Tag: 260319

The Music Roundup 26/03/19

• Songstress: After dueting with Shawn Colvin in the mid-1980s NYC folk boom, Lucy Kaplansky pivoted to earning a doctorate in clinical psychology and starting a private practice, but continued to sing. She added harmonies to Colvin’s debut album Steady On, backed Nanci Griffith on a couple of songs, and finally released her first solo LP, Flesh and Bone,in 1996. Thursday, March 26, 7:30 p.m., Flying Goose Brew Pub, 40 Andover Road, New London, $30, 526-6899.

• Convincing: The journey to channeling Johnny Cash began when Shawn Barker walked into auditions for the rock ’n’ roll origin musical Million Dollar Quartet with a rockabilly haircut and his eyes on the Elvis Presley role. The director had different ideas, though, and his decision pointed Barker to a new path and a multi-decade career starring in his tribute act, The Man In Black. Friday, March 27, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $25 and up, etix.com.

• Rocktivists: Now that Rage Against the Machine is off the road, bands like Evil Empire continue to carry the torch. The Connecticut act re-creates the group’s politically charged rap-metal sound, including Tom Morello’s hypnotic guitar and Zach de la Rocha’s frantic vocalizing. They’re joined by Lounge Fly, a tribute to Stone Temple Pilots, another band that sadly also won’t be touring again. Saturday, March 28, at 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $44, tupelohall.com.

Rhythm kings

James Fernando Trio swings into Concord

Piano player James Fernando believes improvisational jazz is a conversation between musicians that begins before the first note is played. Parameters are established, relationships understood. It’s similar to two friends meeting for coffee — there’s no agenda, but they both know their talk will be more genial than a chat about the financial markets.

“I think improvisation is misunderstood, largely by people who aren’t really in the jazz world,” Fernando said in a recent phone interview. “They think there’s nothing to it because they’re just making it up as they go along, and that’s true, to an extent … but you know who you’re talking to.”

Chord changes, an established tempo and a song’s key are among the elements that provide a jumping-off point, he continued.

“The melody that we played before we begin the improvisation is the same, and all of these contextual elements make it so you’re not just starting from absolutely nothing,” he said. “There’s a lot of information surrounding it, and that makes your decision-making a little bit easier.”

Even so, one of Fernando’s most memorable shows was performed with musicians that he barely knew.

For years the pianist had wanted to start a dedicated jazz trio. Many of his favorite pianists had led their own trios, and the piano-bass-drums format is an enduring configuration in jazz. Though he’d performed with trios many times, he’d never built one of his own.

The chance came in late 2023, with an invitation to play at the Kennedy Center.

“I was asked on very short notice,” he said. “I think some Irish band had their head person get Covid or something like that … obviously, very unfortunate for them, but it was a nice opportunity for us.”

Though long based in Washington, D.C., Fernando had relocated to Philadelphia when he got the call. So he decided to kickstart the project with musicians from his new hometown.

“I called some strangers, really,” he said. “I even met the drummer on stage at the Kennedy Center that same evening.”

The show was a solid success.

“We got a nice recording and video of us at the Kennedy Center, which was very useful in booking more shows,” he said. “I was able to leverage those videos into more performances, and it went so well that I kept working with the same guys … and the rest is history.”

Earlier this year, the trio released Philly 3. Their first album together consists of eight Fernando compositions and a cover of Erroll Garner, one of his key influences.

“I composed with this band in mind, playing to their strengths,” he said, “We performed and rehearsed and kind of developed the music through live performances.”

The disc reflects Fernando’s desire to make music that’s both sophisticated and swinging, playful yet meticulous. He’s aiming for a sound that, as he told an interviewer a while back, “couldn’t have been written by just anyone with a jazz degree, and certainly not by an algorithm.”

On March 21, the James Fernando Trio will perform a fundraiser for Concord Community Music School. It’s his second visit — he did a set at the Bach’s Lunch series last April. The school, he said, “is a well-rounded beacon for music [that’s] very clearly open to people coming and expressing themselves and learning the ways that they’re most passionate about.”

In addition to performing, Fernando has taught classes for several years at D.C.-based Levine Music. He’s a frequent guest instructor, recently hosting a workshop at an Arizona high school, and he’s at UNC Pembroke for a similar event ahead of his stop in New Hampshire.

