Displaying items by tag: Caffé Lena

The Egg celebrates the Pete Seeger Centennial with a concert on Thursday, May 23 at 7 PM and a series of related events in various Capital Region cultural centers May 3- 5, as part of its “New York Living Legacy” series.

Additional events will include multiple venues in Saratoga Springs, including Caffe Lena, and the Saratoga Springs Public Library.

Seeger’s career as a musician was highlighted by popular success with the group The Weavers and songs such as “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “If I Had a Hammer”; Grammy Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award, a National Medal of Arts, induction into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.

Seeger used his music to further social, humanitarian and environmental causes – most notably in the founding of the Clearwater in an effort to save the Hudson River, and one of his closest musical associates Arlo Guthrie will be joined by artists including Amythyst Kiah, Cary Morin, Dan Zanes & Claudia Eliaza,  Dar Williams, David Gonzalez, Guy Davis,  Richie Stearns & Rosie Newton, Taina Asili,  Tony Trischka, Toshi Reagon and Bill & Livia Vanaver - that are keeping his message alive for an evening of music, dance and poetry inspired by Pete Seeger in celebration of his centennial.

Net proceeds from the concert will benefit Clearwater, Caffe Lena and WAMC Public Radio.

Tickets are $40, $35 and $25 and currently available to members of The Egg at The Egg Box Office at the Empire State Plaza and by telephone – 518-473-1845.

In advance of the concert, The Egg will present the program “Wasn’t That a Time” featuring music writer Jesse Jarnow in a number of venues on May 3, 4 and 5. Mr. Jarnow will explore the life of Pete Seeger, focusing on the research done for his 2018 book “Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the American Soul.”  Live music will be performed by banjoist Richie Stearns - who performed with or for Seeger on numerous occasions. The multi-media program will be enhanced by photo projections as well as recorded music by Pete Seeger and the Weavers.

Additional events – these are free and open to the public: 

FRIDAY, MAY 3 - Noon: Caffe Lena, 47 Phila Street, Saratoga Springs; 7 PM: Crandall Public Library, 251 Glen Street, Glens Falls.

SATURDAY, MAY 4: 11 AM: Guilderland Public Library, 2228 Western Ave, Guilderland; 1 PM: Bethlehem Public Library, 451 Delaware Ave, Delmar; 3:30 PM: Clifton Park – Half Moon Public Library, 475 Moe Road, Clifton Park; 7 PM: Sanctuary for Independent Media,  3361 6th Avenue, Troy. 

SUNDAY, MAY 5: 12:30 PM: Saratoga Springs Public Library, 49 Henry St, Saratoga Springs; 3 PM: Voorheesville Public Library, 51 School Rd, Voorheesville.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Caffe Lena powers up in the springtime with a series of major upcoming shows. 

Steve Katz, who studied guitar as a teen with Dave Van Ronk and Reverend Gary Davis, was an original member of The Blues Project (their last major gig: the Monterey Pop Festival), a founding member of Blood, Sweat & Tears, and produced the mid-70’s Lou Reed albums “Rock & Roll Animal,” and “Sally Can’t Dance, will be in the house April 18 for the Rochmon treatment.

Rochmon aka Chuck Vosganian presents a sound & vision analysis of a different artist every month. The April 18 date marks the first live listening party, and where the event will be accompanied by Steve Katz himself. General admission tix: $25.

Robyn Hitchcock, famously of The Soft Boys and a pretty prominent solo career, brings his folky, wry British nihilist psychedelium to the café April 14. General admission tix: $32.

Eric Andersen - accompanied by the fab Scarlet Rivera on violin and Cheryl Prashker on percussion, returns to Lena’s April 7. General admission tix: $35.

Singer-songwriter Sawyer Fredericks performs a three-night stand, Friday, May 24 – Sunday, May 26. General admission tix: $45. Meet & Greet: $65.   

In early May, Caffe Lena will also play a role in a three-day event in the Capital Region celebrating Pete Seeger. 

