Tag: 250828

Country scrappers

Parmalee plays the Dana Center

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

It’s been a hard road for Parmalee.

Named for the band members’ North Carolina hometown, the group formed in 2000 and spent years finding its sound and convincing the fickle country music industry to give them a look. Then, on the eve of a big showcase for the label in 2010, their drummer was nearly killed during an attempted robbery on their tour bus.

They finally broke through, first when the partied-too-hard single “Musta Had a Good Time” cracked the Top 40 in 2012, then a year later with “Carolina,” which went platinum and hit No. 1. Ever since, they’ve earned country airplay records and built success upon success. Fans can check out their impressive catalog of songs at an upcoming concert in Manchester.

Through all the challenges, Parmalee — singer Matt Thomas and his drummer brother Scott, their cousin, bass player Barry Knox, and Josh McSwain, a longtime family friend on lead guitar — never thought about giving up. The scrappy four-piece was determined to make it, whatever it took.

“We just outworked everybody,” Matt Thomas said by phone from Indiana, the latest stop on their Fell In Love With A Cowgirl tour, named for their latest album, which came out in April. “We didn’t have the goods, we didn’t have the song back in the day. We almost had the song and it got us a little bit further.”

So they got resourceful in other ways. A 2007 showcase in Charlotte, North Carolina, was attended by an Atlantic Records bigwig. “I knew he wasn’t going to sign us,” Thomas said, but he decided he’d ask the exec for advice anyway. What would he do with Parmalee? “He said, ‘I’d send you to work with Rick Beato.’”

These days Beato is a big YouTube personality, but back then he was an insider favorite. Thomas and his mates decided to call him. “I was like, ‘Hey, Rick, we’re this band Parmalee, and we’re coming to see you.’ We played him some songs, and we had one we hadn’t finished. We played him the chorus, and he perked up.”

The song was “Carolina.” When Parmalee finally got their record deal, in 2012, they brought Beato back to help polish it to perfection, and with that, they were on their way. “Close Your Eyes” from their Feels Like Carolina album charted, and 2019’s For You produced three hits, “Just the Way,” “Take My Name” and “Girl In Mine.”

Late last year, one more track from For You hit No. 1, “Gonna Love You,” in large part because of an accompanying video. It recreated the horrific night in 2010 when Scott Thomas got into a shootout with two men trying to rob the band. Given a five percent chance of surviving, Scott was in hospital for over a month, and spent six more months in rehab.

With the clip, the band hopes press questions about the incident will finally ease up.

“It’s easy — if someone asks, we can say, ‘Go watch the video, that’s about as close to the night as we could do.’ It’s pretty spot on for the most part,” Matt Thomas said, adding, “it was good to get that off our chest.”

A month after “Gonna Love You” peaked, they dropped the new album’s first single. “Cowgirl” is starting to get some traction with fans. “It’s in the top 30, and once it hits the top 20, the audience starts doubling,” Thomas said. “You can see it reacting differently once it moves up the charts a little bit.”

Despite their history of hits, the band sometimes struggles with the industry. For example, they’ve never gotten a CMA nomination, one of the reasons Knox once wore a T-shirt reading SNUBBED in an interview. “Cowgirl” was no exception. “You have to get all the partners in streaming and radio to believe in it, even though we’ve had multiple No. 1’s,” Thomas said. “But it’s alright, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”

Parmalee with Mackenzie Carpenter

When: Friday, Aug. 29, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Sullivan Arena, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester
Tickets: $35.75 and up at anselm.edu

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 25/08/28

Local music news & events

• Summer ’99: Post-grunge rockers Creed are in town with support from Daughtry, a band that initially was booked for a handful of shows on the tour until Three Doors Down had to cancel. Powered by Scott Stapp’s lead vocals, the Tallahassee four-piece broke through with its 1999 album Human Clay, which contained two No. 1 hits, “Higher” and “With Arms Wide Open.” Thursday, Aug. 28, 7 p.m., SNHU Arena, 555 Elm St., Manchester, $48 and up at ticketmaster.com.

