How did Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks put it before a glorious day for baseball? Oh, yeah: “Let’s play two.”
So goes the game plan that folk singer-songwriter Spencer Lewis is bringing into the CD-release concert he’ll perform at ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret on Friday night.
“We’ll open with a short set from Souls, my album of instrumentals,” Lewis said on Monday, during a telephone interview from his home studio in Bethel. “Then we’ll do all the songs in From Now to Now, which with the vocals is kind of an anomaly in my career.”
While From Now to Now, his first studio album of original songs in 16 years, is his 27th recording, Lewis last played an album-release concert in 1988. At that performance, he unveiled his instrumental Weeding the Garden at the former Annabelle’s in Stockbridge, Vt., just a few miles as the crow flies from his then-home in Barnard.
“I was covering for another performer who was supposed to play that night,” Lewis recalled. “I sold 50 cassettes of my own recording.”
Since then, Lewis estimates, he has sold around 100,000 of his albums, in various forms of recording technology, at the craft fairs and farmers markets and agricultural fairs to which he’s traveled around the Upper Valley, New England and upstate New York for the better part of three decades.
“I enjoy the whole thing of playing for an audience, asking someone else to approve you,” Lewis said. “When people plopped down their $5 or whatever it was then, that was a form of approval.
“What more do you need?”
Lewis, who landed in Vermont in the early 1970s and settled in the Upper Valley in 1983, has been building his catalogue and refining his art while erecting stone walls as his summer source of income.
“The last three years, performing has become a blossoming part of my career,” he said. “That’s nice at 63. I’m sure at some point soon I’m going to be phasing the stone walls out.”
Since around 2004, Lewis has been taking advantage of new technologies for live-looping guitar grooves and overdubbing fiddle rhythms into his shows as well as his recordings.
“I had this stew that I had to learn how to mix: 20 seconds of guitar here, 40 seconds of fiddle there,” Lewis said. “The mix became part of the performance. People get a kick out of it. It sounds complicated, but when it’s done in real time in front of them, it makes a lot more sense.”
Folk-rocker Spencer Lewis celebrates the release of his 27th album,
Best Bets
Pianist Annemieke McLane and accordionist Jeremiah McLane perform Poulenc’s musical interpretation of the children’s book The Story of Babar at two concerts on Saturday, at 10 in the morning at ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret and at 7 that night at the United Church of Strafford. At both performances, Strafford singer and actor Rebecca Bailey will narrate from the book about an orphaned elephant raised in civilization. While admission to both concerts is free, the Strafford church will welcome donations to its piano maintenance fund at the evening performance.
Multi-instrumental roots musician Matt Flinner will lead his trio into West Newbury (Vt.) Hall on Sunday afternoon at 3. To reserve tickets and learn more about this and future performances in the Rock Farmer Road Show series, visit patrickrossmusic.com or call 802-866-3324.
Looking Ahead
The Parish Players will stage their 11th annual Ten-Minute Play Festival at the Eclipse Grange on Thetford Hill between next Thursday night and Feb. 17. To order tickets ($10 to $15) and learn more, visit parishplayers.org or call 603-785-4344. For the opening-night show, tickets will be sold on a buy-one, get-one-free basis.
The Vermont Fiddle Orchestra and the Young Tradition Touring Group will range among the folk music and dance traditions of Ireland, the British Isles, Canada, New England, Sweden and Appalachia, during a Feb. 10 performance at Chandler Music Hall in Randolph. The extravaganza begins at 7:30 p.m. To reserve tickets ($15) and learn more, visit chandler-arts.org or call 802-728-6464.
Sonny Saul will host an evening of jazz at his Pleasant Street Books store in Woodstock on Feb. 10, playing piano alongside bassist Peter Concilio, drummer Pete Michelinie and singer Rebecca Bailey. While admission is free to the session, which starts at 7:30, donations are welcome.
Trombonist Joe Bowie, trumpeter Steven Bernstein, keyboardist Bahnamous Bowie and drummer JT Lewis will perform with Dartmouth College’s Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble during the 41st annual Winter Carnival concert on Feb. 10 at 8 p.m. at Spaulding Auditorium in Hanover. To order tickets ($9 to $10) and learn more, visit hop.dartmouth.edu or call 603-646-2422.
The Windsor-based rock band The Pilgrims will celebrate the release of its new CD, No Focus, with a performance at Windsor Station on Feb. 10 at 9:30.
Saxophonist Cercie Miller, who is on the faculty at Wellesley College, and singer Dominique Eade, who teaches at New England Conservatory in Boston, collaborate on the next session of Jazz on a Sunday Afternoon on Feb. 12 at 4 p.m. at the Center at Eastman in Grantham. To reserve tickets ($16 to $18) and learn more about this concert and the current series, visit josajazz.com, call 603-381-1662 or email bill.wightman@comcast.net.
Feb. 15 is the deadline to submit ideas for stories, on the theme of “Protest,” to tell during AVA Gallery’s next session of The Mudroom on March 9. Stories, which must be told and not read, are limited to seven minutes and must be true and autobiographical. In submitting story ideas to mudroom@avagallery.org, applicants must summarize their stories in no more than 300 words and send a biographical sketch of no more than 150 words. The Mudroom team will choose five stories from those submitted. To learn more, visit avagallery.org or facebook.com/themudroomat@ava.
