Tag: 260129

Maine man

Griffin William Sherry returns to Rex

After his band The Ghost of Paul Revere called it quits after a dozen years together, singer, songwriter and guitarist Griffin William Sherry went solo. His debut album, Hundred Mile Wilderness, was greeted as one of 2024’s best. His live shows, sprinkled with Ghost songs, were equally lauded, and his fan base grew steadily.

However, as a recent phone interview got underway from Sherry’s home in Augusta, Maine, Sherry’s old band was top of mind. In mid-January, news broke of a fall reunion show and a reboot of Ghostland, the annual festival that ended with the dissolution of the much-loved band, amidst hopes it might carry on without them.

“That cat just ran out of the bag,” a laughing Sherry said. “Yeah, we’re getting the band back together, Blues Brothers style. Carrie Fisher will be exhumed from the grave and chase us down with a missile launcher…. We always wanted to play a show together and kind of kept that door open in case.”

He’s especially pleased that his band will perform at Ghostland, on Sept. 6 at Thompson’s Point in Portland, Maine. “That was something I really wanted to happen, for people that might not have been paying attention the last couple of years to see what I’ve been working on.”

His solo material is story-forward and personal, like “Roll Down Slow,” a hard-luck tale drawn from life on the road.

“As a touring musician, you tend to meet a certain type of people that tend to go pretty hard after the sun goes down,” he said. “That kind of flagrant irresponsibility was super interesting to me, and not something I was unfamiliar with.”

Written for his wife the morning after Roe v. Wade was overturned, “We Will Fight” is a defiant love song that resonates at shows. “I use it as an opportunity to platform both Planned Parenthood and also what I see as a civic duty to stand up for your neighbors and not let the times roll over you,” he said. “I think it’s pretty important right now.”

Hundred Mile Wilderness was recorded in Nashville’s legendary Studio B with producer Eddie Spear, who helmed Luke Bryan’s multi-platinum American Heartbreak and also worked with Brandi Carlile, Sierra Ferrell and breakout star Jesse Welles. Sherry played with a band of ace session players.

“My Juliet” is a breezy looking-for-love country song with a character highly informed by the studio band. Sherry allowed that many tracks reflect what he termed “the Nashville bluegrass [and] Americana sound that’s popular right now,” but his spirit, along with his original vision, still guides the effort.

“A lot of the stuff that I had brought to Eddie we ended up using on the final record,” he said. “The instrumentation we chose, certainly having Billy Contreras on fiddle, made it seem a little bit more like a bluegrass record. But that band … I can’t speak highly enough about all those guys.”

Sherry and his touring band, including guitarist Zachary Bence and bass player McCrae Hathaway, are at Manchester’s Rex Theatre on Jan. 30. He was at the venue around the same time last year, bringing filmmaker Ernest Thompson on stage to do “Cross The Bridge,” a song he co-wrote with Joe Delault and Thompson for the movie The Constituent.

Several new songs have made their way into sets lately, including the dreamy “Cathedral of Pine,” released in November, and “Moline,” a brooding ballad yet to be recorded. Sherry explained that he enjoys sharing his works in progress with an audience, and gaining insights from the experience.

“I don’t feel like a song is truly written until I’ve performed it in front of a bunch of people, to see where the reactions are and what needs to be changed or reinforced,” he said. “So I love playing songs for crowds before we put them on a record, so I have a little bit more of an idea what that song’s identity is.”

Griffin William Sherry
When: Friday, Jan. 30, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $40 at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Griffin William Sherry. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 26/01/29

• Song circle: A monthly evening of original music preceded by wine tasting, Songwriter RoundUp is hosted by Katie Dobbins playing some of her own songs, along with the return of singer-songwriter Temple Mountain, and Molly Shuvani, whose powerful voice gives her original songs like “Pebble In The Pond” a hymn-like quality. Several are on Soundcloud and worth a listen or two. Thursday, Jan. 29, at 7 p.m., Hermit Woods Winery, 72 Main St., Meredith, hermitwoods.com.

