Peter Mulvey’s "The Long Haul Tour”- Biking his way to the Iron Horse on September 26th,

Biking 1100 miles from Muskegon MI to Northampton performing 10 shows in 17 days : September 9-26, 2009

From September 9-26, Milwaukee-based, internationally-touring singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey will again take to his bicycle for a concert tour. This year’s third annual bike/concert tour will not follow the previous years’ path, when he rode a "circular route in Wisconsin" concept. The Long Haul Tour begins September 9 with a ferry ride from Milwaukee to Muskegon, MI, where Peter will take to his recumbent bike rigged with guitar and travel necessities and pedal to Grand Rapids for the tour’s kick-off show. From there it’s on to three more Michigan shows, then due east for three shows in New York state, and another three in Massachusetts - with daily rides this year ranging from 40 to 101 miles.

It’s no coincidence that Peter decided to expand his bike tour – which commences less than a month after the release of his new CD, LETTERS FROM A FLYING MACHINE (August 11/Signature Sounds). LETTERS and THE LONG HAUL tour share a common theme: both are a nod to future generations. LETTERS is a collection of original songs, plus spoken word recordings of four of the many letters Peter has written to his nieces and nephews since they were born. The letters and songs work together to assert that love is what outlasts us all; a message he’s hoping to convey to the generations following his. And touring by bicycle dovetails neatly with that message. Says Mulvey, "No matter what you do, it's worth asking yourself if you can do it differently, if you can do it more sustainably. Can I bike to work? Even if 'work' takes me a thousand miles? For me, that's a question that's been challenging and very, very fun to answer. And it's a question each of us owes it to future generations to ask."

Fellow songwriter Brianna Lane will also travel the entire tour by bicycle as the opening act. Bolstered on much of the route by a few other cyclist friends, Mulvey and Lane will travel with all their gear, without a support vehicle. "This is going to be a riot," says Mulvey with a grin. "Traveling over land, under our own power – that's elemental stuff. I'm looking forward to seeing what it does to the songs every night."

Please visit Peter’s MySpace page for training entries, video from his 2007 and 2008 bike tours, and notes from the road once the trip begins. You can get tickets for Pete Mulvey and Brianna Lane at the Iron Horse, Saturday, September 26th at 7PM right here.

Listen to a track off his new album:
Peter Mulvey - Kids in The Square

Gandalf Murphy & The Slambovian Circus of Dreams explored by IHEG intern Lee Taylor who'd never heard of them. They play the Horse on Sat. Sept. 19th

First area of research when discovering a new band for me is to find out where they are from. Upon a swift Google, I came to find that there is no such town as Slambovia. So Gandalf Murphy and Co. are creative, even on the surface. Next thing on the judge de facto is appearance. Aside from a name that spawns images of sci-fi hobbits in "Gandalf Murphy" (a made up name, a la the blowfish named Hootie), the long haired guitar and accordion wielding members look like they're in a world of their own.

The absence of major label and big time media help in the band's eleven year history has thus far given the Sleepy Hollow, New York band a license to build a niche following. Their local following is so big, the band hosts an annual Halloween party, the Grand Slambovian Hillbilly Pirate Ball.

They let their freak flags fly. Their sound is all over the map, but not to cover up any shortcomings. They nail it for different reasons in their songs. "Pushin' Up Daisies" is a mid-tempo number with distorted guitar harmonics, walking bass lines and deep harmonies like Pink Floyd or some strange under-the- radar '90s drug-and-flannel rock band.

"I see you looking through her eyes, there ain't no disguise for what you do to me," lead singer Joziah Longo sings on "Picture" off of last year's "The Great Unravel" album, lamenting love and loneliness with a sort of Neil Young croon mixed with some dirty slide guitar and attitude like southern country-punks the Drive-By Truckers.

Hudson Valley Magazine named the Circus "Band of The Year" for the past three years while their latest studio release "Flapjacks From The Sky" has been hailed by many.

