Thomas Dimopoulos

Thomas Dimopoulos

City Beat and Arts & Entertainment Editor
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Friday, 17 August 2018 11:41

Soldiering For A Cause

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Diane Duhame says she has always felt the need to help others.

In late April, Duhame learned of a group of volunteers who host Friday get-togethers in Albany to provide hot meals for the hungry and necessary essentials to the less fortunate. “I thought: I want to do that,” says Duhame, who makes her home in Galway. 

The Albany organization, who call themselves Street Soldiers, gather at the Soldiers' and Sailors' monument in Washington Park and was founded in 2016 by area residents Renee and Mike Fahey. Their motto: We can't change the world, but we can help those local who are a part of the world.

In Saratoga, things moved quickly. Drawing inspiration from The Faheys, a small group of volunteers assembled in May and were granted permission to set up some tables in the Salvation Army parking lot on Woodlawn Avenue.

 “We started off with no idea what to expect,” Duhame recalled. “That first week we probably had two tables with some sandwiches and fruit. I didn’t know if anyone would show up.”  Volunteers from the Albany group came to support the Saratoga version of the Street Soldiers. About 15 people showed up that first week. The group has gathered every Saturday night since their inaugural May event. 

“It just grew from there. More and more people started coming. Now we have eight tables and we take up a third of the parking lot,” Duhame says. “The last couple of weeks we’ve had about 40 people – and it’s not just for the homeless. There are a lot of people who are trying to make it on minimum wage. There are people leaving bad relationships and on their own. We have families come by and working people who are making minimum wage. They can keep a roof over their heads, but not everything else -   sometimes it’s some shampoo or toilet paper to get you through the week.”  

The tables offer goods – from razors and shaving cream to hair conditioner, underwear and socks – as well as homemade food made by volunteers – a varying course of fried chicken and macaroni salad, to fruit and sandwiches. 

“Everybody makes the Saturday supper and brings it over. We’ve had goulash and bean soup; we’ve also barbecued a few times. Every week it’s something else,” Duhame says. “It’s just a group of individuals who show up Saturday night to help our friends. These are people who have good hearts. There are a lot of good people in the world.” The core group of volunteers has grown to more than a dozen, and more are always welcome.

 For those in need of a meal or supplies, there are no questions asked, and everyone is welcome, Duhame says. “There are no requirements. Just whoever needs it. We don’t ask for any kind of proof or even their name. And there’s no corporation (involved). Nobody has ever said anything negative to us. It’s been amazing, and it’s taken on a life of its own.”

The gatherings are staged 7 p.m. Saturday nights in the Woodlawn Avenue parking lot of the Salvation Army. The plan is to host the event year-round and there are currently discussions being held about moving to an early time slot, to maintain daylight hours, during the winter. 

“I know it’s only going to get bigger and we would like more people to help out. I know people don’t want to come out every Saturday night, but people could do little things: make something and drop it off, or just tell us where you are and we’ll tell someone to come get it. We live all over Saratoga County,” she says.  

The group has created a Facebook page - StreetSoldiers II Saratoga – which contains a “wish list” of supplies and food and information about how others may get involved.

“Sometimes people feel invisible. When someone pays attention, someone who touches your heart, it can make all the difference,” Duhame says. “It’s just human kindness.” 

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Michael John Stone shows his appreciation for the Saratoga Street Soldiers, Saturday night Aug. 10, 2018. Photo by SuperSource Media.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – The city’s history reveals itself room-by-room in the two-story building Minnie Bolster called home.

Bolster, who died last December at the age of 97, collected Saratoga Springs related memorabilia for more than a half-century. Several thousand pieces of her collection will be offered in a public sale, which begins Friday morning.

“She tried to save everything, from all the hotels and the restaurants: the menus, the keys, photographs and posters, some bottles,” says Rosemary Gold, Bolster’s niece and one of a group of a half-dozen family members coordinating the estate sale.

