For most folks, the winter holiday season is an opportunity to connect with friends and family, whether that’s around the dinner table or by warm crackling fire. For musicians, the holiday season can be a departure from the norm.
Whether they’re in transit on a major holiday or racing between venues to play multiple shows on New Year’s Eve, musicians sometimes end up spending holidays in out of the way places alone.
Here, four local and national musicians share their own stories with Hampshire Life about being a gigging musician during the holidays in an anthology of comic and poignant tales.
Greenfield-based folk singer-songwriter Tracy Grammer rose to acclaim in the late 1990s. She left her day job as a graphic designer, editor and proofreader to become a folk singer in 1998. The following year, she signed with Northampton’s Signature Sounds Recordings — along with her bandmate and musical collaborator, the late Dave Carter, who passed away in July at the age of 49 while on tour.
The duo released three celebrated records, topping folk album charts, and in 2002, they toured with legendary 1960s protest folk icon Joan Baez.
In 2000, while en route to Canada for a show at the Nickelodeon Folk Club in Calgary, Grammar and Carter celebrated Thanksgiving together just off an interstate, either in Wisconsin or North Dakota at a 7-Eleven convenience store, Grammer said. It was dark out and the duo had driven straight through dinnertime when they stopped at around 9 or 10 p.m.
“We were on a crazy cross country tour,” she said. “And what I remember is that our Thanksgiving dinner that year was at a 7-Eleven. We said, ‘We should do something for Thanksgiving,’ so we pulled into a 7-Eleven and I remember getting a bag of Snyder’s nibblers pretzels and some string cheese.”
“At the time, that was the best thing that I could think to eat. We were really big into SlimFast shakes, so Dave probably got a SlimFast. It was just the saddest, most disgusting meal ever.”
Grammer said her 7-Eleven Thanksgiving was one small sacrifice that she made as a professional touring musician.
“This is what it means to be a working musician,” she said. “Sometimes you’re not home. Sometimes you have to eat (bleep) food from a 7-Eleven for your holiday dinner. We were happy to be together, but when that sort of thing happens you think, ‘What are the consequences to this life that we’ve chosen for ourselves? Is there any other place we’d rather be?’ (In our case) neither of us had super tight families, so it wasn’t like there was a place for us at the table and we missed out.”
She added: “It certainly gave us that ‘You and me against the world’ feeling. It gave us a feeling that we were doing something unique, chasing our dream, making a sacrifice in service of our music. It was a bittersweet adventure and for the most part, we were happy to be on it.”
Ray Mason is a musical legend in the Pioneer Valley. With his signature green Silvertone guitar, Mason performs shows on a regular basis throughout western Massachusetts both as a solo performer, with his backing band, and as bassist/vocalist for country/ folk-rock band Lonesome Brothers alongside guitarist/ vocalist Jim Armenti and drummer Keith Levreault.
He’s performed hundreds of shows since he started playing live music in the 1966. But one New Year’s Eve in the 1990s, Mason performed three gigs back to back; one in Hartford, CT and two in Northampton.
“It’s probably something I wouldn’t do now,” Mason, 68, said during a recent interview at Bread Euphoria in his hometown of Haydenville.
With any show, the time spent on stage is significantly less than the amount spent setting-up and breaking-down gear — including loading and unloading heavy instruments, amps and other sound equipment at the venue. Plus, there’s the driving to and from the show itself, Mason said.
That New Year’s, he started the night performing with the Ray Mason Band during a First Night event in Hartford, CT. But when he started driving to his next show in Northampton with the Lonesome Brothers, the situation became more stressful. The clock was ticking as he zipped up 1-91 North, and he wasn’t sure if he’d make it to the venue on time.
“For some reason when I booked it I thought, ‘Okay, yeah.’ ” Mason said. “It seemed like I could pull it off, but (then) I felt too anxious like, ‘Maybe I should have thought about it more.’ ”
As it turns out, Mason made it to his second gig. Then he packed up his bass amplifier cabinet and guitar and headed to the third venue, where the band was performing in the back room of a now-defunct club near Route 5.
