Daily Archives: August 6, 2015

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Summer Concert Series: Molly Pinto Madigan

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Get ready for the upcoming performances in the library’s Summer Concert Series! Concerts are at 7 p.m. every Thursday night in July and August at East End Veterans Memorial Park. Every week, Free for All will offer an article about, or interview with, the band of the week. The following is an interview with Molly Pinto Madigan.

What made you decide to become a musician?
I’ve always envied people with a strong sense of purpose — the Mozarts of the world, who have been writing symphonies since they were in diapers, who never doubted the path they were destined to walk (granted, one could argue that, in Mozart’s case at least, purpose doesn’t always equal happiness).  I know musicians who have always known that music was it for them.  And I envy that.  I’ve always been the kind of person who has many interests.  When I was younger, I was fully prepared to juggle a plethora of careers — paleontologist, rock star, farm vet, professional baseball player, actor/director, the next Great American Author, and the owner of my own zoo.  And all at the same time, of course.  I had a sense of purpose, but not focus.  Somewhere along the way, music happened to me.  It seeped into my bones, until I realized that making music had always been a constant in my life, and I wanted to pursue it seriously.  I still have many interests — this month I’m into ballroom dance, preparing for my inevitable stint on Dancing With the Stars, and I’m currently writing my fourth novel — and that’s the great thing about eking out a career in music: it allows me some flexibility.  And as long as I’m being creative, I feel fulfilled.

How would you describe your sound?
That’s hard.  Indie folk, maybe?  Acoustic, Celtic-flavored modern folk with a dash of Americana and a dollop of poetry and a splash of rock.

What is your songwriting process like?
For the past year and a half, I’ve been sticking to the schedule of writing at least one new song each month, which keeps me productive.  So, the end of each month is a frenzy of panicked songwriting that typically results in a song.  I tend to write the music first, the lyrics last, although right now I’m finishing up a concept album that switched the process up a little bit.  Usually it goes like this, though: chords, melody, lyrics.  The lyrics take the longest to develop, and many trees lose their lives in the struggle (because I’m old school and write on paper).

Which artists have been your biggest musical influences, and what is it that draws you to their music?
That’s tough.  Growing up, my favorite band was The Beatles.  Actually, it still is.  My mom listened to a lot of vaguely folky stuff like Cat Stevens, The Cranberries, Simon and Garfunkel, Queen (modern folk?), etc.  I liked what she liked.  I still do.  In my teens, I went through a phase where I mostly listened to traditional folk — Child ballads, and Celtic laments, and Appalachian mountain songs.  Now, I listen to a bit of everything and am lucky to live in a hotspot for modern folk, and some of my best friends are also the songwriters and musicians I idolize most.  (Check out the rest of this concert series, and you’ll see some of them!)

Please tell us about any albums you have available or in production.
My first album, “Outshine the Dusk,” came out in 2013.  I released my newest one, “Wildwood Bride,” a couple of months ago at this library!  Both are available on iTunes and Amazon and CD Baby and Bandcamp.  You can check out my website (www.mollypintomadigan.com) for more info.

What should people expect when they come to your concert on Thursday night? 
I perform solo — just me and guitar.  I will probably make some bad jokes and play a song about a serial-killing mermaid.  Fun times.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
I’ve been coming to this library since I was 15 months old (according to my mom), and I feel like I’ve grown up here.  I’m so grateful to be a part of this community.

More about the Summer Concert Series:
Concerts will be held at 7 p.m. on Thursday evenings in July and August at East End Veterans’ Memorial Park. Bring a blanket or folding chair, and maybe even a picnic dinner, and enjoy live acoustic music from a new performer each week. East End Veterans’ Memorial Park is located at 45 Walnut Street. The concert schedule is as follows:

July 9th: Damn Tall Buildings
July 16th: Hoot and Holler
July 23rd: Colleen White and Sean Smith
July 30th: Semi-Aquatic Rodent
August 6th: Molly Pinto Madigan
August 13th: Eva Walsh
August 20th: Ian Fitzgerald
August 27th: The Whiskey Boys

Please note: In the event of rain, Summer Concerts will be held in the Sutton Room at the Peabody Institute Library and food will not be allowed.

For more information, please call 978-531-0100 ext. 10, or visit the library’s website at www.peabodylibrary.org.

 

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“…when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life…” A Londoner’s If/Then…

I report to you today, Beloved Patrons, from London, a city with perhaps more literary connections than any other in the world–or, at the very least, the English speaking world.  I think it might be an interesting challenge to attempt to walk down a street in this great city, and not find some literary reference.  Watson provided a map of the city for readers to follow in his reports of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures; the opening of Dickens’ Bleak House perfectly captures not only the chaos of the bustling street, but the dismally wet autumnal weather around Lincoln’s Field Inn; Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is set so consciously in Westminster that her heroine and setting seem inseparable; even James Bond walked these stories streets, perhaps along with his less ostentatious colleague, Smiley, from John Le Carre’s immortal spy novels.  This is a city made up of words and tales, of shadows and mysteries that beg to be unravelled.

What I find truly interesting is how many different Londons there are in literature.  Some authors, like Zadie Smith or Monica Ali, focus on the real and the tangible, pulling their stories from the world directly outside their windows.  Historical mysteries delight in the fog-shrouded streets and dark alleys of the Victorian city, not in the least because of the legend of Jack the Ripper–which seems to have survived, despite the intercession of modern science.  Personally, my favorite versions of London are the fantastic ones seen by Neil Gaiman or Susannah Clarke, where magic and reality blend and mix.  If there is anywhere I could believe in separate world below ground, or magicians who could alter reality, it would be in London.

So for the next few weeks, I’ll try to post some blog-ish postcards from this storied city–beginning as soon as the jet-lag fully wears off.  For now, however, take a look at some stories set in this storied city, and get your imagination spinning….

2974777The Skin Map: The first scenes of Stephen Lawhead’s incredibly imaginative time-travel/epic fantasy mashup series known as the Bright Empires begins in contemporary London, and the utter banality of his protagonist’s existence provides the perfect foil to the adventures that he is soon to begin.  As he rushes to catch a train, Kit Livingston finds himself dragged into an adventure that not only changes his life, but may very well change history.  Because Britain’s ‘ley lines’ are not merely fictional…they exist beneath the streets and in the shadows, and offer those with knowledge of thier power to travel at will.  Kit’s great-grad-father nearly died to keep the knowledge of the ley lines a secret–will Kit be able to measure up to his expectations.

2634187The Blood Detective: Dan Waddell published the official guidebook to accompany the hit series Who Do You Are, so it makes sense that the hero of his two-book series is a genealogist, hired by Scotland Yard to help piece together a grisly murder investigation from the National Archives in Kew.  As the killer continues taunting the police with cryptic messages, Nigel Barnes realizes that this crime has ties to a Victorian serial killer whose legacy is still very much alive.  Barnes continues his work Blood Atonement, which provides some great character development for him and his team, including a look into his adorably quirky London flat, furnished with the most unlikely of antique curios.

2699304A Madness of Angels: Kate Griffin’s paranormal adventure begins where most cop procedurals end–with the bad guy being brought down.  But in this case, Griffin’s hero, Matthew Swift, returns to London–and to his body–two years after his death.  This is a terrific, and often challenging book, not in the least because Griffen uses the their-person plural for her narrator’s vision (her most commonly used pronoun is ‘we’, not ‘I’) that emphasizes her hero’s bizarre predicament inside his own skin.  Though a little jarring at first, this style is wonderfully appropriate to this tale, and adds another level of weirdly bizarre to this tale of London and the shadows that cling to it.