Valley News – Art Notes: Music collective celebrating 10th year with festival
WINDSOR — What Doth Lifetime, the collective of musicians that orbits Windsor, held its to start with audio competition a couple of years in the past. There ended up bands there ended up meals vehicles it was pleasurable.
The event was a kind of gown rehearsal for 2020, the 10th anniversary of creating audio less than the What Doth Everyday living banner.
So considerably for that, what with the pandemic.
But the What Doth Lifetime crowd is practically nothing if not persistent, so the festival is back. Starting off at 2 on Saturday afternoon, the Windsor Trade on Depot Road will host eight Upper Valley bands, most of them affiliated with What Doth Existence, on two phases. The exhibits will be held outside masks and vaccination are strongly encouraged.
“We experience like our pretty little-scale minor pageant is probably safe, and we’re outside,” Brendan Dangelo, a founder and core member of the collective, reported this week.
The festival provides a welcome chance to look in on What Doth Existence, one of my favourite ongoing Higher Valley arts tales. An overview: A group of musicians who grew up alongside one another in and all-around Windsor set up a co-op, produce and document their own things, assist their friends’ creative visions and give an outlet for other up-and-coming bands. They are now in their mid- to late 30s, with work and little ones and homes, and they’re however at it.
And, most importantly, the songs set out by some of these bands — Derek and the Demons, Carton, The Pilgrims, Chodus and some others — is quite great. Without a doubt, some of it is terrific, so total of originality, wit and spirit that it fills the heart. When I dip into the in depth What Doth Lifestyle catalog, which any one can do on the collective’s website, whatdothlife.com, I kick myself: Why am I not listening all the time?
The collective’s associates know they’ve bought some thing particular heading on, a collaboration that goes back to the center school years for some of them.
“It’s a regular chance to hold out with our pals to do items we like,” reported Dangelo, a 37-year-old Windsor native who even now lives in city.
Obtaining into songs when they were being youthful was “a saving grace,” he claimed.
“When you have that, it gets to be like the foundation of your neighborhood,” he explained.
The plan for a co-op emerged at a New Year’s Eve dwelling get together in Windsor, with a number of bands playing. Every single band had shared gamers, Dangelo mentioned, and they thought “maybe we should really put an umbrella more than this entire point.”
The collective created it much easier for them to place tunes out into the entire world, through a internet site, and to reserve displays.
If the group’s condition is ill-defined, that’s by layout. While there’s a main team of gamers and 3 prolific bands — Carton, Derek and the Demons and The Pilgrims — other musicians occur and go, at times becoming a member of to make a report or two just before relocating together.
“It’s fantastic, for the reason that we all type of discuss a similar language now,” Kiel Alarcon, who’s a member of Carton and Derek and the Demons and was component of McAsh, a ska band that dates again 20 a long time. (A planned McAsh reunion on Saturday had to be put on keep as a person of the users experienced a situation of COVID-19 in his family members.)
The overlap among the bands can be a bit dizzying. Dangelo and Alarcon are both in Carton, with Ryan Hebert and drummer Bruce Black.
Alarcon is a member of Derek and the Demons, with Derek Young and Chris Egner. Dangelo, Alarcon and Egner are in The Pilgrims, with Chris Rosenquest and Davis McGraw.
Dangelo, Hebert and Black have backed up the wildly prolific Luke Chrisinger in Huge Vacation Avant Garde.
This crew also will take more youthful musicians beneath their wing. Enfield indigenous Hannah Hoffman done as Hannah and the Wooden Spoons, and Chodus is a young band from Claremont that has worked with What Doth Existence.
In the meantime, they all have working day employment. Dangelo performs at Dartmouth-Hitchcock as a system supervisor for a rural overall health professions grant. Other members operate in computer system programming, or teaching, or engineering.
Rosenquest was a person of three customers of The Pilgrims to get the job done at Hanover Strings, which he now owns.
The collective’s membership has never ever anxious that significantly about fame and fortune.
“Every songs biopic that arrives out states that which is not the way to happiness in any case,” Dangelo reported.
The pleasure of the company is in the camaraderie and creativeness. The site phone calls What Doth Existence “a manufacturer with practically nothing to market.”
The tunes kept the bandmates near to residence, Dangelo mentioned.
“If we can keep this heading to the conclude of our times,” he mentioned, “that’ll be a really very good existence.”
The What Doth Lifestyle Pageant is prepared for 2 to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Windsor Trade. Admission is free. As the organizers say on the event’s Facebook web site, “Masks and vaccinations are highly recommended, ya knucklehead.” Bands consist of Carton, Chodus, Derek & the Demons, Folquinette, Grief Counselor, The Pilgrims, Trevor Robinson and Time Lifetime Magazines.
Kim Souza, in her first manifesto for Revolution, her vintage and regionally sourced outfits keep in White River Junction, pointed out that in the Higher Valley, enjoyable is not likely to come seeking for you. You have to make your very own.
Souza does that on a big scale a several occasions a calendar year, and 1 of those people is this weekend. Saturday evening at 7, Revolution and Nancy the Female (aka garments designer Nancy Heyl) host a fall vogue present in Northern Stage’s Courtyard Theater. Admission is $20, to advantage the Hartford Youth Council. Masks are expected.
The Jenny Brook Bluegrass Festival was termed off very last calendar year, but it returns subsequent 7 days at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds.
I’m not likely to make an exhaustive checklist of the performers, except to notice that even with a Grammy nomination, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys are apparently too inadequate to afford a 2nd O, an R and a G. (Also, a single of the ‘Boys’ is a girl.)
If you’re into this sort of point, you really should know that the grounds open up early for tenting on Tuesday, Oct. 5, with performances Oct. 8 by means of Oct. 10.
For tickets and a lot more facts, go to jennybrookbluegrass.com.
Alex Hanson can be attained at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
