Maybe you already heard about this – I wrote about it for today’s Free Press, for instance – but Grace Potter and the Nocturnals have expanded their annual Vermont homecoming show on the Lake Champlain waterfront into a two-day festival-within-a-festival during the Lake Champlain Maritime Festival that will feature a host of national and local bands. Check here for more details.
I was in Higher Ground’s Showcase Lounge on Friday and heard two of the Vermont bands the Nocturnals have hand-picked for their Grand Point North festival. One of them, Chamberlin, opened for the Nocturnals on their tour this winter and recently released a fine album called “Bitter Blood.” I caught them opening for GPN at Higher Ground in December and thought they were all right if a little unfocused. They were a lot tighter Friday night and rocked the house. Vocalist Mark Daly has a booming rock ‘n’ roll voice but hits those high notes with confidence, too. I thought of Chamberlin as primarily a vehicle for Daly and for Ethan West’s stellar guitar work, but Friday night I honed in on the keyboards and secondary percussion of Eric Maier, who gives Chamberlin’s music a lot of its substance. This is a good rock band in the best sense of the phrase – not a lot of bands playing rock ‘n’ roll that sounds both classic and fresh, but Chamberlin does that.
I’ll tell ya, though, the band that really struck me was the one that played right before Chamberlin. I’ve heard Maryse Smith and the Rosesmiths a couple of times, opening for Anders Parker at The Monkey House and The New Pornographers in the Higher Ground Ballroom, and liked what I heard. Friday night was one of those moments I love as a music writer, where you hear a band and know they’ve really got something, and you can’t wait to hear what’s next.
Maryse (it’s pronounced like “Theresa”) is pretty shy on stage, but her songs of love gone wrong are bold and frank. The woman who barely speaks between songs practically shouts her lyrics like a performer who’s getting her songs out not because she wants to but because she absolutely has to. She has an indie-Americana sound that reminds me a lot of Sharon Van Etten, whose new album “Epic” has been extremely heavy in my rotation at home the past few months. I think Maryse’s sound is coming together especially well right now partly because she’s been doing this for long enough that she’s gaining more and more confidence, but she also has an excellent band behind her, with Paddy Reagan (the impresario of The Monkey House who’s also in the band Paper Castles) on drums and Seth Gallant on bass. Most remarkably, Benny Yurco of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals sat in with the band Friday night after having only one rehearsal with them the night before and absolutely killed on lead guitar. Paddy tells me Benny and another of Burlington’s best guitarists, Bill Mullins, will be contributing to Maryse’s forthcoming album, which should be out by the time the Rosesmiths play at the Nocturnals’ Grand Point North festival at Waterfront Park in mid-August. Can’t wait to hear it.
Oh, and back on the topic of GPN, Grace and the band (minus bass player Catherine Popper) recently made a raucous acoustic-soul version of Beyonce’s “Why Don’t You Love Me” which you can check out here.