“So I’ve gotten the chance to see a lot of different programs and see the energy around the schools and whatnot,” he said. “And Concord Community Music School seems absolutely lovely.”

CCMS Jazz Night Fundraiser w/ James Fernando Trio
When: Saturday, March 21, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Concord Community Music School Recital Hall, 23 Wall St., Concord
Tickets: $80 and up includes reception, call 228-1196

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 26/03/19

• Pipe power: Though often mixed up with another band, the Red Hot Chilli Pipers is oceans away from the SoCal alt rockers — these guys lead with bagpipes. Winning top honors on the U.K. TV talent show When Will I Be Famous in 2007 launched the nine-piece group, who blend trad songs like “Flowers of Scotland” with bag rock covers of Journey, Coldplay and Snow Patrol. Thursday, March 19, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $35 and up, etix.com.

• Hometown girl: In his Hippo review of Looking For The Light, the latest LP from Amanda McCarthy, Eric W. Saeger praised “ear-grabbing” songs like “Vodka” and its “peak KT Tunstall”-evoking chorus. The New Hampshire native is now based in Nashville, but she comes back often. She’s a guest on Matt Connarton’s Unleashed show March 21 at 9 a.m. on WMNH 95.3 FM. Friday, March 20, 6:30 p.m., San Francisco Kitchen, 133 Main St., Nashua, amancamccarthy.com.

• Song spinner: Released last year, Something About a Horse from Ian Galipeau is a solid collection of songs, including the countrified “A Father’s Love” and “Say Goodbye,” its melancholy counterpart. “Call It Home” is another standout, a rollicking, funny tune about first-time home ownership. Galipeau plays an afternoon set of his originals at a popular craft brewery. Saturday, March 21, 4 p.m., Great North Aleworks, 1050 Holt Ave., No. 14, Manchester, iangalipeaumusic.com.

Album Reviews 26/03/19

Cactus, Temple Of Blues II (Cleopatra Records)

With his Pedro Pascal looks, Carmine Appice (the actual pronunciation of which is “app-uh-cee,” a riddle that’s confused rock journos for decades now, probably because his equally famous brother Vinnie says it differently) has been one of rock’s premier drummers since the Flower Power days, when he was with Vanilla Fudge. This LP and its predecessor, 2024’s Temple Of The Blues, boast some of arena-rock’s biggest GOATs, shredding away at (you guessed it) blues tunes that would feel as antiquated as a Richard Nixon speech if they were performed by (almost) anyone else. On the whole, the sound is monstrously heavy after an old-school fashion, but it comes from a rotating stage of players who’ve all been around. The proceedings start with Eric “Raw Dog” Gales aiming his world-renowned guitar at anything that moves in a cover of Willie Dixon’s “Back Door Man” (yes, the same tune covered by The Doors on their 1967 debut album), and things just get crazier from there: Older dudes who read Guitar Player magazine “for the articles, nudge-wink” have plenty to lose their minds over, including feats from Pat Travers, Ty Tabor and Bumblefoot, but the bass roster is also stacked: Billy Sheehan, Rudy Sarzo and Jimmy Haslip. Old-timers will love every second of this. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Gary Lucas, The Edge Of Heaven, Vol 2 (self-released)

