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Both Sides Now explores Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen

A tribute act that isn’t exactly, Both Sides Now looks at the music and lives of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. The two were briefly lovers, but remained lifetime friends and mutual muses. Robbie Schaefer plays Cohen, and Danielle Wertz is Mitchell. The cabaret-style concert was first performed last year at the Signature Theatre in Northern Virginia.

Wertz and Schaefer’s paths converged after he’d been asked to do a Mitchell cabaret show himself and declined.

“His response was, ‘That’s kind of a weird fit, and … a heavy vocal lift,” Wertz recalled from a solo tour stop in the Czech Republic. However, Schaefer had been reading up on Cohen, learning about the relationship between the two songwriters. He said, “I think that’s a much more interesting narrative,” and asked them to find him a Joni.

That turned out to be a hard request. The Signature went to its book and couldn’t find a fit, until their director was in New York City working on a new musical. He met Wertz, an old friend, for lunch, and mentioned the show, asking if she liked Mitchell. “I was like, ‘yeah, of course I love Joni Mitchell … she’s been my obsession for the last 10 years.’”

A quick phone call, some emailed links and a few weeks later the two were introduced in California, where both had solo tour stops.

“We met literally on the side of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean,” Wertz said. They played Mitchell’s “A Case of You” together. “Immediately we were like, ‘Yep, this is going to be a great fit, this all is going to work out.’”

Schaefer’s career began in the 1990s with Canadian indie folk band Eddie From Ohio, and he’s made several solo records. The singer, songwriter and guitarist is also a playwright, a recently ordained rabbi and founder of Lamplighters, described as “an online community that cultivates small-batch, relationship-driven, inclusive Judaism.”

Wertz is an accomplished jazz musician and composer who’d earned comparisons to Mitchell before the collaboration. In a review of her second album, 2020’s Other Side, Jazz Weekly writer George W. Harris praised the title song for its “Joni Mitchell’d tenderness.”

The decades-spanning show includes nine Mitchell and seven Cohen songs and opens with the tune that gave Schaeffer and Wertz their first click of musical recognition. The song underscores an idea that reverberates throughout the evening and is emphasized via the easy chairs and lit candles in the stage design.

“Joni and Leonard really did not write music that has tribute show energy; they wrote with such depth and vulnerability,” Wertz said. “I think ‘A Case of You’ does a good job of introducing to the audience what kind of show this is going to be, as opposed to starting with something like, ‘You Turn Me On I’m A Radio.’”

The show touches on interesting intersectionalities such as the fact that both began artistic careers outside of music, Cohen as a poet and novelist, Mitchell as a painter, something she was forced to do after leaving art school when she got pregnant and had to move to a home for unwed mothers. After the birth, the 18-year old new mother gave her baby up for adoption.

“What she had intended to do with the next chapter of her life was to continue being a very serious painter,” Wertz said, explaining that she was moved by the reasoning for Mitchell’s move into music. “After she had the baby, the only way that she knew she could make money was by singing covers of folk songs in coffee shops.”

Cohen’s faith is highlighted in the show. The two have recorded and plan to release “Who By Fire,” a song that includes pieces of the R’tzei prayer sung at high holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

“Leonard was raised in an Orthodox household and spent a lot of his life leaning into those traditions and then backing away,” Wertz said. “So much of his music asks, ‘Is this about God or is this about lust?’ It’s often both. We weave the prayer into that song, then pull it back out and let the lyrics … speak for themselves.”

Both Sides Now inevitably includes a rendition of the song that embodies Cohen to most of the world — a reluctant choice, according to Wertz.

“When we were putting the show together, we both rolled our eyes and went, well, we have to do ‘Hallelujah,’” she said. “But once we started playing it, really taking time, digging deeper and reading between the lines in the lyrics, we know it’s such a blessing to get to sing it every night.”