• Snowy turn: Spending a weekend in ski country, Kier Byrnes & The Kettle Burners kick off winter carnival with a headlining show that’s free to active-duty military and veterans. The following night they’ll preside over apres ski at Ragged Mountain and wrap up with another Franklin set, accompanied by Andrew Mason McIntosh and Will Hatch. Friday, Jan. 30, 6 p.m., Veteran’s Memorial Ski Area, 266 Flaghole Road, Franklin, $15, $10 ages 6-17, kierbyrnes.com.

• Goth show: A fraternal falling out fractured doomy Gene Loves Jezebel into two bands led by identical twins Jay and Michael Aston. This happened in the late 1980s, and though the two reunited briefly in 1997, the rift remains, along with a need to clarify which version of the group is playing when a concert happens. At an upcoming local one, Michael will be the brother in charge. Friday, Jan. 30, 7 p.m., Jewel Music Venue, 61 Canal St., Manchester, $12 and up at promotix.com.

• Prawn act: Connecticut improv rock quartet Big Shrimp formed just a couple of years ago but is already garnering attention. Grateful Web included them in the Top 12 Upcoming Jam Bands for 2026, lauding, “pure heat: long sets, huge grooves, and a rhythm section that feels like it could carry an entire block party by itself.” Twiddle’s Ryan Dempsey joins them for a local show. Saturday, Jan. 31, doors 8 p.m., show 9 p.m., Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester, $23 at eventbrite.com.

• New face: Promising a different show with local material every night, Kathy Griffin returns to New Hampshire with a grateful outlook after a harrowing few years. Sunday, Feb. 1, 7 p.m., Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord, $49 and up at ccanh.com.

Into the Midnight Wood by Alexandra McCollum

Alexandra McCollum has conjured some incredibly endearing characters in Into the Midnight Wood, their debut novel about two comically disparate roommates, each trying to figure out who they are and what they want amidst family drama, dark magic and a tenuous friendship.

I’m relatively new to the fantasy/romantasy genre but in the past year have devoured many books that feature magic, witches, fae, vampires, gods and god complexes, dark academia and other common tropes, but most especially strong female main characters — which is wonderful and commendable, but also made Into the Midnight Wood a refreshing change. Its main character is David, a cisgender gay man, whose roommate and love/hate interest is Meredith, referred to as he/him in the story but who outwardly rejects labels, often dresses femme and is romantically attracted to all genders.

McCollum calls the novel a “queer contemporary fantasy romance that is intended for adult readers” on their website, the latter part alluding to the fact that there are several very explicit “open door” scenes.

Along with the spice, this book is laugh-out-loud funny, thanks mainly to the dialogue between David and Meredith, and to Meredith being a vibrant, charismatic human. But David has lived with him for five years and has grown tired of Meredith’s quirky behaviors. As he tries to remind himself of why he’s looking for a new place to live and a chance to be rid of Meredith for good, David starts a tally, a la “10 Things I Hate About You” — David, though, is mentally cataloging not 10, but 100 things that are “wrong” with Meredith.

David’s list is full of annoyances, some of which are incredibly inane and some of which would absolutely get aggravating over time.

A small sample:

“#11: His accent.” Because “David had never before heard someone manage to sound both American and British at the same time, yet Meredith somehow accomplished it.”

“#13: He persists in outfitting his dog in this humiliating fashion,” referring to Bianca’s rhinestone collar.

“#23: He never puts anything back in its proper place.”

“#48: He insists on holding an impromptu funeral for a rodent.”

“#94: He acts as if an absence of hours or days has been years,” David mentally tallies after Meredith runs up to hug his friend (before noting with a semblance of surprise that he’s kind of missed Meredith greeting him that way.)

But behind Meredith’s persona is a more subdued, almost defeated, side that starts to seep out as his family, full of disapproval and a brother who crosses the line of typical sibling squabbling into full-on emotional abuse, re-enters his life. There’s a wedding at the center of this reunion, because all good family drama happens when there’s a wedding involved.

So where’s the magic? Most of it happens in the Midnight Wood, while the rest of the book is set in a relatively normal, human-occupied place — with a few exceptions that are sprinkled in here and there with little explanation and zero world-building. But it’s an enchanting space, and I didn’t feel any real need for an explanation as to why David and Meredith are fully human while their neighbor, Mrs. Jupiter, is a straight-up witch with a cauldron and a penchant for casting spells. There are hints of otherworldly creatures mentioned throughout as well, like a real estate agent who is presented as human — or, at least, not presented as not human — who turns out to have tentacles.

