Tag: 251106

Horse sense

Ian Galipeau celebrates new LP at Penuche’s

Once, when Ian Galipeau was performing at Great North Aleworks in Manchester, someone in the crowd asked if he knew any Nirvana or James Taylor, saying they felt he could do either one justice. “One of my favorite compliments I’ve ever received in my life as a musician,” Galipeau recalled recently. “It just made me smile and it still does.”

On his new album Something About a Horse Galipeau proves worthy of that praise. It opens with “Queen of the Canyon,” a loping, lovely duet with Jocelyn Bailey (Joanne the Band) that recalls John Prine and Iris Dement, then shifts to a swamp groove on “Fool of Me,” followed by the car-top-down country rocker “Ain’t Ready Yet.”

The next song is “Say Goodbye,” a heartbreaking ballad drawn from Galipeau’s earliest memories.

“It’s about growing up and making sense of my mom leaving, being in a broken family,” he said. “Now … I’ve got a wonderful relationship with my mother, and it was all for the best. But that’s very hard to come to terms with at 4, 5, 6 years old.”

The tune came from a month-long “write a song a day” exercise Galipeau did two years ago, which led to five of the disc’s 11 tracks. The first one was the country-flavored “A Father’s Love.” It also dealt with abandonment and loss but was fictional. Writing it helped prepare him for crafting more difficult autobiographical lyrics.

Working on a deadline and beginning with simple ideas like creating a three-chord song about owning a house (which produced the rollicking and funny “Call It Home”) helped.

“I’m really grateful that I did that exercise because that was such a heavy topic,” he said. “Having to finish it in a day meant I couldn’t wait around and try to make it perfect.”

Galipeau can definitely write from a happier place. His 2024 single “The Little Things” is a gorgeous meditation on life as a husband and dad to two daughters. One, he writes, has “eyes like summer twilight,” the other possesses “fire in her spirit and stained glass in her heart.” It ends with a touching echo of Jason Isbell’s “If We Were Vampires.”

The new LP’s title is a nod to Galipeau’s first-ever music purchase, Bringing Down the Horse by The Wallflowers.

“I bought that cassette along with Third Eye Blind’s self-titled album and Hanson’s Middle of Nowhere,” he said. “To this day, I still love two out of three of those … you can guess which ones.”

He was also thinking of Ben Kweller’s Changing Horses, which is fitting; Galipeau likes to mix things up as a musician. His last album, Faded Pictures, released early this year, was a solo piano effort, a new direction for a mostly guitarist (he also plays bass in the band Modern Fools). The Randy Newman-esque “One Way Ticket” is a standout track.

The New Hampshire native, who now lives in Keene, speaks reverently of his craft.

“The puzzle of songwriting … it’s just absolutely fascinating to me. I love studying other songwriters and I love working out the intricacies of a single idea inside a song within that limited real estate … it’s a beautiful, cathartic puzzle.”

An album release show, part of a multi-date mini-tour, happens Nov. 7 at Penuche’s Ale House in Concord. Galipeau’s band will include guitarist Jonathan Braught, who soloed on a pair of Something About A Horse’s tracks, Jeff Costello on drums and Ethan McBrien, a primary creative force behind psychedelic folk band Party of the Sun.

Slim Volume, whose singer-guitarist Trent Larrabee contributed to the new album, and Concord band Hometown Eulogy, will open. Galipeau is excited for the show, and what comes after. “Every time I release an album, I’m like, oh, I’ve got to start working on the next,” he said. “But this has given me a little more fire and time with the songs … it’s been fun.”