Both Sides Now
When: Friday, Oct. 10, 7:30 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $51 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 25/10/09

• Song queen: A benefit for the NH Prostate Cancer Coalition, Celebrating Celine is singer Jenene Caramielo’s tribute to the French-Canadian chanteuse, featuring hits like “Because You Loved Me,” “I Drove All Night” and the meme-launcher “My Heart Will Go On.” The opera-trained Caramielo also does Broadway and Whitney Houston tributes. Thursday, Oct. 9, 7:30 p.m., Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St., Manchester, $44 at palacetheatre.org.

• Twin bill: Led by a singularly energetic, and shoeless, singer-guitarist, Adam Ezra Group is a top draw at an Exeter listening room, so much that they’re doing early and late shows at their latest visit. Ezra has infectious energy, and is also quite munificent, each year hosting The Ramble, an all-day charity festival that helps veterans find housing, now in its 16th year. Friday, Oct. 10, 5 & 8 p.m., The Word Barn, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter, $49 at thewordbarn.com.

• Total emo: The Black Charade offers three different bands covering the best of the emo sound. Dangerous Nights performs as My Chemical Romance, Heely & the Moon Shoes assume the role of Taking Back Sunday, while A Blockbuster Summer does Jimmy Eat World, whose “The Middle” is arguably the genre’s pinnacle. Saturday, Oct. 11, 8 p.m., Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester, facebook.com/KineticCityEvents.

• Six strings: Between showcase concerts with his trio and jazz brunch at Jimmy’s in Portsmouth, Brad Myrick is a busy guy these days. The talented guitarist will head to France next month to mentor at a creativity retreat with former Suncook resident Vinx. For now, he’s doing lots of local shows, including a recurring one at a cidery that’s a stone’s throw from his home base. Sunday, Oct. 12, 1 p.m., Contoocook Cider Co., 656 Gould Hill Road, Contoocook, bradmyrick.com.

At Last, by Marisa Silver

(Simon & Schuster, 288 pages)

There are few relationships in life as complex as that of the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom. This is true not only as the two women prepare for the union of their children, but throughout the course of their lives. It becomes more true if there are ever grandchildren involved.

Marisa Silver dives into the dynamic in At Last, a sharp and perceptive novel that is heavy on characters if light on plot. The story follows the lives of Evelyn Turner and Helene Simonauer, who are thrown together, unwillingly, when their children decide to get married.

Helene was not at all happy about the union of Ruth — “this tall and rashly opinionated girl” — to Tom, her “otherwise responsible son.” Evelyn, for her part, sees the upcoming wedding as a tragic accident of timing. “Two years ago, [Ruth] met a young man on the street, and now they were getting married. If either she or Tom had been at that same spot five minutes earlier or five minutes later, Evelyn would not be driving around with a woman who clutched her purse on her lap as if she thought Evelyn might steal it.”

“The woman was a disturbance. Evelyn needed to be undisturbed,” Silver writes, letting us know that however disagreeable the women are, her own prose is going to be delightful.

Both Evelyn and Helene are widows, and the sort of women that are often described by others as a “piece of work,” but of course they don’t see it in themselves. They think if they can just get through the wedding and its preparations, they can retreat to their lives and not have to pretend to be nice to each other again.

That’s not how life works. But as the women’s relationship develops over decades, we learn stories from the past that turned them into who they become. Their own mothers are very much architects of their daughters, at least to a point. We witness Evelyn’s attempts to get out from the shadow of an insecure and sometimes cruel mother, and Helene’s efforts to keep her family functioning after her two siblings die in unrelated incidents.

The past is interspersed with the relationships of the present, always with Silver’s shrewd humor and her deep understanding of human nature. In one scene Helene takes Ruth to a hair salon, where she says, with all good intentions, “it looks to me like you haven’t had a good cut in quite a while.” As Ruth sits in the chair, the hairdresser looks at Helene.

“What a feral cat you’ve brought me, her raised eyebrows seemed to say. Oh, don’t I know it, Helene’s eyebrows responded. Satisfied, Helene picked up a copy of Ladies’ Home Journal and pretended to read about tapioca.”

