What We've Been up to:

Jim's unabridged comments:

July 15, 2009
The Food Drive Benefit went well and we raised a good sized donation. There has been interest in others, but no one has stepped up to sponsor one yet, which may simply be a sign of the times. Still, our offer remains open until otherwise stated. We'll play for free if you agree to raise food or donations for a local charity.

If you look on our calendar, you'll see we have a few new gigs listed. The September Farmers Market will be a duo with Rob and I as Phil has a prior commitment. Then again, you may see a very special guest with us.

Phil Boynton also has to bow out of our Topsfield Fair event which really disappoints us, but we have a special guest for this event too, so we'll still have that full trio sound you've come to expect. Rob and my old bandmate Russ leibe from Rust has agreed to join us. This ought to be a lot of fun for us as well as the audience.

I need to get back onto the song list page and update it. We've added quite a few new songs since our last gig. I'm sure you'll be surprised!

May 29, 2009
Okay, it's been a while since I've visited this page. Much water has passed under the bridge, or gone over the dam or, if you are truly philosophical, returned to the mountaintops to begin again.

Tomorrow we launch our kick-off Sing for Supper Food Drive event at the river's edge in Newburyport. We've invited our fans and friends and hope to make quite a party out of it. Our goal is for people to see how much fun it is to raise awareness and donations for local charities. There is no admission charge, except for donations of foodstuffs and other household goods. We are collecting on behalf of Our Neighbors Table in Amesbury.

Also, we have a whole new set of songs to lay on our audience. Some we've written ourselves, some arecovers of obscure but great songs, and a few will be re-tooled rock hits, spun acoustically.

We also are playing around with Garageband and are recording a few new songs for our demo with Phil on lead vocals. The first in the can will be a remake of Elton John's Love Song. Phil plays the native American flute on this one. No, an album is not even on the horizon. For three busy adults with real lives, there simply isn't enough time. We'll be happy with being able to find enough time to rehearse!

Rehearsals
We've been using much of our rehearsal time working of polishing up song elements. Because we aren't into note-for-note reproduction we can remove and embellish songs in new ways, even restructuring them, adding dynamics and so on until they sound like Stellwagen. That isn't to say we don't respect the original artists, as we do replicate some of the songs closely. We've been auditioning quite a few new songs, but it can be a long progression before we decide to add or discard a song into our set list. We might practice a song for a month or more and then let it go if it doesn't meet our expectations.

One song that Rob and I tinkered with a while back was discarded completely. But Rob decided to revisit it and we've changed keys and figured out a new chord structure and now its working pretty well. So, it just goes to show that if you don't at first succeed...

We are slowly bringing more of new member Phil Boynton to the forefront. Phil now sings lead on a couple of songs I used cover and one from Rob. With the addition of several new sings Phil is doing more lead work all the time.

Two weeks ago Phil showed up to rehearsal without his acoustic bass. "In the shop for repair.' he said. Then he unpacked a brand new fretless bass. In addition to a very cool vibe it allows Phil to play in a different style, adding slick slides and runs to several of our tunes.

New Songs
Phil has done a great job getting up to speed with a lot of the songs Rob and I had worked into our sets. Considering how ecclectic our tastes run, Phil has proven to be as versatile as we are, swinging from Beatles to Stones, from Gomez to Cab Calloway. And though he's no ld salt, he's digging some of our seaside work including some traditional chanteys to a few original songs like Polish the Brass and Provincetown Girls.

Phil is now sing lead on a couple of our older songs, re-vamped especially for his vocals. He cover lead on Wild Horses, Good Riddance, Elton John's Love Song, Under the Milky Way, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away and River Driver. We are also tooling up some Elvis Costello and Boz Skaggs with Phil on lead vocals.

Our Demo CD
We worked with Roger Ebacher of Rebach Studios on a new demo CD. Instead of shooting for perfection, our goal was to reproduce our true live sound. I call it "warts-and-all" recording, similar to how bands used to record in the 50s and 60s. We recorded the whole thing "live" without any post-recording tricks, gizmos or corrections. We thought that if people want to know what we'll sound like in their venue a true "live" demo is the only way to go.

We now have six songs on this site and may put up a few more soon. Go to hear them as MP3s on our music page.

2008 Gigs
June 2008 found us playing twice. One was on June 4th as the featured act at the Hobo Cafe on Salisbury Beach and again as the featured act at an Open Mic in Newburyport.

The Hobo Cafe, June 4, 2008
When I first walked into the Hobo cafe I didn't know what to expect. Rob had scoped it out beforehand and said it was a good room for us. We arrived with our guitars and a couple of mics as we were led to believe there was a house PA. Just before we were supposed to go on, we discovered there was no PA, just a couple of small amplifiers sitting on the floor area that served as a stage. We managed to figure out the jacks in the dark, but my guitar effects/tuner pedal couldn't be used due to feedback or something. I was jammed by an active doorway and was bumped by every person coming and going. The mics sounded like mud on the stage area, though the audience said it sounded great to them. By the second song the whole place was singing along having a great time. We had quite a few fans show up and, through the grapevine, we heard the owners claimed it was the biggest crowd they ever had there for a music night.

