To honor the memory of Joel Moss, Caffe Lena will host “Where the Music Never Dies: A Celebration of Joel Moss” on Tuesday, Oct. 14. Image via Caffe Lena.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Joel Moss, a six-time Grammy Award winner who served as Caffe Lena’s broadcast and sound technician, passed away last week at the age of 79.
“It never failed to amaze us that a man who produced records for Johnny Cash, Tony Bennett, The Talking Heads, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and hundreds of others, believed so much in the community of Saratoga Springs and the value of Caffe Lena, that he spent his evenings running our livestream cameras and recording our shows,” the famed folk venue said in a statement. “He was passionately committed to recording every show that happened at Caffe Lena because he felt that Lena’s stage is a national treasure and what happens on it is important. You never know when you’ll capture lightning in a bottle. When he saw that special spark in an artist, he told everyone–whether the artist was 10 years old, was playing their first show, or was an under-appreciated treasure who had put in decades on the road. Joel’s presence and faith elevated the Caffe in the eyes of many, and we are forever richer because of our time with him. We send condolences to his family (he loved you so much and talked about you all the time), innumerable friends, and all the local musicians who had the opportunity to work with him in the studio.”
Moss had a long and illustrious career in the music world, recording albums for artists such as Ray Charles, The Beach Boys, Little Richard, and Joe Cocker. For his efforts, he was awarded multiple Grammys, an Academy Award, and two Emmy nominations. His life and career began in Detroit, where he led a Hebrew folk quintet called The Hi-Liters that played at Lena in 1963. In the Saratoga area, he recorded and produced several albums for charity, including “A Saratoga Christmas Wish,” which raised $70,000 for Make-A-Wish Northeast New York.
To honor Moss’ remarkable legacy, Lena will host “Where the Music Never Dies: A Celebration of Joel Moss” on Tuesday, Oct. 14. The public is invited to gather at Trask Memorial Staircase at the south end of Congress Park at 4:30 p.m. A parade led by New Orleans musician Glen David Andrews will take off at 5 p.m. and attendees will clap, dance, and sing their way to Caffe Lena.
Music and speakers will start at the Caffe, both indoors and out, at 5:30 and end at 9. There will be an outdoor video screen to share what’s happening inside, and the whole event will be livestreamed on YouTube and Caffe Lena TV.
The City of Albany Pipe Band performs on Washington Street outside Speckled Pig Brewing Co. and The Still at Speckled Pig. Photo by Jonathon Norcross.
BALLSTON SPA — Hundreds of revelers packed Washington Street outside Speckled Pig last Saturday for an Oktoberfest block party, which provided the first glimpse of the brewing company’s new next door distillery.
The Still at Speckled Pig, housed in the former home of Jim’s Garage, featured a modern, dark, green-and-black interior with a long white bar and plenty of seating. Two garage doors opened to an outdoor patio with Adirondack-style chairs and fire pits. Cocktails and seasonal beers were served, though a full food menu was not yet available. The party began at noon, with attendees quickly filling up nearly every inch of the distillery space.
Oktoberfest featured free commemorative mugs for the first 150 attendees, a dunk tank, a bouncy house for kids, live music from the City of Albany Pipe Band, Bavarian pretzels, bratwurst, and pizza.
SCHUYLERVILLE — The owners of Brownies Dispensary in Colonie are opening a second location at 1164 NY-29 in Schuylerville, the company announced last Friday. The store has scheduled a grand opening celebration with free food and live music for Sept. 26.
“We are proud to announce Brownies Dispensary Saratoga,” the company wrote in a Facebook post. “We’re thrilled to expand our footprint and make our premium selections even more accessible. Our mission has always been to promote a healthy, fun lifestyle through safe, effective, and delicious products. With this second location, we’re doubling down on our dedication to quality, community, and responsible consumption right here in the heart of the Capital Region.”
Brownies describes itself as a “family, woman, veteran, and Black-owned business.” Its Colonie location first opened in February of 2024. According to state officials, it was the first Upstate cannabis shop to be majority-owned by a Black woman.
“In a world filled with gloom, we want to be that daily experience that leaves you with a smile on your face walking in and out the door,” the company says on its website.
Brownies’ Schuylerville shop will be open seven days a week and offer pickup and delivery service. Products for sale are expected to be the same as those offered in Colonie.