“I had asked her what she envisioned and we’re trying to do this the way she would have wanted,” Gold says.

The initial thought was to have everything go to one buyer. When that didn’t pan out, the family thought to offer the items individually and stage the sale of Saratoga memorabilia in Saratoga.

“There are so many things we’ve come across - all from her 50-year-plus of collecting Saratoga. She was just dedicated to Saratoga. She grew up here and she loved the city,” says Gold. A sale of some antiques was held at the end of June. “It was successful, but it was antiques. You can put a value on that. This one: how do you put a value on something where you’ve never seen another one like it?”

Bolster, whose brother-in-law was photographer and photo collector George Bolster, served as president of the city's historical society for nearly a decade, chaired the annual antique show for more than a quarter century and was the longtime secretary to the late state Supreme Court Judge Michael Sweeney.

During visits to her home, she would happily tell you she was born and raised on the city's West Side and proudly offer that she was a Saratoga Springs High School graduate of the Class of '38. With the confidence of a historian - and while flanked by drawings of bemonocled men beneath top hats and well-dressed ladies pinched at the waist - Bolster would explain how the springs originally brought visitors to the city, but it was the grand hotels and the racing that kept them coming. Bolster published a handful of books about her family and Saratoga. Her collection is so vast, researchers would visit her home to review and peruse the many pieces of the city’s past.

“She’s preserved things for the next generation, or two,” says Gold, seated in a room Bolster called her Revolutionary War room, draped with wallpaper that depicts soldiers at the Battle of Saratoga. Upstairs, in the “Saratoga Room,” vintage newspapers are collaged onto the walls. In between, there are rarely seen maps, engraved souvenir silverware, and a banister from the United States Hotel that was made into a lamp. There is a plethora of glassware, shelves lined with books, paperweights, miniature cups engraved with intricate designs and vintage chairs. There are room keys that once opened the doors inside the city’s grand hotels that are now, no longer there. There is a baton with a ribbon and accompanying dried flowers that date to the city’s floral fete in the late 19th century. And there are thousands of photographs.

The estate sale takes place 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Aug. 10 through Sunday, Aug. 12 at 161 Church St.

“I think we’ll probably have a long line at the door,” Gold says. “We’re hoping people turn out to get a little piece of her history.”  

“In a place not too far from here, something happened. It was called Woodstock.”
– Melanie, on stage at Caffé Lena Aug. 2, 2018.

SARATOGA SPRINGS - On that August evening in 1969, Melanie Safka Schekeryk sat by herself inside of a country tent, fearful about what awaited her outside.

Her new album, simply titled “Melanie,” contained the song “Beautiful People,” which had given her a modicum of success. Still, an estimated half-million people sat in an open field outside her tent in anticipation of what the 22-year-old aspiring actress-turned-singer could bring.  

“I listened to Richie Havens in his 50th minute of ‘Freedom (Motherless Child),’ and I heard Ravi Shankar. Then Wavy Gravy went on and announced that his collective was passing out candles and that everyone should light their candles, because it had started to rain,” Melanie explained to a sold-out house at Caffe Lena last week.    

“I was in such terror that as I walked out onto the field, walked over that rope bridge – it was like a plank - I was (sure I was) walking to my certain doom. How can I possibly entertain 500,000 people with three chords, and my one song?”

Fair or not, she is often linked to her performance at the Woodstock music festival. Many have taken to tagging her as “the voice of her generation.”

“I was walking and walking and… I left my body,” she continued. “I watched myself take the stage. I hovered over my shoulder. I watched myself sit down and when I started singing ‘Beautiful People,’ I came back. I had this real-life experience. At that moment 500,000 people granted me beingness, granted me who I was. And I reciprocated. It wasn’t a musical moment, it was a spiritual moment. And it was real. I can’t tell you how life-altering that moment was,” she explained, before launching in to “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” – which anthemically captures her Woodstock moment – mated with an appropriately collaborative medley with a rendition of the John Lennon song, “Give Peace A Chance.”

