Freak Scene #88: Zoey Tess Stands Fast on 'Knocking at Your Front Door'
Plus, singer and songwriter Brian Dunne comes to terms with his place in the world on 'Clams Casino'
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week in Freak Scene, we hear from Newtown’s Zoey Tess about her caustic protest anthem “Knocking at Your Front Door,” and frequent Western Mass. visitor Brian Dunne talks about his evolution as a songwriter before a performance Tuesday in Northampton.
Working on her own music was something Zoey Tess thought she was finished with. Though the Newtown resident is a singer and a songwriter, she had spent the past few years writing songs for other artists after a bad experience at a recording studio with a project of her own.
In late January of this year, though, she began writing songs in response to the weight that friends and loved ones felt as the new administration in Washington began consolidating power in ominous, threatening fashion.
“I have a lot of friends who identify as queer, or are of different minority groups, and everybody felt this fear of what's going to come,” Tess says.
One of the songs she wrote was “Knocking at Your Front Door,” which is essentially a refusal to back down in the face of rising authoritarianism. She delivers scabrous lyrics in a ringing voice as the musical arrangement builds from acoustic guitar to terse electric licks and whirring organ. “You’ve sown division, sold religion, / Traded slavery for prison systems,” she sings. “You want war? / Well, we’re knocking at your front door.”
Born in Florida, Tess moved to Newtown with her family when she was 4. Her parents were living in neighboring Southbury by the time she came home from Berklee College of Music in Boston for winter break in December 2012. That was when a gunman murdered 20 first-graders and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. She makes oblique reference to the shooting on “Knocking at Your Front Door” when she sings, “Run kids, lock them doors, don’t fear / Congress sends their thoughts and their prayers.”
“‘Knocking at Your Front Door’ is just a very direct song,” Tess says. “And it was me pissed off and wanting to call out the people that I felt needed to be called out.”
The track is the first single from There’s Gonna Be a Reckoning, recorded with producer Spencer Hattendorf. Tess plans to release the album early in 2026.
“The rest of the songs are a little bit more laid back,” Tess says. “It’s an extrospective record. It’s like sitting on a park bench and watching the world on fire and kind of taking notes on my thoughts about what's going on.”
Brian Dunne Leaves Youth Behind on ‘Clams Casino’
When Brian Dunne was finishing the tour for his 2023 album Loser on the Ropes, it hit him: he wasn’t in his 20s anymore. In fact, he was 34. That was on his mind as the New York singer and songwriter began writing songs for his next album, Clams Casino, which came out earlier this month.
“The first thing I thought was, ‘How do I grow up the characters in my songs?’” Dunne, now 36, says by phone before returning to Northampton for a show Tuesday at the Parlor Room, with Dead Gowns (tickets). The answer lay in giving those characters grown-up concerns as they reckon with their place in the world, just as he was reckoning with his.
“I felt like the class war was on and in some ways, the bad guys had won and I had underestimated the power of the almighty dollar as a naïve, sanctimonious youth,” Dunne says. “And I was coming to terms with that, and that’s sort of what the album is: coming to terms with my place in the middle class.”
It’s not always an easy adjustment for the characters in the 10 tracks on Clams Casino. Most of them are trying to reconcile their youthful dreams with present circumstances, which are never as glamorous as his narrators had imagined they would be. There’s often a sense of disillusionment underpinning song that are smart, catchy and frequently wry, observed with a keen eye that he credits to his own working-class upbringing in Monroe, New York, about an hour from New York City.
“I felt like it was a good viewpoint to write all these stories about what happens when dreams don't work out, or what happens when they do work out,” says Dunne, who also performs Dec. 13 at the Iron Horse as part of the folk-rock group Fantastic Cat (tickets). “How do you become the thing that you said you were going to be? How do people become indoctrinated into the establishment when they were anti-establishment?”
There’s a specificity in the details of songs on Dunne’s more recent albums that wasn’t there on his earlier work. Around the time he made his 2020 album Selling Things, Dunne made a conscious choice to shift the way he was writing.
“Early on, I sort of thought of myself as a broad songwriter, and I thought my job was to write the next ‘We Shall Overcome,’” Dunne says. “And then I realized at some point that that actually doesn't make things more universal, it just makes them sort of forgettable. So, I started writing with a much different vernacular, where I wasn't afraid to name really specific things from my life, with the idea that other people would put their specifics onto the song. You don't need to be broad so that people can relate. You can actually be hyper-specific, and people will still know the emotional context of what you're talking about.”
Upcoming Concerts
Gold Dust mark bandleader Stephen Pierce’s birthday tonight, Oct. 17, with a performance at the Marigold Theater in Easthampton, with Convinced Friend, Silvie's Okay and Two Wrong Turns (tickets). There are also rumors of a special guest who will be sitting in with Gold Dust.
Pink Martini were supposed to play tonight at the Academy of Music in Northampton, but the show has rescheduled for May 22.
The Iron Horse in Northampton hosts singer-songwriter Will Evans Dec. 6 (tickets), the annual FAT holiday show Dec. 27 (tickets), folk group the Last Revel Jan. 29 (tickets), the Rural Alberta Advantage Feb. 19 (tickets), rani arbo & Daisy Mayhem Feb. 26 (tickets) and Americana singer Caitlin Canty March 6 (tickets).
District Music Hall in Norwalk, Conn., hosts Gogol Bordello Jan. 2 (tickets).
Briscoe play the Space Ballroom Feb. 28 (tickets).
That’ll do it for this week, but maybe you’re wondering, why is this newsletter called Freak Scene? Find the answer here. Also, I’m always open to submissions. You can send music for coverage consideration to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first.
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