Ian Galipeau w/ Slim Volume, Hometown Eulogy
When: Friday, Nov. 7, at 8 p.m.
Where: Penuche’s Ale House, Bicentennial Square, Concord
More: iangalipeaumusic.com
Also Sunday, Nov. 9, at 3 p.m. at Auspicious Brew, 1 Washington St., Dover, w/ Yoni Gordon

Featured photo: Ian Galipeau. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 25/11/06

• Nineties night: Front men from four ’90s bands gather for Story of a Song, a blend of VH1 Storytellers and Unplugged. Each performer — Chris Barron from Spin Doctors, Brian Vander Ark of The Verve Pipe, Vinnie Dombroski from Sponge, and John Hampson from Nine Days — will go behind the scenes of their big hit (or in some cases hits) in this unique night of song swapping and stories. Thursday, Nov. 6, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $55 and up, tupelohall.com.

• Ethereal music: Check out Wyn & the White Light, an all-female “pomegranate-infused haunted-soul-rock band” led by NEMA-nominated singer-songwriter Wyn Doran. Standouts on their debut album, 2024’s Luck, include the hard-hitting “How the West Was Won.” Also performing are indie rockers Pointless Culture and Five Feet. Friday, Nov. 7, 8:30 p.m., Kettlehead Brewing, 97 Main St., Nashua, $10 at the door, 21+.

• Early Christmas: Putting a vintage touch on contemporary hits, Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox comes to town on its Magic, Moonlight & Mistletoe tour. The show will include retro-reworked songs by artists from Spice Girls to Guns N’ Roses and Chappell Roan along with holiday favorites. Saturday, Nov. 8, 8 p.m., Colonial Theatre, 609 Main St., Laconia, $54 and up, etix.com.

• Brass emo: Fusing ska, pop-punk and emo with a bodacious horn section, Millington headlines a multi-band show at a recently reopened indie music venue. On songs like “Summer Disease” and “FML,” both from their recent EP Better Safe Than Sorry, the Albany, N.Y., sextet fuses a Fall Out Boy vibe to the revved-up party sound of bands like Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish. Sunday, Nov. 9, 6 p.m., Bungalow Bar & Brill, 333 Valley St., Manchester, $18 at dice.fm.

• Settling in: A once-a-month-most-months residency continues for Slim Volume at the pub where its songwriting team found their sound at open mic after meeting at SNHU and bonding over a love of ’60s bands. The quartet’s most recent EP, Big Plans, has echoes of Jellyfish, another act inspired by that decade, on the title cut’s lush harmonies and the Byrds-like track “Running Thin.” Tuesday, Nov. 11, 8 p.m., Strange Brew Tavern, 88 Market St., Manchester, slimvolume.band.

Album Reviews 25/11/06

Carrier, Rhythm Immortal (Modern Love Records)

Once in a while I do check in on the bleeding edge, at least as Brooklyn, N.Y.,’s influenceratti define it, and as of this afternoon anyway, this is the bee’s knees, according to one of the loquacious scribes at Pitchfork Media. Carrier is the nom-de-DJ of Brussels, Belgium-based producer Guy Brewer, who was previously half of the drum ’n’ bass duo Commix, whose glitchy, trippy Burial-adjacent beats grabbed the attention of, well, Burial himself, who remixed one of their songs (see how all this works?). Anyway, at some point Brewer looked around the room he was DJing at and suddenly decided that drum ’n’ bass is crap and that he needed to try something else, namely this collection of thoughtful, monochrome, often sparse compositions you’d picture serving as background at a spotlessly scrubbed art museum full of postmodern sculptures and junk like that. Clicks and thumps and splashes and such appear and reverberate at random, threatening to break into IDM coherence, but that never happens, which isn’t to say that it’s completely scattershot or at all unlistenable, more that the beats tend to settle into grooves that bespeak Aphex Twin nicking Portishead or somesuch. It’s worth knowing about, sure. B —Eric W. Saeger

Lip Cream, Kill Ugly Pop [Reissue] (Relapse Records)

