Tom Rush
Hayley Reardon
Singer-Songwriter and folk icon Tom Rush will return to Symphony Hall with the next of his series of Club 47® concerts on Saturday, Dec 28th at 8:00pm. As is traditional with these shows, Tom will bring together different generations of musicians to share the music. This Holiday Season show will feature the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, with Bill Keith, Geoff Muldaur and Maria Muldaur; Massachusetts favorite Patty Larkin; and (relative) newcomers Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion.
In 1981 Tom Rush assembled the first of a series of concerts named for the fabled Cambridge coffee house where many of the legendary artists of his generation got their start. His Club 47 shows played at venues across the country, including New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Last year, Tom renewed the tradition with a sold-out show at Symphony Hall marking his 50th year on stage.
“These shows are fantastic musical events,” said Tom Rush. “Having a mix of fabulous performers from different generations, sharing the stage, collaborating , exploring each other’s music — it’s a recipe for magic. ‘Honoring the past, celebrating the future,” is the Club 47 slogan, and we try to live up to it.”
The Jim Kweskin Jug Band got their start at the Club 47 in Cambridge and were the original “Americana” band, playing everything from classic blues to hillbilly country, ragtime, jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll. Their imitators were legion, including a San Francisco jug band that became the Grateful Dead and a New York jug band that became the Lovin’ Spoonful, but their loose, exuberant style was uniquely theirs.
“Boston was the home of our Jug band, and our first gig as the Jim Kweskin Jug Band was at Club 47,” Kweskin remembered. “It is fitting that the last performance of our 50th anniversary be performed in Boston. We thank Tom Rush (who started in Boston about the same time we did) for inviting us to join him at Symphony Hall.”
The individual members of the original Jug Band also have made indelible marks on American music. Maria Muldaur is perhaps best known for her 1974 mega-hit Midnight at the Oasis, but her career can best be described as a long, adventurous odyssey through American roots music, including 40 solo albums and multiple Grammy nominations. Geoff Muldaur is one of the great voices and musical forces to emerge from the Cambridge scene. He composes scores for film and television, and his definitive recording of Brazil provided the seed for – and was featured in – Terry Gilliam’s film of the same title. Bill Keith introduced his own melodic approach to the banjo, now called the “Keith-style,” and as member of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys and later collaborations, revolutionized the way the banjo is played.
Patty Larkin redefines the boundaries of urban-folk music with her inventive guitar wizardry and uncompromising vocals and lyrics. She has been described as “riveting” (Chicago Tribune), “hypnotic” (Entertainment Weekly) and “drop dead brilliant” (Performing Songwriter). Patty has called Boston home since her studies at Berklee College of Music where she holds an Honorary Doctorate of Music and is currently an Artist in Residence. Patty and Tom’s friendship was kindled nearly 28 years ago when she was on his Maple Hill Artists’ booking roster, and occupied the “Newcomer” slot at several of Tom’s Symphony Hall Club 47 shows.
“Tom Rush has an iconic connection to the singer songwriter movement of which I am a part. His performances continue to be fresh, full of humor and heart, Larkin said. “I’m pleased to be returning to the Symphony Hall stage to join Tom and his esteemed musical guests.” Her 13th album, Still Green, has just been released.
Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion embody the spirit of the Club 47 tradition. Guthrie— the daughter of Arlo and the granddaughter of Woody— grew up in a musical family rich in the American folk tradition. She and her husband Johnny Irion have been playing together as a musical duo for over thirteen years. They just released their fourth album, Wassaic Way, produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Pat Sansone.
“It’s the kind of night I love,” Tom Rush concludes. “To be on stage with some of my favorite players and favorite people, mixing it up, having fun … it doesn’t get much better than that!”
AfterFab is America’s only tribute to the solo years of all four Beatles – and their unique concept has fans buzzing. The genius of The Beatles didn’t stop with “Abbey Road,” and AfterFab brings the brilliant solo careers of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr to life with high energy and high fidelity to the original recordings. Over 70 hit singles and numerous iconic tracks compose one of the best-loved classic-rock canons ever, from “Band on the Run” and “It Don’t Come Easy” to “Imagine,” “What Is Life” and dozens more.
AfterFab has attracted praise from noted Beatles experts and authors such as Robert Rodriguez and Ricardo Pugialli. “They did the solo stuff and *rocked* it!” declared promoter Charles Rosenay following AfterFab’s 2014 performance at his Danbury Fields Forever Fab Four Music Festival. Beatles radio show host Ken Michaels remarked, “Passion. You could see it in their faces. They’ve really studied the music. And the lead singer, he was outrageous!”
What can you expect from an AfterFab show? A high-energy, passionate tribute to the mega-classic canon of The Beatles’ solo years, the only one in America, played with high fidelity to the original studio recordings. Beatles fans are absolutely everywhere and this unique concept and focus draws them in droves. It’s something new and different for Beatles and classic-rock fans, and general audiences, thanks to 70 US Top-40 hits and 325 million records collectively sold by John, Paul, George, and Ringo, post-Beatles. The genius didn’t stop with Abbey Road. This is the classic Beatles music that fans have been missing.
