Category Archives: SMAC

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Lightroom 2 fixes uneven stage lighting

I just finished processing last night’s Stone Mountain LIVE show (a rather eclectic tribute to the music of the 1950’s).

The Stone Mountain Arts Center is renown for its live music and sound system (as it should be) — less so for the stage lighting.   When you have a large group playing, and they often do, the performers off of center stage drop into the shadows (easily a one-stop drop).

While editing the photographs I realized that Lightroom 2’s new graduated neutral density (GND) filter tool might easily tune the wider-angle stage shots and bring it closer to what an audience member would see.   Now, doing this kind of exposure adjustment was always possible in Photoshop, but I don’t have the time to go through that process for what could be dozens of photos.   With Lightroom I set up a half-stop increase in the exposure and set it at an angle — almost as if I was adding a light to the stage.  The result created a much nicer balance (see the sample image below).  And I could sync this adjustment to the photos that needed it, fine tuning the position of the filter for the composition of each shot.

I’ve done some other work with the LR2 local adjustments, diddling with the masking tool, and I’ve found some uses for that — but for my workflow I think the graduated neutral density filter adjustment tool will turn more bland photos into selects than any other new toy in Lightroom.  Between this new tool and the improved sharpening, it is well worth the cost of upgrade.

Sample: The “stage left” lighting leave sax players Paul Ahlstrand and Tom Hall in the dark.  A somewhat narrow GND filter centered just over drummer Billy MacGillivray’s head makes it appear a new stage light was added.

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Stone Mountain LIVE w/ The Wailin’ Jennys

The July 13th Stone Mountain LIVE show featured one of my favorite bands, The Wailin’ Jennys.  If you haven’t heard the Jenny’s perform, please give them a listen.  They have a style which is quite unique in today’s cookie-cutter music business.

I’m so happy to have permission to photograph these shows — I hope people enjoy seeing some scenes from this jewel of Maine, the Stone Mountain Arts Center.

For a full gallery of this and many other Stone Mountain LIVE shows, head on over to:  http://smac.dmg-photography.com

When we arrived, Carol’s neigbor Tim was in the parking lot with Donner, a 12-year old, 1800 lb. Belgian draft horse.  She’s a darling…

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Katy and Carol Noonan in their pre-song banter…

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The Stone Mountain Boys, featuring vocalist Chris Cote, belted out some great tunes

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And The Wailin’ Jennys…20087-385-3159.jpg

Heather Masse grew up just a couple of towns over (near Fryeburg), so she’s a hometown hero when the Jenny’s perform here. Heather was out in the audience area before the show and it was like being at a family reunion.

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Nicky Mehta

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Ruth Moody

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and Jeremy Penner on fiddle…

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There’s no easy way to explain the next couple of photographs.   That’s “Monty” from the Inn at Crystal Lake.

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A few shots of some of the Stone Mountain Boys after the show…

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Stone Mountain LIVE - March 22

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[L-R: Carol Noonan, Lisa Saffer, Katie Noonan, Billy McGillvray, Duke Levine, and Tim Ostendorf]
Are these people having too much fun? Quite possibly - but so is the audience.

Stone Mountain LIVE is described as “A Prairie Home Companion”, only from the piney woods of Maine. The description is very accurate.

Between the diverse and really stunning musical performances, the SMAC troupe manages to come up with some pretty bizarre skits — but they are easily on a par with Mr. Keillor. When the snow is up over the windows in March (and this is after it has melted down a foot or so) you can’t really blame anyone for going just a little crazy - but in a good way.

And so what this winter of endless snow gives us is a 7 minute barrage of puns involving the names of towns in Maine punctuated by whistles, kazoos, and horns injected into a potboiler romance story. You had to be there.

For more pictures of the show, visit: http://smac.dmg-photography.com

To get tickets to the next Stone Mountain LIVE, head on over to: http://www.stonemountainartscenter.com

Duke is King of the Mountain

Duke Levine at Stone Mountain Arts Center

We headed up to Maine for a weekend of music and a little bit of outdoor photography — the latter will be covered in another journal entry.