• Rock indoors: End the month with a regional rock showcase as VicesFest ’25 happens from noon to midnight for three days, beginning Friday. Performers include headliners Sygnal to Noise, Trawl, and Vices Inc., along with Scarecrow Hill, Sepsiss, Night Fury, Jonee Earthquake Band and over two dozen more, plus food, merch vendors, and standup comedy from Jenn Rose. Friday, Aug. 29, through Sunday, Aug. 31, noon, The Strand, 20 Third St., Dover, $23 and up at eventbrite.com.

• Blues mama: Grammy winner Bonnie Raitt performs a Lakes Region show with Jimmy Vaughan & the Tilt-A-Whirl Band. Saturday, Aug. 30, 7:30 p.m., BNH Pavilion, 72 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford, $49 and up at ticketmaster.com.

• Cat’s last: Now 80 years old, Al Stewart is in the midst of a farewell tour, with Derry one of its final American stops. Best-known for mid-’70s hits like “Time Passages” and “Year of the Cat,” Stewart came up in the British folk revival with his character-driven songs, played the first Glastonbury Festival, and once shared a flat with Paul Simon. Wednesday, Sept. 3, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $50 and up at tupelohall.com.

On Her Game, Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports, by Christine Brennan

(Scribner, 250 pages)

The story of how Caitlin Clark entered the national consciousness begins not with basketball but with soccer. As Christine Brennan explains in On Her Game, it was specifically the Women’s World Cup championship in 1999, the one in which Brandi Chastain led her team to victory over China and ripped off her shirt.

There had been female athletes before, but they wore “tennis dresses, figure skating sequins, gymnastics leotards and swimming suits,” Brennan writes. What came after Title IX was different: “It was raw athleticism that Americans fell for that summer of ’99. It was the girl next door we’d all seen in our neighborhoods, coming back from a game with a grass-stained jersey and scuffed-up knees, now all grown up.”

It was what Caitlin Clark would become.

Clark, the Indiana Fever point guard who has ignited interest in women’s basketball nationwide, is the latest product of Title IX, the 1972 law that ensured equal opportunities in sports for women and girls. And Brennan’s book is a primer for anyone who hasn’t been paying attention and wants to understand why the Iowa native is all over the news.

Brennan writes for USA Today and is also a sought-after television commentator. She caught the fever when Clark was still a junior in college and made a ridiculous three-point shot in a game against Indiana. “There was no way on earth something like that could go in — until it did,” Brennan writes.

At the time, Clark was beginning to build a devoted fan base that would follow her from college to the WNBA. Brennan describes a young woman who benefited from both natural talent and a fierce spirit of competition honed in a family consumed with sports. (Her dad was a college athlete, her mother’s father was a football coach, and her two brothers were also athletes in school.) In the third grade, Clark’s No. 1 goal was to be in the WNBA. She was competitive even when it came to Halloween: “I was the first to the door. I had the best costume. I just dominated trick or treat,” she has said.

Combining interviews she conducted, and the interviews of others, Brennan offers as good a biography as one can compile of someone who is just 23 years old; it’s fleshed out with observations about how Title IX changed women’s sports, and play-by-plays of essential Clark games.

Like the Clark phenomenon, this book came about quickly — Brennan struck a deal with a Scribner editor within a day of their conversation about the project; she then went to Paris to cover the 2024 summer Olympics, before immersing herself in all things Clark for six weeks. Along the way, Brennan became part of the story herself when some WNBA players took offense at questions she posed to a Connecticut Sun player who bruised Clark’s eye during a game and later appeared to laugh about it. The players’ association wanted Brennan banned from covering the league — this did not happen, and Brennan says her questioning was in line with “questions I would ask any athlete — male or female” on a controversial topic.

While that may well be true, Brennan clearly is a fan: She writes about Clark’s “talent, her intelligence, her competitiveness, her sense of humor, and her sense of responsibility, especially toward young girls who love sports.” She believes the WNBA was unprepared for Clark and the attention she brought to the league and shows how some of the athletes were overtly hostile toward Clark because so much attention was being focused on her.

