Tag: 260312

From the heartland

Nebraska singer-songwriter performs area show

When the time comes for career growth, most musicians from small towns move to an industry hub like Nashville or L.A., but Andrea von Kampen, who plays March 14 at The Word Barn, hardly considered it. And while she had a label deal for a while, she’s more than content to now be back in the ranks of the independents.

Born and raised in Nebraska, von Kampen makes music that is lyrically sharp, sonically ethereal, and informed by place. The latter, she believes, isn’t intentional.

“I only feel the difference when I’m with people from the major cities,” she said in a recent phone interview. “In my day-to-day, I don’t feel like it’s influencing me at all.”

The internet is one reason she stays in the heartland.

“I started to make music in the era of Spotify, so it all felt very globalized,” she said. “I was making a pretty good livelihood before I even talked to a label, and I was able to connect with artists from all over the world digitally. So it never even really occurred to me that I’d have to move.”

Family is another, perhaps more important factor.

“My brother’s a composer; he’s a huge influence on the process of our records, and he’s got a great recording setup,” she said. “So … I can make records here, I can put them out, they can be listened to by people all over the world, and I can make an income.”

Her voice has been called “soulful and worn in,” with a hymn-like quality that can be traced to her German Lutheran roots. At times, it sounds effortless. “Singing is like breathing,” she said in a 2024 interview. “I think about my voice like a wind instrument. I’m breathing through it and creating sound and I don’t want anything to obstruct the pure sound coming out.”

Hearing Paul Simon’s album Hearts and Bones at 9 years old left an indelible impression on von Kampen; she often plays the title track in concert. Later, her influences included Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James and other jazz singers: “In high school, I really got into Laura Marling and now it’s a whole bunch of different people in my genre.”

Current artists she enjoys include singer Rita Payés. “I absolutely love bossa nova kind of quiet Spanish guitar settings,” she said, and she also approves of the NFL’s Super Bowl halftime entertainment. “I’m obsessed with what Bad Bunny is doing … I think my inspiration now is very wide and broad.”

The three-song EP Before I Buy a Gun is von Kampen’s latest release, an agonized response to the last election. The title song closing out the record has a sense of hope, though. “I will find a better way,” she sings. “Before I buy a gun, I’ll get to know my neighbor; it’s a fragile thread that holds us all fraying at the seams.”

A gathering feeling of powerlessness compelled her to begin writing songs in the cold Nebraska winter.

“I sort of did the only thing I could do, which was make music,” she explained. “That can feel sort of silly at times, but it’s easy to think you’re not making a difference unless you’re really doing something.”

Sister Moon, her last full-length album, was released in March 2024. Inspired by Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory, it’s a meditation on the environment. “It’s all about trees, deforestation and humans’ impact on the earth,” she said, “and this big time crunch we have to get this figured out in some sort of way or it’s going to be too late.”

At her Word Barn concert, von Kampen will perform with her trio, which includes Jessican Hanson, a violinist influenced by Andrew Bird and Kishi Bashi. “She’s been touring with me forever,” she said. Jonah Bennet, an upright bass player who’s appeared on several of her recordings, rounds out the group.

Following that, she’ll fly to the U.K. for her first headlining tour there, then return to write songs inspired by This Blessed Earth, Ted Genoways’ book about living on a family farm.

“I’d like to do a concept album into a stage production, but I know that’s a very long process,” she said. “That’ll be the next big project that I dive into, I think.”

Andrea von Kampen
When: Saturday, March 14, 7 p.m.
Where: The Word Barn, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter
Tickets: $25 at thewordbarn.com

Featured photo: Andrea von Kampen. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 26/03/12

• Join together: A trio of regional indie bands, New England Triple Stack is in the midst of a spring tour. Sneaky Miles began as a stripped down folk-flavored trio but has grown in sound and size. Jon Nolan & Good Co. offers a dreamy, pop-limned Americana, and Speed Of Sound is a new Maine-based group that includes Beatles disciple Spencer Albee on keys, guitar and vocals. Thursday, March 12, at 7 p.m., Bungalow Bar & Grill, 333 Valley St., Manchester, $20, dice.fm.

• Gender benders: One good measure of the musical caliber delivered by all-female tribute act The Iron Maidens is the number of members who’ve moved on to bigger things, like Nita Krauss, Alice Cooper’s guitarist since 2014. The current lineup is Nikki Stringfield and Shani Kimelman on guitars, singer Kirsten Rosenberg and Linda McDonald and Wanda Ortiz on drums and bass. Friday, March 13, at 9 p.m., Wally’s, 144 Ashworth Ave., Hampton Beach, $34, ticketmaster.com.

