The PUB gives a Venue - and a Voice back to Amherst Music Scene

The first Sunday in October was overcast with the type of constant drizzle that outlasts the stamina of most folks and by nightfall a serious damp had crept into the atmosphere, turning the prematurely fallen leaves into mounds of asthma-inducing clutter. The Patriots had sustained their first loss of the season and many folks had already retired to the warmth of their dens, couches and favorite chairs to escape into Sunday Night football. But a steady flow of patron’s into downtown Amherst’s longtime mainstay latenight bar, The Pub, didn’t seem to notice the foul weather or foul mood of New Englanders across the area.

Fans check out Outer Stylie

            If it was a bad night for live music, someone forget to tell Nate Martel, a local axe-shredder and live music promoter known for his psychedelic wall of guitar noise. Martel was leading the band on stage as well as the hopes of the audience, and his efforts were not going without reward. Having wrapped on a longtime stint as the leader of a Sunday night open mic at Sunderland’s “Snowzee’s”, Nate and compatriot bass player Tom Shack had scoured the area for a new venue to bring their inherited Sunday night crew. Just another in a long line of casualties in the war on live music in the Pioneer Valley, the ownership at Snowzees had recently changed hands. With the changing of the guard, the lights went down on Martel’s long-standing showcase.

            But AJ Jolley, owner and general manager of The Pub, had recently parlayed with Martel and Shack and with the mutual goal of providing the local music scene with a positive and regular outlet, they agreed to revive the Sunday Night affair on a long-term basis in a new location.

            “There’s just nowhere to play in Amherst,” AJ opined as the band was running through its first jam of the evening.

            “I just want to show people that live music can work in Amherst, and we think we have the right place to get it off the ground.”

            He isn’t wrong. On either account. Amherst-based musicians have struggled for many years to implement a thriving showcase in any number of local would-be venues. But often town bylaws calling for low decibels after certain hours, along with other declarations of minutia from Town Hall and the Zoning Board have made it extremely difficult for venues to keep a consistent schedule of live local music. The difficulties plaguing Amherst’s local music scene have been well documented. In the 2000’s, Amherst Brewing Company carried a live music calendar for some time but eventually even ABC was forced to pull the plug as dwindling attendance and constant heckling from town administration made it hard to afford and more trouble than it was worth.

           

            Nate Martel and Tom Shack’s lineup tonight is a stripped down version of their psychedelic blues and hard driven, up tempo rock outfit Outer Stylie. And at this point, they’ve both become a constant presence in the local music scene. Finding a place to perform on a consistent basis is a blessing and one they hope will start to spotlight once and for all the power of live music in the Amherst area.

            As more local music fans began to pile onto the Pub’s central dancefloor, the band responded by bringing more musicians to the stage. First Tuba player Jay Witbeck and Guitar aficionado Dan Thomas of Primate Fiasco and then elusive saxophone player Bob Moriarty joined the group. Upon taking a break, Martel announced Wildcat O’Halloran would be sitting in with his band’s next set. It became quickly evident that fans have been clamoring for a local spot to showcase the music scene. And by all appearances, the Pub will be filling this void nicely.

Local Music Fans show their support

            The battle for local artists not only to find venues but all manner of distribution outlets for their sounds and scene has been a struggle for several decades now. The five college area, seemingly so conducive to the idea of live music venues, has been plagued by false starts and predictable failures over the past 20 years. In 2012 a proposed music venue in the Hampshire Mall was dead on arrival. Hadley, well known to be more accommodating to new business ventures, seemed ready to take on the addition and Hampshire Mall officials were on board as well, but an 11^th hour loss of funding caused the management group to crumble and effort faded. The Quarters, another Hadley-based venture has appeared to be on the verge of opening a vintage video arcade/ bar and grill which has long promised live music to a be a large part of their vision, but their Facebook page has published a number of pushed back opening dates and the doors remain locked. The result is that talented musicians have been forced to take their show on the road, causing Amherst and the surrounding towns to lose out on the economic stimulus, tax revenue and third party vendor sales associated with the operation of a fully functioning rock club.

            For now, with bands like Outer Stylie and the highbrow funk and R&B sounds of  Full Spectrum Dominance, a group that features Darby Wolf of the successful nationally touring dance-rock troupe Rubblebucket and Ryan Hommel of the Grammy-Winning Seth Glier Band, The Pub is poised to be the shield for the local music scene whose heritage continues to be undervalued by those unwilling to take a closer look- or listen. And for the musicians in the area, it’s a welcome port in the ongoing storm.

             

Its been over a year...Walking Dead starts tomorrow..and I've got plenty of work to do!

