I recently received an email from a reader that said, \u201cWhen I read your column I feel completely lost. Who are these people? What are their sounds?\u201d<\/p>\n
Valid questions.<\/p>\n
And I know where you\u2019re at, thinking wise. Maybe feeling a bit beyond the fence, somewhere just out of earshot of that sweet tasting, blood burning music you been reading about\u2026but never seen live.<\/p>\n
Not a problem. There are ways to remedy this.<\/p>\n
First things first: Do you own a car? Good, then hit the road. Don\u2019t worry about the cats, the kids, the nine hours of sleep you require or the lack of flat backs in your pocket. Just focus on where you want to marinate in the music for a few hours.<\/p>\n
Do you like the Lakes Region? The White Mountains? The grizzled streets of Manchester? Maybe your tastes lean toward them border towns where the metal bands bring the shine. These are all viable options, all teeming with great musicians and all kinds of sounds.<\/p>\n
So, what are you thinking? Do you wish to see men play a jawbone, a fiddle, a relic banjo and learn about the Civil War at the same time? You can do that. \u201cThe Hardtacks\u201d might be playing at any given library or music hall from Laconia to Salem.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s punch them up on Google. Click Hardtacks. Click Calendar. Bang. Write it down, set the clock and bingo, you\u2019re ready to be entranced, enlightened and engaged.<\/p>\n
Ok, you want to pass on the jawbone. It\u2019s an acquired taste, sure.<\/p>\n
But you love the blues and how it makes your coffee taste and how fun driving is with B.B. at your side, but you really want to see the blues performed live, pinched faces, thick knuckles and all.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, you won\u2019t have to go far. Again, hit Google, punch in Arthur James, Delanie Pickering or Baza Blues from New Hampshire and off you go. That cup of coffee will come back hard into your face once Mr. James gets to ripping on his pink guitar. Delanie? Yup, buckle up, sister. One whiff off her golden pipes and you will figure out her sound real quick.<\/p>\n
Not much into the bar scene you say? Ok, well, you\u2019re not alone. I once was a lone wolf, too, scared of my own shadow, convinced my social skills had gone to rot.<\/p>\n
Still, my shadow and pride were pulling at me from side-to-side. Then I looked around and said to myself, \u201cGet up, haus, and get out of yourself. Ain\u2018t no one gonna bite ya.\u201d<\/p>\n
You asked, \u201cWho are these people?\u201d Well, you won\u2019t find them in Good Housekeeping or on Fox News or moonlighting on Game of Thrones. You\u2019ll find these influential, multi-talented, swagger-soaked musicians in all corners of the state, armed to the teeth with gear and passion.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re teachers, cameramen, mom\u2019s, craftsmen, grandfathers, farmers, businessmen and vagabonds doing the work that makes our hearts beat to perfection and our heads swim with hope.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve put years (sometimes decades) of practice into their art, daily exercises of the body and mind, and they do it all, as Townes Van Zandt sang, \u201cfor the sake of the song.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s who they are.<\/p>\n
But in the end, my dear, it\u2019s all on you. Don\u2019t expect the music to come knocking on your front door. It\u2019s out there, blazing a vicious path these days all across the Granite State.<\/p>\n
But the music isn\u2019t going to chase you.<\/p>\n
You must chase the music.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Rob Azevedo<\/strong><\/p>\n Rob Azevedo, from Manchester, has been hosting a weekly radio show called \u201cGranite State of Mind\u201d<\/a> for the past three and a half years which showcases musicians from around New Hampshire and beyond. \u201cGranite State of Mind\u201d is an hour long program that features artists performing live in-studio each week, now exclusively on WKXL<\/strong>. Azevedo also writes a weekly music column called \u201cSound Check\u201d for the Concord Monitor<\/a> and hosts a monthly \u201cArtist in the Round\u201d style series at New England College in Concord.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently received an email from a reader that said, \u201cWhen I read your column I feel completely lost. Who are these people? What are their sounds?\u201d Valid questions. And I know where you\u2019re at, thinking wise. Maybe feeling a bit beyond the fence, somewhere just out of earshot of that sweet tasting, blood burning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-granite-state-of-mind"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9667"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9670,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9667\/revisions\/9670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhtalkradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}