• Culture connection: Enjoy an evening of traditional Celtic music from O’Meachair, Woodson and Finley, a group that includes Diarmuid Ó Meachair from Cúil Aodha, County Cork, a traditional Irish accordion and melodeon player as well as a singer in the old sean-nós style, joined by Mainers Will Woodson on flute and uilleann pipes and fiddler Cait Finley, in an intimate setting. Saturday, March 14, at 7 p.m., Blasty Bough Brewing, 3 Griffin Road, Epsom, $25, blastybough.com.

• Irish afternoon: Formed County Sligo in the late 1980s, Dervish was honored with a lifetime achievement award from the BBC in 2019 for being, in the words of the network, “an icon of Irish music.” In February, the band’s PBS special The Great Irish Songbook debuted, featuring guests David Gray, Imelda May, Moya Brennan of Clannad, Indigo Girls, Kate Rusby and Brian Kennedy. Sunday, March 15, at 2 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $44, palacetheatre.org.

• SoCal sounds: The first of two unique shows from tribute band Live From Laurel Canyon dives into the music of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, two songwriters who came from different homes to make career-defining albums — Blue and Sweet Baby James, respectively — in sunny California. The following night is a look at the evolution of SoCal folk rock. Wednesday, March 18, 7:30 p.m., Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club, 135 Congress St., Portsmouth, $22 and up, ticketmaster.com.

International Oscar

A look at more Oscar nominees before the big night

Happy Oscar day to all who celebrate!

The 98th Academy Awards will air Sunday, March 15, at 7 p.m. on ABC. There are some true gems on the list of nominees — I’ll be rooting for Sinners in the 15 categories where it’s nominated and for all of the nominees in the best lead actress category — let’s go, five-way tie! But to wrap up the Oscar season, I took a look at the nominees for International Feature Film, which this year include two movies — The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value — that have a strong presence in other categories as well.

Sirāt, the entry from Spain, is the one movie of the five not yet available (as of March 8) for home viewing. The four I did watch, while varying in tone and style, all had a thread running through them about a country in crisis — what it’s like for the people living in it and how the trauma can echo through the decades.

The Voice of Hind Rajab (rent or purchase), the entry from Tunisia, is based on a true story of operators at the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s 911-like center and their attempts to save 5-year-old Hind Rajab in early 2024. Operators take a call about a car trapped on a street in Gaza, being hit by shells and gunfire. Eventually, Hind is the only survivor in the car and ends up on the phone with the operators, crying for someone to come get her. The movie takes place within the phone center, while the operators attempt to comfort Hind and work on finding a way to get an ambulance to her. Getting an ambulance into the war zone requires a slow-moving this-official-calls-that-official process to find a route where the Israeli military is not. The office head (Amer Hlehel) is desperate not to lose any more ambulance drivers and medics while the two operators (Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees) talking to Hind are desperate to get the scared young girl help now. It’s a harrowing story that mixes the actors and their voices with the voices of the real operators and uses Hind’s real voice throughout, according to media reports. In the way that it is very tightly focused on one child a group of professionals are trying to save, the movie reminded me a bit of the TV show The Pitt, with dedicated people offering competence and compassion in the face of tragedy.

It Was Only An Accident (Hulu, rent or purchase), a French entry that is, according to Wikipedia, a “co-production between Iran, France and Luxembourg,” has a dark comedy veneer with a bleak psychological-drama interior. Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) is absolutely, completely positive that the man (Ebrahim Azizi) who happens to visit the auto repair shop where he works is the man who once tortured him when Vahid was held prisoner by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Absolutely, completely, probably positive, after he kidnaps the man, ties him up and puts him in the back of his van. He considers burying the man alive, but maybe he’s only like 90 percent certain he has the right guy? Looking for confirmation, Vahid contacts another prisoner who was tortured by the man, another person who is also only mostly certain the blindfolded man in Vahid’s van is her former tormentor. Eventually, photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari); Goli (Hadis Pakbaten), the wedding-dress-wearing bride-to-be Shiva was photographing, and Hamid (Mohammad Ali Elyasmehr), the most certain that Vahid’s hostage is the torturer, are driving around in Vahid’s van, attempting to stay undetected by officialdom and trying to figure out what to do with this blindfolded, sometimes unconscious, possibly very dangerous man. There are a few darkly funny moments but the movie’s core is the trauma these people carry around from what they experienced, a trauma that is never far from the surface.