On Friday night we listened to a great Celtic duo: Liz Carroll and John Doyle. Liz is based in Chicago and apologize for the weather that keeps following her around. She’s also a very impressive fiddle player who wowed the audience with back to back reels and the occasional hornpipe. John makes up the other half of the duo and both accompanies Liz with her instrumentals and plays/sings ballads and songs from Ireland (and, I’m sure other countries). John is from Dublin and is obviously well-educated in the history and craft of songwriting and singing - and he’s pretty handy with the guitar as well. The two have been playing together as a duo for a few years now and they work very well together. If you have a chance to see them, do so!

For a change of pace we stayed at the Admiral Peary House in Fryeburg, Maine. Yes, it is the home of Admiral Richard Peary the first person to reach the North Pole in 1909 (hey, next year will be the centennial - they’re probably filming the National Geographic specials already). The owners, Derrek and Hilary, have a great bed and breakfast arrangement there and we are certain to return one of these days. (The inn’s management team is apparently a couple of cats, but we didn’t make their acquaintance.) We slept in the “North Pole” room, which is at the very top of the house. Breakfast is prepared daily by Derrek. Baked apple and cheese blintz on Saturday morning; a fruit soup followed by sweet potato hash on Sunday. Yum! The kitchen is open to the dining area and it creates a great opportunity for conversation between the hosts and guests.

Saturday night was the Duke Levine Band. We heard Duke and his band play at SMAC back in August and they gave everyone a taste of a new album that was in the works. “Beneath the Blue” was released in December and this was the Maine “CD Release” concert. The first song of the evening was “Lava”, from the album of the same name released in 1997. That’s the kind of guy Duke is.

When it comes to the guitar, Duke is what you would call a virtuoso. What he is not is a showman, or more accurately a “show off”. The whole band, including Duke, is composed of so-called “side men” - those people that everyone has heard on any number of albums or movie soundtracks, but only a few know their names. If you grew up in the 60’s and 70’s you probably remember the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Duke would fit perfectly into that show’s NBC Orchestra — a band consisting of the top-flight instrumentalists who were masters of their craft and exceptional at improvisation. The emphasis of this type of musician is on the music, not the theatrics that often accompany concerts. As a person who is most comfortable working behind the scenes, I can identify with them. They walk on the stage with a shyness that betrays their skills as true performers.

Kevin Barry and Duke Levine

Duke Levine’s bandmates for the evening were Kevin Barry (guitar), Mike Rivard (bass), and Per Hansen (drums). The album/movie/tour credits for these guys combined would probably fill a book. Kevin is Duke’s “wing man” — he’s also exceptionally skilled at the guitar and complemented Duke’s Telecaster (the only guitar Duke played tonight) with acoustic, electric, and lap steel guitars.

The first half of the show was all instrumental. In the August show, about 20 minutes in, Duke commented during a break that “you all know nobody up here sings, right?” A combination of music from old albums and the new one, plus other tunes. Like all great masters, Duke doesn’t just play the guitar - he is a student of the great players who have come before him and he pays homage to those roots musicians who created country, soul, R&B, rock and roll, and probably a dozen other variants that I’m ignorant of. I don’t know if Duke has taught at Berklee, but I’d bet he would do well there.

Chris Cote
The second set was nothing short of amazing. First Duke brought Chris Cote on stage and they proceeded to blow the roof off the hall. Not unlike the other band members, Chris walks on stage with the same near reluctance that the other band members have. But then he starts singing. Chris is an amazing vocalist and he just got better and stronger as the night went on. For Robby Robertson’s classic tune “The Weight”, Duke welcomed Mason Daring and Carol Noonan to the stage. Three powerful singers and a killer band… This was going to be trouble. Mason is another one of those “guys behind the scenes” having numerous movie and TV credits as a composer and performer. He also was the producer of Duke’s first three albums. Perhaps the highlight of the show was a song by “The Falcons”, an influential R&B group in the early 60’s. Unfortunately I’m not well-versed in all forms of music and I don’t remember which tune it was … didn’t matter. It was phenomenal! The electricity from the performance simply permeated the audience. I think after this number Duke noted that “perhaps this instrumental stuff isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be”.

For the final song of the encore Mike and Per left the stage and Duke and Kevin ended the evening with an unnamed composition that exemplified the grace and skill of these two artists.

Exhilarating is the only word that describes the evening.

My thanks to Duke for allowing me to photograph his show. Without the music the photographs are a bit empty - but for anyone who was there they should bring back some smiles.