AfterFab is a formidable six-member powerhouse of long-experienced Beatles-expert musicians with a dynamic, entertaining front man and a talent for getting the music right. Not impersonators, but a music-first tribute along the lines of Brit Floyd, Get The Led Out, or The Fab Faux. Based in New England, the band began in 2012, designed from the start as a concert attraction for top music clubs, performing-arts spaces, theatres, and venues that desire to present something special for guests. Misson-driven to convey the brilliance of the solo Beatles’ legacy, AfterFab adds extra dimensions of entertainment with back-stories of the songs, fascinating trivia, and video of images of solo Beatles LPs, singles, adverts, and quotations.
Denny Laine celebrates the 40th anniversary of the “Wings Over America” tour with a live on stage performance of their greatest album, “Band on the Run”—complete and unabridged! Within a year of its release, “Band On the Run” had sold over six-million copies worldwide, having spawned three U.S. Top Ten hits-”Helen Wheels”, “Jet”, and the title track. The singles alone occupied the U.S. chart for forty-five (45) weeks, while the album stayed on the charts for over two (2) years. “Band On The Run” was in the Top-30 of the Billboard 200 as recently as 2010, when a remastered version of the album was released.
This special evening celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Wings Over America tour. The sold out U.S. leg of the “Wings Over the World” tour helped carry the’ “Silly Love Songs” single and “Wings at the Speed of Sound” album to number one on their respective charts. From the tour came the film “Rock Show” and the number one triple album set “Wings over America”.
By far the most successful album involving any of the Beatles following their breakup, “Band on the Run” was created by Paul McCartney, Denny Laine and Linda McCartney. The other members of Wings quit the group just prior to the departure to Lagos, Nigeria to begin sessions for the album, but out of adversity came advantage. With Paul McCartney on vocals, piano, drums, guitar, bass, and keys, and Denny Laine contributing vocals, keys, acoustic, electric and bass guitars, and Linda McCartney on keys and vocals, Band On the Run transcended the era to become an album whose deep cuts such as “Let Me Roll It”, “Picasso’s Last Words”, and “Mrs. Vanderbilt” and “Bluebird” are better remembered-and played more often on classic rock radio-than most hits of the era.
Expect other Wings hits such as “Live and Let Die”, and “Time to Hide” as well as Denny’s legendary lead vocal on the Moody Blues classic “Go Now” to round out this special anniversary show.
Tickets: Click Here
It’s the 45th Anniversary of the Greatest Album by Badfinger, 1972’s Straight Up, and the band’s legendary guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist Joey Molland—along with his dynamic band—brings the album to the stage in a bracing live show.
Featuring 5 tracks written by Joey, Q Magazine described Straight Up as ”…brimming with mature melodies and bracing verse/chorus interplay…”, while NME deemed it ”…a stone cold beauty of an album…” and advised, “Love it like your mother …”
George Harrison produced four tracks on the album, Name of the Game, Suitcase,I’d Die Babe, the latter two written by Molland, and Pete Ham’s Day After Day, which gave the group a Top 5 U.S. Single. AllMusic says, ”…there’s absolutely no filler and everybody is in top form…” The album, which also featured Baby Blue, stayed on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart for 32 weeks.
From their legendary lineup, Joey Molland continues the unforgettable legacy of BADFINGER. One of the original signings to the Beatles’ Apple Records label, they had their first hit single with a Paul McCartney penned song, Come and Get It, which went to #7 in the U.S. charts.
Badfinger followed this with their own compositions No Matter What, Day After Day (produced by George Harrison), and Baby Blue, which went to #8, #4 and #14 respectively.
https://youtu.be/C53QAuOoSgc
A Tribute to Todd Rundgren, Gary Backstrom’s Road to Utopia, comes to the Regent Theatre, 7 Medford Street, Arlington, MA on Friday, June 7, at 8 pm. Tickets here.
Todd Rundgren
Considered by many to be the “Ultimate Rock Cult Hero” Todd Rundgren has maintained a legion of fans through four decades. Todd’s searing guitar work reached a nationwide audience in his role as lead guitarist for the blues-psychedelic band Nazz. He wrote and arranged almost all of the work that went into the three albums the group produced.
His first big solo success was in 1971 with “We Gotta Get You a Woman” and in 1973 from the double album “Something/Anything?” He scored big on the charts with “I Saw the Light” and a revision of a Nazz song, “Hello, It’s Me.”
Rundgren has scored huge as a music producer, most notably on Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” opus. In the late 1970s and through the 1980s Todd formed the group Utopia, each member an accomplished musician and vocalist. He has also been called on by films and TV for his musical scores and sometimes tours with Ringo Starr as a member of his All-Star Band.
Gary Backstrom
Gary is the founder and frontman of the acclaimed Jam Band “Jiggle The Handle.” The Gary Backstrom Band is a Boston-based Band that mixes Soul, R&B, Funk, Rock and Latin grooves blended into a unique sound. Their sound features exciting, unpredictable improvisation that can only be heard in the best live acts on the scene today. Gary is considered “one of the most underrated, fluid, and melodic players in the Northeast.”
Some of the proceeds from this concert will go to
The project brings personalized iPods to people living with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, helping them reconnect with the world through the music they love.
This will be a quite the night for a great cause.
THE BARGAIN of the Summer!
The New Bedford Folk Festival offers an impressive line-up of the best in contemporary, Americana, traditional, blues and Celtic folk music with more than 75 performances on seven stages over two days. At the heart of the festival are the workshops, themed jam sessions with multiple artists, many playing together for the first time, for a unique, never-to-be-seen-again show.
