Recorded in the Goucher Woods by Holy Shadow |
>> While it’s far above the heights of what we normally cover, this week’s announcement that STATE THEATRE will partner with Forefront Partners, the builders behind Thompson’s Point, to make a new outdoor concert venue, well that’s certainly the news of the week. Since they reopened the 1,700-seat concert venue in 2010, we’ve seen the network build down—acquiring Port City Music Hall and mingling now and then with the goings-on at the Empire stage. And we’ve seen them build up—booking the Civic Center for the occasional Black Keys or Skrillex throwdown. This time they’re building out. The proposed outdoor concert venue should seat roughly 5,000, and the group aim to link it up to Portland Trails for easier accessibility. Is it an answer to the Maine State Pier shows being handled all the way from Bangor? Who will be the first local band to play this stage? What sort of caliber bands are we talking about here—U2? We can’t answer these questions now, but we’ll learn a few of them as soon as summer 2015, when the venture plans to host its first shows. While we’re at it, might as well bang a little drum for Grime Studios, the long-tenured, working-class music facility whose crowdfunding campaign to build a new rehearsal complex (formerly on Thompson’s Point) has a mere two weeks left to hit its $10,000 goal.
>> Found our way toward a lovely little slice of something from HOLY SHADOW, a bracingly emotional and realist young folk punk band outta Portland. We were first turned onto them by a heartfelt thank you letter written to the band by a fan in the inaugural issue of River Court, a one-page newsprint of deep Portland subculture (think Providence’s fantastic Mothers News) that we have high, high hopes for. Seek it out to read yourselves, but parts of our week were spent connecting the dots between the raw acoustic punk energy of Recorded in the Goucher Woods and the letter’s prose, which congratulates the band on telling off some bros who misbehaved at the show, “practicing revenge without hurting anyone,” and thus “hold(ing) it down for the future of punk rock in Portland, Maine.” We’re just thrilled to hear people using “punk” to describe ethics instead of distortion, and we’re happy to take their word for it and keep listening.
An earlier version of this article stated that the State Theatre had a hand in booking the Tom Petty concert at the Cross Insurance Arena/Cumberland County Civic Center.