AYC Open Mic, June 27, 2008
This is a private event that Rob and I have been hosting for the past 5 or 6 years. Rob claims longer, but it isn't worth fighting about. Rob and I soloed a few songs, as did Phil Boynton. Rob sang Bar-B-Q Blues which fit his dry sense of humor and a couple of other songs. I opened the show with an original song called Brand New Day which is subtitled The Zoloff Song. Later I sang Wreck of the Isadore, a lengthy song about a sea disaster. Phil soloed with his versions of Greenday's Time of Your Life and Wild Horses. Later, after the other acts had completed their performances, we took the floor as Stellwagen and performed for just over an hour. We debuted a new song Provincetown Girls and a quirky version of White Rabbit.

Yankee Homecoming, Newburyport, August 2, 2008
It took us an hour to set up for the 3:00 performance. Everyone was coming from somewhere else and we had 3 cars and no parking, so we ended up shuttling ourselves arond after unloading and hauling our gear to the outdoor stage on Inn Street. The stage was a tight fit for 3 of us being about 8x8 overall. Still wwe managed to fit everything we needed. We played 2 sets. It was interesting to see which of our songs affected traffic flow heading up and down Inn Street. It was cool to see people stop and sit down and STAY to hear us perform on a busy bustling pedestrian area. There were other louder rock bands playing down the street at the Market Square stage and that did affect us at times because loud isn't our thing. Our second set found several hundred people listening and enjoying Stellwagen. It was great fun to have a crowd helping out with the hand claps on Space Oddity. The weather was iffy for an outdoor show, but the rain held off until our last mic stand was packed away, thenit hit with gusto. It was a fun time and we look forward to doing it again next year.

Topsfield Fair, October 10, 2008 This was a whole lot of fun for al;l three of us in the group. It took about 1 hour to set up the stage with a nice sound system on loan from Johnny Sabino who also helped set it us and stayed for the first few songs. It was real nice weather for an outdoor show. We were on the Trianon Stage so anyone coming through the main gate saw and heard us. Considering there is so much to do at the fair we were pleased to see about half the 200 or so seats filled at one point, along with more people hanging back by the picnic tables. Our schedule had a last minute change to accomodate the Lonestar crew who needed all afternoon to set up the Grandstand stage, pushing country act Shawna Stack into oner of our original afternoon slots. We got to meet some of her band, all nice guys and great musicians. The fair people liked us very much and we expect to beck there again next year.

Cider Hill Farm, Amesbury, October 18, 2008 Originally scheduled for an early date in September, this was a train-date make-up. The day started out looking promising with sun and 60 degree weather, but the clouds quilted the sky and the temperature never got much above 54. At one point early in the first set we started Wild Horses with the sun shining but the clouds moved in and dropped the temperature so much that all of our instruments went completely out of tune IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SONG! There wasn't much we could do but soldier on and finish the song. Rob and Phil seemed to be okay, but the cold really affected my hands, making it hard to play and harder to concentrate on my parts. Still, we had a lot of familiar faces in the crowd, some who stayed for all three sets. We really appreciate the support guys. A big thankyou again to all our fans who showed up and a bigger hand to Johnny Sabino who lent us the big system.

The Holy Grail, October 25, 2008 This is a new restaurant/pub up off of Rte 125 in Epping. I was there for dinner about a month ago and loved the place: good food, good space: a renovated church. Nice people, great waitstaff. They had a duo providing music for the pub crowd that night. I contacted the Kennedy's who own the place and asked for consideration to play there. sent here to this site and we got an offer to play right away. When we got to the Holy Grail the packing lot was mobbed and so was the inside. People were lined up waiting to get in. Its that kind of place. Though we were supposed to go on at 8:30, we couldn't even start setting up until 8:45. I think we started playing around 9:30 and ran through two full sets and one zinger of a short set, ending with When I'm Up. We had a table of a few old fans who brought friends and friends of friends. They were having a blast, as were we. It was fun to look down the long pub bar and see people keeping the beat, singing along and applauding. I think we made a few new fans and were told by one couple who are regulars, that we are the best band they've ever seen in there. Tell the management! We laughed and struggled our way through the evening. There was such a din while we were setting up it was hard to hear anything at all. We experimented with a second amp and small monitors but couldn't get it working without feeding back. In the end I could here my vocals but not my guitar. I couldn't hear Rob's guitar most the night either, so I fed off the bass, moved my fingers around the guitar neck like I've practiced and prayed it would sound okay. Praying in a church! Its been a while. But all reports that came back from our spotters and e3ntourage, as well as the patrons and owners, everything sounds great, thank goodness!

What's Next?

There are a couple of other offers on our plate. And we are looking into some more pubs and open mics around the area. It's the end of sailing season so we've tucked away the tide charts and our boats are "on the hard." We hope to concentrate on a few select indoor events over the winter, and spend more time re-arranging some of our standards as well as learning another 20+ songs to widen the set lists. We've gotten aseveral good requests through this web site, so perhaps you'll hear some Zombies, Left Banke, CSN&Y, Elvis Costello, and more new songs you'll like as well as some of our others. Hopefully we can continue to stay away from the bar scene and still find some good venues for our brand of music. We will keep you posted.

November is mostly down time for the group. Our bass player Phil Boynton is getting married in November. Congratulations to Phil and Maryanne McPherson. Rob and I wish you all happiness and a great life of love, spirituality and health. We're thrilled to be part of their lives. Rob and I are looking forward to playing a few tunes for ou at your wedding reception. Should be a lot of fun!

If your venue has any openings in December - March, let us know.