they usually do literally every other month, so here it is! When last we left our heroes, on whichever album it was, they were fully committed to making nonsense acid-pop, refusing to bother with stupid boring music-nerd stuff like hooks, instrumental interplay or song structure, so why don’t we just mosey on down to the YouTube corral, Van Morrison style, and take a gander at the latest blah blah blah from these blotter-acid-gobbling turkey-people, yes let’s. Lol, listen to the band’s funny singing man on the new single, “Grow Wings and Fly,” making no sense, something about hanging out in Shanghai, and then — wait, now it’s an actual good ’70s radio-pop song! What are they even doing! Help!

• But wait a minute, we’re not out of the woods yet, because look who it is, Buckcherry with their new album, Roar Like Thunder! The title track comes off like AC/DC, as always, but in arena-punkabilly mode. Ha ha, who buys these albums?

• Last but not least this week is British grime-rapper AJ Tracey, with the appropriately hip-hoppishly titled Don’t Die Before You’re Dead, aren’t you already scared of this hip-hop fellow? “Friday Prayer” recycles/steals from some old Otis Redding beat, and then we get some above-average grime-rapping, as advertised (hilarious note: the band’s Like-bots made no attempt to disguise themselves on the YouTube page for this one, it’s so cute). —Eric W. Saeger

Lime Custard Cake

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

½ cup (1 cube) butter, melted

1¼ cup (250 g) sugar

4 eggs, separated

zest of 3 limes

¼ cup (4 Tablespoons) fresh squeezed lime juice

2 teaspoons dehydrated lime juice powder (optional) – available online, dehydrated citrus powders let you bump up citrus flavor in a recipe without throwing off your moisture content

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ cup (65 g) all purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

1¼ cup (300 ml) evaporated milk

Heat oven to 325°F.

Butter a 9-inch spring-form pan, and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Measure and set aside all your ingredients. This is something restaurant cooks call mise en place, or “meez.” If you’ve ever watched a cooking show and wondered why everything looks so effortless, takes five minutes, and the kitchen on set doesn’t look like a war zone, it’s because an intern has already found all the ingredients, prepared them, and set them aside, so the chef isn’t running around with her sleeve on fire shouting, “HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY BE OUT OF BUTTER!!??” If you haven’t done this before, try it. It’s a game-changer.

Whip the egg whites into stiff peaks. Set aside.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until the mixture is light in color and fluffy.

Mix in the lime zest, lime juice, lime juice powder and vanilla. Add the flour and salt, and mix until everything is incorporated. Drizzle in the evaporated milk and mix everything together.

Stir 1/3 of the beaten egg whites into the mixture to lighten it, then gently fold in the rest, one half at a time, until the batter is light and mousse-like. (Not moose-like; if that happens, something has definitely gone awry.)

Spoon the batter into your spring-form pan, and bake it for 50 to 55 minutes, until the top is slightly golden but still a little jiggly if you shake it.

Let the cake cook completely in the pan before removing it. It might collapse in on itself a little, and lose some volume, but it will still be beautiful.

Serve in small slices — it’s very rich — with glasses of seltzer over crushed ice. Eat it listening to “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess. You’ll be able to tell your child — even an eye-rolling teenager — that their daddy is rich, and their momma’s good-looking, and mean it.

Featured photo: Lime Custard Cake. Photo by John Fladd.

In the kitchen with Daniel MacCrea

New Culinary Director, Pats Peak Ski Area (686 Flanders Road, Henniker, 428-3245, patspeak.com)

“Culinary’s something I kind of fell into,” MacCrea said. “I was working at a hotel when I was like 16 or 17. I was actually a busboy. And then something happened where one of the cooks was on vacation … and one cook got let go, and one guy just kind of stopped showing up. I looked at the executive chef and said, ‘Hey, you can come get me; I can fill in a few shifts.’ That was kind of how I got started. … I did some chain restaurant work. I worked in elder care as a culinary director for Expected Living for about eight or nine years. That was actually really rewarding. Then … I was the executive chef at Great Wolf Lodge for about three years before I took this Pats Peak job. I graduated high school, but then never really went to culinary school because I was already working and in the field doing it, and I love what I did, and I just wanted to work and move up the ladder and progress that way.

Do you have a particular culinary point of view or a philosophy in the kitchen?

I do. I mean, I honestly think it’s not about me; it’s really just about whatever my guest wants. I try to cater to anyone and everyone. I really got into cooking for people with allergies and specific kinds of needs. I started really in health care, but then I expanded it when I was at my last job at Great Wolf Lodge. For me, it’s just all about guest satisfaction. If I can make somebody happy with my food, I’ve done my job.

What’s your must-have kitchen item?

Other than the very obvious, like just a good quality chef’s knife, I feel like oregano is my secret ingredient. I add oregano to a lot of dishes. I just like fresh herbs. I think if you have fresh herbs in general, you’re going to be better off. Fresh herbs, I think they elevate just about every dish.

What do you think is the most important skill in the kitchen?

For me, the most important skill is really being able to interact with a lot of different kinds of people. People skills are huge. You’re interacting with people from all different backgrounds, all different walks of life, all different personalities, and to be able to get the most out of those people that work around you I think is just so important

What would you have for your last meal?

I’d probably just have like a nice steak, like a nice T-bone or porterhouse, cooked medium rare, with something like creamy mashed potatoes and garlic green beans on the side.

What’s the best dish that you ever ate at a restaurant?

I was in Chicago — I think the place was called Gibson’s Italia. It was all family style, but literally everything I tried on that table was amazing — great steak, great pasta, great everything. We were at a leadership course thing, it was like a long weekend, and this woman was local to Chicago and she was taking us to all these places. I mean she’s walking up to these restaurants, no signage, no nothing, you wouldn’t know it was a restaurant unless you lived there. The service was incredible. The food was incredible.

Who’s a celebrity you’d like to see eating your food?

I’d be terrified, but I would love to have Gordon Ramsay eat my food. Although I admit I would be absolutely terrified, but, I mean, he’ll tell you like it is.

What’s your favorite dish to put on a menu?

When I’m planning a menu, I like to have some barbecue items. I love pulled pork, I love smoked brisket. I just like smoked meats. It’s a lot of the kind of weird cuts that way back when people didn’t appreciate them, and then we started making them into fantastic meals and I just love that.

What’s your favorite cookbook?

I’ve read a lot of cookbooks. I don’t know if I have an exact favorite one. I know they’re not actually cookbooks, but I like anything by [Anthony] Bourdain. I love that stuff. The cookbook I go to the most is literally a culinary textbook from Johnson & Wales. I just sort of picked that up, and it’s just amazing. It’s so easy to use, it has everything you could want. Right now, I’m reading about smoking.

What’s a big new food trend that you see?

There’s a lot of stuff I think that is trending, but hot honey is huge right now. I also think people are trying to get back to basics. I think overdone dishes with a million ingredients are kind of a way of the past. I think simple dishes, simple flavors, just good quality fresh ingredients is kind of on the rise. And I love that.

What’s your favorite thing to cook at home?

I like to cook a lot of Asian-fusion food. I like to make orange chicken and Szechuan chicken, things like that. I like to make simple meals that I can make really quick that are really flavorful. Really, my wife’s pretty picky, so anything that I can get her to eat and say is good is huge for me.

Featured Image: Daniel MacCrea, New Culinary Director, Pats Peak Ski Area. Courtesy photo.

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