Other Voices in Other Rooms: Laurie Anderson is slated to be in the Spa City in April, and we’re hearing Chuck Mangione will be in the city in June.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — More than a dozen albums ago, Saratoga Springs High School friends Pete Donnelly, Mike Gent and Guy Lyons first got together to form a musical ensemble they called The Figgs.

Thirty-one years and some 1,500 shows later, Donnelly - who calls Philadelphia and South Jersey home these days – returns Jan. 31 to Caffe Lena, where he will be joined by Fred Berman on drums, Ray Long on bass, and John Cunningham on guitar.

In addition to his founding-member in-standing with The Figgs, Donnelly’s musical path has traveled through Terry Adams’ legendary NRBQ, Soul Asylum, the Replacements’ Tommy Stinson and Graham Parker, among others.  

There was a TV commercial for a luxury car in 2013 that featured the catchy post-new wave riffs of the Figgs’ “Je T’adore,”  and with the song “Your Smile Is a Deadly Thing,” released in 2016, the band showcased THE most addictive guitar riff of the year. Go ahead, give it a whirl HERE. 

Coming back to Saratoga, “still pretty much feels like home,” Donnelly said, during a phone interview in advance of New Year’s Eve return to perform at First Night Saratoga 2017.

His most recent solo album, 2018’s “Phases of The Moon,” features an all-star combo and signals a departure from Donnelly's past work. While the pop songs remain, the jazz predominates. (As was written in these pages upon the album’s release last year: The piano serves as a driving force, merging seductive jazz riffs laced with a sweet soul muse, topped with the familiar jingle-jangle of an electric guitar).

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.

“As a kid I loved jazz music, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and I think a lot of people are surprised by that. Those were my idols,” says Donnelly, whose first instrument was the bass - and specifically an Ibanez Roadstar II, purchased at Drome Sound in Albany on his 13th birthday.  Growing up in ‘80s, bands like Hüsker Dü and Black Flag helped inspire his music “counter to the cheesy, schmaltzy ‘80s pop world we grew up in during the Reagan Era. Our music was an affront to that. It was an expression of searching for an identity in a banal world,” he says. “It almost feels like it’s a return to that now.”

Pete Donnelly performs 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 31 at Caffe Lena. Tickets are $20 general admission, $18 members, $10 students and kids. For more information, call 518-583-0022, or go to: caffelena.org.    

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Amanda Platt calls Asheville, North Carolina home these days, but a decade-and-a-half and six albums ago, the then-musical novice would drag her banjo to Caffè Lena on Open Mic night, building a foundation for her life in the arts. Platt, with her band the Honeycutters, returns to the stage of her formative years Jan. 19.

“Caffè Lena is where I first learned to perform, the first place I started playing my songs out,” recalls the singer-songwriter, who attended classes at Skidmore College, worked in Ballston Spa and took lessons on playing the banjo from local musicians Trish Miller and John Kirk.

“I started playing at the Thursday night Open Mic in the winter of 2005 and I found a real receptive community at Caffè Lena. All the regulars at the Open Mic were very welcoming and kind to me and made me feel that I wasn’t being totally ridiculous to want to write songs and sing them,” Platt says. “It’s really where I started everything, where I had my first real show and where I made a promise to myself that I was just going to keep going.” 

As a band, the Honeycutters – billed as a country roots group who blend Honky Tonk music with Appalachian folk – have released five albums. Platt also has a solo record to her credit and the band is readying a live album for release in June.

The date in Saratoga Springs is sandwiched between tour stops in New Haven, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., and just before the band crosses the Atlantic for shows in Germany and The Netherlands in March.   “People are really into American music over there,” says Platt, who grew up on Hastings-on-Hudson. her father has a musical background.

“My Dad used to make music professionally in his twenties. “After he got married, my mom said: you’re going to figure something else out,” says Platt, with a laugh. “He went to law school and became an attorney, but music has stayed in his life, playing weekends.”  Her dad lives in nearby Columbia County and may sit in with the band for a few songs at Caffè Lena. The show will also mark Platt’s first return since the café underwent renovations. “I am excited to come back and see it,” she says.

Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters perform at Caffè Lena at 8 p.m. on Friday Jan 18. Tickets are $20 general admission, $18 café members, $10 students and kids.  