The story’s complexity owes not just to current events but to past ones. At one point Helene comes across a packet of letters in her late husband’s things that indicate a secret relationship overseas. The letters were written in German between 1939 and 1943 by someone named Irina. (“It was the string, wrapped several times around the letters horizontally and vertically and then knotted, that made her know she was in the presence of something dangerous.”)

As Helene tries to figure out their meaning, she sets into motion the events that will culminate in Tom and Ruth meeting, and ultimately getting married, and having a daughter named Francine. The grandmothers, as grandmothers are wont to do, compete for the child’s affection as she grows up into a person old enough to have her own narrative in this story — it’s Francine who tells us, in her own words, what it’s like to be told by her parents that they’re getting a divorce, what it’s like to see her grandmothers ravaged by age and memory loss.

Silva has said that At Last has its roots in a childhood memory. One of her grandmothers, driving her to the other’s grandmother’s house, said “I know you love me more than her.” She was 4 at the time, but those words were burned into her memory and provided the scaffolding on which she built Helene and Evelyn’s story.

We hear her own experience when she writes, “When Francie was a newborn and Helene would go over to visit, Evelyn would be there more times than not holding Francie while Ruth rested. And so it was Evelyn who would ask Helene if she’d like to hold the baby, or if she’d like to give Francie a bottle, and it was Evelyn who would take the baby from her when Francie started to fuss, as if Helene didn’t know how to calm a child.”

This is Silver’s eighth novel, and it is expertly crafted. Despite the fine writing, it’s hard to imagine what audience it might find among men. It’s a novel of and about women and the intermingled tensions that hum through their lives. Mother-in-law and baby experience is not required to enjoy the story, but it helps. B+

Featured Photo: All Consuming, by Ruby Tandoh

Album Reviews 25/10/09

Air, The Virgin Suicides Redux (TH Productions)

I was never a fan of this French space-rock duo or space-rock in general, but this remix of their 1999 album The Virgin Suicides is more like it, mostly because it’s an all-analog affair that reveals the band as the outlet-mall-ambient organism that it is much more so than the original did. They knew the 1999 record wasn’t representative (or useful, let’s just say it) because it was made on a very low budget. “It was during the first era of digital home studio equipment,” the band recently said, now that it’s safe to admit it, “and the sound is very metallic and cold. We’ve always regretted that about the way it sounds.” Well, hear hear, I completely understand it now after hearing this reupholstered version: They wanted it to sound like Dark Side Of The Moon-era Pink Floyd, except, you know, edgier. Or something. No, seriously, the non-cheese-drenched parts are quite indica-stoner-listenable, whereas the over-modulated Flaming Lips parts are still intact, all of which means it’s actually more relevant now than when it first came out. The spaceship sounds and This Island Earth robo-bursts are still idiotic, but Wayne Coyne wouldn’t be around today if it weren’t for that nonsense, put it that way. B-

Magic Wands, Cascades (Metropolis Records)

Ah, a nice easy Halloween-apropos dream-pop/goth record from Metropolis Records. This one features a Los Angeles-based boy-girl duo, Chris and Dexy Valentine, who first surfaced in 2012 with Aloha Moon, the title track of which sounded like a shoegaze band trying Sadé-yacht-pop on for size, while the rest sounded like a Chex Mix of Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Lana Del Rey and Lola Falana. This one stays in that zone but goes harder, starting with “Across The Water,” which borrows the buzzy guitar drone from Wire’s “It’s A Boy” to good brain-zapping effect, after which “Armor” does the obligato Joy Division-meets-Bauhaus thing (translation: there’s a lot of reverb, angst and intentionally cheesy production values; “Hide” uses a similar sewing pattern). “Albatross” is pure shoegaze, sounding like Raveonettes trying to sound really forlorn; “Moonshadow” is the best on board if you like sexy vampires riding motorcycles (and who doesn’t). This is definitely worth any goth’s while. A-