At Caffé Lena, Melanie performed two sold out shows accompanied on vocals, guitar and occasional cello by her son, Beau Jared Schekeryk. Collectively, the evening featured 3-1/2 hours of music that covered a half-century of songwriting.

“I was just here - but somehow you all look different,” she quipped, acknowledging the café audience when taking the stage for the evening’s late show. The second set featured 14 songs which included “Animal Crackers” - dating to her 1968 debut, her love-‘em-and-leave-‘em ode “Any Guy” - released in 1969, and songs from the early ‘70s (“Babe Rainbow,” “Someday I’ll Be A Farmer”) to the 1990s (“Under Cool Cover of Night).”

Affected perhaps by the back-to-back sets, her voice wore rough early on, but when tackling “Ruby Tuesday,” any hoarseness majestically dissolved and the power of simple acoustic guitars and THOSE VOCALS were on full-on display.

“Ruby Tuesday” signaled one of three Rolling Stones songs performed during the night; a tasteful instrumental rendition of “Paint it Black,” and a version of “Wild Horses” – “we should do this because this is Saratoga Springs, it’s all about the horses,” she announced – were the others.

Melanie alternated between English, French, German, and Korean during the choruses of “Look What They’ve Done to My Song Ma,” inspired an audience sing-a-long on her Freudian ditty “Psychotherapy,” and delivered convincing performances of her songs “Beautiful People,” “Angel Watching Over You,” and her biggest chart-topping hit, “Brand New Key” – a song she admits she hated for a long time.

”When it became a hit, I went from playing nice, small cuddly places to big stadiums, where people wanted to hear 90 minutes of "Hump, Ha-HA, Hump, Ha-Ha,” she explained, pointing the song’s background chorus. “Here’s the clincher, all these years later, I’m OK with the whole song,” she admitted. “It’s a damn cute song.”

SARATOGA SPRINGS - In the age of social platforms, event hashtags and electronic invites, it was a dinosaur. Suddenly one recent weekday morning, it was no more. 

The Caroline Street Register stood fixed to a building on the south side of Caroline Street for approximately a half-century – the notice board a tapestry of flyers and posters and postcard-size bulletins that for several decades freely publicized city staged events. An adjacent plank which runs along the billboard’s left side lists 20 different businesses – and alongside, each business’ motto - a heavy plank reminder of the city’s funkier and hands-on, do-it-yourself past.

When the building was undergoing an exterior paint job recently, workers removed the large sign, apparently targeted for the trash pile. Local resident Stephen Smigielski was working at a nearby eatery at the time.

“I saw it sitting against the lamppost, just waiting for the dumpster,” Smigielski says. “The garbage truck was pulling up and I was like, whoa, whoa…”

Jim Stanley, who runs the Tin & Lint located a few yards from the board’s long-standing position, estimates the register has clung to the Caroline Street wall since probably the early 1970s. The business listings had been updated and repainted at least twice since that time, he added.

“I grew up in the ‘70s in Saratoga Springs,” Smigielski explained. “I remember a lot of the places being boarded up when the town was not as booming as it is now. That sign was always there. It was there when we were teenagers. I didn’t want it to hit the bonfire.”

Smigielski rescued the sign and placed it in a toolshed for safekeeping. Beneath a stencil burgundy-fade that reads “notices,” it remains as it was, festooned with staples and push-pins and swatches of flyers that existed the day the board came down.  The “register” position holds a listing of businesses that date to the 1970s - some which continue to exist to the present day, others not as fortunate and obliterated by time.

Desperate Annie’s – with its’ motto “Lively Libations,” the Tin & Lint - “an American Bar,” Gaffney’s, Sperry’s, and the Vault – “coin shop and baseball cards,” maintain their respective businesses on Caroline Street.     

