One of my happiest moments working in a record store has been playing Sam Amidon’s “Lily-O” record over the speakers and seeing multiple customers slowly get magnetized toward the counter to ask what was playing. They all walked out with his CDs in their happy mitts.
I can’t play his record for you through the newspaper, but I can give you advice: go see Sam Amidon at The Parlor Room in Northampton Wednesday at 7 p.m.
He plays acoustic guitar, banjo and fiddle, and is a fearless interpreter of traditional songs, infusing some with a hypnotic calm (“Blue Mountains”) and others with unpredictable jolts: On “As I Roved Out,” for example, his voice becomes a sharp rasp that scrapes the sides of his throat as it escapes, flying out over his pulsing clawhammer banjo. He recasts the old-as-the-hills major-key tune “Groundhog” (about hunting and cooking said animal) in freakier colors that reflect the song’s taken-for-granted violence. Amidon turns it into a placid David Lynch-ian nightmare, with a catchy off-kilter melody.
There’s often a polite predictability in the circles in which Amidon travels (folk fests, sit-down venues), but his stage persona is a happy wrench in the works, as I found out at the Clearwater Festival last year. I was pulled in by songs like “Walkin’ Boss” and the haunting “Prodigal Son” — his weary voice, banjo up high on his thin frame, unmoving, like a scarecrow. But between songs he also included a wandering spiel about Kirsten Dunst relaying secret messages through her acting, and treated the crowd to a straight-faced interlude of atonal fiddle scraping. His dedication to his craft is undeniable, but there’s some Andy Kaufman playfulness in there, too.
Sam Amidon is at The Parlor Room in Northampton on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Jake Xerxes Fussell opens.
Acclaimed jazz pianist Fred Hersch has put out more than 40 records, including a recent live album featuring his trio, which he’ll bring along for a performance at the Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro Saturday at 8 p.m. Very recommended!
Tortoise first hit the national scene in the early ’90s, when it was a big deal for an indie-rock band to mention Miles Davis as an influence. The Chicago-based band’s instrumental music drew inspiration from dub, Krautrock, sound tracks, 20th-century minimalist composers, jazz, progressive and much more. I was forever in their fan club after experiencing “Djed,” a 21-minute epic that’s as mind-bending as Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” If you haven’t sat down with headphones and a dark room and been enveloped by that composition yet, do yourself a favor, put down the newspaper or iPad, and go let your life be changed.
In the meantime, Tortoise just released a new record after a seven-year hiatus, “The Catastrophist,” which breaks different kinds of new ground — like keeping the songs to pop length, covering David Essex’s 1973 oddball hit “Rock On” and including some vocals (Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley sings the dreamy “Yonder Blue”).
Tortoise makes a rare appearance at the Iron Horse in Northampton Monday at 8:30 p.m. Mind Over Mirrors opens.
Big Hush is a cool shoegazey quartet with woozy warped guitars (from Washington, D.C.) and it’ll headline a show that also features Digital Prisoners of War and the timeless indie-rock of Halfsour (both Boston bands) as well as Temple Cats, the latest project from Juliana Ward. It all happens at Flywheel in Easthampton Thursday at 7 p.m.
Zoe Darrow and her fiddle (and her dad!) brought down the house during the grand finale at “The Really Big Show” last month, stomping around the stage sawing fiery notes with a bow that almost couldn’t take the heat, strands fraying every which way. Darrow’s known for playing traditional Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton style fiddle tunes, and she’ll bring along some friends for a St. Patrick’s Day show at the Iron Horse Thursday at 7 p.m.
Andrew Drury’s Content Provider is a “musically free” quartet of Briggan Krauss and Ingrid Laubrock (saxophones), Brandon Seabrook (guitar) and Drury on drums, yet sometimes the band will link up for a swinging angular passage that feels so good. It’s the latest show in the Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares concert series, taking place at The Parlor Room Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
Nine-piece Northampton-based party band Amazing Love plays “covers from every generation” (with more than 70 songs in their dancefloor-friendly repertoire) and it’ll celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with an early show at the One Bar & Brill in Northampton Thursday at 8:30 p.m.