In baseball, if you manage to maintain a .300-plus average, amass in excess of 3,000 hits and/or sock 500 round-trippers, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be getting a call from Cooperstown some day.
Local folk-rock trio Fancy Trash will be the first to admit that, despite racking up some pretty impressive numbers themselves (they have just released their fifth CD, As Is, as they enter their tenth year of existence with more than 1,000 live shows under their collective belt), they are far from a shoo-in when it comes to an eternal resting place in rock ’n’ roll’s hallowed hall.
But it’s still more than enough reason to throw one helluva party.
“Yeah, we’ve been at this awhile, with plenty of dings along the way,” notes singer/guitarist Dave Houghton as he readies for the band’s CD release/anniversary bash at the Iron Horse (iheg.com) this Friday, Nov. 9. “This new album captures our sound in a way that others weren’t able to. You can hear us releasing some demons, but in a pretty sort of way.”
Clocking at just 28 minutes in length, Trash’s As Is is a lean, mean audio exercise in indie rock steeped in American roots that was recorded with Justin Pizzoferato at Easthampton’s Sonelab Studios this summer.
Tix are $10 in advance, $13 at the door for this 10 p.m. event.The Goldwater Trio, featuring Thane Thomsen (of Figments fame) and Scott Hall (Drunk Stuntmen) with cellist Melissa Nelson, gets the opening nod.
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Similarly celebrating studio product this week is songwriter/six-stringer Kaki King, arriving at the Iron Horse Nov. 8 in support of her recently released sixth CD, Glow.
Hailed as both a “new guitar god” and “a genre unto herself” by Rolling Stone, King has performed with artists as diverse and popular as Foo Fighters and Timbaland and contributed to the score of Sean Penn’s Golden Globe-nominated Into The Wild. She even literally had a hand in the movie August Rush, where she was “hand double” for several guitar-playing scenes. Tix are $15 in advance, $18 at the door for this 7 p.m. show.
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Next up, a listing from the regional market. On Friday, Nov. 9, some of Beantown’s top real estate agents by day/active musicians at night will literally give back to the communities that have given so much to them with Rock & Realtor (rockandrealtor.com), A Benefit for Project Place. The event is slated to take place at the Church of Boston on Kilmarnock Street and will feature pop-rocker Aaron Lippert of Keller Williams Realty International, Boston indie-faves Eddie Japan, featuring David Santos of Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty, and Northampton’s prodigal daughter Amy Fairchild, of Broadway Village Real Estate, performing with her band Miriam.
Tickets are $25 per person and organizers are hoping that funds from the door plus the live auctions planned will help the benefit achieve its goal of raising $10,000 for Project Place, a local organization dedicated to helping Boston’s homeless and underemployed populations.
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Last but not least, endless rounds of educational budget cuts may all but assure that no one ever takes the arts for granted. And that’s all the more reason to publicize the rare instances—such as this—when there actually is grant money available for aspiring artists.
The Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) recently announced some $200,000 in new grants to support artist live/workspaces across the Commonwealth. Among the municipal ArtistLink grantees are the towns of Pittsfield and Holyoke, the latter of which received $10,000 earmarked for its Canal Street Studios.
“These funds will allow us to plan for the expansion of the creative economy in Holyoke,” noted Mayor Alex Morse. “At the same time, we’ll be able to provide direct assistance to property owners so that they can transform their spaces for artists, entertainment and restaurant venues, and the kind of amenities that make a downtown vibrant and attractive.”
In addition to funding, ArtistLink provides technical assistance to artists, community-based nonprofits, municipalities and real estate developers interested in creating and maintaining artist live/workspaces and studios. For more information on the resource, kindly point your browser to artistlink.org.•
Send correspondence to Nightcrawler, P.O. Box 427, Somers, CT 06071; fax to (860) 394-4262 or email garycarra@aol.com.