But the Midnight Wood is where most of the magic happens. It’s where Meredith seems to have a connection with a lot of the creatures he meets in the Midnight Wood, like magic mice (hence the rodent funeral noted in #48). He seems to feel at home in these woods, engaging with misfit beings who, like Meredith, are hard to define.

There’s some dark magic looming among the trees too though, in the form of Erlking of the Midnight Wood, who feeds on others’ misery and is especially interested in getting to Meredith’s deep, dark feelings that he tries so hard to shove down. It’s an interesting way to bring life to Meredith’s self-loathing, essentially taking on the form of a monster that threatens to destroy him if he gives in to his despair.

Could this story have been told without the moderate dose of magic? Probably. But the magic tempers the serious themes, adding a dose of whimsy without taking away from the real, heartfelt messages.

If you’re looking for a typical romantasy, this isn’t it, but it’s well worth the journey if you’re looking for something enchantingly eccentric. B+ —Meghan Siegler

Featured Photo: The Midnight Wood by Alexandra McCollum

Album Reviews 26/01/29

KMFDM, Enemy (Metropolis Records)

This Hamburg, Germany-based industrial band has always been mandatory listening for safety-pin goths with aircraft-carrier-sized chips on their shoulders. I consider them Kiss for anarchists: crazy hair, piercingly loud fashions, and an unrelenting desire to smash the western world’s end-stage capitalist system. They’ve nailed the aesthetic with rage anthems before (“Free Your Hate” is still my favorite), but can they still compete in these sociopolitical times, which are obviously so [nervous hysterical laughter]? Well, things don’t get started until a few songs in: The rather childish title track sounds like something they thought would sound anthemic but doesn’t, and then comes “Oubliette,” which futzes around with Judas Priest-style riff-metal, which was never their strong suit. But then comes the echo-y, apocalyptic-sounding “L’Etat,” in which they remember that their biggest competitor is Rammstein; it’s one of the best things they’ve ever done. Resident hot chick Lucia Cifarelli steps in to sing the industrial-pop number “Vampyr,” sounding sweet during the verses and demon-rabid on the breaks of course, and — whoa, just hold it right there, they did get a new guitarist, and he can definitely shred. It’s OK! A-

Ben Rosenblum’s Nebula Project, The Longest Way Round (One Trick Dog Records)

