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“She said something to the effect of, ‘Isn’t this incredible, to be legitimized, finally?’ ” Alger recalled during a conversation in White River Junction on Monday. “I had to say ‘yes.’ ”
Not that Alger needed the Nobel Committee’s historic — and, in some circles, controversial — decision to reach that conclusion: Over a career of more than 40 years, the New York-born, Georgia-raised Alger has regularly channeled a variety of literary influences, not least the poet Robert Frost, into a string of hit songs for the likes of Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood and Kathy Mattea.
Tonight and Friday night, the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Famer joins Sharon resident Jim Rooney in celebrating the intersection between song lyrics and poetry. Tonight in Strafford, they’ll muse on the literary side of the equation, during the weekly Town House Forum. And Friday night at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction, they’ll perform a wide range of songs with fellow Americana musician Chris Brashear.
“Since Jim left Nashville a couple of years ago, we don’t have a chance to hang out and have an agenda,” said Alger, who wrote songs for Rooney’s production company in Nashville in the 1970s. “To have a couple of gigs like this is kind of cool.”
Tonight’s gig in Strafford grew out of Alger and Rooney’s long-running fascination with the alchemy involved in songwriting.
“Language is the secret to all art,” Alger said. “If you don’t build your mastery of language, how it’s expressed, it’s hard to find a way to share your voice, your vision. … In the last decade or so, thanks to our ‘advances’ in communication with everyone in the universe, we’ve lost any grasp of the language we use. … Being able to express yourself will satisfy you so much more down the line in life. It’ll open up the world to you.
“The way Jim and I see it, we’ve saved ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in therapy by working these things out through music.”
In the songwriting class he’s been teaching for several years at Belmont University in Nashville, Alger encourages students to read as much literature as they can, in addition to listening to whatever music turns them on.
“You’ve got to find a source that inspires you,” Alger said. “If it’s rap, fine: Let’s make it interesting rap. From there, you read more poetry and you deconstruct the songs you like. … Some of these kids, when they’re being challenged to get out of their comfort zone, aren’t sure what to do.”
For Alger, an early revelation came from a teacher who introduced him to Frost’s poetry at his high school in rural Georgia, right around the time the folk-music revival of the early 1960s was kicking in.
“There was this surface simplicity of Frost that attracted a sophomore in high school,” Alger recalled. “Then I started to notice this other thing below the surface simplicity, a complexity. He wasn’t just this perfect, grandfatherly character that the popular culture was making him out to be.”
Over the ensuing decades, the link between poetry and song lyrics kept percolating, until he met then-poet laureate Robert Pinsky at a conference entitled “Art and the Public Purpose” about 20 years ago. Next thing Alger knew, Pinsky was asking him to write an essay on that link, for an online course that Pinsky was teaching.
“And guess who was in my essay,” Alger said. “Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.”
While Alger doubts that he would sell his soul to have written some of the combinations of words that Dylan and Cohen strung together over the decades, he might trade a few of his No. 1 hits, maybe even the hall of fame designation, to be able to claim authorship of one particular line from Cohen’s 1992 song Anthem.
“It’s the one that goes, ‘There’s a crack, a crack in everything./That’s how the light gets in,’ ” Alger said. “That’s the kind of thing where, when you hear it, you go, ‘Yes: This is what I’m still striving for. To get there.’ ”
Americana musicians Pat Alger, Jim Rooney and Chris Brashear perform at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction on Friday night at 7:30. To reserve tickets ($17.50) and learn more, visit yellowhousemedia.com. Tonight at 7, Alger and Rooney appear at the Town House Forum in the Strafford Town House. While admission to the forum is free, donations are welcome to the new-books fund at Strafford’s Morrill Memorial and Harris Library.
Best Bets
You’re gonna hear them roar: The singers, actors and dancers from the BarnArts Summer Youth Theater program stage The Lion King Jr. at Barnard Town Hall on Friday night at 7, on Saturday afternoon at 2 and Saturday night at 7, before completing The Circle of Life and other signature songs from musical on Sunday afternoon at 2. Admission costs $8 to $12. To reserve tickets and learn more, visit barnarts.org.
Singer-guitarist Tom Pirozzoli performs with guitarist Gerry Putnam on Friday night at 7, at the Harbor House Livery in Sunapee Harbor. Before the concert, Pirozzoli will show some of his paintings in an exhibit that includes work by potter Jon Keenan and weaver David Stearns.