But she also offers a portrait of Clark as a hard-nosed and volatile athlete who often lets her own emotions get the best of her. Near the end of last season her teammates famously formed a “Caitlin Clark De-Escalation Committee,” intervening on the court when it looked like Clark was in danger of getting yet another technical foul. Much of the news coverage of Clark in the past year has focused on opponents’ heavy coverage of her, and fouls that may or may not have been intentional, but Clark has had her own bad-girl behavior, and those around her are constantly saying they need to let “Caitlin be Caitlin,” whatever that means in the moment.

Brennan says she first saw Clark in person at the Iowa-Maryland game in February 2024. Within a minute of watching Clark play, she understood why so many people were talking about her.

“This wasn’t just sports. It was entertainment. Clark was the high-wire act at the circus. She was the diva at the opera. She was a show. She was the show.”

Despite a slow start in the WNBA, Clark continued to draw crowds, filling arenas that were never sold out before Clark arrived (at least before an injury in Boston July 15 sidelined her indefinitely).

Her detractors say she has enjoyed “white privilege” and “pretty privilege” and is stealing attention from veterans in the WNBA; her defenders point out that the surge in popularity in women’s basketball has occurred because of her, and say that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” In fact, it was Brennan’s questioning last May about why WNBA teams had to fly commercial that led to the league’s implementing charter flights — but it came after video of Clark walking through baggage claim went viral, not after Brittney Griner was harassed at an airport by a YouTuber.

Brennan does a solid job laying out the Clark story, although at times it’s a bit of a slog to get through the play-by-play of each consequential game on which she reports. Those who follow Clark closely might find much of this book repetitive, as so much of it has been reported elsewhere. But anyone wanting to understand why Clark became a cultural flashpoint will appreciate the crash course offered in On Her Game. B —Jennifer Graham

Featured Photo: On Her Game, Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports, by Christine Brennan (Scribner, 250 pages)

Album Reviews 25/08/28


Ashes And Diamonds, Are Forever (Cleopatra Records)

I’ve probably missed out on the last 40 records from the Cleopatra Records indie label, but only because my emailbox looks like the Brooklyn city dump the week after Christmas. I did, however, catch this goth-rock gem, due out on Halloween day; it features Bauhaus co-founder Daniel Ash, Bruce Smith of Public Image Limited and — excuse me, the bassist for Sade, as in literally the “Smooth Operator” lady. Ash uses an “e-bow” (an electronic device that emulates a bow, you know, like a violin bow) on his guitar (Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien uses one on songs like “My Iron Lung”); the gizmo brings a sort of “wub-wub” effect to these proceedings on songs like “Teenage Robots,” which reads like Trent Reznor with a fetish for throwback electro, if that makes any sense to you (it won’t be on the exam; think of it as a woofer-trashing Nine Inch Nails with a low-but-not-too-low budget). Elsewhere we have “Boy Or Girl,” which is fiercely goth, in the vein of Rammstein (or more accurately Combichrist). In short: It’s wrecky, buzzy, no-wavey, and well worth your time. A —Eric W. Saeger

Crayon, “Kill Your Idols” (Erased Tapes)

Crayon is a terminally hip Parisian music fixture who’s dominant both in jazz and electronic, and there’s a lot of futurism at work here, which some might choose to eschew, given that it’s almost too relevant to the times. OK, I’m being unintelligible, sorry, how about this: You remember when Moby’s Play first appeared and took over the planet by blending electronica with roots, downtempo and whatnot? Well, what this guy does is a next-level version of that. I’d love to tell you more, but his debut LP, Home Safe, isn’t out until Oct. 24; all I can reveal past this teaser track is that it proves that music technology has evolved far beyond Portishead. The tune in question here (it’s message isn’t violent, more a plea to the listener to be themself) features a casual but highly immersive, backward-masked beat over which painter-turned-singer Lossapardo lays some down-pitched vocal lines that reminded me of Tricky on grape drank. If this one does make the rounds it’ll be huge, I assure you, and I do hope it does. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

