My Other Sites
I also write and perform music. For more information on that see my music web site.
Publications
Some of the places where my photos have been published:
- Weston Life Magazine – August 2015
- Pressconnects.com – article on the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival
- Graphics on CDs by various musicians including: Rich Eilbert, Bob Halperin, …
Venues
Some of my favorite venues for hearing music and photographing shows
- Club Passim, one of the oldest folk music coffeehouses in the country. Great sound, and intimate viewing of a lot of great performers – over 300 shows a year. Seating is also fairly intimate, it’s a small room with four person shared tables.
- Amazing Things Arts Center, a nice local arts center in Framingham MA which presents a variety of music and other acts.
- The Circle of Friends Coffeehouse in Franklin MA
- The Me & Thee Coffeehouse in Marblehead MA
- The Homegrown Coffeehouse in Needham MA
- The Parlor Room in Northampton MA. A fairly new venue presenting a lot of quality acts
- The Burren Somerville. A bar which strongly supports the local music scene. Since this is a bar it’s not as much of a listening room as some of the above but still a good place to hear acts that might not play the larger rooms.
As long as I’m mentioning venues, I should note a few which are not good for concert photography, and in fact are pretty poor listening rooms in general:
- Johnny D’s in Somerville MA. This used to be an ok venue with a lot of good acts, but over the past few years they’ve come up with some seating policies which make it very unpleasant. First, they started charging extra for dinner seating in areas with good views of the stage. This was annoying but acceptable; however they then began to set aside the entire area actually in front of the stage for standing “general admission”. The end result is that people who have paid extra for seating cannot actually see the stage because of the standing crowd. As an additional injury they GA crowd tends to talk during the show, so you can’t even hear the music well. We’ve stopped attending shows at Johnny D’s because of this.
- The Calvin Theater in Northampton MA has a similar problem. They tend to reserve the area in front of the stage as a “dance area”. With the result that you can purchase what you think are good seats only to find that the people standing (generally not dancing) in front of the stage have blocked your view. On top of that, the last show we attended there the sound quality was atrocious. Again, we’ve stopped attending shows there.
Open Mikes
Some of the quality open mikes in the Boston area that I am familiar with:
- The Emerson Umbrella Open Mike, in Concord MA. Twice monthly on Sunday nights, except in the summer. Run by Ellen Schmidt, a long time heroine of the Boston open mike scene
- The Nourish Restaurant Open Mike, in Lexington MA. Three times a month on Tuesday nights. Also run by Ellen Schmidt.
- The PCA Open Mike in Westford, MA. A 10 year open mike run by John Ferullo
- The Harvest Cafe Open Mike. Twice a month on Wednesday nights, run by Paul Rogoshewski.
- The Amazing Things Open Mike in Framingham MA. Thursday nights at the Amazing Things Arts Center, run by Dan Cloutier.
- The Natick Center for Arts Open Mike. Tuesday nights, run by Mark Stepakoff.
- Bolton Public Library Open Mike in Bolton MA. Once a month on a Tuesday night, run by Dan & Faith Senie.
- Maynard Public Library Open Mike in Maynard MA. Once a month on a Thursday night, run by Drew Stevens.
- The Club Passim Open Mike. Famous as the starting place for a lot of now professional musicians. Has been sporadic for the past few years but rumors say that it will become more regular in Spring 2014.
- The Cantab Open Mike. The venerable open mike in Cambridge MA run by Geoff Bartley.
- The Burren Open Mike. Tuesday nights at the Burren in Somerville, run by Hugh McGowan.
- The Lizard Lounge Open Mike Challenge. Monday nights at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, run by Tom Bianchi.
See also the Boston area Open Mike list maintained by Sam Bayer.
Other Music Photographers
There are a number of other people in the Boston area who also photograph a lot of Concerts and other Music Events. These include:
- Dan Senie, mostly does art photography, but he has been known to photograph concerts, and often takes my photo when I’m playing an open mike
- Jake Jacobson (A Sharper Eye Photography) photographs a lot of the same type of shows as I do.
- Neale Eckstein (Fox Run Studio) also photographs a lot of musicians and concerts, Neale is especially good with candid shots.
- Mark Longo, also mostly art photography but shoots occasional concerts
- Jess Wrubel (Razzi Entertainment). Photographs a lot of folk/acoustic shows, often in the Providence RI area.