SARATOGA SPRINGS – What can one say about David Amram?

He’s played the French horn in the legendary jazz bands of Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie and Lionel Hampton. He created and performed in the first ever Jazz/Poetry readings in late 1950s New York with his friend Jack Kerouac. He worked with Allen Ginsberg in the film “Pull My Daisy,” composed the scores for “Splendor In The Grass,” and “The Manchurian Candidate,” served as the Composer and Music Director for the Lincoln Center Theatre, and was appointed by Leonard Bernstein as the first Composer In Residence for the New York Philharmonic.

Locals may recall his recent appearance at SPAC with Willie Nelson at Farm Aid, or his emotionally stirring performance at the Lake George Jazz Festival in September 2001, when in the immediate days following 9/11, Amram brought together the T.S. Monk Sextet and Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra for a musical collaboration in Shepard Park that marked, for many, the first public event they attended in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. 

Amram’s collaborations in a storied career have included the likes of Arthur Miller and Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan. And topping it off, he IS the nicest guy you could ever meet – a point punctuated by his late friend Jack Kerouac, who for his cheerful disposition. dubbed Amram “Sunny Dave.”

Amram will perform Friday, Feb. 1 at Caffe Lena. Tickets are $35 general public, $32 café members, $14.50 students and kids.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Some people called him “Captain Fun,” others the “unofficial mayor of Saratoga Springs,” but the one sure thing of which you could be certain when running into Al McKenney on one of his strolls along Broadway, was you would hear a story you had never heard before. And he had a wealth of lifetime experiences from which to draw.  

McKenney had managed concert tours featuring musicians from David Bromberg to Clannad and performed emcee duties for the Smithsonian’s annual National Folk Festival, and Pete Seeger’s Great Hudson Revival. His voice is forever immortalized at Kent State University on their KSU Folk Festival Recordings, which date back several decades.  Beyond McKenney’s omnipresent suspenders, purple Caffe Lena T-shirt and similarly colored beret were the tales of musicians Utah Philipps or Rosalie Sorrels and memories of Lena Spencer, owner of the coffeehouse on Phila Street where so many memories have been made.

When the then 26-year-old hitchhiked a ride from his native Massachusetts to land in Saratoga Springs in 1971, there was no going back. When McKenney died in the summer of 2015, he had amassed more than 1,000 vinyl records and hundreds of CD’s and music-related books.

This week, volunteers at Caffe Lena began unpacking the first 18 boxes containing the vinyl collection and placing them alphabetically in specially designed purple shelves, each standing nearly seven feet in height and located in the café’s entry area.

First out: Joan Baez’s self-titled debut on Vanguard Records – in mono, no less and released in 1960, the same year Lena and Bill Spencer opened the doors of their café. Next came a slew of Louisiana Cajun compilations led by the 1934 Lomax Recordings and a handful of platters by Clifton Chenier. There was a large collection of albums by Joni Mitchell, by Hank Williams, and by Bruce Springsteen. More than a half-century of Bob Dylan recordings spread across the lobby floor.

“The ‘D‘  space will probably have to be larger,” surmised Caffe Lena Executive Director Sarah Craig, eyeballing dozens of record jackets whose vinyl grooves contained the original strains of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Like A Rolling Stone,” to "Silvio" and "Gotta Serve Somebody," live performances of "My Back Pages" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," to cover renditions performed by The Byrds, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.   

The plan for the collection – named the Captain Fun Listening Library - is to share with the community the kicks the music delivers. Caffe Lena will host a Lunchtime Listening Hour one Friday each month, with the tentative hope to kick off the series the first Friday in October. The listening hour will take place 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. It will be a completely free event, curated by Chuck Vosganian aka Rochmon, and attendees are encouraged to bring a brown bag lunch.

“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 - 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.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – The Rochmon Record Club returns to Caffe Lena Tuesday, March 20 to indulge in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 album, “Déjà Vu.” Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and a $5 donation is suggested, which goes to the restoration funds of Caffe Lena and Universal Preservation Hall.

