Freak Scene #111: Mark Erelli's New Album 'Spring Green'
Plus, Reale Wolfe gets, er, real on the Connecticut trio's new track "Bit Off More"
If you arrived here courtesy of the Lehrer Report in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, welcome! This week, we preview (part of) the Back Porch Festival with Spring Green, the latest album from Mark Erelli, and catch up with new music from Connecticut trio Reale Wolfe.
Mark Erelli was the first person I ever saw perform at the Iron Horse, when he opened for John Hiatt on Oct. 16, 2000. Erelli was still local at the time, having just completed a master’s degree at UMass while living in Northampton and recording for Signature Sounds, which released the self-titled album in 1999 that probably comprised a good chunk of his set that night. Erelli lives outside of Boston these days, and has released something like 11 solo albums with and without Signature, along with a covers record, a collaboration with Jeffrey Foucault, various singles and live recordings and two LPs as part of Barnstar!, plus stints backing Josh Ritter and Lori McKenna.
Yet for all those changes, Erelli is still recognizably himself on Spring Green, his latest. (He performs Saturday at 4:45 p.m. at the Iron Horse as part of the Back Porch Festival). He’s older, sure, but he’s still searching for truth on these 11 songs — even as he recognizes, perhaps more clearly than ever, that the things one holds inviolable at 24 can take new shapes as the decades pass.
There’s definitely a sense that time is passing on Spring Green. It’s there in “King of Nothing,” a wintry folk song co-written with Peter Mulvey, as their protagonist reflects from oblique angles on the solitude that envelops him. It’s palpable on “In Waves,” a slow and tender number where echoes of the departed — friends, colleagues, peers — linger in the narrator’s memory, flitting across the corner of his vision or manifesting as a lump in his throat. Though getting older offers plenty of opportunity for somber reflection, there’s more to Spring Green than a gathering twilight: “Walk Beside Me” is about the subtle, almost imperceptible ways that love can evolve as the years fall away. A similar theme fuels “Kindhearted Woman,” a waltz-time ode to his wife Polly that Erelli wrote with Sean Staples.
After trying on different musical approaches earlier in his career — a rootsy, folk-rock sound on his first few albums, a C&W sound on Hillbilly Pilgrim — Erelli has long since landed somewhere in the middle. The songs on Spring Green are rooted in acoustic folk and decorated with pedal steel guitar, piano, bass, drums and backing vocals from singers including Kris Delmhorst, Rose Cousins, Annie Lynch and Rose Polenzani. It’s a rich musical blend that sounds distinctive throughout, but never monochromatic. Rather, Spring Green is the work of singer and songwriter who retains the empathy and sense of wonder of his youth, and leavened it with the perspective that only comes with time.
Reale Wolfe Feel the Urgency on ‘Bit Off More’
Connecticut blues-rockers Reale Wolfe have been steadily releasing singles for a few years now, but the trio’s more recent music has taken on a new urgency. That’s particularly true of their latest, “Bit Off More,” which guitarist Brian Wolfe calls “a rush release, given the times.”
The track has a sprawling, woozy feel, with heavy, overdriven electric guitars and a thudding beat from Rich Suarez washing over Roger C. Reale’s full-blast vocals. “You told us you would help the economy / But now most people have to fight to be free,” Reale sings through a haze of reverb. “You start a war to shade a most evil crime / Your day is coming, you are running out of time.”
Reale Wolfe did two takes of the song at Bonehead Studio in Chester in early March, and chose the second one, which has no overdubs or fixes: just Wolfe, Reale and Suarez locked in together. “Bit Off More” follows the group’s February release, the slinky, sultry “TV Blues,” and January’s gnashing raver “Let’s Make a Promise.”
Upcoming Concerts
Here are this week’s newly announced concerts. The full concert calendar is available here.
Northampton band Les Dérailleurs play next Tuesday, March 31, at Holyoke Media with California band the Wind-Ups and local acts Corsica and Jetties; the Flywheel Collective show has a $10 cover.
Coming to Tree House Brewing in South Deerfield: Dark Star Orchestra June 15-16 (tickets), alt-rock singer Matt Maeson July 16 (tickets) and Oteil & Friends Aug. 6 (tickets).
The Academy of Music in Northampton hosts Fruit Bats July 26 (tickets) and Tab Benoit with Ghalia Volt Oct. 18 (tickets).
At the Iron Horse: Eddie 9V June 16 (tickets), indie-rock guitarist Delicate Steve June 26 (tickets), two shows with Michael Kosta Aug. 8 (early and late) and Chris Smither Dec. 4 (tickets) and Dec. 5 (tickets).
At the Parlor Room: Bre Kennedy with Abigail Rose April 28 (tickets), BITCH April 30 (tickets), Chris Pureka May 31 (tickets), Harrison Goodell with Makayla Nelson June 11 (tickets), Caleb Klauder and Reeb Willms Band Sept. 19 (tickets) and Spencer LaJoye Nov. 4 (tickets).
The Drake in Amherst hosts Hotline TNT April 25 (tickets).
Robert Earl Keen performs May 30 at Infinity Hall in Hartford (tickets).
At the Space Ballroom: 40 Below Summer June 20 (tickets), Delta Sleep June 25 (tickets), Sqwerv July 3 (tickets) and Eric Hutchinson July 16 (tickets).
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