maine folk – Pocket Full of Mumbles

June 20, 2023June 20, 2023

Mumbles back at Pineland Farms for Strawberry Moon PYO: June 22-24

NEW GLOUCESTER — Pocket Full of Mumbles, Maine’s favorite purveyors of eclectic, crowd-pleasing twang, will again headline the annual Strawberry Moon Celebration here at Pineland Farms this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Show time is 4-7 p.m. each day, June 22-24.

This three-day event, the ultimate yard party, takes place entirely within the Pineland Farms property at 752 Mayall Road in New Gloucester. Festivities, which also run from 4-7 p.m. each afternoon, include, music, PYO strawberriues galore, food-truck fare, games, sunshine, farm equipment, dessert tables, horse-drawn carriage rides, special moonlit picking hours, and plenty of room for kids to run wild. The cost: Just $5 per person — but don’t forget to put your ticket price toward your PYO purchase at checkout. Children under 2: free.

The Mumbles will bring the musical ambience, next to the big tractor, from a proper flatbed stage. Food & drink vendors include Craft Curbside, Cruzin’ Slice, Shut up N’ Eat It, Cheese the Day, the Pink Waffle, and our very own Pineland Market strawberry shortcake station.

For more information, visit the Pineland Farms website or call the Farm at (207) 657-2877.

It’s a lot to absorb, but don’t overthink it: Just drop by, harvest a few quarts of delicious strawberries from the rich Maine soil, listen to the music, have a beverage, a bite to eat and, if you need more strawberries, come back the next day and do it all again.

June 6, 2023June 7, 2023

Mumbles back at SBE Friday, June 9; Sebago Days July 15 & Topsham Fair Aug. 9

Pocket Full of Mumbles, Maine’s favorite purveyors of eclectic, crowd-pleasing twang, will return to Side By Each Brewing Co. in Auburn this Friday night, June 9. Showtime is 7-10 p.m.

With a variety of guest soloists (the lovely and talented Nancy Durham will sit in on the drums this Friday), the Mumbles do indeed stock each set with eclectic crowd pleasers. On June 9, expect newly worked up selections from Warren Zevon, the Grateful Dead and Son Volt, to go along with heapin’ helpings of originals, CSNY, Chris Stapleton, vintage Jackson Browne, Bob Mould, The Dillards, Ryan Adams, James Taylor, Liz Phair and Tom Petty.

Later this month, the Mumbles will play in residence at the annual Strawberry Festival, a three-day, pick-your-own extravaganza scheduled for June 22-23-24 at Pineland Farms on the Mayall Road in Gray. As it has done the last three Junes, PFOM will preside from its flatbed stage Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 4-7 p.m. The band will also play the Sebago Days festival on July 15 (2 p.m.), and the Topsham Fair Aug. 9 (11 a.m.), so mark your calendars.

May 4, 2023May 4, 2023

Mumbles Make Side By Each Debut Saturday Night, May 6

Pocket Full of Mumbles, Maine’s favorite purveyors of smart twang, has emerged from winter hibernation straight into show season. The three-piece will make its 2023 debut at Side By Each Brewing Co. in Auburn this Saturday night, May 6, with a return engagement scheduled for Friday June 9. Each show will run 6-9 p.m.

Pocket Full of Mumbles debuted in 2017 as a Simon & Garfunkel tribute act, featuring close harmonies and largely acoustic instrumentation from fiddler/bassist Mike Conant and guitarist Hal Phillips. Early in the pandemic, they added Tim Howie on pedal steel, Telecaster and banjo, lending amplification and twang to their portfolio of S&G and original songs. With a variety of guest drummers and soloists (Bald Hill mando player Ben DeTroy will sit in June 9), the Mumbles stock each set with selections from Son Volt, CSN, Neil Young, Cracker, vintage Jackson Browne, fIREhOSE and Bob Mould, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Ryan Adams, James Taylor, Liz Phair and The Band.

Later in June, the Mumbles will again play in residence at the annual Strawberry Festival, a three-day, pick-your-own extravaganza held June 24-25-26 at Pineland Farms on the Mayall Road in Gray. The event has grown a great deal through the years: What had been a quiet, 1-day, pick-your-own affair has matured into a three-day family-friendly blowout complete with food trucks, craft brew vendors, farm equipment (for climbing) and, of course

June 25, 2019January 20, 2023

Stephen Never Really Got Over Judy

Besotted young men have for centuries been composing love songs for/about the objects of their affection. When it comes to qualitative productivity, however, it’s tough to match Stephen Stills’ preoccupation with Judy Collins.