Photo via Angela LaBombard, Fillies on Phila’s Front of House manager.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Fillies on Phila, a wood-fired pizza restaurant that opened earlier this year, has announced some changes to its menus and hours.
According to the eatery’s Front of House Manager Angela LaBombard, starting Sept. 30, Fillies will be offering brunch Thursdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.; there will be a new tailgating menu in effect during brunch; lunch will no longer be served on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and the new opening time for those days will be 4 p.m.
The new tailgate menu will include calamari, deviled eggs, chili cheese nachos, wings, steamers, Philly cheesesteak bao buns, and more. The brunch menu will feature ricotta pancakes, brioche French toast, brunch smash burger, prime rib hash, breakfast enchiladas, and oven-baked frittata.
Fillies on Phila is one of a handful of new restaurants that either have opened or will open on Phila Street this year. Other additions include Standard Fare, Familiar Creature, and the forthcoming Noah’s Italian Chophouse. Filles is located at 39 Phila Street.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Saratoga Central Catholic Saints girl’s varsity soccer team will play two night games this fall at Skidmore College’s Wachenheim Field.
The games will be held on Friday, Sept. 19 (vs. Germantown) and Friday, Sept. 26 (against Gloversville). Both games begin at 7 p.m. There is no admission to watch the games and free parking is available close to Wachenheim Field on Skidmore’s campus.
In an interview with Saratoga TODAY earlier this month, Saints Head Coach Brian Venn called his team’s ability to play under the lights at Skidmore “a testament to what we’re going to be able to do to build this [program] into a soccer destination in the future.”
Team Co-owner Frank Polsinello, Head Coach Bob Catherwood, and Assistant Coach Tim Hepp at the Saratoga Racers’ new home court in Mechanicville. Photo by Treyvon Robinson, the team’s social media manager.
MECHANICVILLE — The Saratoga Racers burst into existence last year, finishing their inaugural American Basketball Association (ABA) season with a 13-7 record and an appearance in the league’s playoff semifinals. But the team could reach even greater heights in its forthcoming sophomore season, which will be hosted at a new home court in Mechanicville.
The venue change is the result of new ownership. Earlier this summer, the Racers were sold by Keith Harrington to an ownership group led by Frank Polsinello, a Mechanicville native with big plans for both the team and his home city.
The structure at 10 North Main Street includes a basketball court originally built in the 1950s that can seat up to 2,800 spectators. It’s a much larger site than the Saratoga Central Catholic gym on Broadway, which hosted the Racers last season. And there are plans already in place to beautify the Racers’ new home.
“I’ve loved this gym since I was 12 years old,” said Polsinello. “We’re redeveloping it… We’re hoping it’ll be the center of a new, revitalized Mechanicville community.”
Tentative plans for the building include adding a fitness club, pickleball court, cornhole league, brewpub and cafe, apartments, and theater events. If all comes to fruition, it’ll be a new era for the historic gym, which has hosted games played by local notables like pro basketball player Barry Kramer and future State Senator Jim Tedisco.
The court’s storied past is not lost on current members of the Saratoga Racers, who said they appreciated the venue’s legacy and have been practicing there almost every night.
“It’s a game changer,” said Racers’ star Tobias Holmes. “Now we can prepare a lot earlier than last year and it’s helping us already tremendously.”
A number of Saratoga’s standouts are set to return for year two, including Holmes and RJ Rosa, both of whom practiced with the team on Tuesday night.
“We can really get in here whenever we want,” Rosa said. “That’s a night and day difference from last year. I’m seeing guys take advantage of it almost every night, which is huge.”
Rosa credited the ownership and venue change with attracting more talent to the team. “We’re seeing new guys that we didn’t see last year come out,” he said. “I think it’s a combination of us performing well last year but also them seeing that we’re doing things the right way.”
Three Racers players said that a combination of added talent and improved chemistry among returning players would likely result in a better team taking the court this season. The goal for the players was the same: to advance as far as possible in the ABA postseason, perhaps all the way to a national championship.
Head Coach Bob Catherwood pointed out that the Racers fell in last year’s playoffs by only 8 points to a team that advanced to the final four. “We’ve got the capability to have a great year,” said the veteran coach, who helped lead both the Albany Patroons and Albany Legends to title victories.
