Tag: 251204

Seasonal songs

Acoustic duo Ryanhood performs Christmas show

The Word Barn in Exeter is presenting “12 Nights of Christmas” at Orchard Chapel in nearby Hampton Falls. The series kicked off Nov. 29 with Halley Neal and Sam Robbins. Upcoming shows include an Irish Christmas on Dec. 4 with John Doyle and Cathy Ryan, outlaw country band Juanita & the Hardliners on Dec. 6 and Harrison Goodell the next night.

Ahead of the two-night candlelight carol sing finale Dec. 20 and Dec. 21 are Cape Breton and Nova Scotia themed shows Dec. 11 and Dec. 12, guitar virtuoso Ben Garnett on Dec. 13, the Scottish Fish on Dec. 14, and Celtic favorites Lunasa on Dec. 14, playing an 8 p.m. show that was added after the early one sold out.

New England natives round things out. Vermonters Kat Wright and Brett Hughes, joined by Tyler Bolles and Will Seeders, appear Dec. 17, followed by New Hampshire fiddler Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki’s Trio’s Celtic themed show Dec. 18, and A Winter Solstice with Low Lily on Dec. 19.

There’s one more act amongst all this superb holiday talent. Ryanhood is a duo hailing from Tucson, Arizona, but Ryan Green and fellow singer/guitarist Cameron Hood, who perform A Winter’s Evening on Dec. 5, can credibly claim New England as their second home.

Green and Hood were high school rivals in the late ’90s, facing off in a few battles of the bands. After graduation, though, the two worked in the same music store and became good friends. Inspired by a Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds live album, they often jammed. “Acoustic songwriter meets lead guitar virtuoso,” Green called it in a recent phone interview.

While Green headed to Berklee in Boston and Hood attended University of Arizona, their collaboration continued. When Hood came to visit a couple of times, the two busked in T stations. After Green got his degree, he heard about a lucrative street performing gig at Faneuil Hall and invited his pal to audition for it with him.

Thus Ryanhood was born, a New England band.

“It was largely Cameron’s songs and songwriting, and myself as a lead guitarist, harmony vocalist, producer and arranger,” Green said. “I wasn’t really much of a writer in the beginning, and then as the years and decades went on, it became highly collaborative in all the elements.”

The duo went from earning solid tip money from tourists, along with an occasional CD sale, to touring the region’s college circuit.

“We’ve played Dartmouth, Saint Anselm, Franklin Pierce, Plymouth State, Keene State and Colby-Sawyer,” Green said. “We’ve also played Tupelo Music Hall.”

Ryanhood then took the spirit home, playing their first holiday shows at Tucson’s Club Congress. The efforts produced an original song one year, “What Is Christmas.” In 2017 they released On Christmas, containing seven originals, along with an acoustic “Sleigh Ride” and gems like Sixpence None The Richer singer Leigh Nash’s solo song “Christmas Falling.”

The events were fun — and elaborate.

“It was a hometown show, so we were able to do anything we could dream,” Green said. “We had easy chairs, trees on stage, a gift exchange, and toward the end a ding going off like an oven timer saying the cookies are ready. Servers came into the venue wearing chef hats, carrying trays, and everybody was getting cookies.”

The playful banter between Green and Hood affirms a bond seasoned over decades, both personal and musical. The duo just released Yes & No, its first LP since 2021’s Under The Leaves.

“It’s a bold, bright, harmony-saturated romp through the inescapable contradictions at the heart of each of us,” Green said.

Their area appearance, however, will hew to the holidays. Though freshly baked cookies may not appear, Green promises the essence of Ryanhood’s hometown happenings will make the trip East.

“All the fun, Christmas-y things you can think of … most of that does actually still happen on the road, and usually venues can help us track down the staging to pull it off,” he said. “It’s rooted in all the things that are fun about the season, and if it’s something we think could make people smile, and tap into that nostalgia, then we try to go there.”

A Winter’s Evening with Ryanhood
When: Friday, Dec. 5, at 7 p.m.
Where: Orchard Chapel, 143 Exeter Road, Hampton Falls
Tickets: $25 at thewordbarn.com

Featured photo: Ryanhood. Photo by Ehab Tamimi.