• Another week of albums is upon us, specifically the typhoon of new albums that will be released verily unto thy Pirate Bay and AOL Music and such-and-so apps on Aug. 29! Into the breach we go; the blank Microsoft Word page stares back at me, begging me to fill it full of stuff about albums, for your edification and amusement, so let’s just do it by first taking a gander at something I assume I won’t hate, the new album from The Hives, The Hives Forever Forever The Hives! The Hives are from Sweden and therefore eat herring at every meal, except when they’re eating “fermented dairy products,” which sounds like “cheese” to me, but I don’t know a lot about what the day-to-day life of a Swede is like, so for all I know, their version of a “fermented dairy product” is a half-gallon of milk after it’s been sitting in the sun for a day or so, and the only reason they consume such horrific junk is so that they’ll automatically have to take a day off from work in order to go to the emergency room, where they revel in taking selfies and posting them on their Facebooks just to taunt Americans about how great it is for Swedes, having excellent soup-to-nuts health care that barely costs them anything, neener. Now, if you’re one of those pesky millennial kids who needs to get off my lawn, you know The Hives as the greatest garage band on Earth, not only because their music is a loud sloppy mess but also because their singer, Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, will do anything for publicity, like the time in 2023 when he stood around on Hollywood Boulevard holding protest signs written in fluent broken-English that said “The Hives Must Album Now!” and “Honk If You Want a New The Hives Album.” I’ll tell you, folks, that’s a showman after my own heart; that kind of thing is something I’d love to see a local New Hampshire band do, like, set up their gear some Saturday night outside one of the restaurants that serves all-you-can-eat pulled pork and sing songs about how much they hate Dave Matthews and Judas Priest, whatever, I think it’d be funny anyway, so let’s see what these lunatics are singing about these days. Ah, here’s the video for the title track: The five band members are walking around in some dumb castle, dressed up like King Henry VIII, and then they sit down to eat giant mushrooms, but all the while the song is playing, and it sounds like Gang Of Four covering a Billy Idol song from his “Dancin’ With Myself” era. They are smiling playfully in the video because they have wonderful health care.

• Once upon a time in the 1980s, when punk rock was starting its inevitable decline, there was an all-girl band called The Go-Gos, which was led by the bass player, and she wanted to have a hot-looking singer, so they hired Belinda Carlisle, whose talent for singing off-key eventually became the stuff of legend. Belinda’s new album, Once Upon A Time In California, is composed of cover tunes, including a rub of the Youngbloods’ hippy anthem “Get Together,” in which Belinda tries to sound like either Marianne Faithfull or Sam Kinison, I can’t really tell.

• Sabrina Carpenter is still relevant until the next harvest moon or whatever, so she’s releasing a new album, Man’s Best Friend! The single, “Manchild,” sounds like Chappel Roan singing a cover of Hall & Oates’s “Kiss On My List,” and its video is getting a lot of hate on YouTube, which is just mean, you know?

• And finally it’s ’70s-arena-rock throwbacks Wolf Alice, with their fourth LP, The Clearing! “The Sofa” rips off Roberta Flack’s 1974 hit “Feel Like Makin’ Love” in basically every way, take from that what you will. They’ll be at Citizens House of Blues in Boston on Sept. 20, good luck getting tickets. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Ashes And Diamonds, Are Forever (Cleopatra Records) & Crayon, “Kill Your Idols” (Erased Tapes)

Life in the pits

Many years ago, we planted a peach tree. Jump forward two decades and we have more peaches than we know what to do with. Two words spring to mind: peach daiquiris.

Peach-Infused Rum

Peaches are full of delicate flavors, colors, and, er, peachiness that are alcohol-soluble. If you cut up a bunch of peaches and soak them in liquor for anywhere from a few hours to a week you will end up with something special. Don’t bother to peel them; peach skins have flavor compounds and colors that will serve you well.

Rinse your peaches, just to make sure you’re not including any dust or bugs then slice them into chunks into a large container, and cover them with rum. For an application like this, your best bet is probably to use a medium-shelf white rum. (Vodka will work perfectly well, as will whiskey. Maybe even tequila.)

I usually let it sit for four or five days, stirring or shaking it once or twice a day. When I think it’s ready, I taste a spoonful or so, then strain it through a fine-mesh strainer. If I’m feeling fancy I’ll strain it again through a coffee filter.