Catherwood has a career record of 370-154 for a 72% winning percentage. At 73 years old (he’ll be 74 this November), he seemed to have no regrets about coming out of retirement to coach the Racers. He cited one game last season, in which Saratoga went on a 31-0 scoring run, as one of the most extraordinary things he’s ever seen on a basketball court. “I’ve got a couple rings, a couple championships, but I never had a game like that,” Catherwood said. “It’s a lot of fun.”
The fun is set to continue in early November, when the Racers will play their first games of the 2025-26 regular season.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Daniel Donato is like a Quentin Tarantino movie.
The musician referenced Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” in our interview, and the film serves as something of a shortcut to explaining Donato’s unique sound. The movie is assuredly a Western, filled with genre conventions and set a decade after the Civil War. But it’s also a 21st century Tarantino flick, stuffed with the maestro’s signature dialogue and exaggerated violence.
Similarly, Donato is a traditional country artist in the vein of Marty Robbins or Merle Haggard. But he’s also unconventional and improvisational like the Grateful Dead. It’s a recipe of musical flavors that demands its own category; one that Donato has labeled “cosmic country.”
This swirl of Stetson and psychedelia can quickly become addictive to those receptive to its sound, creating some buzz around Donato that’s similar in many respects to the rising popularity of Billy Strings, a bluegrass traditionalist/jam bander who will headline a concert in Albany later this year.
Donato’s cosmic voyage will pass through Saratoga Springs, where he’s scheduled to play at Putnam Place on Sept. 25. It’ll be the artist’s second Spa City performance following a 2022 co-headlining show at Putnam with the Kitchen Dwellers.
Ahead of the concert, Saratoga TODAY spoke with the artist about his new album “Horizons” (released less than a month ago), his upbringing, and his fanbase. That conversation is presented here in Q&A format, with some light editing for length and clarity.
Saratoga TODAY: When you start working on a new album, is there something specific you want to achieve with that album, like a certain sound, or are you trying to explore certain ideas? And if so, what was your objective with “Horizons”?
Daniel Donato: Well, ideas can take form and they can be personalized in many forms. Ideas can be personalized in the form of sounds, lyrics, and composition, at least musically speaking, and arrangement. So, the whole thing really is an idea. With “Horizons,” I wanted to have a message of faith on an individual level of people, not like on a collective, dogmatic level. But just on the individual level of really righteously trying to show up for life and truly experience what’s going on. The whole record goes through varying levels of that. There’s some deeper songs and there’s songs that you don’t have to dig as deep. So that’s kind of the idea. Really, it’s an album of faith, but just on an individual level.
ST: Do you feel like this album was a little bit more in the direction of traditional country? I’ve seen other people describe it that way, but I was curious if you felt that the album had that sound.
DD: I think parts of it does, yeah. If you watch “The Hateful Eight” by Tarantino, there’s elements of that movie that are very traditional and Western, but then there are elements of it as well that are also horrific and modern in terms of the props and the violence that is conveyed in that as well. So, I think it starts in a traditional place. It starts in a country place, and it ends in a cosmic place.
ST: That’s a great movie, by the way, very underrated in my opinion.
DD: Oh my God, yeah.
ST: Nowadays, it seems like there’s so much emphasis on touring and live shows. How important are albums to you? Do you see a studio album as, “This is the reason why I’m a musician?” Or is it more 50/50 between that and live shows?
DD: The reason why I believe I’m a musician is that is my purpose, to add service into the world, to bring service to the world. Hopefully in other forms too; I’d love to be a father. But that is my main form of service to the world, is music. And so music can happen in the form of video. It can happen at a live show. It could happen on an album. Whatever form it is that I’m being called to do at that present moment, the forms are more or less secondary, as the service in itself is happening in any of the forms. The service is primary, and the forms are secondary. It’s not really up to me to decide which form is the preferred modality of any single listener. It’s really just my job to make sure that we have opportunities set up for people to experience cosmic country, whatever form it is; whether it be live, whether it be on our archival releases, whether it be on an album, could be anything. Cosmic country also can be experienced in the storytelling that we have with our posters that we do for every tour as well, and all kinds of things like that.
