Happy Birthday WERS
posted in: Features • Music News
This year, WERS celebrates 60 years of commercial-free, independent radio, and last night they hosted their own birthday party featuring Ryan Montbleau, Will Dailey, JJ Grey & Mofro and Pete Yorn. Although the formal setting of the Cutler Majestic Theater made the crowd a bit subdued, the performers couldn’t help but rock out anyway.
Last Friday, OurStage hosted a last minute contest to give away 2 free tickets to the concert; I caught up with the winner, and Boston-area artist, Brian Bergeron after the event. “It was great,” he said. “There were some hiccups in production, but my favorite part of the night was the way that Will rebounded from the sound issues.”
Will Dailey didn’t let the lack of a working mic get in his way; he stepped to the edge of the stage, strummed his guitar and belted out the Rolling Stones classic, You Can’t Always Get What You Want in seemingly perfect unison with the tech team scrambling with plugs and wires behind him. It was like watching an oddly choreographed dance.
It turns out that Bergeron and Dailey know each other quite well. “I moved to boston back in ’03 and Will was the first musician I ever met here; he’s become a good friend of mine and has worked with me on two of my (recording) projects,” adds Bergeron. In fact, the song that lead Bergeron to win OurStage’s College Clash Channel in January 2008 was produced by Dailey. And today, Bergeron is wrapping up production on his latest album also produced by Dailey.
“We had lots of fun working on this album,” Bergeron says. “It was a real educational experience for me. Will is the most complete musician I’ve ever met; He has such an understanding of music as an art. If you put something into a song, he knows exactly what you’ll get out of it.”
You can get a taste of what this new album has to offer at Bergeron’s OurStage fanclub where he’s uploaded some rough cuts from the recording studio and, if you’re in the Boston-area be sure to catch Bergeron in his summer residency at The Barking Crab.
Dailey’s WERS birthday performance was followed up by a heart-pounding, mind-blowing performance by JJ Grey & Mofro. This band was not afraid to take advantage of the Carnegie Hall style of venue and JJ Grey knows how to work a crowd. His soulful vocals in Lochloosa, a song he wrote while on the road and longing for his home in Florida, made the entire audience seem just a tiny bit homesick by the end. Then, he helped us bounce right back with the crowd-pleaser, Orange Blossoms. Stage performance aside, the highlight is perhaps the Ingrid Michaelson look alike dancing, hopping and fist pumping stage right through the entire set; that girl got a workout! Too bad, the theater seating got in the way of the rest of us trying to boogie.
The evening wrapped up with Pete Yorn’s 2009 debut performance; this concert is set to kick-off what WERS’ Matt Shearer called, “the year of Pete Yorn.” With a new album set to release in June, his first in almost three years, his set presented the perfect blend of old and new. I was personally satisfied to hear Life On A Chain and Strange Condition and if the new album is as good as Don’t Wanna Cry suggests, we are definitely in for a great year.
Overall, this show was a fantastic way to celebrate anyone’s 60th birthday and bodes well for WERS’ next 60 years of great independent music and programming. For even more detail from the concert, check out the WERS live blog.
From the OurStage point of view, though, the highlight of the night was the evenings opener and OurStage member, Ryan Montbleau. We were able to snag some of this rising star’s valuable time this weekend for a Q&A, check it out!