Peach Syrup

Wash a bunch of peaches, then dice them up. Again, I wouldn’t worry about the skins. Freeze the diced peaches for a few hours or overnight. By freezing them you’ll poke holes through all the cell walls with ice crystals.

Later, when you’ve got a little time on your hands, cook the frozen peach chunks with an equal amount (by weight) of sugar. Stir the mixture from time to time, until the juice comes to a boil, then strain that, too. If the syrup needs a little zing, squeeze a little fresh lemon juice into it, not worrying too much about measuring anything.

This syrup will last for two or three weeks in your refrigerator.

Peach Daiquiri

2 ounces peach-infused rum (see above)

1 ounce fresh-squeezed lime juice

2/3 ounce peach syrup (see above)

Combine all three ingredients, with ice, in a cocktail shaker. Shake until a frost line appears in the condensation on the shaker, then strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass.

Is this rummy? A little.

Is it limey? Just limey enough. Lime is everybody’s best friend, and it gets along beautifully in this situation.

Is it peachy? Sweet Leaping Moses on a Popsicle Stick, yes. This is the perfect drink for when a child is whining. After two or three sips, you can assure them that living is easy, that their daddy is rich, and their momma’s good-lookin’. The child’s confused silence will be a little bonus.

Featured photo: Peach Daiquiri. Photo by John Fladd.

Bonding over mushrooms

One time, at MycoCamp…

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

Christine Gagnon is a mushroom expert, owner of the Uncanoonuc Foraging Co. (uncforaging.com), and one of the organizers of New Hampshire MycoCamp 2025, a three-day event in the forest to celebrate everything mushroomy. “Myco” is a reference to mycology, the study of mushrooms.

“Four years ago,” she said, I teamed up with two friends to organize our first ever New Hampshire MycoCamp. It consisted of a weekend away where everybody could stay together in the same location and be fed together and eat together and then go on forays to find mushrooms together and then come back and talk about mushrooms and how to identify them, all the different characteristics, where they grow — all those fun mushroom things.”

Each year since then, Gagnon said, more mushroom enthusiasts have come to MycoCamp, and the event has gotten too big for its original space.

“It was an excellent space,” she said, “and a good location, but we were outgrowing it quickly. So this year we’ll be able to [hold it] at the World Fellowship Center in Albany, New Hampshire. They have over 400 acres, they have a main lodge, a bunch of different cabins and homes, they have a couple of bunk houses, and they have camping. There’s the clearest lake that I have ever seen down a trail in the middle of the woods that nobody has access to unless they’re at camp or they have a home there. There’s a huge commercial kitchen, there’s a huge dining area, there’s a meeting space, it’s just a wonderful venue to hold an event like this.”

This event is a gathering of mushroom fans of all types, Gagnon said — academics, foragers, chefs and biologists.

“It’s like a bird-watching convention,” she said, “except that it’s mushrooms…. There are people who just study the DNA, or other people study mushrooms that are bioluminescent or study mushrooms that just react under UV light or some just look at the medicinal qualities of mushrooms. Some people study how mushrooms might break down the wood, or how they might mitigate pollution using mushrooms.”

Gagnon described the weekend’s activities.

“There will be speakers on Friday night and Saturday night,” she said. “And then afterward, there’s a big fire outside, or there’s a fireplace inside and people hang out there. … We may include a cooking demonstration with mushrooms. [During the day] we will certainly go on forays — scheduled walks into the woods — and mushrooms are gathered and brought back and spread out on tables. And then we talk about what the mushrooms are. And we, well, we separate them by species. ‘These are all the Russulas and these are all the Amanitas and how do we know that this is this and not that?’ And then we talk about them and it’s a lot of fun.”

Gagnon said you don’t have to be a mushroom expert. “You can be a total beginner … But if you’re more advanced, you’re still going to learn stuff … It’s really inclusive and it’s very educational, but also just fun.”

New Hampshire MycoCamp 2025

When: Friday, Sept. 5, through Sunday, Sept. 7
Where: Albany, New Hampshire
Registration is open now. Price depends on the type of accommodation, but tickets start at $150. Visit the event’s website by searching for “New Hampshire MycoCamp 2025.”

Featured photo: Mushroom. Courtesy photo.

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