The Music Roundup 25/12/04

• Psycho-delic: Celebrating their debut album, Girl For Me, local blues rockers Lee & Dr. G perform a release show, with a merch table offering red vinyl copies of the disc, a true talisman of success these days. Powered by the twin guitar talents of Lee Durham and Brandon “Dr. G” Gauthier, the band was recently nominated as a Rising Star In New Hampshire at the New England Music Awards. Thursday, Dec. 4, 7:30 p.m., BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $20 at ccanh.com.

• Tinsel twang: Experience a Nashville Christmas up north as Ayla Brown and her band play a Storytellers-styled concert to mark the holiday season. Among the songs the American Idol veteran will do is “Christmas Without You,” from 2013’s A Little Bit of Christmas, an EP that also contained the standards “O Holy Night,” “Silent Night” and “Angels We Have Heard On High.” Friday, Dec. 5, 7:30 p.m., Dana Center, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester, $44.50 and up at tickets.anselm.edu.

• Aughts rock: Coming to prominence with “The Boxer,” an anthemic Celtic-infused rocker, Carbon Leaf offered a fresh sound in the pop-crowded early 2000s, cementing its reputation as a top touring act after being the first unsigned band to appear at the American Music Awards. The band’s latest LP, Time Is the Playground, is solid, with great tracks like the storytelling “Backmask 1983.” Saturday, Dec. 6, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $50 at tupelomusichall.com.

• Village holiday: A midday appearance by youthful country singer Olivia Conway is part of a family-friendly Christmas in the Village event. Along with her set at a live music-forward Main Street spot, there are crafts, hayrides, magic, cookie decorating, face painting, visits with Santa, balloon art and children’s favorite Mr. Aaron, all of it sponsored by Pembroke Women’s Club. Sunday, Dec. 7, 1 p.m., Pembroke City Limits, 134 Main St., Suncook, more at oliviaconwaymusic.com.

• Sister act: Ann and Nancy Wilson appear with their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Heart at a show augmented by an abbreviated version of Starship led by Micky Thomas, singer of hits like “We Built This City” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” After a few fractious years apart, the Wilson sisters made up and resumed doing “Barracuda,” “Crazy On You” and other faves. Wednesday, Dec. 10, 7:30 p.m., SNHU Arena, 555 Elm St., Manchester, $76 and up at ticketmaster.com.

Album Reviews 25/12/04

Tom Smith, There Is Nothing In The Dark Which Isn’t There In The Light (Play It Again Sam Records)

First solo album for the leader of The Editors, a Birmingham, England alt-rock band with whom you may be familiar for such semi-hits as “Papillon,” a really sturdy tune that sounded like Elbow with a more liberal dollop of Bruce Springsteen and more sweeping orchestration. For this one, Smith originally started constructing the songs with long-time collaborator Andy Burrows (they’d already done two albums together), but he ultimately decided to go it alone with producer Iain Archer, whose credits include Snow Patrol’s Final Straw LP. Thematically it’s about loneliness and resilience, its half-plugged guitars driving that obvious point home, which is to say it’s in no way an Editors album, more a songwriting showcase, but then again Smith’s writing for Editors was always top-drawer. That ability’s on full display here with “Leave,” an Americana-drenched slow-burner, and the finger-picking “Broken Time,” which could be mistaken for Coldplay in acoustic mode. One couldn’t say it’s a good start, more a next-phase statement by a well-established songwriter. A —Eric W. Saeger

TEED, Always With Me (Nice Age Music)

This Los Angeles producer (real name Orlando Higginbottom) goes by the TEED acronym nowadays after having spent a few years performing as Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, a nym that bespeaks a lot more upbeat fun than he delivers. He’s a thinking dude who’s “yearning for connection at the end of the world,” publicly posing such questions as “How do we find happiness in the chaos of our world? How do we release music in a broken, toxic industry?” etc. As such, he and his unapologetically ’80s-tinged sounds fit in well in a shattered world that has no choice anymore but to face its mortality. I agree with the sentiment of course, but the execution feels like defeatism at times: “My Melody” borrows its sadly resigned, minor-key-driven vibe from Spandau Ballet, Depeche Mode and The Motels, but on the other hand he’s obviously influenced by MGMT, Gorillaz and things like that, and that side of him sees plenty of light at the end of the tunnel, as “Desire” attests. Nice, melodic stuff here. He’ll be at Bsmt in Boston on Friday, Dec. 5. A —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