Follow-up collection of midcentury (mostly 1930s and ’40s) Chinese pop music from the trio of guitarist Lucas, singer/Chinese-stringed-instrument virtuoso Feifei Yang, and multi-instrumentalist Jason Candler. This one caught my eye because my wife has been completely immersed of late in antique Chinese fiction; it’s not what my pathetically Americanized ears were expecting at all, at least not until the third track, “New Pair Of Flowers,” a classic Chinese pop number that was most famously performed in the ’30s by Chow Hsuan, aka “The Golden Voice of China.” Yang’s two-stringed erhu colors the whole thing, evincing the playful joy with which its high-pitched, oft-typecasted sound is most often associated by Westerners. You’ll also find plenty of modern jazz-inflected melodies, but everything here is intended to mark the record’s release date, Feb. 7, the start of the Year of the Fire Horse in Chinese culture. Other artists celebrated here are Bai Kwong (a sensual, husky-voiced singer known as the “Mae West of China”) and Yao Lee (ironically, an instrumental version of her “Rose Rose I Love You”; Lee’s dubbed vocals were lip-synched by various Chinese actresses in the movies from the 1940s on). A+ —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• The next Friday-load of new albums will arrive on March 20, and now for your periodic reminder that you shouldn’t ever feel compelled to force-feed your ears a particular band’s music just because your friends seem to like them. Case in point: A dear Facebook “friend-quaintance” admitted to me recently that he “felt pressured to like” Postal Service, one of the worst bands I’ve ever heard. He was having trouble with it, so I tried talking him out of it. Now, I know that a lot of you people can relate to losing precious days or hours “trying to like” this or that band, maybe because the music you actually like is considered dated and you think your brain needs an upgrade. I would tell you this: If you listen to a good-enough number of songs by a band and all you get out of it is alienation and a desire never to hear them again, you should simply give up and go back to trying new bands or just stick with your favorites. Enjoying music isn’t a competition. It’s OK to be like the character Juno MacGuff in the movie Juno, when she tells her boyfriend she thinks Sonic Youth sucks, because honestly, a lot of people loved that moment, when she finally made it safe for people to point out the fact that they have sucked since Day 1. Same goes for almost every single “indie” band that’s emerged from Boston since the Lemonheads (Mission Of Burma, anyone?). Am I qualified to discuss this nonsense? Yes, but you are too, which is the point of this segue. Twenty-two years ago I started doing actual music review columns for actual newspapers and I have been forced to “try to like” entire genres ever since. Now, in our example, Postal Service is an easy one to dissect. Quite simply, they put out nothing but total suckage. The fact that Gibbard took Jimmy Figurine seriously enough to collaborate with him in Postal Service is irrefutable proof that Death Cab has a fatal flaw in its DNA, not that it hasn’t always been totally obvious.

Years ago, a Hippo writer lumped Postal Service and Clinic together, partly in order to dismiss certain indie bands as horrible, which many are. I disagreed with him in that particular instance, because to me, despite the fact that they screw up their song structures on purpose, Clinic’s very noisy core sound is awesome, with the doctor masks and the horribly distorted guitars. So if you want to post about why you hate indie music, it’s best to leave Clinic out of it. Just do a little research: A billion bands have tried to sound like The Strokes and failed, so pick one of those losers or be brave and just go with Arctic Monkeys. It’s not hard to find a lousy indie band, just do the research. OK, at any rate, speaking of force-feeding myself music I don’t care about, Kanye West, now known as Ye, releases his new album Bully this week, or maybe the next, according to some Redditors who hate him and don’t think it’ll ever drop, no one really knows. An advance song had some stupid AI stuff on it, which, surprise, made his haters hate him even more. Anyway, that.

• I’ve liked most of the music I’ve heard from British electronic band Ladytron in the past, and their new album Paradises didn’t disappoint — much, anyway. The disposable but very listenable single “Kingdom Undersea” is ’80s all the way, part Depeche Mode, part Pet Shop Boys.

• Superstar K-pop boyband BTS releases Arirang this week, and every snippet I’ve heard from it has been so overly epic it makes M83 look like a kazoo band.

• We’ll call it a week with cowboy-hat singer Luke Combs, who is from Huntersville, North Carolina. His new LP, The Way I Am, is a sexytime dobro-powered makeout song for cowboys and the heavily twanging gals who put up with them. —Eric W. Saeger

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

Featured Photo: Cactus, Temple Of Blues II and Gary Lucas, The Edge Of Heaven, Vol 2

Blood Orange Margarita

  • 1 1/2 ounces blanco tequila – I like Tanteo, which has a kiss (un beso?) of jalapeño to it. 3/4 ounce triple sec – for citrusy sweetness, to offset the bitterness of the Campari
  • 1/4 ounce Campari – for color and a little bitterness to offset the sweetness of the triple sec
  • 3/4 ounce fresh squeezed blood orange juice
  • 3/4 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
  • 1/4 ounce simple syrup
  • Another ounce fresh squeezed blood orange juice

Add ice to a cocktail shaker.

Ask your digital assistant to play “Cancion del Mariachi” from the El Mariachi soundtrack.Set it to repeat several times. Chuckle evilly. Take a swig of tequila if you have to. Attitude is everything with this drink.