Lot of fun, this one (if a bit scattershot with regard to focus), the latest release from award-winning (an ASCAP Young Jazz Composers award and two Downbeat awards, all in 2010) New York City-based pianist, accordionist and composer Rosenblum. Now, with regard to the parenthetical caveat above, there’s nothing inherently wrong with shifting genres and such in order to cover a crazy-wide spectrum of world music, and I’d chalk Rosenblum’s predilection for it to his eye-popping range of experience: He’s played with Rickie Lee Jones, yes, but also Canadian-Indian singer Kiran Ahluwalia and Brazilian hand percussionist/Late Show Band member Nêgah Santos; his influences are deep and varied, from Brazilian forró to Irish reels and jigs to Bulgarian folkloric songs and Dominican merengue. Yes, there’s accordion on here when it fits the mood, but no mood — or flavor of joyful expressionism, let’s say — is off limits, it seems. One minute you’re madly bouncing around in a hydraulically fitted 1964 Impala, the next you’re being treated to some of the most lively post-bop you’ve ever heard. So the verdict? Open minds will absolutely love this. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Alrighty, my fellow cubicle-imprisoned office colleagues, January’s already almost out of the way, won’t be long before we’re all offline at the beach again, so let’s keep the agile AI synergy circling back and pivot to the new albums “hitting the streets” (prolly with nauseating wet flopping sounds) on Jan. 30, reach out if you want to ping my brains out or just network, my DMs are open! Now, folks, we’ve lost a lot of famous rock stars over the last few months, so let’s chat about it. The worst one for me was Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley, a boyhood hero of mine. I’d really been looking forward to the next time his band played at Tupelo Music Hall so I could mooch some passes and have a serious chat with him about maybe letting me try out to be his lead singer, or at least let me get up and sing some Zeppelin songs with him or something; he knew he was a godawful singer and I figured we would have gotten along since he was as much of a jackass as me and took very few things seriously. O Fortuna, guys, but the most recent one was of course Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, a loss that was the talk of social media for days. Funny story about Bob: Back in the mid-Aughts, I was writing a column for a corporate newspaper on the New Hampshire seacoast that’s nowadays mostly digitally distributed and no longer found in your 7-Elevens and such. Anyhow, I’d written a piece about how electronic music was going to take over sooner rather than later (again, this was a long time ago), and the next day, lo and behold, there was an email in my inbox from Weir, whose band Ratdog was in town. He must have been bored in town, because he mansplained around 900 words at me about how “guitar-based rock wasn’t going to go away,” which wasn’t what I’d said at all, so immediately I got defensive, thinking “who is this guy anyway,” because I knew and still know basically nothing about the Dead, and I assumed he was a second-banana guitarist hack they’d hired in the ’80s or ’90s, in other words I didn’t know that he had been an original founder of the Dead when they were still just a silly Mungo Jerry-style jug band. We had words, folks, angry words, like, I told him I thought the Dead were awful and I’d be embarrassed to be in a band like that, so he got mad and wrote back, “Oh definitely, I want YOUR life, sitting in your mom’s basement telling people to [censored] off.” From there it got really ugly — my editor at the time is the only one who saw the whole thing — and he somehow never invited me to Thanksgiving dinner, but all that aside, I feel bad for his fans, RIP Bob, which brings us to the new album from The Soft Pink Truth, titled Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever! It’s an experimental house music side-project from Drew Daniel, who’s half of the San Francisco duo Matmos, but there’s really nothing danceable at all about the first single “Time Inside the Violet”; it’s a bunch of violins and eerie weirdness, but you might love it, I don’t know.

• James Adrian Brown was the guitarist for the now-defunct U.K. alt-rock band Pulled Apart By Horses, and his debut solo LP is Forever Neon Lights. The single “Generator” is pretty neat, built over a noisy, catchy beat a la Wonky-era Orbital.

• French synthpop bro Sébastien Tellier releases his first album in six years, Kiss The Beast, led by the single “Thrill Of The Night (feat. Slayyyter & Nile Rodgers).” It sounds like early Madonna if that makes you happy.

• We’ll end the week with California-based emo-pop band Joyce Manor, and their new full-length I Used To Go To This Bar. The featured tune, “I Know Where Mark Chen Lives,” sounds exactly like Lit or Hoobastank or Dashboard Confessional etc.

Featured Photo: album covers for KMFDM, Enemy and Ben Rosenblum’s Nebula Project, The Longest Way Round

Warm Strawberry Pretzel Salad

This is an excellent all-day project for when weather has you stuck in the house. No one part of this recipe is difficult or takes very long to complete, but there are several stages where you need to walk away and leave it so the magic can happen.

  • 6 1/2 ounces (185 g) small pretzel sticks
  • 2 1/4 cups (446 g) sugar – You’ll be using small amounts of this during different steps of this recipe, so measure the two and a quarter cups into a small mixing bowl.
  • 12 Tablespoons (a stick and a half) butter, melted
  • An 8-ounce package of cream cheese
  • 1 cup (227 g) heavy cream
  • A 3-pound bag of frozen strawberries – If you can find 3 pounds of frozen sliced strawberries, so much the better.
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 400°F. Set the bag of strawberries out to thaw.

Spray a 9×13-inch baking pan with non-stick baking spray, or oil it liberally with vegetable oil.

Pulverize the pretzels. You can do this in a food processor, a blender, or a combination of a rolling pin and anger issues. Combine the pretzel dust, the melted butter and 1/4 cup of sugar thoroughly, then transfer the mixture to the greased baking pan. Tamp the pretzel mixture down with the flat bottom of a measuring cup or a rocks glass.

Bake for 10 minutes or until the edges of the pretzel base start to brown slightly. Remove from the oven, and set aside to cool for half an hour.