“Shortly after we set up, we realized that there was no heat in the room. And so as we were playing, you could see your breath, and we all had our coats on.”
For Mason, music is his life and the passion he has for music has not faded during his career, which spans more than half a century.
“I’ve been playing in bands since 1966, so that’s a long time now,” he said. “That’s just what I do every week. You just go out, load up the car and play gigs. It’s a way of life. It’s something that I love to do, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it … I grew up listening to records in my room and being transfixed by them. I still I’m a fan. Every morning I get up and think of 50 albums I want to hear. I try never to lose that.”
Lonesome Brothers will be performing two sets during this year’s First Night Northampton 2019 at the World War II Club, 50 Conz St., from 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. and from 8 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. Mason will also be performing a solo show at the A.P.E Gallery from 5 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Before David Sokol was the music editor for the Valley Advocate, he was a drummer for a rock band called Little Fire.
In 1974, he was a senior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Sokol had booked Little Fire for three gigs over Thanksgiving — at Elms College in Chicopee, the now-closed Steak Out in Amherst, and the former Dial Tone music venue in Enfield, CT — an impressive feat, given that he’d founded the band only months before.
The group performed covers of 1960s and 1970s rock songs from artists like Eric Clapton and Jackson Browne, as well as original songs.
And they played shows constantly, at college parties or venues like the long-gone Red Pantry in Belchertown.
“People loved us,” he said. “We were judged by how many drinks the clubs sold or how many people were on the dance floor, and we always got called back. It was a fun time.” They also made some serious dough. “In those days, the average amount that we got paid was between $120 and $200 for the band.”
The five-member band ended up spending Thanksgiving dinner together in 1974 at Miss Florence Diner in Florence before driving down to Enfield, CT to perfor, he said.
“I missed Thanksgiving dinner for the first time in my life,” remembers Sokol, who was a senior in college at the time. The experience, he said, was a little surreal. “Having Thanksgiving dinner at Flo’s Diner was just unlike anything else. There weren’t many other people there (and) Flo’s seemed kind of sad that night because it wasn’t celebratory. But they had a Thanksgiving dinner with stuffing and cranberry sauce and all that stuff.”
Sokol wouldn’t have had it any other way. Afterwards, Little Fire played a packed show at the Dial Tone. “It kind of confirmed the fact that that was where we belonged that night,” he says now.
“I felt like I was successful because my band was doing well enough to be working.”
Earlier this month, roots rock guitarist and songwriter Melissa Etheridge performed at Northampton’s Calvin Theater during her holiday show tour. Etheridge released “A New Thought for Christmas” a decade ago, which features her own take on holiday classics such as “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and “Blue Christmas,” made famous by Elvis Presley.
Etheridge said during a phone interview that she decided to start her holiday concert tours because she wants audiences to “feel good being in a room full of 2,000 people who are all different and celebrating the spirit and life.”
She added, “It’s a fine line between cheesy and cheery, but I walk it.”
Several years ago, Etheridge spent a Thanksgiving Day on a flight to Australia for one of her performances.
“I realized that, not only was I going to be in another country on Thanksgiving, but I was going to completely erase Thanksgiving,” she said. “It wasn’t even going to be a day for me. We ended up having Thanksgiving a couple days before, but it was super strange. It was kind of sad.”
This year, on the day of her show in Northampton, Etheridge’s staff collected nearly 180 toys for local children via the Hadley nonprofit Friends of Children. Throughout her current tour, Etheridge’s staff has been connecting with local nonprofits to provide children with toys during the holiday season.
But come Christmas, she won’t be on a tour bus, or doing sound checks or crashing in a random hotel.
For Etheridge, winter holidays are meant to be shared with her family.
“I have always made sure to be home on Christmas,” she said. “That’s a really important time for me. I have four children and everyone in my organization knows that I’m going to be there for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It was always a big and special part of my life growing up, and it was always my happiest holiday. I love it.”
Chris Goudreau can be reached at cgoudreau@gazettenet.com.