News gathered at the May 27th CD release show at The Burren for The Remittance Men:  Great to see and hear Jake Armerding at the show as part of the Remittance Men band. He is gearing up to do another “new song per month” project. Tim Gearan – who sang on two songs during the show – is working on not one album, but two. They will show very different sides of Tim musically.

On the subject of The Remittance Men band, it’s a reminder of why so many fans and musicians check out the liner notes of albums. So here was the band from right to left in a semi-circle, surrounding lead singer and songwriter Tom Robertson (formerly of The Social No. 11):

Jake Armerding on fiddle and mandolin (member of Barnstar and still shows up on some projects of Mark Erelli and others);
Zachariah Hickman on bass (Barnstar, Erelli, and he’s seemingly produced 10% of the WUMB music library);
Dave Brophy on drums (random searches on liner notes show him on multiple recent projects);
Andy Santospago on lead guitar (on something like 3 or 5 projects over the past year including the latest albums by Greg Klyma and Bob Bradshaw, plus being a member of the band Miriam);
James Rohr on piano and accordion (member of The Blue Ribbons, he’s popped up on a few projects over the past 18 months).

So let’s keep reading those liner notes, whether our albums come from CD’s, vinyl, or online sources.

Former Twisted Pine member Rachel Sumner is releasing another single with her new band Traveling Light. Coming out on June 3rd, the song “Strangers Again” is a cover of a Gillian Welch-David Rawlings song from Gillian’s Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs Vol 3 (the complete box set of those 48 previously unreleased songs in three volumes was released in December 2020). Rachel will be releasing a couple more tracks over the next two months. The full album is then due out on August 5th.

Cue that old song, “Are You Ready For The Summer Time,” here come the summer music festivals (and let’s pause for a moment of appreciation that we have them again). To look at one of them – the annual Green River Festival coming up June 24-26 at the Franklin County Fairgrounds in Greenfield, MA – a number of the slated bands have local roots. You’ve got Lake Street Dive, the Ryan Montbleau Band, Pasonsfield, Sarah Borges, and Jake Manzi. Congrats to our local musicians who are part of this and other summer music festivals.

I got around to the Union Square portion of Somerville’s Porchfest last month. It was much fun. A veritable plethora of towns are having Porchfest in June:

June 4th: Newton, Dorchester.
June 11th: Winchester, Malden.
June 18th: Arlington.
June 25th: Reading, Quincy, and Dedham.

So get out there to enjoy local music while mixing with your music fan neighbors…and supporting live local music.

That’s all for now (until five minutes after I submit this when some other interesting piece of information comes through…),

~ Perry Persoff