Night Owl Cafe serves lattes and biscotti for a concert with different bands
Ryan Loredo
A&E Editor
Coffee, a drink familiar to most of the Keene State College population, usually is accompanied by a morning routine, a meal, and/or acoustic music meant to relax the drinker.
Some cafés in Keene and in other cities offer a stage to bands so they can play to people sipping their warming elixir.
The Night Owl Café at KSC featured a night dedicated to such an atmosphere on Saturday, March 3 featuring various coffee drinks, pastries, and the music of two bands.
The first band was a Boston-based group, “The Ballroom Thieves,” an undefined genre band. The band consists of singers Martin Early on guitar, Devin Mauch on percussion, and Rachel Gawell on cello.
“We are the Ballroom Thieves,” Mauch said. “We are from Boston, Mass., we just released an EP called ‘The Devil and the Deep,’ and we’ve been playing the college circuit now for the last few months to promote the CD.”
The band members have not yet defined its exact genre.
“And I don’t think we will,” Gauch said.
“We are just this combination of indie, folk, pop, something along those lines.”
Gauch and Early originally met in college and began their band while jamming together. As for the origin of the name, Early said, “I was at a music festival in Rhode Island, the Newport Folk Festival.”
He went on to say, “I was sitting there, Devin and I had just gotten back from our first tour and we were kind of thinking, ‘We need a band name, we can’t just be Martin Early and Devin Mauch because that is really unoriginal.’” Early continued explaining his band name, saying, “And so I had a few drinks, I was sitting there, watching the Decemberists play while this was going on, and I was just going through some names and the first thing that came to mind was ‘The Drunken Thieves,’ and then I was like I can’t do that, like I wanted something with thieves in it.”
He later said, “So then I decided ‘The Ballroom Thieves’ because it just fits our style, we don’t really fit into any genre really and that’s kind of what I was trying to bring across with the name because we’re here to dance, in the ballroom but really we are there to steal everyone’s [stuff].”
The newest member of the band is celloist Gawell who became part of the band after they asked her to record with them for their newest album. “I had a celloist in the Boston area who gave my name to these guys. It was sort of through the musician network. They were looking for a celloist for the EP we recorded last summer, and so they asked somebody that I know, and he couldn’t do it, and so I came and recorded cello.”
The band performed to the crowded and caffeinated crowd of the NOC, playing some of its new and old works. One song performed during the show was a cover of Jay Z’s “I’m a Hustler Baby” in which each of the members had their chance to sing individually.
Gawell was even begged by her band mates and audience members to rap in French for the song. “I took about five years of [French] in school so I’m like somewhat fluent, not totally fluent, but I have also been to Paris several times.” Students laughed and enjoyed the music at certain times when appropriate to the performance. For one song the band asked KSC student Joanna Oko to hold up posters with illustrations to lyrics sung by Early.
Oko said, “It was awesome! They were really good. We were talking about how good they were throughout the show so it was really exciting going up there.”
After the performance, some audience members rushed to the merchandise table to get copies of the CDs, sign a poster given by the band, or to actually meet the performers. Students then re-gathered to view the final act, Preston Pugmire. He appeared on stage with a single guitar, pedal, and various objects.
He used these items to create a night of original works.
He began with a self introduction and started to demonstrate his style of playing to recorded sound bites.
He did not have these pre-recorded however; he simply strummed a note, a riff, slapped a deck of cards together, or rang some bells on his hand. With his use of recordings he became a modern one-man band.
Pugmire said, “I used a set of looping pedals, a bunch of effects pedal with processors that are at my feet that I can control while I play. I then record my vocals and my guitar playing through them and then I layer it over and over again so I can create this song and build it live in front of the audience.” He commented on his earlier work also, “I’ve been doing it for probably four years. I saw Howie Day do it like along time ago and thought it was so cool so I went, got the equipment and just started practicing.”
At some moments during the show, he talked about how he recorded a certain song for his current wife or embarrassing moments during his previous performances.
He even sang some songs out of a megaphone pointed to the audience. He said, “Bottom line, it’s love and a connection with the audience. Honestly that’s how it goes, it’s the foundation.”
Between songs he joked with a few people in the audience about his “sexy water shots” in which he turned his body sideways gulping down some water while looking to the side where a camera would capture his stance.
Pugmire said, “Something small like this [venue], where there is like 130 people who are all connected and engaged, that’s the best because everybody is there.”
The KSC Social Activities Council was responsible for bringing the two acts and bringing the concert together.
SAC representative Colleen Butler said, “We went to a conference called NACA (National Association for Campus Activities) in Hartford and we got to see a whole bunch of performers like comedians and other bands and these were two that were playing and I really liked them and so did the rest of the group so we voted upon it and those were our two favorites.”
Ryan Loredo can be contacted at rloredo@keene-equinox.com