• Wow, just look at this year, running toward its finish line as fast as it can, and who could blame it, if I were the year 2025, I’d be doing the same thing, hiding my face in shame and trying to forget I ever even happened, wouldn’t you? But hold it, 2025 isn’t quite done tormenting us, because it looks like there are more albums coming out this Friday, Dec. 5! And look at that, this week I didn’t even have to resort to asking the AI gods what albums are coming out, because there are enough serious albums that are coming out that I don’t have to risk it, which is good, because as wonderful and omniscient as AI is, it has wrought chaos, like the time Zillow had to fire 2,000 employees because their AI-powered home-value-forecasting program screwed the pooch completely, or the time New York City’s MyCity chatbot got caught encouraging business owners to perform illegal activities. And plus, with my luck, when it’s the dead of Christmas week and there are literally no new albums coming out, I’ll ask Google’s AI droid for a handy list of records I can tell all you nice people about, and the AI will glitch out in the manner of the Year 2000 software bug, and I’ll be telling you about “new records” that literally came out 100 years ago, like Vernon Dalhart’s “Puttin’ On the Style,” which came out in December 1925. Now, if something like that ever does happen, I hope you’ll be nice and write it off as a little technical glitch that wasn’t my fault at all, it was our robot matrix overlords, and you’ll tell me you’re actually super-glad that you bought an album that was recorded by a military bandleader who played the coronet. Who knows, it might lead people to buy Al Jolson records instead of video game soundtracks, which would be a massive win-win all around, don’t you think? Whatever, either way, we don’t have to worry about any Terminators at the moment, because look who has a new album coming out on Friday, none other than Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds! What’s that? No, silly, Nick Cave only started making records in the 1970s, so he wasn’t the one who recorded the original version of “Yes Sir That’s My Baby” in the 1920s, you’re thinking of Gene Austin, can you not be insolent for one second, that’d be great. All right, this new Nick Cave album is called God Live, which led me to assume that it’s a live album, which it is, which proves once again that I am the best music journalist in our state and you should buy me a coffee on my Patreon. Nick still looks like the Tall Man from the 1979 film Phantasm and he still sings like Dr. Frank N. Furter in the new live version of “Wild God,” so all is bright this holiday season!

• Commercial-bluegrass outfit Zac Brown Band’s most famous song is “Chicken Fried,” which has been my personal national anthem recently, given that it’s all I’ve really wanted to eat for many a fortnight. Their new album Love & Fear includes the single “Let It Run,” which features Snoop Dogg doing some rapping, because it is a song about the “devil’s lettuce” or whatever you little monsters call it nowadays, the end.

• Since 2012, dream-pop princess Melody Prochet’s main project has been Melody’s Echo Chamber, whose new LP is Unclouded. The single, “In The Stars,” is a slow, bug-eyed tune that is “distinctly Sixties,” a phrase no one can say 10 times fast.

• We’ll call it a week with Anna of the North’s new album, Girl In A Bottle! Anna is from Norway, which is fine by me since we’re not at war with them at the moment (yet); lead single “Dream Girl” is a cross between New Young Pony Club and TLC (yes, that TLC). It’s agreeable enough. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Tom Smith, There Is Nothing In The Dark Which Isn’t There In The Light and TEED, Always With Me

Beautiful-on-the-Inside Cookies

  • 2/3 cup (150 g) olive oil
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • ¾ cup (90 g) flour
  • 1/3 cup (66 g) brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1½ cups (133 g) rolled oats
  • ½ cup (85 g) dried sweetened cranberries
  • 2 Granny Smith apples
  • 4 ounces (115 g) aged Gouda cheese

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Peel and core the apples. Chop into a fine dice — the pieces should be about the same size as chocolate chips. Eat a small handful of the apple pieces. Set the rest aside. (OK, you want about a cup and a half of chopped apple, which works out to roughly an apple and a half.)

If the cheese has a cloth or waxy rind, remove it, then chop it into more chocolate-chip-size pieces.

