Our first band, Rebbecca Lula, brought in enough tickets and beer-chugging Dot Rats that the club was always happy to have us even if our music was some ’80s aural clusterf– of The Jam, Devo and The English Beat. I couldn’t afford school, so I waited tables, joined my cousin Greg McKenna‘s rock band and started playing Boston’s many clubs. More like: That building and those people altered the course of my life forever.Īt 18, most kids were heading off to college. Not an I-lived-at-that-club-in-the-’90s history. So yeah, I have a history with TT the Bear’s Place. Janet Knott/The Boston Globe via Getty Images the Bear's Place, a music venue in Central Square, Cambridge, Mass. Hours later, Jeannie and co-owner Bonney Bouley, having gone back to TT’s and cleaned out the till, returned to Cambridge jail and sprung me from the clink. Naturally, I was arrested - for assault and battery on a police officer. When the clubs let out with a mad, sweaty crush of grungy musicians and fans, Cambridge’s Finest were in in rare form and in no mood for a mouthy Dorchester rock chick defending the honor (and the gear and the cargo vans) of all the bands loading onto Brookline Ave that night. Our show that night was fire-code smashing mayhem and so was that of Chicago’s Red Red Meat, who were playing next door at the Middle East. 1993: Letters to Cleo’s swinging-from-the-rafters record-release party for the original Cherrydisc version of our first album, Aurora Gory Alice. Or the time in 2008 that the entire Boston music community - including Letters to Cleo - rallied around TT’s co-owner Jeanne Connolly to play benefit concerts to help defray the cost of her cancer treatment.Īctually, now I know what it was. Wait, it must be the time in 1997 that USA Mike proposed to me after soundcheck and I took the TT’s stage as a newly engaged gal. Or the time I looked out into the sparse audience on that Wednesday night gig and saw someone I didn’t know singing all the words to our songs. Maybe it was the big black X marks that Jeanne drew on each of my hands with that big, stinky magic marker between every soundcheck and show I played in the late 80’s before I turned 21. Folksinger Don White at the Rose Garden Coffeehouse.My quintessential TT the Bear’s Place memory? Rachael Yamagata's indie pop at City Winery. Nonpareil acoustic bluesman Chris Smither lights up the Spire Center. English DJ Jonas Blue is a big deal at Big Night Live. A benefit with multiple bands at The C-Note, in the annual Wreckless Wreck Chords show beginning at 5 p.m. Don't forget the earplugs when Michigan hardcore outfit I Prevail takes over MGM Music Hall. Hard rockers Turnstile open a two-night stand at Roadrunner. SATURDAY: Buffalo Tom frontman Bill Janovitz worth a trip to The Burren. The English Beat gets City Winery jumping. The Lizard Lounge is reopened and the Gravel Project is ready to rock it. Ali Gatie raps and grooves at Big Night Live. Baltimore power popsters Pinkshift at Brighton Music Hall. The 'science fiction fusion' trio Consider the Source warms up Soundcheck Studios. Toronto quintet Alvvays and their indie pop at Roadrunner. The Good Trees River Band rocks The C-Note. The folk-pop quartet Darlingside arrives at the Spire Center. Ironically, she had a guest guitarist on those gigs, rock veteran Bill Guerra, whose day job is general manager at the Paradise.įRIDAY: A cool double bill for roots fans at Boston Harbor Distillery with Peter Parcek and Danielle Miraglia. Hanley was in Boston in the spring for a pair of solo shows at City Winery. “Īnd then there are song that they will never leave off the set list: ‘Awake’ or ‘Here and Now.” There might be certain things we don’t play, and never did, but in the main, if anything is in our set it is because we all love it. I never get sick of playing anything from our past. it is a really fun aspect of our catalog. Every soundtrack has music people know and want to hear, from the ‘Josie and the Pussycats’ stuff, to songs from (the 1999 movie) 'Ten Things I Hate About You.' People really dig the soundtrack music. “One of the most popular things is our soundtrack music. “It is funny, but a lot of people like different records,” Hanley said. It would be easy to expect many fans to want tunes from “Aurora Gory Alice,” their hit debut album, which included the hit single “Here and Now.”

Letters to cleo