From their inception in 1984 to their breakup in 1990, this crew was one of Japan’s most important punk bands, or so I’m told by my buddy at Relapse Records. As with most U.S.-based underground acts of that era, their elite pedigree is, or at least was until just now, mostly based on anecdotal evidence, tales told by curiosity-seeking mosh-pit scamps who risked their lives smashing into anyone, anytime, anyplace. In those days, of course, there was no handy digital proof that bands like this even existed outside of American cities, so, sure, I was game to investigate this. It’s hardcore all right, of a Black Flag bent, but these guys wore their influences on their sleeves: This 1986 record, considered to be their seminal one, gets right down to cheeky business with opening song “Shangri-La,” ripping off Black Sabbath’s “The Mob Rules” as if they had written permission to do so. “Fight In The Street” comes after that, sounding more like mid-career Metallica than Metallica did at the time. The quality of sound here is pretty remarkable, it’s honestly as much an ’80s thrash-metal album as a punk one. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• It’s November, and look there, a bunch of new albums, all waiting to be released on Friday, Nov. 7, but what a lot of people have asked me about, of course, is the upcoming tour by Canadian prog-rock band Rush! They have a new drummer now, Anika Nilles, replacing the completely irreplaceable Neil Peart, who, after spending years redefining the art of hard rock drumming, passed away in 2020. What he did was monumental really; unlike more prog-oriented drummers like ELP’s Carl Palmer and Yes’s Bill Bruford, Peart had to make a lot of noise on the drum kit, which he did, but his noises were next-level, full of odd little tricks that were too clever to be written off as mere gimmicks. Anyway, like many Rush fans (not that I’m a card-carrying Rush fanatic; I really only like their album A Farewell To Kings and the more self-indulgent half of Hemispheres), I wanted to see what Nilles has done before. She arrived on the scene in the early 2010s through a series of videos posted to YouTube, which is where I found her playing along to her first album, Pikalar, the camera fixed solely on her while her backing band played along unseen, revealing that she was intent on parlaying her drumming work (and cachet as an educator specializing in pop music) into some sort of big gig. Joining Rush is certainly that, and I’m genuinely happy for her, and even more so for Rush’s fans (although ticket prices for this “reunion tour” — which is far from that, given that surviving members Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee are best friends who hang out constantly — are monstrous, as I talked about last week), especially the ones who never got to see them stand around play in their heyday. On the other hand, it does feel to me like something of a money grab by the original members. Why? Not just because of the ticket prices, which they could have had some say in capping, but — and I’m well aware that this will sound snobbish — because Nilles is an above-average rock drummer who seems to have a side fetish for Return To Forever-style fusion, i.e, she isn’t a lifelong prog/jazz drummer. Yeah, it bothers me that Lifeson and Lee didn’t grab someone like Weather Report’s Peter Erskine (who, at 71, is actually younger than the Rush guys) or Will Kennedy of the Yellowjackets. But hey man, that’s just me; if you have that much spare cash, you do you, so let’s put aside all that awfulness and talk about the new Mountain Goats album, Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan! The Goats are still led by singer-songwriter John Darnielle, of course; the new single, “Only One Way,” sounds like Pavement re-doing Elton John’s 1976 hit “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart,” but it’s all good, no one under the age of 40 knows Elton John ever existed anyway.

• I’ve never liked Portugal. The Man, but maybe “Angoon,” the single from their new album, SHISH, will convert me, you never know. Hmm, Of Montreal-style singing, some noise-pop edge to it, weren’t the Aughts a great time to be alive, guys?

• Welsh-Australian indie-waif Stella Donnelly has a good one here, the single “Feel It Change,” from her new album, Love And Fortune! Nice, gentle, mildly angry despite its 1960s pop vibe, it’s, you know, nice.

• And finally it’s former Kurt Vile cohort Steve Gunn, with a bunch of new mope-folk tunes on his latest album, Daylight Daylight! “Nearly There” is of course strummy and depressing, perfect for staring at your bad date’s fish tank while you think of an excuse to leave. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Carrier, Rhythm Immortal and Lip Cream, Kill Ugly Pop

Delhi Cooler

  • 2 ounces London dry gin
  • ¾ ounces pineapple juice
  • ¾ ounces fresh squeezed lime juice
  • ¾ ounces curry syrup (see below)

Combine all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker and shake thoroughly, until the ice starts to break up. Strain over fresh ice in a small Collins glass.