Well it has def been a while since I felt like posting but you know what? I’ve got plenty to say and there are plenty of interesting things going on right now. So where’ve I been since April 2012? Hmm… Right now I’m working for a startup. My title is Social Media Director but as we have yet to launch our website (but should be doing so in the next two weeks) the job description includes a lot more than that. Its very, very cool to be part of something literally from the ground floor. Around this time last year I was still hopeful that a different project, opening a Music Venue in Hadley, MA, was going to get off the ground and be successful. That particular project was dead on arrival and truthfully, I knew that going into it. But I wanted to bring my knowledge to the table with the people who were trying to make that happen, and it’s a goal that I’ve long had in the back of my head anyways. Still hope to one day get a venue up and running in the Pioneer Valley that can go head to head with the Iron Horse Entertainment Group.

But working on IDYL Music (pronounced “Ideal”) has been a much different journey. The platform itself is nothing too original. It’s a music distribution platform and ours will be peer to peer. The difference between this and iTunes or even Spotify is that with IDYL, the users get a percentage of the profits when distributing songs. The goal is to encourage sharing rather than try to stifle it. There is a kind of moral imperative operating at the core of the program: We want to see artists get a fair wage for selling their intellectual property, and the concept of eliminating the middle man and making the users and fans into a direct sharing network who are then paid to help promote emerging artists speaks for itself. Its cool because it turns your music library into an investment portfolio. I can forsee a platform where power users try and scope out the best new bands and buy songs early on, gambling on a particular song’s popularity and turning that into an opportunity to make money. Plus the whole concept sort of steers users away from piracy because yeah, you can download music for free. Everyone does it (the latest facts I’ve heard are that only 1 out of 20 songs shared on the internet are paid for, even in the current iTunes era) but if you buy the rights to share a song with IDYL, there is literally a potential to make up to 100 bucks if a song reaches its full viral potential. The founder of the company, Jay Stevens, wrote some interesting books a few years back. One is called Storming Heaven, its about the advent of LSD and its impact on our culture. Another is called Drumming on the Edge of Magic and it was co-written with Mickey Hart, one of the original drummers of the Grateful Dead. He’s got a certain gravitas about him and I can tell, having worked closely with him for a few months now, that he is a Believer. I’ve always strived to work in environments like this: I stay away from big corporate gigs and try to work for people who started from scratch so that hopefully if I learn enough one day, I’ll be able to start something from scratch. In a lot of ways, I’m doing it right now. Anyways, Jay refers to IDYL as the first system of “monetizing virality” and that’s a good way to look at it. Hopefully, by the end of the year, we’ll have a lot of people talking about IDYL and putting some energy (and hopefully money) into out crowd funding campaign to get this project off the ground. Apart from that, I can never get away from the restaurant industry but I’m lucky to be back working for a company I’ve always liked, Amherst Brewing Company. I spent the first 6 months of the year working there as the banquet captain but also starting up a distribution arm. At this point, we’ve got distribution running so well that we were approached by a company called Williams Distribution to handle the sales and transport. It got big fast because it’s a good product. And ABC is independent, so that works for me too. But in reality, my energy and my hopes right now are behind IDYL and trying to make this platform a reality. I’ll keep you posted here and when the time comes, if you like what you hear, I encourage you to throw a couple bucks at the thing and see if we can’t build a really cool system that not only helps artists get paid, it’ll help YOU get paid. Can’t beat that. That’s all for the main page… As usual I’ve got science fiction really on my brain so I gotta put some thoughts down about William Gibson, Cyberpunk as a genre and the life and style that imitates that art, and also the concept of the “Neural Handshake” talked about in the Giant Robot vs Giant Monster movie “Pacific Rim”… So I’m gonna go write some other stuff and put it in the side bars. This is where you will find IDYL MUSIC. Right now its just a coming soon site but if you're game you can input your email address and be updated as soon as the site goes live.

OK..FEBRUARY IS ALMOST DONE... LETS GET SOME MUSIC REVIEWS IN

F Me…. I really wanted to make sure I posted something of significance, grammatical competence and mental stimulus every week when I started this blog. Turns out yeah, I admit, it is actually a bit of work to maintain. And pumping out any more than a few paragraphs worth reading? Turns out that can get tedious as well. So I decided I wont try to brain-bomb anyone and I’m not gonna put posts up just to say I put ‘em  up. But I’m gonna try to work as the beat writer and editor of my own brain, that said, this week’s live show review is little late and ended a bit more rushed and scattered than I meant for it to sound. I had high hopes of an epic piece edifying the New Deal and decrying the sorry state of live music from a regional and national touring act standpoint. You’ll just have to take my word for it and assume as I write more about the music I love the voice of my inner journalist will become more and more clear… without further adue

The New Deal Keep it Deep and Live – Pearl St. February 5^th

the New Deal Footwear..Uggs and AF1's..dancin' shoes?

The night of February 5^th was a dark and stormy one. January 2011 was a record-setting month for snowfall in the northeast, and the beginning of February wasn’t proving to be any prettier, although now we had moved to such treachery as ice-rain. Storm drains all across the valley were backing up making even car travel difficult in low-lying areas. I had it in my mind to take this Saturday and make sure I got a chance to see some good live music, but nature and “real jobs” had been conspiring against me for days; I was exhausted after hours of corporate restaurant gruel and the locals who weren’t working didn’t have the stomach to brave the outdoor elements. I had almost resigned myself to the couch with the dog. Luckily for myself a few souls wanted to press their luck and drag me along with them. The phone call came in and it featured a free ticket to Pearl St. to see the New Deal. I couldn’t very well pass up such an opportunity.