Keeping it all in the family, Longo has had five children with accordion player Tink Lloyd, two of them are now in the band, Chen on bass and Orien on cowbell and keyboards. This is not a family band, but a family rocking unit. Recap on why the locals can't get enough: a name like no other, family matters, roots-flavored psychedelia!

You can get tickets here for their show at 7PM, Saturday, September 19th at the Iron Horse.

Moutain Park Photos

Erika Wennerstrom of Heartless Bastards.
Heartless Bastards.
The Decemberists.
Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond, Decemberists)

All photos by Dave Barnum.

Mountain Park Free Concert Pix

Rubblebucket Orchestra sends funky horns cascading over the hills. They'll be back at the Iron Horse in September with a lot of new fans I'm sure.
Views from the hill.
Unknown guy with geetar sporting stickers that lend a clue as to the inspirations. Perhaps a future IHEG booking?
Exploding knucks with Brendan and Tim. Knucks alone do not suffice.
Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens NAILED it for gospel fans and those who didn't know they were.
Johnny A and Sonny Landreth backstage caught talking guitar. Kelsey from WRSI The River and I interrupted to get Sonny to sign the guitar donated by Falcetti music to be given away Monday morning on The River.

Johnny A played a lot of Hendrix and Zeppelin and a tributre to Les Paul. The crowd loved him. Well played electric guitar sounds amazing nestled in the mountain setting.
Exploding knucks may not even suffice apparently.

Dan Kandel talks about Sonny Landreth who headlines the free concert at Mountain Park this Saturday

As a guitarist - I find it difficult to be surprised by the skill or style of very few players these days. There is such an abundance of active iconic guitarists such as Pat Metheny, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Richard Thompson, etc. etc. who have been gigging for decades-all remain masters of their genre-all are consistently great-but this lends itself to certain degree of predictability. In the last decade there have been only two players who have completely transfixed me- most recently- 28 year old Vieux Farka Toure (who’s style I won’t even attempt to describe) & for several years- Sonny Landreth -a guitarist some 30 years older - who has somehow entirely eluded being recognized for his technical wizardry after nearly three decades of playing (until Eric Clapton invited him to play his Crossroads festival 5 years ago - creating a near overnight sensation.)

Sonny’s style is a virtuosic and venomous combination of slide guitar, fret-board tapping and flawless finger picking - all played with a head cutting assault - suggesting the timbre and tone of some type of extraterrestrial Hydra comprised of Duane Allman, Steve Vai & Rory Gallagher. Landreth’s ambitions within the Blues are as visionary as Sun Ra’s were to Jazz - his sounds are the groans of an artist fueled by urgency to go beyond both genre & instrument and rigorously pursue some kind inexplicable cosmic quest for sounds somewhere in the ether.

Last year’s performance at the Iron Horse was nothing short of brilliant to watch. The set was a mixed bag of straight ahead Blues, bayou injected Country Rock and - dare I say it- Jazz fusion - as only Sonny Landreth could have presented it. Not unlike Adrian Belew (also returning this Fall), Sonny is both visual & visceral in performance. Which is perhaps why he has remained under the radar for so long…some artist’s are just meant to be on a stage and not in a studio & one can hear there reticence when recorded ( jazz great Bill Evan’s comes to mind.) Perhaps that is why he has only released 9 recordings in his lengthy career (although his recent endeavors have included the likes of not only Clapton but also the unrivalled master of guitar tone: Robben Ford).

One can expect nothing short of the equivalent of a Master Class on guitar technique from Sonny upon his welcome return to the Valley and a rare opportunity to see; "probably the most underestimated musician on the planet and also probably one of the most advanced” (Eric Clapton).

Ken Maiuri of the Gazette writes about Mountain Park

Jimmy Page (with the Yardbirds) had "an Indian robe on ... he was standing five feet away from our hands, and he never looked at his guitar once, he just kept looking at the ceiling," recalled Ray Mason with a laugh.

"There's a lot of history here," said entrepreneur Eric Suher last Friday morning, standing on a grassy ridge that was once part of Holyoke's Mountain Park amusement park.

