Spencer Scholes
In the realm of musicians Spencer is a man on a journey, a blue collar songster, an average guy with exceptional energy, a poor man with rich experience, a kind hearted bloke with volcanic indignation, a southern working man with a universal outlook, a pragmatic mystic who's personal visions burst into the mundane from the indefinable.
His musical output twists and turns stretching from seemingly endless panoramic vistas across style and genre. I have heard him perform two hours of original material and then do a seven hour show of covers drawn from rebel country to reggae and pop while owning every song as if it was his experience in that moment.
Professional musicians have described his music as "funky fried folk rock" and "balladeer pop". He has been called a troubadour and traveling minstrel as he is often found carrying his guitar everywhere sharing his music with people from all backgrounds and walks of life.
His original songs reveal a depth and resonance full of feeling. His stage presence is intense as with eyes closed he sways and rocks as if wrestling some inner emotion, seeming to reach down with his breath to draw his songs from through the floor under his feet. The intensity is balanced by his unexpected surprise confessions, and his oversized smile.
His lyrics often embrace traditional rhyme and tempo structures in one song while in another flow as prosaic confessions as if he is verbalizing his feelings conversationally in the moment. All form, tempo, tones, time signatures and approach seems to be not only fair game to him but familiar territory. A multi instrumentalist, I have seen him play a show on acoustic guitar with a pile of new lyrics in front of him and capture an audience with his honest sincerity, while the very next day he played a show on Bass guitar with a restrained and modest drummer and a banjo picker without any lyric sheets at all, transforming the sound and delivery into a psychedelic free flowing word association with deep grooves.
Spencer carries a professionalism and easy demeanor making him a pleasure to work with. He has never missed a show and continues to tour regionally as his sole profession. Most everywhere he has played from dive bars, restaurants, art galleries, clubs, and music festivals he has been invited back. His musicality has improved in many ways over the many years he has been making music. What seems to have largely contributed to his continued growth is the intense passion and energy that he obviously puts into his music. Trancelike at times he may lean in toward the microphone with eyes closed and narrowly miss pounding his nose.
Playing mostly guitar and vocal chords with the occasional wailing harmonica accompaniment his sound is full enough and energetic enough for a large crowd while being flexible enough to dive beneath soft conversation in a restaurant.
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Tom Mcbride
To rustle up inspiration for his award-winning third album Morning in Glen Burnie, Tom McBride dug deep into his record collection.
“I was trying to identify those songs that I loved as a child and still enjoy now,” he explains. “I looked backwards a little bit and dug deeper into some older folk, pop, and country songs by artists like Roy Orbison, Buck Owens, and George Jones. I was challenging myself to simplify my writing, to really dig into more traditional forms and melodies.”
“Put really simply,” he sums up, “I just tried to write good songs.”
With an eye on the classics, McBride wrote the songs that eventually became Morning in Glen Burnie, a modern album steeped in an old-school blend of Americana, blues, soul and pop/rock. Many of the songs were inspired by Nashville, the town where he launched his music career in the early 2000s. McBride recorded Morning in Glen Burnie closer to his hometown, though, setting up shop just outside of Boston. Another Beantown native, Kimon Kirk (Grant-Lee Phillips, Aimee Mann), signed on as producer.
“We recorded at Dimension Sound Studios with an excellent engineer, Dan Cardinal, and a band that included a full rhythm section, organ, and electric guitar,” McBride says. “Many of the tracks on the album are either the second or third attempt of the song. We’d go over the forms together in the mixing room, talk about the vibe of the song together, and then we’d go play it. Just painless, and a lot of fun.”
The result is a breezy, classic-sounding record that splits the difference between all of McBride’s influences, from the country sway of the Mavericks to the crooning pop of Sam Cooke. It’s the sound of a singer/songwriter working with a well-oiled band. It’s already begun gathering its own buzz, too, with the Mid-Atlantic Songwriters Association awarding its prestigious gold prize to the album’s first track, “But I Don’t Care.”
The Boston native has logged over 300 shows across the country over the past few years, has performed at CMJ, Folk Alliance & SXSW and his songs have been featured on AAA-radio stations across the country as well as within print and on-line magazines like American Songwriter, Spark Magazine, & Bootleg Magazine among many others. McBride has recently shared the stage with notable acts such as Dawes, William Elliot Whitmore, Futurebirds, Ellis Paul, Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed, Ben Taylor, Charlie Mars among others.
http://tommcbridemusic.com
Doors 7pm
Show 8pm
In the Showroom!