With a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat the cream cheese and 1/2 cup of sugar for a few minutes, until it is fluffy and friendly-looking, then slowly drizzle in the cream, and beat the mixture until it has soft peaks. With a large spoon or a spatula, transfer the cream cheese mixture to the pretzel substrate, and smooth it out. Move the baking pan to your refrigerator, and let it chill for at least half an hour.

Put 2 pounds (2/3 of the bag) of strawberries in your blender or food processor, and puree them thoroughly, then strain the liquid into a large saucepan through a fine-mesh strainer. Add the salt and the remaining 2 cups of sugar, then cook the strawberry mixture over medium heat until it just starts to come to a slow simmer. You don’t want to cook the flavor out of the strawberries; you just want to get the sugar completely dissolved. If you bought frozen whole berries, slice the remaining ones. Mix the remaining berries into the puree.

Using a sturdy spatula, cut servings of the pretzel-and-cream mixture, and top generously with strawberry sauce. This can be served warm or chilled, and goes extremely well with plain seltzer.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Thoughtful tasting

Wine, cheese, chocolate and more

“I think restaurants need to be a little bit more than just a restaurant these days,” Elissa Drift said, “because anyone can go anywhere and get food at any time. And there needs to be a reason for people to come out nowadays.”

Drift is the owner of Local Street Eats, a Nashua restaurant that has been developing innovative events. Drift said that, for her, building customer loyalty has been rooted almost as much in promoting a fun atmosphere as in great food and innovative drinks. Part of that atmosphere comes from holding special events.

“What’s the point?’ she asked. “If you’re not having any fun, why do it? So honestly, these events are just like really a cool way to bring people together and have an experience beyond eating. I think anyone can go to a restaurant. And people like to do things and have some sort of tangibility to the experience. So, when they’re tasting and eating and drinking and everything like that, whether it’s something as simple as our Chocolate and Cheese Thing, we are guiding them. They love that because they can learn and people love to learn, believe it or not. They love to get tidbits of information in a not-so-school setting.”

The “Chocolate and Cheese Thing” refers to an event Drift has scheduled at Local Street Eats for Feb. 10, “A Sweet Affair: Chocolate, Cheese, & Wine,” which she described on the restaurant’s website as “a guided tasting experience led by a special guest, taking you through the ultimate night of sipping, snacking and savoring, with no pressure to share.” It is an event designed for female friends to bond over — a “Galentine’s Day” activity. (Although, she said, anyone is welcome.) Participants will taste five different pairings of cheese, wine and chocolate.

“I thought it would be a really cool way to just kind of like bring everybody together,” Drift said, “to have some really good cheese, have some really good wine, and chocolate, but also talk about why those items pair well, and maybe just taste some things that they haven’t tasted or pair some things together that maybe they would have never even thought about.”

Drift described the first tasting course as an example.

“I love prosecco,” she said, “so we’re going to start with a nice prosecco, a triple-cream brie, and a white chocolate with lemon. The brie is going to be really bright and creamy, and that prosecco is just going to be perfect with all the sparkly notes in there. Then, the prosecco is a little dry, so it helps that the white chocolate has a creaminess to it and then the tartness from the lemon. It’s going to be a fun pairing.”

By contrast, the final tasting course will also feature a sparkling wine, but the tasting profile of the pairing will be very different, Drift said. “[The wine is] a rosa regale; it’s a sweet red, but it’s sparkling. It’s really sweet so you kind of need to pair it with something that’s going to cut that so that we’re going to serve it with a blue cheese and a dark chocolate truffle. The dark chocolate will have [notes of] cassis and cherry and raspberries, so it’s going to play off that sweetness, but it’s going to have a bitter sweetness to it. I think those, the first pairing and the last one, are going to be my two favorites.”

Drift thinks this sort of guided tasting will be popular.

“I think chocolate, cheese, and wine are three things that basically everybody likes,” she said. “And if you don’t, I’m so sorry for you.”

A Sweet Affair: Chocolate, Cheese & Wine
When: Tuesday, Feb.10, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Where: Local Street Eats, 112 W. Pearl St., Nashua, 402-4435, local-streeteats.com
Tickets: $45 each, available at eventbrite.com or through a link on the Local Street Eats website. Visit local-streeteats.com/events.

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