Some have been replaced by other businesses:   E.H. Holland (“70 years of Service”) most recently was the site of One Caroline Street Bistro; Boyce & Drake plumbing and heating currently sites Hamlet & Ghost; Madame Jumel’s “dining emporium” has been transformed into Dango’s pub; Aiko’s is today the Spa City Tap and Barrel, and Side St. Saloon (“Drinks Galore”) morphed into Clancy’s Tavern. 

Gone are the Coronet Press (“Printers Extraordinaire”), Ambience Unlimited (custom audio environments), Jah Skates and Reggae Shop, Esthetiques (European nail and skin care center), Duval’s (games of chance), Hal Bigelow (custom cabinetry), Kitsch (non-essentials), Northwind Graphics (silkscreen prints), The Sideline (food emporium) and Discline – whose motto was “CD’s Forever.” 

Some of the businesses existed in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, which suggests that may have been the last time the registry was updated.

Preserving the sign was Smigielski’s main purpose. He has no specific plans regarding its future destination, other than it should be somewhere where people can see it and where it will continue to be preserved.   

“I’m not looking for financial gain, but I am looking for it to find a home,” he says. “Even if it sits in a shed for the rest of its life, my first thought was: let’s save this.”  

It was a wild ride sometimes and you never really knew what to expect from him, but we were all really close. He was always kind to us, always respectful and without a doubt the funniest guy I’ve ever known.”

–Teri Coté, longtime drummer of the David Cassidy Band, who will perform in a special one-off David Cassidy Tribute Concert in Saratoga Springs Aug. 14.

Teri Coté was 6 years old when the popular Partridge Family TV show concluded its four-year-run of 96 episodes in 1974. A year or two later, inspired by the music of Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind and Fire, she was drawn to the drum kit.  

“That’s when I discovered I wanted to be a drummer, or, actually when the drums chose me,” says Coté, who became a member of the David Cassidy Band in 2003. It is a role she filled for more than a decade.

“He was a really nice guy and it was a lot of fun. We had some wild moments - he was a wild character, you know? But, always very loving to the band, even during the times when he was having a rough time,” she says.

Cassidy’s musical inspiration came from people like Jimi Hendrix and the Yardbirds, but his massive popularity as a teen idol in the early 1970s cemented an image ultimately impossible to shed. “It was a cage he couldn’t break out of - and he did try - but it didn’t work. I think he had a lot of frustration with that,” Coté says.

As a bandleader, Coté says Cassidy liked to keep things fresh, at times changing pre-written setlists at the last instant and creating unpredictable moments. “He liked that energy, creating that intensity. After being who he was in his heyday, I think he really craved that energy, creating excitement in his shows. One way or another he would make sure that was happening.”

Cassidy’s fan base, while not as large in number as once had been, was nonetheless just as energetic and intense. “We saw a lot of people in the front rows who were regulars. They would come from all over the world - which boggled our minds. They just loved him,” says Coté, who makes her home in Massachusetts, just north of Boston.

During some show segments, Cassidy and Coté would swap onstage roles - she picking up the microphone at center stage to sing the Pretenders’ song “Brass in Pocket,” and Cassidy taking a seat behind the drum kit, keeping the beat.    

“When he sat to play the drums, he looked like a 12-year-old kid with this huge smile on his face,” Coté says. “He was just…so ecstatic. I admired that he would just let it show like that. I think sometimes he just wanted to disappear into the band and just be an I’m-one-of-the-guys kind of thing.”

The brief role-swapping scenario was played out in a March 2017 show at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square. Coté, who took a short break from the band a year-and-a-half earlier, returned that night for a special appearance with Cassidy’s band. The set began with a performance of “C'mon Get Happy,” and concluded 15 songs later with a performance of “I Think I Love You.” It would be the final concert Cassidy and the band would play. Less than nine months later, the 67-year-old singer died from liver and kidney failure.

