November 26, 2022
If you've seen our social media feed over the last week, you've known something was up. The three surviving members of Nor'easter actually being together, knowing that one lives in New Hampshire, another in Tennessee and the 3rd in Virginia, would be a very special occasion.
2022 has already been an epic year for us - to see the album the 3 founding members recorded in 1989 released and enjoyed in far-flung corners of the world is simply still beyond our wildest dreams. But indeed, there is more….
Some of our final show in 1987 - the May Day festival in Moosup CT - was captured on 4-head video camera. That footage sat unseen by the band for 35 years until we got the original tape late last year. It had significant degradation and mold growing on the outside, but the tape itself was intact enough to clean and transfer to digital. Once again, engineer Dustin DeLage has worked magic with old tape, bringing color and clarity to the footage. Nor'easter soundman Matt Turkovich captured most of the show on stereo cassette from the soundboard.
The film is not high definition, and certainly won't meet modern quality standards as a video release with a single camera and outdoor light. But over these past few months, we've realized that our story is common to countless musicians everywhere who dreamed big, worked hard, and ultimately wound up having to let go when life's demands insisted. That's how 99.99% of those band stories end - even though the music world is populated by the tiny fraction who were lucky enough to be in the right places at the right times to make those big steps onto big stage. Bands are like families in many ways, and friend groups in many others, and unique because of that intersection. The act of making music together is sublime, mysterious and fascinating.
So today we'd like you to know that we're planning on telling that story in a mini-"rockumentary," Rock Time in Your Town, featuring footage from that concert as well as interviews that we just filmed last weekend at Cabin Studios. That reunion - after 35 years! - was special beyond measure. The boys had an amazing visit, did a fabulous job with the interviews, and perhaps most special of all, played some music together. There was great homemade food all weekend and lots of laughs reminiscing about our missing Matts. No promises how much of that you'll get to see, but we're hoping that brings a smile to your face just knowing that it happened.
We're going to need help to make this movie. It's expensive beyond anything we've attempted, and we'd like very much to do it well for you as well as Matt's musical legacy. After the holidays we'll launch a crowdfunding campaign, and we hope you'll help us share our chapter of an "every band" story. We'll submit it to some film festivals, and have a couple premiere events - perhaps even one back in Plainfield where it all went down. For now, know that we're busy doing another cool thing with our time capsule, and make a mental note to watch for our IndieGoGo campaign in January.
In the meantime, maybe start getting psyched for all of that by cranking this!
A HUGE thank you to Willam McFadden for the great photography all weekend! For more photos visit the Gallery.