In a show benefiting Americans United for Separation of Church and State, folk-rocker Catie Curtis will perform at the Flying Goose Brew Pub and Grille in New London on Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. To reserve tickets ($25) and learn more, visit flyinggoose.com/music or call 603-526-6899.
Theatre/Performance Art
Northern Stage lowers the curtain on its production of Jack Neary’s dark comedy Trick or Treat at the Barrette Center for the Arts in White River Junction, with performances this afternoon at 2, at 7:30 tonight and Friday night, Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30, and at 5 on Sunday afternoon. For tickets ($15 to $30) and more information, visit northernstage.org or call 802-296-7000.
Plainfield’s Peter “Rusty” Pardoe hosts an open mic for comedians at Cataleya Caribbean Bar & Grill in New London tonight at 7. Sets run five to 10 minutes. Sign-up starts at 6:45.
Shaker Bridge Theatre wraps its run of the drama Love Alone with 7:30 performances tonight, Friday night and Saturday night and a 2:30 show on Sunday afternoon. To reserve tickets ($16 to $32) and learn more, visit shakerbridgetheatre.org or call 603-448-3750.
Music
The funk duo Soule Monde performs at the Flying Goose Brew Pub and Grille in New London tonight at 8. To reserve tickets and learn more, visit flyinggoose.com/music or call 603-526-6899.
Sensible Shoes performs at Lampscapes in downtown White River Junction, Friday night at 6.
The Conniption Fits rock the Skinny Pancake in Hanover on Friday night starting at 8.
Pianist Diana Fanning and cellist Dieuwke Davydov tune up for their eighth tour of Europe by performing chamber music at the Chandler Music Hall on Saturday night at 7:30. Tickets cost $20 in advance and $22 at the door; to reserve seats, visit chandler-arts.org or call 802-728-6464.
Dance
The Newport Opera House Association has postponed the winter warm-up dance it had originally scheduled for this Saturday night. To be reimbursed for reserved tickets and to learn more, visit newportoperahouse.com or call 603-863-2412 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Friday, Monday or Tuesday.
Bar and Club Circuit
Singer-guitarist Dave Clark and harmonica player Jed Dickinson perform ballads, blues, folk rock and their own compositions in the tavern of the Lyme Inn tonight at 6.
Pianist Bob Lucier plays jazz at the Canoe Club tonight and next Thursday night from 6:30 to 9:30. For the nights in between, the performers are acoustic chameleon Joseph Stallsmith on Friday, the Sensible Shoes duo of Barbara Blaisdell and Tim Utt on Saturday and jazz guitarist Billy Rosen on Wednesday. And on Monday night between 5:30 and 8:30, Marko the Magician performs his tableside sleight-of-hand.
Singer-songwriter Charlie Christos performs at the Taverne on the Square in Claremont tonight starting at 7. Subsequent performers over the weekend are the folk duo of Mark and Deb Bond on Friday night at 8 and the Shana Stack Band with a set of country on Saturday night at 9.
The Exit 9 Blues Band pulls into Windsor Station tonight at 7:30, followed by Rumblecats on Friday night at 9:30, the Equalites with a set of reggae, rock and soul on Saturday night at 9:30 and singer-songwriter Steve Hartmann on Tuesday night at 6.
Singer-songwriter Dan Walker performs in the tavern at Jesse’s in Hanover on Friday night at 5.
Acoustic rocker Dave Bundza kicks off the weekend of music at the Salt hill Pub in Hanover on Friday night at 7, and The Blues Brothers Revue ramps up the volume at 8 on Saturday night.
The Jordan Tirrel-Wysocki duo plays Celtic-flavored folk-rock at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon on Friday night at 8. The reggae ensemble Dopamine follows on Saturday night at 8.
Club Soda performs classic rock and dance music at Newport’s Salt hill Pub on Friday night at 9, followed on Saturday night at 8 by singer-songwriter Chris Powers.
Guitarist Billy Rosen, trumpeter Dave Ellis and drummer Tim Gilmore set the jazzy rhythm for dancing at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners on Friday night starting at 8.
Guitarist Cindy Geilich and singer Laurianne Jordan join forces and voices at the Stone Arch Bakery in Lebanon on Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Guitarist Billy Rosen and tenor saxophonist Michael Parker perform jazz at Carpenter and Main in Norwich on Tuesday night at 7.
Dave Clark hosts the weekly Pickin’ Party at the Skinny Pancake on Tuesday night at 7, and Bow Thayer plays still more Americana at the venue on Wednesday night at 7:30.
Royalton singer Alison “AliT” Turner helps Soulfix jazz up dinnertime in the tavern of the Lyme Inn next Thursday night at 6.
Open Mics
Jim Yeager hosts an open mic at 7 tonight at the ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret.
Ramunto’s Brick & Brew Pizza in Bridgewater hosts an open mic starting at 7:30 on Thursday nights. Participants get a free large cheese pizza.
String players of all ages and abilities are welcome at the weekly acoustic jam session at South Royalton’s BALE Commons on Friday night from 6:30 to 10.
Joe Stallsmith leads a weekly hootenanny of Americana, folk and bluegrass at Salt hill Pub in Hanover on Monday nights at 6.
Bradford’s Colatina Exit holds an open mic, Tuesday nights at 8.
Jim Yeager hosts an open mic at Hartland’s Skunk Hollow Tavern, at 8:30 on Wednesday night.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.