Bassist Peter Concilio, saxophonist Michael Zsoldos, keyboard player Bruce Sklar and drummer Tim Gilmore share their take on the music of Wayne Shorter on Friday night at 8 at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners. To reserve a table, call 802-436-2139.
Reading, Vt., fiddler Adam Boyce and Perkinsville resident George Ainley’s old-timey string band provide the background music to Plymouth Old Home Day on Saturday at the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site in Plymouth Notch, Vt. Running from 10 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon, the celebration includes actor Jim Cooke’s performance as President John Quincy Adams at 1:30 p.m. While admission is free to the events and performances and to the visitor center, tickets are required to tour the homestead’s historic buildings. To learn more, visit historicsites.vermont.gov/.
Performance artist Erin Markey kicks off the New York Theatre Workshop’s three-weekend run of plays in progress on Saturday afternoon at 4, by bringing to life, through her one-woman show Little Women/Aunt Pat’s or Bust, a 14-year-old girl who loses her parents and supports her surviving family by working in a strip club in an alternate dimension. The workshop will present this and all the other plays at the Warner Bentley Theater, below the main lobby of the Hopkins Center. Admission to each show costs $9 to $13. To reserve tickets and learn more about the workshop’s shows, visit hop.dartmouth.edu.
The Amherst Jazz Orchestra plays big-band rhythms on the athletic field at Albert Bridge School in Brownsville on Saturday afternoon at 4:30. Proceeds from sales of tickets ($10) go to the School and Community in Partnership’s Ascutney Musicians Fund, which brings musicians to the area to teach and perform.
Vermont native Chatch Pregger brings his Farm to Ballet Project, with performers dancing to music from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, to Woodstock’s Billings Farm and Museum on Saturday night at 6:30. Admission is $15 to $35. To learn more about this performance and about the tour, visit farmtoballet.org or billingsfarm.org.
Metropolitan Opera soprano Sara Heaton joins the North Country Chamber Players at Alumni Hall in Haverhill on Sunday afternoon, for a concert featuring music from movies, theater and operas. Works of Verdi, Bernstein, Giovanni Rota and Erich Wolfgang Korngold round out the mix. For tickets ($20 for members of Court Street Arts, $22 for others) and more information, visit alumnihall.org or call 603-989-5500.
Three months after narrowly missing the cut for the Top 11 in NBC’s singing contest The Voice, Woodstock Union High School alumnus Troy Ramey returns to town to perform with Woodstock native and singer-guitarist Bryan Frates at Bentley’s restaurant on Sunday night from 6:30 to 10.
African-roots musician Rocky Dawuni leads his band onto the green in Hanover for a free concert on Wednesday afternoon at 5:30.
The New London Barn Playhouse begins its run of the “jukebox musical” All Shook Up with performances on Wednesday afternoon at 2 and Wednesday night at 7:30. Featuring Elvis Presley’s biggest hits, the play follows a Midwestern teen who finds common cause with a motorcycle-riding stranger in her small town. The production runs through Aug. 20.
Looking Ahead
Veteran folk singers Norman Kennedy and Margaret Bennett will range across the traditions of Scottish music with concerts on Aug. 14 at the East Grafton Christian United Church and on Aug. 16 at the Seven Stars Arts Center in Sharon. Both shows start at 7:30. For tickets ($5 to $20) to the Sharon show, visit sevenstarsarts.org.
Theater/Performance Art
Opera North shifts its Summerfest into high gear over the weekend at the Lebanon Opera House, starting tonight at 7:30 with the Offenbach comedy La belle Helene and continuing Friday night at 7:30 with the opening performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Saturday night at 7:30 with Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate. Summerfest ends on Aug. 13. Tickets for individual shows cost $20 to $90. To reserve seats and learn more about package deals and about the series, visit operanorth.org.
Performers from the Newport Opera House Association’s summer camp stage Schoolhouse Rock Live Jr. at Newport’s Richards Elementary School, on Friday afternoon at 2:30 and 5:30. Tickets at the door cost $2.50 to $5. To learn more, call 603-863-2412.The
Claremont’s Repertory Theatre company performs the Larry Blamire adaptation of Robin Hood at the Claremont Opera House at 7 on Friday and Saturday nights and at 1 on Sunday afternoon. To reserve tickets ($10) visit claremontoperahouse.org or the box office in City Hall, or call 603-542-4433.