They met in 1967, when Stills was immediately post Buffalo Springfield and pre CSN — a tremendously productive songwriting period for the young Canadians. She’d just released “Wildflowers”, the highest charting album of her career (wherein she covered Both Sides Now, the work of another young Canadian, Joni Mitchell). Apparently, Stills spied Collins in the audience at West Hollywood’s Whisky a Go Go and the rest is history.

The resulting 18-month relationship would move Stills to write three Judy-centric tunes: Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and Helplessly Hoping both showed up two years later on CSN’s eponymous, much-heralded debut album. Another ode to Judy — So Begins the Task, wherein Stills addresses the difficulties in accepting her rejection — didn’t make the cut. It wouldn’t be recorded until 1972, when it appeared on Still’s solo album, Manassas.

Nevertheless, Pocket Full of Mumbles will cover it (along with the epic, 8.5-minute Suite) this Friday, June 28 at the Allagash Brewery in Portland.

Reproducing CSN’s 3- and 4-part harmonies is no small matter, especially for a duo, but it can be done. PFOM proves it (see the Video/Audio tab for evidence). Collins and Stills themselves further this argument: Their 2017 album, “Everybody Knows”, featured an attractive mix of new songs, catalogue selections and CSN covers. Indeed, another PFOM tune on tap Friday night, You Don’t Have To Cry, was a staple of the tour Collins and Stills undertook in support of “Everybody Knows”.

That album and tour may not have transpired had David Crosby, Graham Nash and Stills made plain, in 2016, that they’d finally had enough of one another. Each has indicated they will never perform with the others again — a sentiment Neil Young made plain (but kept reneging on) starting in 1974. Prior to her 50th anniversary tour with Stills, Collins was dismissive of the idea that she was ever some sort of stand-in.

“I’m the original girl,” she told The Guardian in 2017. “I was there before any of them.”

May 1, 2019May 4, 2023

What ever happened to that guy who robbed the liquor store?

We often tell audiences that a particular tune we perform (and recently recorded, see below), “Wednesday Morning, 3 a.m.”, contains perhaps the most unlikely Paul Simon lyric ever written down. Give a listen and pay special attention to the third verse… The notion that effete, petit Paul Simon would ever knock over a liquor store, or commit a violent felony of any kind, is patently absurd. The same could be said of Art Garfunkel, who is taller but no less the sensitive, urbane sophisticate.

No one claims this or any S&G song is explicitly autobiographical, but this unlikely outlaw theme is one that Simon & Garfunkel must have fancied because they resurrect and amplify it on their very next album with the song, “Somewhere They Can’t Find Me”.

In an earlier blog (from July 2018, see below), we remark on the fact that S&G’s debut album, Wednesday Morning 3 a.m., was something of a dud. Indeed, Simon’s next batch of spare folk tunes didn’t thrill the executives at Columbia Records, and so he fucked off to England, with Kathy (she of the song), to concentrate on becoming the next Bob Dylan. It wasn’t until producer Tom Wilson rocked up the single, “Sounds of Silence” (in post production), that S&G would reform. Indeed, this new Byrds-inspired version would go straight to #1, which led Simon, Garfunkel and Wilson to affix more orchestration to many of the remaining songs on this second album, the now iconic Sounds of Silence.

One of those cuts, “Somewhere They Can’t Find Me”, doesn’t merely harken back to the criminal storyline detailed in the previous album’s title cut; it reprises nearly the entire lyric and updates the story.

In the wistful original, our antihero narrator has committed a crime, broken the law… In the middle of the night, his girlfriend asleep at his side, he wonders aloud (amid rich harmonies) what fate the dawn will bring.

Artists will sometimes refer back to previous lyrics, dropping little references or inside jokes to the listener. But with “Somewhere” we find something quite different: Simon deploys the original “Wednesday Morning” lyric to create a brand new song. A newly inserted chorus spells out next steps: I’ve got to creep down the alleyway, fly down the highway…

These urgent new lyrics and tone reveal that our unlikely felon has resolved to go on the lam — Before they come and get me I’ll be gone! Somewhere, where they can’t find me…

It’s not clear, but it seems his girlfriend may have woken up in time to hear all this. One can imagine her surprise: That this poetic, nebbish (a nice Jewish boy?) has A) robbed a liquor store; and B) now intends to elude the long arm of justice like some turtle-necked, scarf-wearing Clyde Barrow. It’s all a bit grandiose but it does lead us to wonder (and further consult the S&G songbook) as to whatever happened to that guy…