Add the tequila, triple sec, Campari, lime juice and simple syrup, then shake to the rhythm of la musica. It helps to stand in front of a mirror while you do this, practicing your “You want some of this?” look. If one of the kids comes in to see what you’re doing, this look will chase them away and give them something to talk about in therapy later in life.

Strain the margarita over fresh ice in a rocks glass, then top with a float of the remaining blood orange juice, which will give you a lovely ombre (hombre?) effect.

This is a lovely little margarita — not too boozy, with just enough tequila to remind you that in your own way, you are formidable — the cabrona of school drop-off, the machote of your fantasy football league. The blood orange is sweet, but “sweet” in the way a teenage boy would say it, while watching something explode.

Featured photo: Blood Orange Margarita. Photo by John Fladd.

Chili, chowder, local help

Saint Peter’s holds its annual fundraising cook-off

Lee O’Connor is the chairman of the Chili and Chowder Cook-Off for Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Londonderry, which will take place this Saturday, March 21. O’Connor said the Cook-Off has become one of the most important events of the year for St. Peter’s.

“This is an event we’ve been having for nine years,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for people to cook chili and chowder with a chance of winning prizes and a chance to support important local programs. This year we’re supporting the Liberty House in Manchester, which helps local vets get their lives back together. [The Cook-Off] has become a big community event. We have a lot of people walk in just to have some chili and chowder and support a local cause. We probably have 100 people there and a lot of people just walk in just to support the event.”

The competition is open to anyone who wants to participate, O’Connor said. “Anybody can cook. We typically have 25 to 30 entries of either chili or chowder. People can either email our church or contact me, or in worst case, just walk in with their entry. There’s a $10 entry fee to submit a recipe, but with the opportunity to win several prizes. We’re excited to invite everybody to cook and to eat.”

While cooks are welcome at the cook-off, O’Conner said, anyone with an appetite is encouraged to come taste the entries and decide for themselves what the rankings should be. “To dine is here is the best bargain in town,” he said. “It costs $15 for all the chili and chowder you can eat.”

O’Connor said the ratio of chili to chowder varies from year to year, but there are usually more chili entrants than chowders.

“We’re encouraging folks to consider making their favorite chowder recipe,” he said, “but we’ve probably got close to 20 chili entries right now, and I think seven or eight chowders. So our judges are going to be busy.”

He said planning a strategy to appeal to the judges can be tricky.

“The judges have a judging sheet,” he said, “but these are not professional judges, so it largely comes down to their own personal taste. But the judging sheet helps them determine how much heat is in each chili. They look for meat or vegetarian flavors. Surprisingly, we have a lot of vegetarian entries that sometimes win. The winning chilis should have a distinct taste and some level of heat could be determined by the judges.” That level of heat can be pretty intense, he said. “There’s typically a couple of hot chilis that I like a lot — some five-alarm chilis.”

On the chowder side, O’Connor said, entries span the chowder spectrum.

“Clam chowder is a classic,” he said, “and so is corn, but sometimes we get … Manhattan clam chowder…. There’s some entries that border on soups that have an Italian flair; there’s some pasta in them sometimes. This is New England, so there’s seafood chowder, clam chowder, fish chowder, and corn chowder is a big one. So that’s what my wife makes.”

The secret to a winning chili or chowder, O’Connor said, will be big chunks of fresh ingredients. “I think that with chili,” he said, “having a quality meat and quality preparation is key to this. I think typically people who put time and effort into preparing meat tend to do better here.”

And it doesn’t hurt to look good.

“Contestants have to bring chili in a crock pot already heated,” he said. “And if it looks good in the pot and maybe has some condiments that you bring with it, those tend to catch the judge’s eye as well. Presentation is important.”

Ninth Annual Chili Chowder Cookoff
When: Saturday, March 21
Where: Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church, 3 Peabody Row, Londonderry, 437-8333, stpeterslondonderry.org
Cooks can register by signing up at church or emailing the church at church@stpeterslondonderry.org. There is a $10 entry fee. There is also a kids’ dessert competition, which is free to enter. Tasting tickets cost $15, $7 for ages 10 and under, according to the church’s Facebook page. The event will also include piñatas for kids and raffles, the post said.

Featured photo: Last year’s judges. Courtesy photo.

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