If It's Too Loud...

I'm going to age myself here, but the first (and last) time I saw Tracy Bonham live was at the album release show for The Burdens of Being Upright way back in 1996. It was at The Middle East, and you could get a free ticket if you purchased the CD at Newbury Comics. I'm not sure why I never saw her again after that show, but I've been on a bit of a Tracy Bonham kick lately. The Burdens of Being Upright might be the most underappreciated songs of that era. We all know and remember the big megahit "Mother Mother," but "Navy Bean," "Tell It to the Sky," "Kisses," and "The One" are all far better than you remember. Once I saw that she was starting a residency at The Burren to mark the album's thirtieth anniversary, I immediately acquired a ticket to the February show. Sunday night's show was moved an hour earlier due to the huge snow storm still happening, but instead of weighing on everyone like a cloud, the impending s...

Photo by David Doobinin Boston isn't considered one of the cooler cities. Everything shuts down insanely early, we're not exactly known for our dining, and many of our musicians leave for New York, Los Angeles, or even Philadelphia to make it big. However, we occasionally get magical events like Juliana Hatfield hosting her album release show at the one hundred capacity The Burren on a Sunday night. I wasn't sure what to expect with Sunday night's show. Was it a solo show? Would Hatfield have a band? Was it a regular show, or would she focus on the new album? Turns out she played as a trio, and it was a mixture of new songs, favorites, and underappreciated classics. The focus of the show was the just released (and excellent) Lightning Might Strike , and although I was a fan of the album after the first listen, after hearing her classics played alongside the brand new songs, the new album is as great as anything else she's ever released in the past forty or so years....

One of the best things about living in the Boston area are shows like last Saturday night's Bill Janovitz performance at The Burren. The Buffalo Tom frontman played a laid back solo set at a 100 person dinner venue in the back room of an Irish pub. Such a small venue and Janovitz's easy rapport with the audience made this an incredibly intimate show, particularly with the special guests for the evening. The set list was made up almost entirely from social media audience requests. This truly lead to a unique song selection. You got Buffalo Tom favorites like "Fortune Teller," "Mineral," and "Dry Land." In fact, "Taillights Fade," the most obvious choice for a Buffalo Tom song, wasn't requested but added by Janovitz as one of the few non requests. The crowd was also versed in Janovitz's solo career, requesting songs from way back to his 1996 solo album Lonesome Billy , "Mary Kay" (an ode to Mary Kay Letourneau and her ...