The Activated Story Theatre troupe brings its national tour to Sunapee’s Abbott Library on Wednesday night at 6, for performances of multicultural adaptations of The Three Little Pigs and Old Joe and the Carpenter. Admission is free. To learn more, visit activatedstorytheatre.com.
Music
The Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock hosts the first of two Morning Music Jams today at 9:30. Acoustic musicians of all ages and skill levels are welcome, as are listeners.
Fiddler Andy Stewart and guitarist Mary Jo Slattery play at the Newberry Market in White River Junction this afternoon between 4:30 and 6:30.
Second Wind serenades the Lebanon Farmers Market with folk and rock rhythms between 4 and 7 this afternoon in Colburn Park.
The John Lackard Blues band performs Pentangle Arts’ weekly Brown Bag concert on the green in Woodstock this afternoon at 5:30.
The Americana duo of Celia Woodsmith and Chris Hersch appears at the weekly Feast and Field Market tonight starting at 5:30, at the former Clark Farm in Barnard.
Roots musician Brian Carroll performs at the Denny Park gazebo on Main Street in Bradford tonight at 6.
Taj Weekes and Adowa play reggae and Afro-folk from the bandstand at Lebanon’s Colburn Park tonight starting at 7.
Dr. Harp’s Blues Review plays on the gazebo at Newbury (N.H.) Harbor tonight at 7.
Singer-songwriter Jim Hollis commands the Flanders Stage at Sunapee Harbor for a set of rock on Saturday afternoon from 5 to 7.
The Acacia Music trio performs chamber works from France and North America on Sunday afternoon at 2, at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish. Admission is included in the $10 entry fee to the historic site.
Murphy’s Blues appears at the bandstand on the Newport Common on Sunday night at 6.
Singer-songwriter Sandi Anderson appears at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock on Monday afternoon at 4.
Americana’s Most Wanted plays the common in Strafford on Tuesday night at 6. While admission is free, donations are welcome, with part of the proceeds benefiting the renovation of the Strafford Town House spire.
The Trombone Stompers Dixieland Band plays jazz at Colburn Park in Lebanon on Monday night at 7.
The Lyme Town Band performs from the bandstand at the Fairlee Town Common on Tuesday night at 6:30.
Folk-rocker Danielle Miraglia plays at Lyman Point Park in White River Junction on Wednesday night at 6:30.
Bar and Club Circuit
Singer-songwriter George Nostrand pulls into Windsor Station tonight at 7:30. Following him to the venue over the coming week are The Elovators with a set of reggae and funk on Friday night at 9:30, Borderstone with a session of rock on Saturday night at 9:30 and singer-songwriter Erik Boedtker on Tuesday night at 6.
The Incognito Duo plays rock, soul and country in the tavern at Jesse’s in Hanover on Friday evening starting at 5.
New Orleans-based street musicians Milly Raccoon and Nathan Rivera play jazz, swing, bluegrass and more at the Skinny Pancake in Hanover on Friday night at 7. And on Saturday night at 7, guitarist Cary Morin weaves what he calls his “acoustic Native Americana” with reggae, jazz, bluegrass blues and dance rhythms.
Guitarist Ted Mortimer makes the rounds of the Upper Valley this weekend, performing with saxophonist Katie Runde at Salt hill Pub in Newport on Friday night at 8 and with fiddler Thal Aylward at the SILO Distillery in Windsor on Sunday afternoon from 1 to 3, before closing with a solo show at Peyton Place in Orford on Sunday night at 7.
Tirade frontman Toby Moore plays a solo acoustic set at Salt hill Pub in Hanover on Friday night starting at 9.
Wheel of Awesome mixes rock music, game shows and trivia contests during its appearance at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon on Friday night starting at 9. Singer-songwriter Ryan Alvanos performs Saturday night at 9.
Soulfix returns to Crossroads restaurant in South Royalton on Friday night at 9.
Open Mics
Jim Yeager hosts open mics tonight at 7 at the ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret, and at 8:30 Wednesday night at Hartland’s Skunk Hollow Tavern.
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, Monday nights at 6.
Bradford’s Colatina Exit holds an open mic, Tuesday nights at 8.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.