In 1969, the trio of Crosby, Stills and Nash – born from the fracturing of The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Hollies, respectively - released their debut collaborative album and sought the addition of a fourth member to round out their sound. After being rejected by John “hot town, summer in the city

back of my neck getting dirty and gritty” Sebastian, and Jimi Hendrix, the trio brought electric guitar wizard/ moody folkie Neil Young into the fold. (Jimi Hendrix, by the way, recorded a rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” with Stephen Stills guitar months prior to CSN’s offering - a recording of which was for the first time, coincidentally released this week).  

CSNY made their stage debut as a foursome at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, then promptly manned the main stage at Woodstock the following evening. Their 10-song album was released in March 1970 and generated the Top 40 singles: “Teach Your Children,” “Our House,” and “Woodstock.”

Following the event Caffe Lena, the Rochmon Record Club a/k/a Chuck Vosganian will hit the road to Schenectady, to preside over a Beatles tribute night at Proctors.

The event, which the venue is billing as a new concert series, showcases local musicians performing their renditions of Beatles’ songs culled from the “White Album,” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

The lineup includes Bryan Brundige Collective, Clear Mind, Eastbound Jesus, Girl Blue, Let's Be Leonard and Wild Adriatic.

Tickets for the “Capital Records Live” event, which takes place 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 23 at the GE Theatre at Proctors, are $25 and available at the Proctors box office at 432 State St., Schenectady; by phone at 518-346-6204, or and online at proctors.org.

Who: James Mastrianni

Where: Caffè Lena

Congratulations on being elected Board Chair at Caffè Lena Where are you originally from?

- Niskayuna originally. I’ve been in Saratoga Springs since 1994.

Do you recall the first time you came to the café?

- I know exactly when it was. The spring of 1990.  I had a guitar teacher who was playing a show.

You play guitar?

- I’ve been a musician for 40 years, a pianist and guitarist. I’ve played with The Refrigerators, in Dead cover bands, with jam bands and duos with guitars. I have a recording studio in my house and release music of my own as well as produce other folks.

What do you think of the café since the renovation?  

- It’s awesome. I think it has the chance to be one of the best listening rooms in the country - capable of attracting high caliber performers to a great sounding intimate space and in an awesome community. We also have the capability now to be a full-fledged studio and offer production services to artists – off-hours recordings, or live recordings. We can do audio. The next phase is video. If you’re an up-and-coming artist, we can create these videos that go on YouTube and can go viral. So, there’s an opportunity to be a little video production studio as well. That’s what we’re shooting for. We’ll see if we can get there.

What did you want to be when you were a kid?

- A professional hockey player. I was a hockey addict from 5 to age 15 and grew up ice skating rink in back yard. But, I couldn’t do both – play piano and hockey. I was missing my piano recitals and it got to the point where I had to choose. I chose music.

If you had the opportunity to play music with anyone, who would that be?

- It’s hard to pick just one. I’m a huge fan of Lake Street Dive. And if I could hang with the guys from Snarky Puppy, that would be unbelievable.

What stands out to you about Saratoga?  

- I think there are some very interesting people and businesses who are doing very interesting things. There’s a heck of a talent pool of very committed folks in this community and that’s what I like about it.

A Saratoga entrepreneur and business owner, since 2007 Mastrianni has served as president of a company that administers federally funded affordable housing programs in 11 counties. What is the vision in the near future for Caffè Lena?

- We’ve built this tremendous infrastructure and now we have a real organization to run. We have to deal with things like human resource issues and health insurance, employee handbooks and contracts. I’ve done these things my whole career - these things you do in business. It wasn’t too long ago, if we ran out of copier paper we would check the bank balance to see if we could buy some paper. We’re a very different organization now. The nuts and bolts stuff, and that’s where the café is now.  

Who would play you in a film about your life?

- George Clooney, of course. I’m often mistaken for him.

Mastrianni was joined by five new Board members the famed music venue: Tom Kernan, Margo Olson, Christopher Shaw, Kevin Veitch and Joanne Dittes Yepsen. They join current Board members Kevin Bright, Eric Brodwin, Michael Eck, Wanda Fischer, Kira Karbocus, Peter Martin, Bob Rehm, George Ward and Brent Wilkes.