Coté and a varied alumnus from the Cassidy band will perform for the first time together since Cassidy’s death in a special tribute on Aug. 14 in Saratoga Springs. The show will also serve as a fundraiser for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation - an organization close to the singer’s heart. Vance Brescia, longtime guitarist and music director for Peter Noone, will handle a good portion of the vocal duties. Popular horse trainer and bass player Gary Contessa is also expected to join the band onstage.

“It’s going to be exciting. Everybody’s a great player and we’ll be getting together to rehearse the day before,” says Coté, who maintains a busy schedule between teaching assignments, performing gigs and showcasing her own jewelry line. She and her husband, who is also a drummer, operate a drum shop – soon to expand to three music shops in the state - where she teaches the art of percussion.

After more than a decade of performances with Cassidy, one of Coté’s everlasting memories of Cassidy was his sense of humor.   

“David would make us laugh so much. He was really funny. He got that from his dad (Jack Cassidy), I think. He really believed his dad was the funniest person he ever knew,” Coté says. “We had a good friendship, a joke-filled relationship. I have some friends who have a great sense of humor, but David really took the cake. His sense of humor…I really miss that.”

The David Cassidy Tribute Concert will take place 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 14 at the Horseshoe Inn, located at 9 Gridley Ave., Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and will benefit the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

Tickets are $50 and available by calling TRF at 518-226-0028 or online at https://www.trfinc.org/event/david-cassidy-band-special-guests/.

Saratoga Springs’ native son Pete Donnelly has released a new album, a corresponding music video and is preparing to hit the road in October with an all-new combo at his side.

“Phases of the Moon” signals a departure of sorts for fans familiar with Donnelly’s work as co-founder of The Figgs. Ten of the album’s 18 tracks are instrumentals and include recreation of works by Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Oscar Pettiford.

The Figgs – who formed in 1987 when Donnelly collaborated with fellow Saratoga Springs High School students Mike Gent, and Guy Lyons – have released more than a dozen albums and staged some 1,500 shows at hallowed venues like the QE2, CBGB’s, and the Whisky A Go Go. And while Gent and Donnelly continue to perform together, the solo record, “Phases of the Moon,” features a nod to the bass player-turned-guitarist’s younger musical ears - which heralded an appreciation for Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk, as much as for bands like Black Flag and Hüsker Dü.

The piano serves as a driving force on “Phases of the Moon,” merging seductive jazz riffs laced with a sweet soul muse, topped with the familiar jingle-jangle of an electric guitar, a permeable dose of catchy songwriting throughout and adorned with a class rock and roll beat THAT JUST SWINGS.

Donnelly - who calls Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey home these days - asked director Geoffray Barbier to coordinate a New York City rooftop video shoot for the album’s debut single, “Dr. Richard.” The result maintains a rock ‘n’ rebel tradition not seen since The Senders rocked tar beach with their "My Baby Glows in the Dark" rooftop video in 1990 - look it up! – and the Jefferson Airplane sang and strummed atop a Manhattan rooftop a generation earlier.

For more information about “Phases of the Moon” – released as a full-length CD and a special hand-numbered double album, go to: http://www.petedonnellymusic.com/

SARATOGA SPRINGS - The city is reviewing a plan that would construct two 96-unit “work force” apartment buildings near Saratoga Casino Hotel.

Liberty Affordable Housing Inc. – a not-for-profit developer headquartered in Rome, N.Y., is seeking amendments to the city’s Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Ordinance that would develop the buildings on a 30.27-acre parcel, which are currently vacant and in an area near the Saratoga Casino soccer fields.

The land is owned by B.M.H.D. Inc. of Ballston Spa, and Saratoga Harness Racing Inc. with frontage along Jefferson Street and along Crescent Avenue.

The two apartment buildings will be accessible via Bunny Lake Drive, a private road. The two four-story buildings each will house 96 apartments and consist of two and three-bedroom units containing mixed income households targeting 50, 60 and 90 percent AMI.