Links:

My photos from the January 19, 2008 Duke Levine Band performance at SMAC.
Duke Levine
Stone Mountain Arts Center
Liz Carroll
John Doyle
Admiral Peary House

Stone Mountain LIVE - First Anniversary Show

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We’re driving back from Maine where we just attended the first anniversary of the Stone Mountain Arts Center Live show. The show was “accompanied” by a rather wicked thunderstorm that raged outside the large windows behind the stage. The lights went out a few times during dinner, but everything had relatively calmed down by show time (I gotta get me one of those lightning triggers for the camera…)

The SMAC Live show bills itself as a cross between A Prairie Home Companion and Mountain Stage. While it is certainly still a top-notch variety show, it is definitely much more professional in tone and presentation than the debut show last August. In a way, this first anniversary show was kind of a “best of” for a number of earlier shows and a preview of the upcoming CD they recorded in July (e.g., Carol reprised the “Barn Song” from the Barn Raising show a few months ago, Duke and the band hit on some of the songs they played at his show (Mansquito!), and the night was sprinkled with classic tunes by the Beatles and Burt Bacharach).

I asked Carol if she wanted photos of the show and she agreed to let me take some shots. We had arrived early enough to get seated in the first row. This is always an opportunity and a curse when it comes to photography as the light levels vary greatly between center stage and the rest of the band in the shadows. That and you are sometimes, as my wife artfully notes, “shooting up people’s noses”. To be honest, I didn’t do all that well with the exposures tonight — I’ve done much better from 20 feet back… Live and learn. I also try to be kind of discreet and only grab a few shots here and there. Well, I’m not a very good photographer and invariably something is wrong with the person’s eyes or where the omnipresent microphones end up, so about half the frames end up in the trash can. Still, while I hope to capture some of the magic that happens in that room - it is really an experience for your ears and soul — less so for your eyes.

We drove back to Maynard from the show, dodging the downed limbs and power lines in nearby Eaton, NH. It turned out to be a really powerful storm just to the west of where we were. It’s 2am. Back home, safe and sound.

For more pictures from the show visit: http://smac.dmg-photography.com/SML-Aug-2007

Duke Levine Band in Concert at SMAC

Duke Levine Band at Stone Mountain Arts Center

[L to R: Kevin Barry, Per Hanson, Mike Rivard, and Duke Levine]

Duke Levine (along with Kevin Barry) have been at the core of the instrumental team behind Carol Noonan’s records for a number of years. In addition to being a studio recording artist, Duke has played with a number of bands (big and small) ranging from Boston local Dennis Brennan to touring with Mary Chapin Carpenter. Duke has also released a number of CDs featuring his guitar instrumentals.

The Duke Levine Band is tight. These guys are all master technicians at what they do. There’s no light show. Heck, there’s not even singing! Just a mix of classic and original guitar tunes. Duke is obviously an afficiando of other guitar masters and pays tribute to them with fabulous arrangements and execution. I’m looking forward to his new CD, slated for release in the fall (we hope).

Duke was kind enough to give me permission to shoot during the show. Professionals at work.

To see more photos from the night visit: http://smac.dmg-photography.com/DLB-Aug-2007

Carol Noonan and Band at SMAC

After an afternoon of chasing rainbows we headed off to Brownfield, Maine for what we knew would be a stirring night of music and fun.

2006c-385-1199.jpg Yes, it’s another evening at the Stone Mountain Arts Center.

Where else do you get:

Traditional Christmas carols…

Holiday show tunes…

Ave Maria sung in the original German by a world-renown opera singer…

Tim Ostendorf as Disco Santa A cautionary tale featuring a rather inebriated Disco Santa sung to the tune of the Animals “House of the Rising Sun”…

Wonderful piano and instrumental arrangements (The Stone Mountain Boys and also Dana Cunningham)…

And, yes, toe-tapping Holiday Bluegrass?

Three shows. All sold out. We managed to score tickets to the middle show. We had a great dinner before the show and watched as the room filled to capacity.

Carol had, pardon the pun, decked the hall with trees and lights providing a warm holiday feel to the entire center.

Carol and Jeff’s extraordinary vision and gamble appears to be really paying off.

The Stone Mountain Arts Center, in just a few months, has gone from a renovated barn to a thriving entertainment center that thrills both the audience and the artists alike.

Shows are selling out months in advance. And this is a place that most people driving there for the first time say “this can’t be right”.

The only thing missing was the snow.

Check out a full gallery of photos hiding away on my web site: Stone Mountain Christmas Gallery

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