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Sure and begorrah or whatever, this Friday is another Friday, Oct. 10, meaning there will be new albums coming out that day, and we will talk about them in this space, but as long as we’re talking about albums while speaking with Irish accents, I would like to discuss very quickly an album that is not coming out on Friday, because it isn’t done yet! This segues magnificently into my new sub-series for this column, tentatively titled “Eric Actually Leaves The House To Find Nightlife In Manchester NH,” which I did once again on Saturday, Sept. 28, to chill with the homies at the Shaskeen Pub on Elm Street! Yes, if you can even understand my words through this thick Irish brogue, that date was the Pub’s 20th Anniversary celebration, so I showed up at midnight to meet Ross The Mandolin Player from the Irish folk/rock band Rebel Collective, whose members live up north a bit, but not as ungodly far as Berlin or Montreal, I forget where exactly. Anyway, they have recorded all the tracks for their upcoming new album, but haven’t mixed it yet. I’m sure it will be awesome; they are influenced by Flogging Molly, The Pogues and of course world music of a leprechaun bent, and it all went off quite well during this performance. FYI, they haven’t played any large conventions where people guzzle green absinthe lager or whatnot, but they have played their tin whistles and guitars and fiddles at the Highland Games, so that’s something to look forward to! Now, recall that I did ask you people where I should go after the Slam Free Or Die poetry event I attended the other week, and you naturally ignored my totally desperate pleas, but funnily enough, I, a confirmed unwelcome person from Mass., heard about the Shaskeen from a friend on Twitter who used to live in Manchester during the days when Pockets The Mastermind was the local king of hip-hop, so neener, I know your secrets now. In the meantime, while you wait for Rebel Collective’s awesome new album, you could always put away your kilt and taxi-driver cap and don your skinny jeans and chullo hat to go listen to Paw, the new album from indie-rock dude Avery Tucker, formerly half of Girlpool, whose awkward moonbat-twee tune “Chinatown” is still talked about among the 10 or 15 people worldwide who still remember it! Paw’s leadoff single, “Like I’m Young” is similarly moonbatty and minimalist, except for when Tucker starts singing increasingly loudly and then the whole mess descends into a slow-motion ’90s-grunge Silkworm-ish skronk-a-thon. It’s OK!

• In April, Mass Appeal Records announced a set of seven albums coming this year from such rap artists as Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, and Nas, the latter of whom helped out on the forthcoming new one from Mobb Deep, Infinite. Includes some rhymes from Prodigy, who died in 2017; “Easy Bruh” is eerie, trippy and of course badass, just like all hardcore hip-hop that appeals to fans who prefer groups whose logos are rendered in Spinal Tap font.

• The Wytches is a raw, rattley post-punk band from England that kind of reminds me of The Horrors when they were good. Talking Machine, their new album, features a tune called “Black Ice” that’s loud and messy in a Hives kind of way but less spazzy and more mid-tempo; you’ll probably like it if you like Brian Jonestown Massacre and that kind of thing.

• And lastly we have to pay attention to veteran emo band Yellowcard, whose new album Better Days sounds exactly like Blink-182 and Lit and Good Charlotte and all the rest of them, isn’t art amazing?

Featured Photo: Shiner, BELIEVEYOUME (Spartan Records) & Patrick Wolf, Better Or Worse [EP] (Appaport/Virgin Music)

Samurai Cocktail

  • 2½ ounces medium-shelf vodka. Once you get to a certain price point with vodkas, it takes a pretty refined palate to distinguish between them. Once you add other, more flavorful ingredients, it becomes virtually impossible. You can tell when you’re dealing with the cheap stuff — it has a chemical taste that is not appealing. When you get to the Absolut/Tito’s/Grey Goose level, you can feel comfortable going with whatever is on sale at the liquor store that week.
  • 2 ounces sake — I went with a small bottle called Demon Slayer. I have to admit that the main attraction was a cool label.
  • ½ ounce elderflower liqueur. I like St. Germaine.
  • 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice. If you think of cocktail ingredients as having personalities, lime juice is everyone’s best friend. She gets along with everyone but very seldom brings any drama. She’s the one you could call at 2 in the morning to talk about the weird dream you just had.
  • A large sprig or half a handful of fresh mint.