AMI, or the Area Median Income for a family of four in Saratoga County is about $84,000, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Based on this structure, the rent would equate to annual earnings of approximately $42,000, $50,400, and $75,600, respectively, for a family of four.  

Plans call for the project to take place in two phases built in two phases. one for each building - and each phase also calls for the development of 147 parking spaces, of which 6 will be handicap accessible.

Earlier this month, Skip Carlson, vice president of external affairs at Saratoga Casino, submitted a letter to the city explaining that approximately 550 of the Saratoga Casino Hotel’s 630 employees would qualify to live in the planned workforce housing project.

“The majority of these employees can’t afford to live in Saratoga Springs as 74.1 percent live outside the 12866 zip code,” Carlson wrote. Saratoga Casino Hotel employs 630 workers. Of those approximately half earn less than $30,250 annually, one-fourth earn between $30,250- $36,300, and one-fourth earn $36,300 - $54,450 annually, according to documents submitted to the city.

Liberty Affordable Housing Inc. will also seek negotiating a PILOT agreement up to a maximum term of 40 years. The hope is to secure all municipal approvals by Oct. 15.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – As an artist, Amy Lee is restless, as all artists with anything worth saying must be: searching; growing and endlessly re-defining.

“Challenges,” she says. “Pushing myself to the next place. At this point in my career, the challenges are the fun parts.”

Seeking a different path led the lead singer and co-founder Evanescence, perhaps surprisingly, down a road previously traveled. Once there, she discovered secret passageways with untainted, offshoot roads that pointed to some new place. She named this synergy between past and present “Synthesis.” An album was released last November and the summer leg of the tour - which features co-headliner Lindsey Stirling – will play the big stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center on July 28.

The show includes the added dimension of a full orchestra – an orchestra not touring with the band mind you, but rather, a different orchestra with an entirely new set of musicians on each night who will perform with the band.

“It makes for a very high-energy, tightrope-like feeling and in a very beautiful way different every time,” Lee says. “It creates these very raw, vulnerable and quiet moments where you have to just be so comfortable in your own skin that you totally focus and make beautiful music. That’s what makes it so exciting to me, to do something so different.”

The band first meets the orchestra on the day of the show during soundcheck where they’’ll run through parts of three or four songs then collectively perform live together for the first time in front of a live audience. Some live collaboration between Lee and Stirling during each of their respective sets is anticipated as well. Setlists from the early part of the tour indicate songs that span the band’s career from 2003 to 2018, as well as an occasional nod to the Beatles “(Across the Universe”) and Ozzy Osbourne (“Alive”).

As nerve-wracking and exciting as staging a performance in front of a live audience for the first-time may be, Lee says the addition of an orchestra creates “an electronic, awesome, cool different world.” Allowing her imagination to run free, Lee says she can envision some of her own favorite bands doing likewise.

 “I think it would be really good to see the Smashing Pumpkins do that. That would lend itself to it very well. And Portishead - Oh, that would be incredible! I’ve always gotten a lot of inspiration from Bjork and if I could go see the way she did “Vespertine” back in the day (2001) – it was sort of in this realm between the electronic elements and the orchestra.”  

Evanescence formed in the mid-1990s and released their debut album “Fallen” in 2003. Commercial success was immediate; the album topped the charts in more than 10 countries and sold more than 17 million copies worldwide. Lee, the group’s sole original member in the band’s current incarnation, was tagged as a goth-metal superstar in Victorian dress.

“After our first album, ‘Fallen,’ I felt a serious urge to push us forward and show other sides. It was good, but it was just this bud, this beginning picture of all that I wanted to express and all that I am. It became important to show something else. I always want to keep that open, to try new things,” she says. “To the degree that ‘Fallen’ was so huge, I felt almost frustrated that no matter what I did there’s a mass of people that are going to see me in just that one, simple, first way.”

Over the course of the band’s career, the business of music and concerts has drastically changed. Lee has changed with it.  