There are similarities in tone between It Was Only An Accident and The Secret Agent (Hulu, rent or purchase), a movie that also deals with people trying to live a normal life in a country that is broken. In this case, that country is Brazil in the late 1970s, when, as the movie tells us, lots of “mischief” happened, from the dead body left for days in a parking lot because no police can be bothered to come get it to the government persecution that requires people to go into hiding. Armando (Wagner Moura) is hiding in plain sight as Marcelo, living in an apartment full of people using different names in an attempt to stay alive, as he tries to figure out what happened to his long-gone mother and find a way to get himself and his young son out of the country. Armando’s problems seem to stem from the politically-connected head of the country’s power company defunding Armando’s university work and Armando’s objections to that action. When rich dudes and their idiot sons hold government-backed, extra-legal power, their personal prejudices and power-seeking whims can destroy lives — is how Armando’s problems can be boiled down. The movie does an excellent job with the world building with lots of engrossing moments and details about the people trying to maneuver through this fraught society.

Sentimental Value (rent or purchase) from Norway received nine Oscar nominations, including International Feature Film and, along with The Secret Agent, a spot on the Best Picture list. This movie has an episodic feel, like you’re binging a family dramady TV series. After the death of their mother, sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) must deal with the reappearance of their father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a famous filmmaker who has been largely absent from the family since the parents’ divorce decades earlier. The family house still belongs to Gustav, the latest in a long line of his family to inhabit it, who is now considering using it to film his new movie, a semi-biographical story about his mother. He’d like stage actress Nora to star in his movie but their relationship is so spikey she won’t even read the script. Agnes, married mother of a young son, is sort of the family peacemaker, but you can tell she’s dragging around baggage too — some of it, as she learns when she investigates Gustav’s mother’s imprisonment for anti-Nazi resistance during World War II, possibly inherited. The sudden appearance of American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) as a possible Nora replacement in the movie does not help with family dynamics. All four of these core performers are nominated and they all turn in nuanced performances that let us see character arcs and growth.

New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival
The 18th annual New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival kicks off Sunday, March 15, with an opening reception at the Singer Center for the Arts (77 Amherst St. in Manchester) at 5 p.m. followed by the festival’s the first in-person screening, Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire at the Rex Theatre in Manchester, at 7 p.m., according to a press release. In-person and virtual screenings continue through Sunday, March 29, and the festival will feature 13 feature films and four short films, the release said. Screenings will take place in Manchester, Concord, Portsmouth, Hanover and Keene, according to the nhjewishfilmfestival.com, where individual tickets and ticket packages are available for purchase. Local in-person screenings include The Road Between Us on Thursday, March 19, at 7 p.m. at Chunky’s in Manchester; Ethan Bloom on Tuesday, March 24, at 7 p.m. at O’Neil Cinemas in Londonderry; The Stronghold on Thursday, March 26, at 7 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord; Hidden: The Kati Preston Story with special guest Kati Preston for a post-film discussion on Sunday, March 29, at 1 p.m. at Red River Theatres; 13: The Musical on Sunday, March 29, at 1:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres, and The Ring on Sunday, March 29, at 3:30 p.m. followed by a festival wrap party at 5:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres. See the festival website for the full schedule and for tickets and trailers.

Featured photo: It Was Only an Accident

The Hitch by Sara Levine

(Roxane Gay Books, 291 pages)

“You don’t realize how small your life has become until something wreaks havoc, until the pin is removed on which the threads of reality hang.”

That’s Rose Cutler musing on the havoc in her spare bedroom, where her 6-year-old nephew is barking and playing with chew toys, having been inhabited by the soul of a dead corgi.

This is the improbable premise of The Hitch, Sara Levine’s comic novel about a young woman whose world is thrown into chaos by an otherworldly event. Single and childless by choice, Rose lives alone — very comfortably, thanks to the success of her artisanal yogurt business. She’s a vegan, sharing recipes throughout. She’s also a moral scold who can’t get through a meal or a conversation without a lecture about the environmental problems caused by this, that or the other, and yet seems bewildered at the effect this has on other people. (“Chat rooms, social media platforms, electronic bulletin boards — people routinely misunderstand my tone,” she says.)

Rose has a younger brother, Victor, to whom she became a de facto mom after their parents died. Now that Victor is married and has a child, Rose is overly invested in the life of her nephew; spending two hours with Nathan every Saturday is the highlight of her week.

When Rose’s brother and sister-in-law announce they are visiting Mexico for a week to reconnect as a couple, she is thrilled to have Nathan stay with her. But she does not have a contingency plan for the dark turn the week takes when her dog, a massive Newfoundland, accidentally kills a corgi in a park and her nephew insists the soul of the corgi entered him.