Measure out the olive oil, then add the egg and vanilla right into the measuring cup if it’s big enough; otherwise combine the wet ingredients in a bowl. Regardless, beat the mixture with a fork until it’s combined. Set the eggy mixture aside.

Add the flour, brown sugar, ginger, baking powder and salt to a large mixing bowl. Stir with a whisk to combine it thoroughly. Set the whisk aside and thank it for its brief-but-meaningful contribution to this endeavor.

Wash and dry your hands, then add the oats to the flour mixture and toss it with your hands. (Tossing, in the sense of tossing a salad. Don’t throw it up to the ceiling.) Add the dried cranberries and mix them in with your fingers. Then do the same for the chopped apple, and then for the cheese. Finally, add the wet ingredients to the dry ones, and stir with a wooden spoon to combine. Or, if you find yourself committed to the mixing-with-your-hands thing, go ahead and do that. Nobody will report you to the cookie police.

Scoop ping-pong-ball-sized lumps of cookie dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. If you evenly space six cookie lumps, that will be about right.

Bake for 17 minutes, but check on them at 15. You want them to be lightly browned on top. If your oven is especially eager, you might want to take the cookies out a little early. Alternatively, you might have to give each batch an extra minute or two. Ovens are fiercely independent and each insists on heating in its own way. Respect that. You and your oven are in a partnership; you have to work with each other.

Allow the cookies to cool on the baking mat or parchment. You should get 15 to 20 cookies to a batch.

Are these the most beautiful cookies you will come across this Cookie Season? No. In the Cookie Beauty Pageant, they are definitely the Miss Congeniality. They are lumpy and have bits sticking out in unexpected places. The edges might look overbaked.

And yet.

These cookies are subtly sweet, with hits of fruitiness and cheesiness. These are not the cookies you will bring to your kids’ school bake sale. These are the ones you can bring to your book club and serve with a glass of wine. These are the ones that you can have with a pot of tea on a morning when you have the house to yourself. These are the ones you give to your friend who is feeling overwhelmed and needs something to focus on other than a world spiraling into chaos and lamentation.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Foods and craftsWaffles, schupfnudeln, music and lights

A German Christmas market in Amherst

There will be a German Christmas Market in Amherst Village Green on Saturday, Dec. 13. According to founder and organizer Lindsay Buchanan, it was created as a way to pull the Amherst community together.

“This is a small-town community event,” she said. “It is a traditional winter Christmas market with elements of European and German traditions tied in. I really enjoy travel and learning about foreign cultures, and I’m passionate about Christmas. I grew up in Amherst and have been living locally as an adult again. And personally I feel like it’s very quiet here. It would be great if we had more to do. I also noticed that there was a lack of events that could appeal to people of all ages. Usually Christmas events, in my opinion, are geared toward little kids. And I wanted to create something that people of any age could enjoy. I want teenagers to have something to do. And people who don’t have children, there’s still stuff for them too.”

This will be the Market’s third official year, Buchanan said, and there will be a focus on community and food.

“This year we will have about 55, I’d say over 55 vendors. That includes food trucks and artisans, some farms and craftspeople. We will also have live music, some German music, as well as traditional Christmas, winter market music, Christmas carols. We will also have Santa Claus and the Krampus on hand for photos.”

“We will have a beer garden with German beer and hot glühwein,” Buchanan continued. “It’s a hot spiced mulled wine that is known at these types of European Christmas markets. This will have a taste of the actual Christmas markets of Germany and Europe, which is a bit different from what people are used to here. Our vendors include local artisans, farms and more. Some vendors will sell German-themed goods and food. Some of our authentic lineup … includes bratwurst with sauerkraut, schupfnudeln [a German potato pasta] with sauerkraut and braised pork, pretzels, Bavarian waffles, Liège waffles [rich, chewy, brioche-like waffle with a shell of caramelized sugar], raclette [melted cheese], pierogi, and a variety of other German and Swiss treats.”

With so many different elements on hand, Buchanan said, each visitor can curate their own personalized experience: “It’s not just a craft fair. It’s not just a concert. You’ve got some different things to choose from, in a cute New England historic setting.”

Buchanan said guests should dress for December in New Hampshire.

