Miller, Bonfield and the sounds of the season

Kristen Miller and Ken Bonfield perform 'Soulful Strings' Dec. 4.

Kristen Miller is a cellist who has been turning the instrument on its head for years, mixing hypnotic African rhythms and Eastern melodies with rock attitude, vocabulary and gear. Ken Bonfield is a Gloucester-based multi-instrumentalist who has developed a style that's difficult to pin down, combining elements of folk, Celtic, classical and blues for acoustic guitar to create a mash he calls, for better or worse, fojazzical. They've both got Christmas albums out: Bonfield’s subdued, introspective “WinterNight,” coming out more than a decade ago, and Miller’s 2010 “Winter Loves Company,” a collaboration with sound guru Tom Eaton, a sweet mix of cello and piano with a Windham Hill sensibility. Both include fresh arrangements of traditional carols as well as original seasonal compositions. They'll be playing a holiday show together next week, but, given their idosyncatic musical histories, it is unlikely that their “Soulful Strings,” show at the First Religious Society Unitarian Universalist  Church in Newburyport next week will be your traditional rum-pa-pa-pum kind of show, but it’s gonna be nice.

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Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover

They say you can't just a book by its cover. Which is bunk. Just ask Joel Brown. Last year, right about this time, the Boston Globe scribbler and Port novelist was in Carriagetown, trying to score some of that fancy, super-nutritious and undoubtedly horribly expensive food for his dog Buffy. All his Port connections had gone dry. That's when he spied Bertram & Oliver, a book store that had just opened a couple of months before. Brown had just self-published "Mirror Ball Man," a  mystery set in a little seaside community very much like Newburyport and had a couple of copies with him, and when you self-publish, you also self-promote and you develop a thick skin. You learn that cold-calling bookstores is no worse than, well, stopping strangers on the street and asking them what it's like living in a city that's being overrun by bloodthirsty zombies, activated by a mysterious cell phone signal, like in "Cell," a Stephen King book based in real-life Malden — a fun, goofy assignment for the Globe that is responsible, in a way, for Brown's being able to come to terms with his secret desire: Writing fiction. So he swallowed hard and took the plunge, pitching to B&O owner Joanne Wimberly. She cooly assessed the cover, a picture of the Plum Island Lighthouse with a disco mirror ball shining from inside, and bottom-lined it: "Right cover, right price. I'll take six."

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A proper peek at Pullins' Pico

Ian Thal playing the Sprite in a recent production of 'Pico.'
Photo courtesy Daniel Bourque.

Complicated world we live in. Most people aren't really happy until they get the whole story, but, in this sad era of diminished expectations, we're happy enough, or we'll settle for, a piece of the action. Because something's better than nothing, right? Because you can't always go whole hog. Which is what Ralph, the philosophy-reading, pig-in-a-blanket-on-a-stick-selling hero of "Plato on the Corn Dog" wants to do when he gets caught up in the say-anything-to-sell madness of a slick infomercial king in the new (sort-of) theater short from Port playwright Ron Pullins. And what is really interesting here is that this play, which the playwright is offering up, for free, to anyone who wants to participate artistically and vicariously in Occupy Whatever movement, and "Pico," which was just published by Steel Toe Review, were pulled, whole hog, from larger works — the former from "The Dollartorium," the playwright's funny take on the ugly side of the American dream and what it takes to sell it, and the latter from "Woman. Bicycle."

Pullins, who owns Focus Publishing, the Port publishing house specializing in classical Greek and Roman drama as well as deadly dry academic textbooks, describes "Pico" as "commedia dell’arte and a miracle play in a form Pinter might have imagined." Not bad. Guy ought to be a writer or something. But we see it more like Godot meets Kafka's K in a low-rent bar just down the hill from the Castle, called upon to perform a play no one in Moss's remembers, despite the fact that the little sprite, like Kafka's surveyor, is certain he is in the right place at the right time and ready to do the job they wanted him to do — even if no one else remembers engaging him.

It started out as a scene for "Woman. Bicycle,”a complicated play to summarize if you want to go beyond the playwright's dismissive "someone comes, something happens." Could be two strangers, a guy and a girl, collide while riding bicycles. Could be they’re out riding together and grabbed by a couple of rightish thugs who hassle them because they’re obviously of the wrong political persuasion. Lot of that going on these days. Or could be a guy trying to write a story and a woman who just wants to get him between the sheets. "Plato on the Corn Dog" drops its old-school 'tude, riffing on "The Cloud," Aristophanes’ spectacular hatchet job on the looking-very-familiar Greek intelligentsia at a time, like ours, when sophistry, not philosophy, ruled, taking aim at the insanity of our consumer, marketing and financial um ... culture?

The best thing about all this, at least for lazy theater-goers like me, is that you get to experience the stage without ever leaving the comfort of your computer. You can read "Pico" here and you can check in on the American dream with "Plato on the Corn Dog" here. Now, if only someone, somewhere, could do something so I wouldn't have to get off the couch to experience theater ...