This is a ludicrous premise, but Levine is known for absurdity. One of her previous books has three exclamation points in the title (Treasure Island!!!); I’ve not read it but am informed by the internet that it’s a cult classic. The internet also informs that she writes in the style of Kevin Wilson, who has an enormously appealing dry wit. And even though Levine’s muse appears to be slightly unhinged and The Hitch dangles on the precipice of lunacy, it works.

It works because (a) Levine is funny and (b) Rose, despite her circumstances, is achingly familiar; we all know someone like her, or perhaps we are her, if we’re willing to admit it. Rose describes herself as a “scientifically literate person with ethical standards,” and she is struggling to live in a world that violates these standards at every turn. Her own company, the Cultured Cow, violates them, adding to her inner turmoil.

Her comic foil is her sister-in-law, Astrid — Nathan’s mother — who “isn’t a dog person. Or a cat person. Or a people person.”

As much as Victor and Astrid love Nathan, they draw the line on their animal-loving son getting a dog, and so when the soul of the corgi enters him, Nathan is enthusiastic — he sees it as getting an “inner dog.” Rose, however, sees it as her nephew becoming possessed by a corgi, a turn of events made worse by the fact that she doesn’t like corgis: “The bat ears and the stubby legs, the huge head and the black-rimmed prostitute eyes; the length of the body, the absence of a tail! The breed is engineered to make people smile, specifically those people who need to patronize an animal in order to love it.” She is desperate to exorcise the corgi from her nephew before her brother and sister-in-law return from vacation. Hilarity ensues. And some sadness, too, as we begin to understand what motivates Rose, and how lonely she is.

The Hitch is by no means the great American novel, nor does it aspire to be. It’s more like a single episode of a sitcom contained in a book. Humorless vegans and corgi lovers best stay away, but for everyone else Levine offers a light-hearted diversion from the more reality-based cares of the world. B+ —Jennifer Graham

Featured Photo: The Hitch, by Sara Levine

Album Reviews 26/03/12

Quinsin Nachoff, Patterns From Nature (Whirlwind Recordings)

This New York-based saxophonist and composer has earned a rep for “moving fluidly between jazz and classical worlds through stirring yet intricately cerebral compositions,” to borrow some promotional verbiage I’d never use myself to describe anyone’s music but which isn’t too shabby overall. Nachoff does use a wide spectrum of sounds to render these soundscapes, which are meant to describe precisely what you’d expect from the title, i.e., a fractal, ever-expanding aural depiction of nature at work (there’s a companion video that was designed with the help of a physicist). There’s even a musical saw at work in the opening track, “Branches,” a sighing, often mopey exercise that borrows the creepy nervous tension from Jonny Greenwood’s avant garde soundtrack to There Will Be Blood, in which warring strings dance around their own dissonance without ever providing real closure, while elsewhere we have bouncy nature-documentary cuteness (“Cracks”) and so on. A highly intellectual engagement that took 10 years to complete, well worth your time. A+

Rivers of Nihil, Rivers of Nihil (Metal Blade Records)

I’m really not trying to be the Chuck Eddy of New Hampshire rock journalism, sticking to heavy bands and ignoring others; really the only reason I’m reviewing a metal record for the second week in a row is that Metal Blade Records was kind enough to send me a 12-inch vinyl copy of this one (yes, I can be bought cheap, please take note; I miss the days when I’d get stacks of vinyl from SST and all the other indie labels, so chalk up this hiccup to a desire on my part to relive my 20s). This one just came out in “bleach and ammonia” colored vinyl (gray/black marble), which is cool, and their music is cool too in its way. The band markets itself as a progressive/extreme metal thingamajig, and yeah, there’s a lot of both genres going on: Instead of a bunch of gear-changes from Cookie Monster thrash to epic metal, these guys simply layer those things together like a peanut butter cup, using the Cannibal Corpse stuff as a drone device, which is pretty freaking clever, and, of course, brutal. I’m not surprised that the thrashers have been loving these guys. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Like every other Friday, March 13 will be a day of new albums, yadda yadda. It is another Friday the 13th, because we had one last month, which is how March always rolls 75 percent of the time because the Gregorian calendar was a silly idea to begin with, but either way we can start with the new album from Daniel Romano & The Outfit, a project that usually features Canadian indie-slacking musician/poet Romano, but this time it doesn’t, which I’ll blame on Gregorian calendars because there’s no one else I can think of to yell at. The album is titled Preservers Of The Pearl, and once again it will focus on “underground rock” because that’s what Romano wants the five people who show up at his shows to think it is, but there are several songwriting collaborators on board for this exercise in mediocrity, namely Outfit band members Ian Romano, Carson McHone, and new guy Tommy Major, all of whom were probably ready to quit if Daniel didn’t let them write some songs, you know how it goes. Supposedly they are trying to follow in the footsteps of (their words, mind you) “underground rock trailblazers like Mystery Lights, Sheer Mag, Shadow Show, and Uni Boys,” but my first encounter with this album was the tune “Cardinal Star,” which is the most boring, decidedly non-underground song I’ve heard all year, like it’d be too boring for Sheryl Crow to include on one of her albums, but believe it or not there’s a little hope here, thanks to the lead single “Autopoiet,” which, if it had a little more punk in its vibe, would be almost as interesting as your basic Parquet Courts tune, if you remember those guys, but anyway, what I’m getting at is that The Outfit is no more “underground” than eating a tuna fish sandwich in the park, but if Romano wants to insist that this is something rebellious, I can nod, walk away slowly, and simply allow this band to fade into oblivion, no harm done.