Start by bruising the mint. Squeeze it in your hand, then roll it around like you’re making a Play-Doh snake. Drop it into a martini glass. This drink is at its best when it is very cold, so using a glass with a stem is key; it keeps the warmth of your hands from heating the drink up.

Fill a cocktail shaker about a third of the way up with ice, then add the vodka, the sake, the elderflower liqueur and the lime juice. Shake vigorously, until you hear the ice start to break up in the shaker. (I don’t know about you, but tiny shards of ice floating on the surface of a cocktail are one of my Favorite Things. I do also like brown paper packages tied up with string, though.)

Strain the contents of the shaker over the bruised mint in the martini glass. The mint will act as both an ingredient and a garnish, so you don’t need to spend important Cocktail Time worrying about that.

Sit somewhere comfortable and devote 100 percent of your attention to your drink, which features a quality I don’t create often: subtlety.

Your first impression will be of the lime juice. She’s delicious here, but not as acidic as you might have been expecting. The elderflower liqueur has taken a bit of her edge off. Because she is such a good friend, though, as you sit savoring the first sip of this drink, she will say, “Oh, have you met my friends?” and she will introduce them to you, one-by-one, starting with the mint. There will be depth from the sake, and a very faint, mellow sweetness from the elderflower.

And you will remind yourself that while samurai were renowned as brilliant warriors, they were also expected to excel at something less in-your-face — flower arranging perhaps, or writing poetry.

It’s a good drink.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Pizza, bubble tea, pumpkins

Food and fall fun at the Milford Pumpkin Festival

New Hampshire’s pumpkin season will officially kick off this weekend in Milford. The Milford Pumpkin Festival has been held since 1994, said Festival Director Wade Campbell.

“We’re all things pumpkin,” he said. “We have pumpkin carving — students from Milford High School are doing pumpkin carving to bring down. We have something called a Small Pumpkin House — which is where we’ll put the carved pumpkins on display — made out of pallets from Pallet Works out of Amherst. And of course we do the Great Pumpkin Weigh-Off. The giant pumpkins will be on display Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They get upwards to almost 1,000 pounds. A few years ago we had the largest pumpkin ever grown in North America. The gentleman [who grew it] could have brought it to one of the large-scale events, like Topfield Fair or something, but he came to us instead. I thought that was kind of cool.”

As with most harvest season festivals, a big focus of the weekend’s event will be food, Campbell said. “We have one whole street — which is Middle Street — that is dedicated to food vendors. And not only do we have food vendors there, on Middle Street, which range from pizza, to traditional fair foods like fried dough, sausage, to bubble tea; we’ll have seafood this year. And then all our venues — because we have five main venues — have at least one food truck or food available with plenty of food.”

Campbell said that this year the festival itself won’t feature any food-specific events, but that is a direction the organizers would like to move in. “We’re not doing any chili cook-offs or anything like that,” he said. “I’d like to bring that sort of event back. But right now the food is just from casual strolling. Pick what you like, pick what you want, and go from there. We shut down downtown completely during those hours, which allows people to walk around.”

Several downtown restaurants participate, Campbell said, including Brickhouse, Station 101, and Unwined.

“We have many venues throughout town now,” Campbell said. “Originally, it started just on the Oval. Now, it’s [five sites] — the Town Hall, Middle Street, Emerson Park, which is down by the post office. That’s where the Haunted Trail is. We have vendors down there. There’s the Community House Lawn, which is downtown. They do games and stuff and they do a lot of non -profit stuff over there. We are also doing stuff down at Keys Field. At night, we have an astronomy station for two nights in a row, weather permitting. You can look at the stars and they do presentations down there.”

Perhaps the coolest pumpkin event of the festival, Campbell said, has nothing to do with eating them. Dollars for Scholars has a trebuchet — something like a medieval catapult — set up at Railroad Pond, just off the Oval.