The ingredients in this drink all get along, but they all maintain their own identities. The result is less like the mosh pit at a concert and more like a collegial workplace. Each ingredient stands out. If you concentrate, the lime seems to be the dominant flavor, or the pineapple, or maybe the gin. If you were a little nervous about the curry syrup — and admit it, you probably were — you can relax. The garam masala lends a gentle spiciness to this whole operation, with the tiniest bit of heat on the very tail end of each sip.

Calling this a cooler implies that it would be a good conclusion to a hot, dusty afternoon, but in fact it’s a very good way to embrace a rainy November one.

Curry Syrup

  • 1 cup (198 g) granulated sugar
  • 1 cup (227 g) water
  • 1 Tablespoon ground garam masala — Most whole spices should be replaced once a year, but ground spices and spice mixes go stale much more quickly and are really only good for six months or so. This will be a good excuse for you to buy some fresh curry spices. The pre-ground stuff is fine for this application, but if you decide you want to go a step further, buy a bag of whole garam masala spices, toast them in a dry pan when you want them, and grind them yourself.

Heat all three ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Let the mixture boil for 30 seconds or so, to make certain that the sugar has gone completely into solution, then remove from the heat. Let the mixture steep for 20 to 30 minutes, then strain it, and store it in your refrigerator for a couple of weeks.

Some thoughts on straining:

Swirling this syrup around in its pan will show you that the spice mixture has not dissolved into the syrup. It has flavored it, and largely sunk to the bottom of the pan, but has not completely committed to this operation. Letting the syrup sit for an hour or so to let the curry precipitate out will help, but you’ll probably want to filter the syrup even so.

A fine-meshed strainer will not be fine enough to catch the small curry particles. Yes, you can use a coffee filter, but that might be too fine and will clog up easily. A year or two ago I bought some slightly coarser strainers from a science lab supplier, but if you don’t need to strain things like this very often, go ahead and use the strainer and line it with an old T-shirt. Just wash it first.

Featured photo: Dehli Cooler. Photo by John Fladd.

Gluten free, teen owned

New Boston bakery focuses on sweat treats

New Boston teen Marley Godbois has set up her own gluten-free bakery, The Cupcake ’Porium (facebook.com/GFcupcakesNH).

“It’s a teen-owned cottage bakery,” Godbois said. “It follows the cottage laws in New Hampshire. And it’s gluten-free. It has muffins, cookies, cupcakes, cakes, all that stuff.”

Godbois, who is a junior in high school, sells her baked goods from her family’s home and provides baked goods for The Cure Cafe (8 Mill St., New Boston, 741-5016, curellc.toast.site).

“I usually make about two dozen cookies … and a dozen muffins for the cafe downtown,” she said. “And then, depending on the week, I also make mini cakes, which are just cupcakes but in mini loaf pans.” There are often special orders. “I have a festival this week where I’m baking 150 cookies and 100 mini cakes,” she said.

Shortly after she started baking — “When Covid happened, I was stuck inside all day, with nothing else to do” — Godbois discovered an underserved market for her gluten-free treats.

“My mom kind of has … a gluten allergy and I have a sensitivity to [gluten]. And it’s just really hard to find good gluten-free stuff.” She discovered that many of her peers had an understanding of what gluten is and wanted to buy from her.

For the most part, Godbois said, her customers are looking for rich, indulgent baked goods.

“The most popular things are really anything with chocolate and peanut butter. I have a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie and a chocolate peanut butter cake, which is a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and then a little half of a peanut butter cup on top. I also have a chai latte cake; I make a spice mix that’s just like all the spices that are in chai, and then it’s just a pumpkin cake with that added in. It’s spicy.”

With the holidays approaching, Godbois has been experimenting and developing new recipes.