ST: Obviously, Nashville has had such a strong influence on you, but I saw that you started out in Atlantic City. That combination, going from New Jersey to Nashville, what kind of influence do you think that had on you?
DD: My parents are from Jersey. People in Nashville don’t really understand that. In Tennessee, everyone’s like, “Oh, you’re from the Northeast.” And it’s like, yeah, but Long Island is different than Philly, and Philly is different than Atlantic City, and Atlantic City is different than North Jersey. My dad’s from East Brunswick and my mom’s from Atlantic City. Those are both tough and rough places to grow up, economically and socially. You have that influence and then you also have that general modality of the Northeast, which is you have to keep your nose to the grindstone and work hard every day. The South has that but in different ways. So, the way that Jersey affected me really was through my parents and my household, and then growing up in Nashville was just part of the cosmic design of my life because it really didn’t make any contextual sense for anyone in our family to move to Tennessee. Nobody in my family had ever thought about living in Tennessee, let alone ever actually doing it. So, I’m grateful that both of those things happened.
ST: I’m curious about the demographics of people you find coming to your shows. Are there a lot of people who are into the Dead or Phish who are saying, “Oh, maybe I like country music a little bit more than I thought I did?” Or do you find that it’s more people who love country music who are embracing the jam and the improvisational aspect of it?
DD: There’s people coming to our shows that are discovering country music that I just assumed everybody knew and loved. And then there’s people coming to our shows that already know country music and that are discovering the types of music that, like Widespread Panic and Phish and the Dead have curated, that I thought everybody would just know. So, the secondary blessing of what we’re doing is we’re getting to reveal a tapestry of influence and deliver people an experience of discovery, which is such a righteous gift.
BALLSTON SPA — Actor and filmmaker Robert Redford passed away Tuesday morning at the age of 89 at his home in Utah.
Redford’s illustrious career once brought him to the Village of Ballston Spa, where he filmed a scene on Front Street for “The Way We Were,” a romantic drama directed by Sydney Pollack and released in 1973. The film was a box office hit and won 2 Academy Awards for Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Song.
The Ballston Spa scene features Redord’s character beckoning Barbra Streisand’s character to cross the street and chat with him. They have a conversation near a restaurant built for the movie in front of the present-day Medberry Inn & Spa.
Redford’s many well-known acting credits include “The Natural,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Sting,” “Barefoot in the Park,” “All the President’s Men,” “Out of Africa,” “Three Days of the Condor,” and “Avengers: Endgame.”
As a director, he helmed “Ordinary People” (which won an Academy Award for Best Picture), “A River Runs Through It,” “The Horse Whisperer,” “Quiz Show,” and “The Legend of Bagger Vance.” He also co-founded the famed Sundance Film Festival.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Summer 2025 just ended but plans for summer 2026 have already begun.
Country music star Riley Green is the first artist to be officially booked to perform at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) for the 2026 season. He’ll take the stage on Friday, June 19 during his “Cowboy As It Gets” tour. Openers will include Justin Moore and Drake White & Hannah McFarland.
Green has charted four top-20 Billboard country hits, including “Half of Me,” “Different ‘Round Here,” and “There Was This Girl.” He won an Academy of Country Music Award in 2020 for Top New Male Vocalist. Last year, he was awarded Musical Event of the Year for “You Look Like You Love Me” (featuring Ella Langley) by the Country Music Association.
Rendering of The Ambler Hotel, formerly known as the St. Charles Motel. Image via Weekender Hospitality, LLC.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Ambler Hotel will celebrate its grand opening early next month, according to the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce.
The Ambler is the renamed, renovated, redesigned, and rebranded structure at 188 South Broadway that formerly housed the St. Charles Motel.
Keir Weimer, the founder and CEO of Weekender, told Saratoga TODAY last year that the creative concept of The Ambler was “Palm Springs meets an urban New York market.” The brick exterior has been painted white and the rooms will feature some bold pops of color. The hotel will also be a smart one, meaning it’ll offer WiFi-enabled keyless doors that allow guests to check in at any hour, large-screen TVs loaded with apps, and WiFi thermostats.
As a brand, Weekender prides itself on creating rooms that function as basecamps for adventurers. The Ambler will be within walking distance of downtown Saratoga Springs, allowing its guests to explore the vibrant Spa City on foot.