            An extra 15 minutes of creep-driving later had me established in the Strong Ave. parking lot and waiting to meet Brendan of IHEG fame at the door to Pearl St. It became immediately clear that we were walking into a hot zone, as an overly intoxicated (and likely underage) patron was being escorted none-too-politely from the premises as we opened the door. This would prove to be the only unpleasant part of the evening as we were to be treated to one of the New Deal’s traditional throwdowns.

Mike Hannigan and Andrea Scobi get down to the sound..

            Before getting too far into describing the nights festivities I need to provide some back story. I’ve been watching the New Deal make their rounds in the North East during the winter months and across the festival circuit during the summer for a solid 8 years. What amazes me about the trio is their ability to come so hard so consistently. I would be hard pressed to recall a performance of theirs that wasn’t a standout excellent show, to say nothing of an unimpressive performance, and more often than not their sets are the most memorable of any given evening or event. During the course of their decade-long tenure, the fully-live and mostly analog electronic-style group has managed to stay under the national radar while remaining at the top of the class of “techno bands” that have sprung up in the wake of groups like the Disco Biscuits (who personally leave a dirty taste in my mouth as pretenders to some sort of crown left in what is generally the vaccum of Phish’s absence.)

            For the uninitiated it is difficult to explain in a way that conveys something as truly excellent as the New Deal’s live performance really is. Suffice to say this. The trio kept Pearl St.’s 650-plus  (very nearly capacity) rocking from jump. There were two extra length sets from the high-powered performers and they even came back for an encore. As previously stated I’ve seen these guys perform already in many venues under different circumstances and to be honest Northampton, MA just isn’t their biggest stage. But they treat the crowd properly and play every song like it just might be their last, taking a full-on dancehall audience from the top of 5^th gear to deeper more introspective house moments but never letting the bet falter and never seeming to forget where they came from.

            I spent the second set observing with a friend of mine whom’s musical tastes run a diverse gamut and who’s girlfriend is no stranger to the Biscuit scene and the dance-band circuit in general. I knew my friend to be open to exploring new genres of music but the New Deal seemed a bit outside of his relatively deep box. After a few songs I could tell that he was an eager new fan, digesting each new hit and tempo change as I watched and bobbed my own head. His quote, which for the layman really could sum up the night: “I’m definitely a fan.”

            Sidenote: I’m too old for festy-games, glowsticks, crystals and the like. Said friend’s date and her crew of rabble-rousers were all for the traditional wardrobe modifications and dancing accessories. Just not my thing. I was amused, however, when a cute young dancing mistress likely from UMass campus 8 or 9 miles away approached me and handed me a note. I was a bit taken aback immediately since I hadn’t been handed a note in this fashion since around 8^th grade. When I opened the paper the hand-scrawl, in red pencil, read,” Keep it Going…”

Andrea Scobi and PNC...

            I complied and continued to get lost in auditory hallucinogen of the Jamie Shield’s weirdly animalistic and alive-sounding manipulations of the Moog Prodigy… This is music I can get behind and on a winter night in February when rain, sleet, flooding and darkness threaten to engulf existence it is a good feeling knowing that somewhere out there in the darkness the New Deal are getting people warm and hopefully helping them to pump their fists in unison and dance just a little bit longer.

    the New Deal (lower case "the" intentional) do not tour continuously. Hailing from Toronto they have a tendency to string 6-8 dates together 4 or 5 times a year the have a northeast-centric route map. If you are in Boston or New York you can usually catch them and they often mix in places like Providence, Burlington, Hartford and Philadelphia for these runs. In the summer months they stay busy as previously stated, occupying space on the festival circuits. I think it is somewhat extraordinary that they have maintained such an exact science and placement within the touring act hieracrchy for such a long period of time....never quite hitting that benchmark that forces them into 5,000 seat rooms but having no problems hitting a place like Pearl St. in Northampton 4 or 5 times a year and selling 600 plus tickets each time. Bands of that caliber with such a  strong stage presence and seemingly unlimited desire and ability to keep the energy of the crowd up (not to mention their own) night after night are few and far between in this day and age. Whether you dip your toes in the "jam band" end of the pool (dirty words in some circles, I know) or subscribe to a more beat-oriented philosophy I highly recommend checking out the New Deal the next time they stop through your hood. It will instantly become the story of the "last time you had this much fun" likely holding you down until you inevitably check them out again...

Next up reports on Alan Evans, Alecia Chakour, Darby Wolf and how that nonsense all ties together...

-Bob

crumby DROID photos are 5 megapixel but I was having difficulties with the flash... I actually think for the scenario they could be worse. I really just wanted to make sure I included the Keep it Going shot, but what the heck..