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View ProfilesPublished December 21, 2022 at 10:00 a.m.
Last year, I took a stand of sorts. It was my first end-of-year roundup as music editor, and I decided I'd mark my tenure by deviating from the norm. No end-of-year top 10 lists, no best singles or videos — not a single thing ranked. The way I saw it, 2021 was a rather weird year and therefore deserved a rather weird send-off.
Well, that little experiment taught me something immediately: You're all reading the column (thanks for that!), and you all really wanted the lists. Whether the "you" in question was bands hoping to see where they landed, fans wanting to push for their favorites, or even other music writers wanting to compare and contrast our picks, the consensus was clear.
I have listened from the mountain/my desk, and let me tell you: There will be lists. I'm going to rank every goddamn thing in this state now; there's no stopping me. In next week's issue, I'll give you the 10 best releases from Vermont in 2022, as well as the 10 best singles.
In this week's column, however, I thought I'd let some of the other contributors to the music section have their say. Curating the best of an entire state's music scene is no small endeavor! Fortunately, I have help from talented writers and photographers who work hard to cover every nook and cranny of the Green Mountain scene. So let's hear what they had to say, shall we?
I'm honestly not sure there's a person in the state who sees more live music than Burlington musician and freelance photographer Luke Awtry. As the music scene's busiest camera-for-hire, Awtry has been witness to some incredible shows. I asked him for a few memories from the past year that rank as his favorites. Rather than pick the best show, he chose to highlight his favorite moments, those special times when he got a great shot. Here are three events that resonated with our intrepid photographer.
"I arrived early to catch some people in the lobby, and it was mostly what I expected to see," Awtry recalled in an email, describing encountering a room full of people in drag before John Cameron Mitchell's March performance at the Flynn in Burlington.
A younger attendee, wearing drag in public for the first time in their life, told Awtry that Mitchell's portrayal of a gay East German rocker in Hedwig and the Angry Inch had inspired them.
"That feeling of empowerment gave them the courage to finally take that very scary leap of revealing themselves to the world, on their own terms and in their own unique way," Awtry wrote.
The photographer could see this was something of a moment for the young attendee. So he shepherded them outside the theater for a portrait under the lighted marquee, their idol's name glowing bright.
"To me, that is the ultimate power of music," Awtry concluded. "To reach a single individual and show them that they have the strength within themselves to be who they want to be."
In his years of photographing live music, Awtry has had his fair share of meetings with legends, from getting a hug from Stevie Wonder to playfully letting Bono know that the Irish rocker didn't need to wear sunglasses indoors. None of these encounters got the veteran photographer flummoxed or starstruck, though.
"What has always struck me, much more than the performers themselves, are the instruments they play," Awtry wrote.
Nothing quite prepared him for the excitement of seeing a violin that's more than three centuries old.
"When I heard Itzhak Perlman was performing, I got really excited," Awtry revealed. Yes, he was certainly eager to catch the Israeli American violin virtuoso live. But the real draw was Perlman's 1714 Soil Stradivarius violin, one of the finest instruments ever crafted by master Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari.
On the day of the performance, Awtry met Perlman backstage and wasted no time. He doubted that Perlman would tour with an instrument valued at around $16 million, but he still asked Perlman what he would be playing onstage that night.
Perlman smiled and said, "The Strad. What else?"
The gearhead in Awtry drove him to investigate the famous violin as soon as he got a chance, while shooting a portrait of Perlman. When the 16-time Grammy Award winner put the Stradivarius down in its case, Awtry leaned over, camera in hand.
"I wanted to inspect every part of it, smell it, touch it, pluck a string," he said. "But apparently I had already crossed a line."
Awtry felt the very large hand of Perlman's bodyguard grip his shoulder with a power and urgency that told him he needed to step away from the famous violin immediately. Catching the exchange, Perlman glanced at a nervous Awtry, who blurted out "It's quite a thing of beauty, isn't it?"
Perlman just smiled at him again and put the violin away.
The Waking Windows festival in Winooski is always a huge weekend of work for Awtry, who does his level best to cover as many of the artists on the bill as possible. For the 2019 edition, which featured more than 180 acts, Awtry partnered with his Boston-based photographer friend and colleague Bryan Lasky, aka Boney Diego. Between the two of them, they estimate, they were able to shoot about 97 percent of that year's festival, a stunning feat of organization and hustle.
For the 2022 edition, though, they wanted to hit the 100 percent mark and cover every single act at the fest.
"We did the thing we do the night before every festival we shoot together," Awtry explained. The two photographers pulled out their schedules, festival maps, Sharpies and highlighters and planned their attack.
Things were going according to plan when Lasky summoned Awtry backstage during funk band Acqua Mossa's set. Lasky pointed to his ear and asked Awtry to take a look.
"When he was taking his earplugs out, one of them snapped in half and lodged in his ear canal," Awtry said. Though he tried to help, it was soon decided that Lasky would need a visit to the emergency room to dislodge the plug.
"So there we were, in the ER at 2 a.m., on our laptops importing and editing photos," Awtry recalled. "Nearly the entire time he was on that hospital bed, he had his laptop in front of him, still on the job. There's not many professions that would excite someone enough to be so diligent about delivering the work."
How about our other freelancers' picks, you ask?
Jordan Adams, who held down the music editor post before yours truly, still does quite a bit of arts and entertainment writing for the paper. His pick for album of the year is Burlington singer-songwriter Will Keeper's Glass Doll. With a combination of R&B and electro-pop sounds as a bedrock, the album showcases Keeper's melodic sensibilities and strongly empathetic songs. Adams singled out "Security" as the choice cut on the record.
Annie Cutler started writing reviews for us this year and tackled an eclectic mix of genres and acts. To reflect that range, she went with a top three, giving gold, silver and bronze to Michael Roberts' alt-country record Sympathizer, teen pop singer Junes' Nothing Feels Right and bluegrass outfit the Wormdogs' Sunny Side Up. OK, so she didn't assign rank, but I like to visualize a podium whenever I can. I won't dictate who won gold, but all three records were strong picks from Cutler.
As for Justin Boland, our resident hip-hop expert doesn't need to pick a list when he maintains an entire damn website devoted to the best rap in the state. I shouted out his site earlier this year in a column recapping the Vermont Hip Hop Awards. But there's never a bad time to point out that nothing else in Vermont comes remotely close to what Boland does over at the encyclopedic vermonthiphop.com. A long-serving member of the scene who raps under the moniker Wombaticus Rex, Boland keeps an all-seeing eye on Green Mountain State hip-hop. Do yourself a favor and check it out!
There were so many releases in 2022, and any of the above is a good pick for album of the year. Did any of them make the cut for my list, though? Stay tuned to find out next week.
Tags: Music News + Views, John Cameron Mitchell, Itzhak Perlman, Waking Windows, Boney Diego, Will Keeper’s, Michael Roberts, Junes, Wormdogs, Vermont Hip Hop Awards
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