• Speaking of overhyped bands and musicians who’ve gotten away with spectacular mediocrity, look, gang, it’s Sonic Youth’s bass player Kim Gordon, with a new album, Play Me, another Friday The 13th arrival she probably timed just to be random and hip. Now look, I have my reasons for never having liked anything by Gordon or Sonic Youth or Thurston Moore, the main one being that I’ve never felt the urge to burn any of their songs to a mixtape because eww, but note that this doesn’t mean that I never liked any indie bands from the ’80s and ’90s, just the really popular hipster ones; I mean, back then the record industry was taking the Boston indie scene seriously out of sheer desperation. But who knows, maybe I’ll hear Gordon’s new single “Not Today” and think it’s so cool that I can forgive her for once literally claiming that her dream three-band concert would feature John Cage, Neil Young and Yoko Ono (that wasn’t easy to get over, and don’t think I didn’t try). Oh let’s just roll it and let me barf in peace. Eh, it’s not awful, lots of distortion, some Romeo Void-style singing, it’s OK as a post-No Wave song, may I be excused now?

• Oh great, it’s The Black Crowes, whom I’m still mad at after all these years for not sending me an advance of that one album, whatever its name was. Their new LP A Pound Of Feathers includes the song “It’s Like That,” which sounds like Whitesnake trying to be relevant. They’ll be at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, Mass., on June 19, but I shall not mooch passes to be in attendance, so don’t look for me.

• Lastly it’s U.K. band The Orielles, with Only You Left, featuring the single “Three Halves,” an interesting enough combination of shoegaze vocals and extreme-metal guitars, all overdone.

NOTE: Local (NH) bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter/Bluesky (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Featured Photo:

1931 Fruit Cookies

This recipe is adapted from one in a recipe booklet put out by Robin Hood Flour in 1931. It makes about two dozen cookies.

Wet ingredients

  • ½ cup (1 stick) butter – The team at Robin Hood called for shortening, because it was the Great Depression, but my philosophy is that if you can use butter, why wouldn’t you? (That’s a rhetorical question. I understand that there actually are reasons, but I’m making a point here.)
  • 1 cup (198 g) sugar – It dissolves into liquids so well that it is often classified as a wet ingredient.
  • The zested rind of two lemons – The Robin Hood team suggested the zest from a large orange.
  • 2 eggs – This is a good idea. No notes.
  • 2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice – The original recipe called for orange juice.

Dry ingredients

  • 2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour – Needless to say, this recipe specified Robin Hood flour.
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons dehydrated lemon juice powder (Optional. I realize that most bakers don’t have any of this on hand, but you should really consider picking some up. It helps bump the lemony flavor without throwing off a recipe’s dry-to-wet ratio. It makes a super-lemony cake frosting.)

Delicate prima donna ingredient

  • 1 cup (180 g) dried blueberries – The 1931 recipe called for raisins, but lemon and blueberries are a classic pairing.

With your stand or hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Then mix in the lemon zest and lemon juice.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk the dry ingredients together, then add the dry mixture to the wet one at slow speed. Carefully mix the dried blueberries into the dough.

Cover the dough with a piece of waxed paper, and chill it in your refrigerator for about 45 minutes. While it’s chilling, preheat your oven to 375°F.

After reading a couple chapters of a good book, scoop the dough onto parchment paper or a silicone mat, one Tablespoon at a time. (I have a miniature ice cream scoop that does a lovely job of this.) Flatten the blobs with a wet fork, the way you would with peanut butter cookies.

Bake for about 12 minutes — all ovens are a little different — until the edges have browned slightly. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet.

These are not fancy cookies, but they are gently sweet, and lemony, with tiny bursts of blueberry flavor. These are a good gift for a friend who’s having a hard time, without making a big deal about it.

Featured photo: 1931 Fruit Cookies. Photo by John Fladd.

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