 

Project comes home for the Holadays

Joe Holaday may well be, and, for the record, these are his own words, "a boring rock star." He's a house-husband and dad who eats (and likes) oatmeal, plays basketball three days a week in an old folks lunchtime league at Latitudes  (“My jump shot hasn't left me,” says the 54-year-old Port musician) and actually shows up on time, sometimes a little bit early, for interviews — even in the morning. But, romantic ideas about the lives of rockers aside, he really is a very busy boring rock star. The bassist, probably best known for his long-running gig with The Fools, is back in town after a recording date with Fran Cosmo, the "other" singer from the band Boston, sharing session credits with keyboardist Steve Baler, Holaday's bandmate from Beatlejuice, the Fab Four tribute band that had been fronted by original Boston vocalist Brad Delp until his death four years ago, and that has soldiered on in the wake of his suicide — and in Velvet Elvis, another tribute band, this one giving props to pre-Vegas Elvis and other golden age of rock pioneers: two bands that, to make things even more complicated, include, among other people, Mike Girard and Rich Bartlett from The Fools. And, come to think of it, Holaday's sons, Jared and PJ. They have been known to take the stage with Beatlejuice, which is one of the reasons that a couple of their "goofy uncles," which is how Holaday Senior describes the relationship between his sons and the boys in the band(s), perform  in the Holaday Project, the family band that makes its formal debut at the Firehouse this week. And, yeah, we're talking about the mayor's hubby and kiddos.

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Joel Brown back with new Libertyport mystery

In downtown Libertyport the other day. You know, that achingly familiar, desperately quaint and picturesque and oh-so-hip New England seaside community? Ran into Joel Brown, the Boston Globe scribbler sidelining, these days, as a crime novelist. He was hanging in Foley’s, the iconic newsstand/coffee shop with the red and green neon sign and the old-time soda fountain, the funky rival the evil corporate bean-roasters just a couple doors down the street. Near, um, the Thirsty Lobster, that "defiant anomaly among the art galleries and boutiques?" Just across the street from the gently curving red-brick blocks of Dock Square, a mixed-use landscape of stores and restaurants on the ground floor and offices or apartments above, with awnings, signs and flower boxes adding color and variety, a public space that “just worked in a way that was hard to explain, like Fenway Park,” as the Port resident writes in "Mermaid Blues," his latest Libertyport mystery. But it doesn't work that well for Joey Durst, the hard-partying, not-so-hard-working son of a local fisherman, who turns up sleeping with the fishes in one of those surprisingly seedy walk-ups above the Whale — I mean, the Lobster.

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Big news Brewing for Amesbury rockers

Wow, they've been sitting on this for months now, not saying a word, despite endless badgering from reporter-types, and unauthorized posters offering more than they could deliver, but they promised it would be the most ambitious project they've ever been involved in, but something they just couldn't talk about, even though you could tell they were dying to spill it — and it turns out that they were telling the truth: Next month, the Brew will release "A Garden in the Snow," the first title of a three-disc, 30-plus song collection called  "Triptych. The other two albums — "Light From Below" and "Hard Enough To Break" — will officially drop in December.  The albums will be released in separate shows in three venues in two states.  Word is that "Triptych" is composed of three interlocking sets of songs that compress the many influences and experiences of the Amesbury-based quartet, which has been gigging and writing together since forming nearly a decade ago in Amesbury. "A Garden in the Snow" is an impressionistic, indie-rock album that explores the possibilities of song craft without restrictions.   "Light From Below"  is the heavier-hitting release of the project, reflecting the band's commitment to live, improvisational rock — and includes a blistering cover of  Led  Zeppelin's "Going to California," paying homage to Zep while making the song their own.  "Hard Enough to Break," the third album, showcases the band's  obsession with the golden age of FM radio, paying tribute to the pop form with tight arrangements that pay tribute to pop form, while maintaining the band’s passion for going all in. All of "Triptych" features The Brew’s notable use of three- and four-part vocal harmonies, situational lyrics and fat-ass hooks. The albums will be released on the band’s Riverwood Records label. All three albums are available on the band's web, as is a detailed tour schedule, but here's are the bare-knuckle facts, down and dirty: "A Garden in the Snow" comes out Nov. 4  at The Brighton Music Hall, which, despite its name, is in Allston. "Light From Below" will be released on Dec. 9th at Port City Music Hall in Portland, Maine. "Hard Enough to Break" will have a local release on Dec. 17, when the band turns up at the at the Blue Ocean Music Hall in Salisbury.

The storied career of AJ Mungo

You can call him AJ, you can call him Andrew ...