“We used to have lighters that we’d hold up in the audience, which was so beautifully romantic and sweet. Then people got cell phone with those lights which are so much brighter. I remember when that first started to be a thing, every artist was complaining, ‘Ah, they’re like zombies, they’re not even paying attention to the live show,” she recalls.

“We always want people to live in the moment, to live in the show, but I do take it as a sort of compliment: that they want to capture it, they want to remember it, they want to live it again. At the same time, we have this moment during special shows where we’ll have this… moment. One person with a cell phone and their light does it, then somebody next to them does it, then more and more and more and they all light up to make like these… glowing souls. Just this sea of light. It’s hard to explain, but you feel the magnitude as if in that moment every person is represented; everybody gets into it and it just chokes me up. Every time.”

Over the past 15 years, Lee expanded her collaborative circle to include recordings with Seether and Korn; she sang “Halfway Down the Stairs” – a song based on the lyrics of an A.A. Milne poem - for a cover album of Muppets songs in 2011, and one year later performed Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” for a Johnny Cash tribute album. In 2018, there are a multitude of creative reaches. “We’re just stripping all of my comfort zones away,” she says.

With “Synthesis,” Lee is re-imagining the band’s musical canon by collecting the shards of a melody once gifted from some ethereal place, disassembling its pieces, and then welding them with a new flame into a new composite.  

“There are parts of these songs (on ‘Synthesis’), particularly the ones I chose, where there was something about them that stood out to me, or that I wanted to push more. There was a stripping away involved and rebuilding for sure, but it’s all stemming from stuff that was all in there, underneath,” Lee explains.

“‘Never Go Back,’ for example - our first song on this album - is a very classically minded song, which is funny because production-wise it’s this heavy rock song with swatches of metal. But, it’s so related. If you think about the instrumentation and the production of music, I feel there are so many similarities between heavy, metal music and the shredders of the classical age. I mean, you could Bach up against Pantera and find total similarities,” she says with a laugh.

“I’m not saying we’re Pantera, or Bach – nothing like! But there was always this part, this big, epic beautiful bridge in ‘Never Go Back,’ that in this version now starts off the song that to me was channeling some big, classical epic drama. I wanted to experiment with taking that all the way in the other direction, seeing what it sounded like and being able to let it live in that world where it was partially born in the first place. The whole (‘Synthesis”) is kind of like that, taking things and going: here’s the other side of it that maybe you didn’t notice.”

The idea for “Synthesis” was born after Lee sat down and revisited the band’s musical history in advance of the release of a comprehensive Evanescence box set.

“I realized how proud I am of everything that we’ve done. Instead of thinking that I have to keep pushing in new directions to show everybody how different we can be, I kind of fell in love with all of it and wanted to spend a little bit of time embracing all that we are,” Lee says. “Instead of feeling that my favorite parts are the parts that I’m running from, I can go back and pour more love into who I already am. I have a new perspective on what Evanescence is and it means something to me that’s just full of love in all directions. So, I feel that’s been a beautiful turn in my heart more recently. And I don’t know what the future sound will be, but I do know it will be out of love.”

Evanescence and Lindsey Stirling will perform at SPAC on Saturday, July 28.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – David Cassidy famously traveled the globe yet maintained Saratoga as his favorite place in the world. Plans are underway to honor the popular singer and actor this summer with a special memorial race at Saratoga Race Course, according to former Cassidy girlfriend Maura Rossi.

Plans call for the memorial race to be held Saturday Aug. 18 – a day that will also feature the Alabama Stakes race and which was among Cassidy’s favorite days to attend during the summer meet, Rossi said.  

Cassidy - best known for his portrayal of Keith Partridge in the early 1970s television sit-com “The Partridge Family,” as well as for a series of chart-making hits during the same era, passed away last November at the age of 67. His passion for equines frequently brought him to Saratoga, where he bought his first yearling and where in 2001 he purchased a home.

The specific Cassidy memorial non-stakes race will be determined in the days leading up to the Aug. 18 date.