“We have like a Thanksgiving menu that we’re going to send out after Halloween is over. It’s the pumpkin chai, but there’s a carrot cake with an orange cream cheese buttercream. There’s the chocolate peanut butter thing, of course, with chocolate cake and peanut butter frosting. And then chocolate Oreos, which is just the same chocolate base with gluten-free Oreos chopped up inside it and a buttercream with Oreo crumbs in it, with a half of an Oreo on top.”

Godbois said that while she sells some of her baked goods in person, a lot of her business involves social media.

“I have a Facebook page,” she said. “I have Instagram. We have a cart out in front of our house every Friday and Saturday, and sometimes Sundays if we have leftover stuff. And then Cafe, obviously. We have an order form on Facebook, and customers can reach out by email or Facebook Messenger.”

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Residency to restaurant?

Cap Center seeks next culinary artist

The Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord is starting the search for its third Culinary Artist in Residence. According to Salvatore Prizio, the Executive Director of the Capitol Center, the residency is a way to help individual community members and to broaden Concord’s food landscape, while improving the experience for audiences attending events at the Capitol Center.

“This program,” Prizio said, “allows new Americans or folks who have been economically disadvantaged the opportunity to pursue a passion and open up a restaurant with minimal risk [and] utilize our commercial kitchens for a 12- or 18-month residency to start a restaurant. Eventually, our goal is that they, when they leave us, either go to a brick-and-mortar or they start a ghost kitchen somewhere or they start a food truck. Most restaurants fail in their first year. We provide the ability for [our Culinary Artists in Residence] to minimize that risk.”

The CCA’s first Culinary Artist in Residence was Batulo Mohamed, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“She was our first candidate,” Prizio said, “and she sold Somali meat pies and Somali delicacies at the BNH stage. She developed a great business catering, and then she saved up enough through the time that she was with us to buy a food truck. Now she has one of the most popular food trucks in New Hampshire.”

The Capitol Center’s second Culinary Artist in Residence is Susan Chung, owner of Sue’s Kimbap House, which is working out of the Capitol Center’s Bank of NH Stage. Chung said her residency has been a learning experience she wouldn’t have had any other way.

“It’s been amazing,” she said. “It’s been difficult, but I’ve learned a lot for sure. But the wonderful thing about this is that it really helped me and will probably help the next person be able to take [a restaurant idea] from a thought and a concept to reality. The team that the Capitol Center provides helps with everything in all aspects of the restaurant industry and what it takes — things that you wouldn’t even think about if you didn’t have a restaurant previously.”

Much like her predecessor, Batulo Mohamed, Chung is planning to use her experience with the Capitol Center to launch a food business that follows a different path than a traditional brick-and-mortar restaurant.

“So the great thing is, I’m here until April,” she said, “But starting Nov. 1, I have some exciting news that I’m going to [launch] a meal-prep business along with this restaurant for the next five months.” She said the meal-prep business will start by offering kits to make Korean dishes at first, then eventually dishes from other styles of cooking. “Right now we’re going to offer all of the favorites from our restaurant, like bibimbap, japchae, the combo bulgogi, and a few others. And not only will it be Korean food, it will be other foods as well. It’ll have a rotating menu.”

For Salvatore Prizio, seeing unique new businesses like Mohamed’s and Chung’s hints at opportunities to explore cuisines and business models new to the area.

“We had this amazing Somali food the first time around,” he said. “We have Korean food. Is there another community in the area that we could connect with via a food opportunity that’s not currently being offered on the street or in our area? We want to find somebody who has the willingness to commit to this for a minimum of 12 months and has the personal stamina to commit to the project. We want to see an enthusiasm for it, and see some creativity. Are they willing to innovate? Are they willing to embrace technology?”

For Susan Chung, operating out of the same building as a theater provides a unique way to combine food, media and technology.

“We’ve gotten approval for a K-Pop Demon Hunters dance party in February,” she said. “I think it’s going to be so much fun where everyone can get kimbap and all the food items that are in the movie.

Featured photo: Susan Chung and her family. Courtesy photo.

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