Call him AJ. Not a lot of people do these days, at least not in our little city where he a local celebrity — famous, you could say — where everybody knows him by his given name. The nickname goes back, way back, to the days  when he was a young punk and promising juvenile delinquent growing up on the wrong side of the river, back to his father, who people also called AJ, although the initials meant something else.  The father was Andrew Joseph, the son was  Andrew John. That became an issue at his christening, when the parish priest insisted that, to avoid a lifetime of confusion Andrew John have "Jr." tacked on to his name, which is why the name on the box of "Thanks for Listening, a Memoir" says, "a film by AJ Mungo and" — talk about a name — "Amie Spiridigliozzi-Keefe" instead of "Andrew J. Mungo Jr." It's also one of the stories Mungo tells in the film, which gets a proper big screen premiere this week at the Screening Room, the city's hip, alternative cinema, which he owns, and which, after three decades in fashionable, trendy Blueberry Port, has propelled him to superstar status or, at least, relative fame, but only within the city limits. He still has to pay cash in Strawberry Port, and in Raspberry Port he has to show a photo ID. The movie, the film-maker and -shower says, tongue squarely in cheek, is his bid to bust the fame game open — beyond the Merrimack, even. And, at the same time, goose his rep here, in the most delicious of the Ports, because fame can be fleeting, and while most folks may know who he is, this guy behind the camera, or the popcorn machine, or, depending on the day, the ticket booth, what do we actually know about him? And, while we're talking about him, what's the deal with his freakishly large head? 

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Boston Horns blow into town for concert

Garret Savluk

It's hard to imagine the Boston Horns playing a sit-down concert. The seven-piece band has been burning up stages with high-energy, hard-grooving funk and soul for more than a decade and has developed a reputation for, well, burning down the house, for getting folks off their seats and onto the dance floor or into the aisles. And that's exactly what they're planning on doing next week, when the band pulls into the Port for their first local gig in years.  "You'd better tie the roof down," says Horns frontman Garret Savluk. "We're going to mix it up, we're going to do our thing, we're going to blow this place up." But, as hard as it is to imagine people sitting in their seats, politely clapping like it's the US Open, while the Horns tear it up onstage, it's even more difficult to imagine Savluk up there doing it without saxophonist Henley Douglas at his side. They've been playing together for better than two decades, from the early days with The Blues Meanies, which had them backing the Del Fuegos, among others, to the years as the conceptually outrageous Heavy Metal Horns, which put them on the road with then-chart-toppers Extreme, to their work over the past ten years as the Boston Horns, opening for monster funk acts like the Tower of Power and bringing the band, and its powerhouse sound, to a headlining tour in Japan. But that's where the Horns are these days. They're still together, but the Douglas-Savluk partnership is done. 

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Powell play adopts new look

Things aren't the way they should be and they're not what they seem in "The Way Life Should Be," the "new" Leslie Powell play that has been kicking around stages, on the east coast, in the southwest, in one form or another for about seven years and, recently opened the fourth season of North Shore Readers Theater Collaborative, a Port play development series, in a dramatically stripped down form that came after a major rewrite just days before the latest opening. Something the actors must have been really happy about. Hey, everyone loves last-minute rewrites, right? It’s a story with a very long history — like the play itself. It's about a much-delayed, much- anticipated reunion, a get-together Elaine has played out in her head thousands of times over the years. She has not seen Grady since he was a little boy  — 19 inches to be exact — when she gave him up for adoption. He’s 27 years old now. She knows it was the "right" thing to do, but that decision has cast a shadow over the rest of her life, which has been shrouded in doubt and guilt for as long as she can remember, although the emotional ramifications have mostly simmered below the surface. He is the "ghost baby," who has been haunting her all his life. Wherever that played out. She has waited for the call for years, not expecting to get it, because in her heart she feels guilty, she feels like she is being — and maybe should be — punished because, after all, what kind of monster would willingly give away her child? No, no. Nobody ever said it. To her face. But she has felt the scorn of icy imagined stares through most of her adult life. No amount of comfort, reassurance from Jess, her lovie-dovie, long-time live-in will change that. Okey-dokey? 

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Once upon a time, Greg Moss wrote a play

Aisha Chodat plays Jenny in the new Greg Moss play. Photo by Lydia See.

It's not like anyone hoodwinked him, he was not dragged, kicking and screaming, into the project. He went along willingly, however cautiously, saying he would kick the idea around a little, to keep an open mind, just see what happens, but with a boatload of doubt, because Gregory S. Moss, a homegrown, but lately a globetrotting playwright, just back from a French premiere of his play "House of Gold," is a little distrustful of the form — "skeptical" is how he puts it — even though some of his work is built along similar structures. So when Edward Speck, artistic director of Theater in the Open, a company Moss had been involved with for more than 15 years, approached him, asked him to do an original adaptation of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale — any one, his choice — Moss thought ... I'm probably not the right guy to do a straight adaptation, but maybe I could take a different approach. So he dug into the literature, the folklore of fairy tales. He read the usual Freudian takes about what is going on below the surface of these creepy, disturbing, if you think about it, stories — or, at least, the ones that the evil genius Walt Disney hasn't gotten his dreck-stained fingers all over, and came up with something original, spellbinding — a modern Grimm-like fairytale set in the here and now, specifically Newburyport, or "this Puritan black hole of the universe" as our 15-year-old heroine Jenny Stone (Aisha Chodat) puts it — a little city by the laughing waters that geeky Froggy (Max Vye) — a characters whose name might ring a bell with all you clever kids out there — was told to avoid at all costs.

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