Rossi, who reached out to the New York Racing Association to name the race, said she is also coordinating a schedule for the winner of the race to be given a trophy in Cassidy’s honor, as well as for fans and friends of the singer to be able to have their picture taken in the Winner’s Circle. A Facebook page related to the event has been posted at: https://www.facebook.com/davidcassidymemorialrace/.

Cassidy has an ardent fan base. Samantha Cox, one of Cassidy’s fans, coordinated from her home in Indiana a successful social media effort shortly after the singer’s death that raised in excess of $2,500 to have placed a memorial bench in Cassidy’s honor at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. Cox also initiated a “Celebration of David Cassidy’s Life,” event that was staged in Saratoga Springs on May 20 and drew fans to the local community from across the world. Cox has since said she plans to stage an annual event celebrating Cassidy’s legacy every May 20 in the Spa City.

Meanwhile, a David Cassidy Tribute Concert – featuring members of Cassidy’s band – will take place 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 14 at the Horseshoe Inn, located at 9 Gridley Ave., in Saratoga Springs, and will benefit the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. Tickets to the concert are available via the TRF website at: https://www.trfinc.org/event/david-cassidy-band-special-guests/

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Her songs have been covered by everyone from Ray Charles (“Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma”) and Mott The Hoople (“Lay Down: Candles In The Rain“) to the Dollyrots (“Brand New Key”), and her rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” is arguably the only time anyone has out-muscled The World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band on their own turf.

Melanie – who alongside other iconic music-makers like Cher, Beyonce and Adele is quintessentially illuminative to be able to get by on a first-name-only basis – will perform two shows at Caffe Lena on Aug. 2.

Her discography counts dozens of releases and spans several decades, but perhaps is most notable for a song she wrote after her appearance at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, capturing the mood of the moment and providing a theme for a generation. Getting to play on the bill at Woodstock seemed simple enough.

“It sounded like camping for three days out in the country, so I asked the promoters, 'Can I do it?’” Melanie recalled, during an interview with this reporter when she visited Saratoga Springs to perform at Caffe Lena a few years ago. “They said: Sure, kid.” She was 22 years old at the time and as showtime grew near, the reality of performing in front of hundreds of thousands of people brought with it a dose of anxiety.

“I thought, 'Oh my god, there's Janis Joplin. I could hear Richie (Havens) singing: Freedom...Freedom...Freedom... It was scary. I'm just a girl with a guitar, they're never going to put me on that stage,” she said. “I started getting this real deep bronchial cough. Joan Baez heard me coughing and she sent an assistant over with a pot of hot tea. It was like nectar of the Gods.”

Shortly after Ravi Shankar performed, the sky threatened rain. “People from the Hog Farm, or some other group were saying some inspirational things about lighting candles to keep the rain away,” she recalled.

As the candles began to flicker, Melanie was told it was her turn to take the stage.

“I had to walk the plank and I watched the hillside completely lit up with candles, like the flickering millions… I had an out of body experience.” A few days later, she put the experience to song. “I started thinking about it, about what literally was right in front of me.”

A year later the song she’d written about the experience - “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” - was being played on radio stations across the country. It sold more than 1 million copies, showcased the singer with the childlike, yet other-worldly voice, blessed with reams of slicing vibrato, and began a longstanding concert tradition of audiences striking matches and thumbing lighters and holding the flame aloft in music halls across the world.

Melanie’s Woodstock moment spawned a music career with sprinkled with high points – she was introduced to a crowd of 600,000 at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival by Keith Moon after she took the stage immediately after The Who – and strung together a number of hits through the 1970s. More than 80 million copies of her records have been sold to date, she's had her songs covered by singers as diverse as Cher, Dolly Parton, and Macy Gray.    

Melanie performs at Caffe Lena Thursday Aug. 2. Shows at 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Tickets: $45 general admission. $40 café members, $22.50 students and kids.

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