For 90 years it was a favorite Valley family destination full of rides, food, games, dances and live entertainment. After a slow dismantling, the remnants spent two dead decades overtaken by weeds, spray paint and the elements, a graveyard of piles of paint-faded wood, a ghost park.

This weekend Suher, who also owns the Iron Horse Entertainment Group, starts the next chapter of Mountain Park's story, giving the abandoned area a new life as a live-music venue.

The new Mountain Park's central feature will be a large natural amphitheater, its stage located where the park's original merry-go-round stood at the beginning of the last century.

Things kick off Saturday at 2 p.m. with a free festival, featuring a string of acts who might otherwise headline their own shows at one of the other IHEG venues (The Calvin, Pearl Street, Iron Horse, The Basement).

The day-long event includes blues guitarist/singer/songwriter Sonny Landreth, critically acclaimed Daptone recording artists Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens, blues guitarist Johnny A., Boston's funky nine-piece Rubblebucket Orchestra and popular Springfield mainstays the Frank Manzi Band. It's an "open hose" of sorts, giving the community a chance to see the new space and some strong live music.

On Sunday, Mountain Park holds its first prime-time concert, featuring The Decemberists, a highly popular Portland, Ore., band some have described as "library pop" thanks to frontman/songwriter Colin Meloy's love of folk tales and story-like lyrics, as well as clothing and vocabulary from an earlier era. The band has a flair for the theatrical, making them the perfect act to kick off the new venue, which in its earlier life had its own theater company, The Valley Players.

Park gates will open for The Decemberists concert at 5:30 p.m. and showtime is at 7 p.m. Ohio rock trio Heartless Bastards will start the show. "Low back" chairs and blankets are allowed, and free parking is included with the ticket price.

Suher invited a few reporters to get a look at the park-in-progress last week, and as cars pulled up, the businessman was already there under the serious summer sun, talking on a cell phone with one hand and holding a note-filled legal pad in the other. Tractors dotted the landscape and lurched calmly throughout the property, getting things ready.

The new Mountain Park has been in the works for two-and-a-half years - "The city's been very cooperative," said Suher, a Holyoke native himself - and he was visibly jazzed to see the physical progress finally being made.

Leading around a small group, he pointed out some of what would be happening with the property before the opening weekend (power lines would be run underground to keep sight lines clear and open, for example) and what additional work would be done before the 2010 concert season begins (the park's old picnic grove will be fully refurbished; landscaped pathways will snake scenically throughout the property, on which sits a huge volcanic rock, the park's oldest remaining artifact).

The steel Picnic Pavilion (built in 1971), the only salvageable element left over from the amusement park, will abut the stage and house the concession stands.

Though this season is truncated by summer's end right around the corner, next year's entertainment calendar at Mountain Park (scheduled to start around Memorial Day and end by October 1) will be a "full slate of events," Suher said.

Like every Holyoke native over a certain age, Suher's childhood is intertwined with Mountain Park. He saw his share of free shows on the midway, and he recalled how the park's Stardust Ballroom was destroyed by a gas explosion just hours before his older brother's senior prom was supposed to take place in the building.

In its heyday, the Stardust Ballroom was a huge destination for longtime Valley rocker Ray Mason, another Holyoke native, who saw countless mind-blowing shows there in the '60s from his usual vantage point: right up front, being pushed against the stage by the throng.

Two highlights of Mason's Mountain Park concertgoing era were the Animals (one vivid memory involves guitarist Hilton Valentine attempting to sing a backing vocal, then reconsidering after getting shocked by blue sparks shooting out of the microphone) and The Yardbirds, featuring the soon-to-be-legendary guitarist Jimmy Page, who had "an Indian robe on ... he was standing five feet away from our hands, and he never looked at his guitar once, he just kept looking at the ceiling," recalled Mason with a laugh.

The ballroom and amusement park are long gone, but for the first time in more than 20 years, live shows will return to that mountainous location. Thrilling music memories are a cherished part of Mountain Park's history, and now they won't have to be just a thing of the past.

Ken Maiuri