“They launch pumpkins into the water, and they try to hit a mannequin on a float,” he said. Additionally, he said, “we’ve got scarecrow-making over on the Community House lawn that’s run by the Lions and Rotary [clubs]. That’s their venue. And we have a haunted trail that’s Friday night and Saturday night. And a bunch of loud music. Each venue has music. We have a beer and wine tasting over on Community House lawn. And, of course, we have our big pumpkin lighting that kicks off our event.”

Milford Pumpkin Festival

When: Friday, Oct. 10, from 5 to 9 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 11, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 12, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: downtown Milford
More: milfordpumpkinfestival.org

Highlights, according to the website

  • As part of the Great Pumpkin Weigh Off, giant pumpkins will be on display throughout the weekend with winning pumpkins announced on Saturday at noon.The lighting of the town hall pumpkin will take place Friday 6:30 p.m.
  • The Haunted Trail will run Friday 6 to 9 p.m. and Saturday 5:30 to 9 p.m. Admission costs $7 for adults, $3 for ages 10 and under; children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult.
  • The Boys and Girls Club of Souhegan Valley Pumpkinfest 5K and Kids Fun Run will take place Saturday morning. Register online through Friday. The fun run starts at 8:30 a.m. and the 5K starts at 9 a.m.
  • A Pumpkin Carving Demo will take place all day Saturday starting at 10 a.m. with Master Pumpkin Carver Jim Flis, according to the website.
  • A Milford Historical Walking Tour will take place at 8 and 9:30 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
  • Pumpkin Painting and Scarecrow Making will take place on the Community House Lawn Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (see website for pricing, as well as pricing for face painting).
  • A Rubber Duck Race will take place Sunday at 1 p.m.
  • There will be a bounce house and games in Emerson Park all three days.
  • Red Trouser Show featuring juggling and aerobatic stunts will take place Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m.

Milford Pumpkin Festival Music & Performance

According to milfordpumpkinfestival.org, this is the line-up for music and other live performances at the festival.

Friday, Oct. 10

  • Oval Stage: Rabbit’s Foot, 5:30 p.m.; Fox and The Flamingos, 7:15 p.m.
  • Community House Lawn Stage: Justin Cohn, 5:45 p.m.; Glitter Tooth, 7:30 p.m.
  • Intersection Of Elm & Union St: Red Trouser Show, 7 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 11

  • Keyes Memorial Park Stage: Gary P & Wendy 11 a.m.; Stone Hill Station, 11:45 a.m.; Alivia Ferdinand, 12:40 p.m.; Tumble Toads, 1:30 p.m.; Groove Hound, 2:40 p.m.; Kevin Kierstead, 3:40 p.m.; Toni Lynn Washington & The Motivators, 4 p.m.
  • Oval Stage: Jiggery Pokery, 10 a.m.; The Two’s , 11 a.m.; Jamdemic, 12:15 p.m.; Fatha Groove, 1:45 p.m.; Pop Farmers, 3:30; The Incidentals, 5:15 p.m.; Ballou Bros Band, 7 p.m.
  • Community House Lawn Stage: Chris Roberts with Katie Roberts, 10:30 a.m.; Chris Gunn, 11:45 a.m.; Vale’s End, 1 p.m.; 21st & 1st, 2:30 p.m.: Soul Circuit, 4 p.m.; Humans Being, 5:45 p.m.; Cosmic Blossom, 7:30 p.m.
  • Intersection Of Elm & Union St: SVB&G Club Competitive Dance Team, 11:45 a.m.; Flying Gravity Circus, 1 p.m.; Red Trouser Show, 7 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 12

  • Oval Stage: Paul Driscoll, 10 a.m.; Murphy-Clark, 11:15 a.m.; The Slakas, 1 p.m.
  • Community House Lawn Stage: RGB, 10:45 a.m.; Crescendos Gate, noon; Caylin Costello, 1:15 p.m.
  • Appearing in front of Brickhouse Restaurant and Chaotic Lily: Milford Pumpkin Festival Dance Jam, 11:30 a.m.; A Company of Witches, 1 p.m. with an Encore at 2 p.m.

Featured photo: Milford Pumpkin Festival. Courtesy photo.

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