“It is a fully outdoor event,” she said. “Though we will have tents set up and some areas with heaters, it is an outdoor event. This is a special, festive, kind of magical-looking Christmas event. The Christmas lights are on. Each of the vendors have put tons of work into their personal stations. We’ve got Santa Claus dressed to the nines and the people at the beer garden reveling. It’s kind of amazing when you see it all coming together and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh; it’s actually real.’ It’s actually something special that’s like a new tradition and people are creating memories.”

The Amherst German Christmas Market
When: Saturday, Dec. 13, from 10:15 a.m. to 6:15 p.m.
Admission is $10. See amherstchristmasmarket.org for tickets, to select an arrival time and information on parking.

Featured photo: Past German Christmas Market. Courtesy photo.

Foods and crafts

New Hampshire World Christmas Market

Michaela Herholz is the COO and CFO of Nourish New England, a nonprofit organization that works with food banks, soup kitchens and other groups that fight hunger.

“The purpose of our nonprofit is to support food insecurity charities in the community,” Herholz said.

Nourish New England is the host of the first ever New Hampshire World Christmas Market set for Dec. 13 and Dec. 14 at the Anheuser-Busch complex in Merrimack. Herholz said this inaugural market will draw together vendors and guests from widely different backgrounds.

“We have at least 80 vendors lined up to sell food and crafts,” she said. “We have 11 food trucks lined up, representing food from around the globe. And there will be additional food vendors who will be in our tented space. This Market will be at the Biergarten [at Anheuser-Busch] in Merrimack. It’s primarily an outdoor Christmas market, but there will be an indoor space at the beer garden, which will be serving glühwein, which is a traditional German spiced mulled wine.” Herholz said that it was important to Nourish New England to feature local vendors.

”Sweet Finnish Bakery will be one of the vendors; among other things, they make Finnish coffee breads. Auntie B’s will sell Greek pastries. And Mount Dearborn Farm will have some traditional German cookies. The Seacoast Pretzel Company will have traditional German pretzels.”

Because this event is a world market, there will be food and crafts representing holiday traditions from around the globe, Herholz said.

“Deadproof Pizza Company is one of the food trucks that’s going to be there, and we’ve also got Wicked Tasty Food Truck and Empanadas Deluxe 603. One of our sponsors is Sweet Dreams Confections. They’re based in Derry. And they donate a portion of all of their profits to local charities, particularly food insecurities. So they’ve been a great collaborator with us as part of our nonprofit mission this past year. Linda, who is the owner of Sweet Dreams Confections, sells sourdough breads and some other goodies like that.”

“All of the craft vendors are local artisans,” Herholz said, “selling handmade items. We have some vintage Christmas vendors. Others are doing crochet. We have local artists whose artwork is on ornaments or you can buy their framed artwork.”

In a Nov. 20 press release, Nourish New England described the event as being “inspired by the historic Christmas markets of Europe, and specifically the German Weihnachtsmärkte. It will feature a 1,000-foot festive walkway lined with curated food and craft vendors selling wares with origins from Christmas Market countries you expect, such as Germany, Poland, Hungary, France, and Switzerland.”

Herholz said the Christmas Market will have other attractions over the two days, in addition to food and crafts, such as live music.

“We have a Boston-based band that is called Blindness. They’re a two-person band, and the best description of their music is probably alternative rock. They’ll be [performing] some Christmas music as well as some of their own music. And we will have the Granite State Bellringers doing a performance, so we’ll have that nice traditional aspect from that. We’ll have a Santa photo station set up in the former horse stables that [ Anheuser-Busch] has converted to indoor space. The bar will be open at that end of the Market, too.”

Herholz said one of the events she is most looking forward to has nothing to do with food, crafts or bell-ringing.

“We’re working with a company called East Coast Evolution Leadership,” she said. “They’ll be doing a Krampus Run. Or maybe it’s a Krampus March. Either way, their team will be there, dressed as the Krampus.”

2025 New Hampshire World Christmas Market
Where: Anheuser-Busch complex, 221 DW Highway, Merrimack, 595-1202, anheuser-busch.com/breweries/merrimack-nh
When: Saturday, Dec. 13, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 14, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Admission: $10, with discounts for seniors, children, veterans and first responders. Proceeds from the market will go toward Nourish New England.
More: visit nhworldchristmasmarket.com.

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