RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Lowell Politics: May 10, 2026

The Tuesday, May 5, 2026, council meeting lasted just over two hours with no single issue dominating the meeting. Perhaps the central theme of council discussions on Tuesday and at other recent meetings has been the fiscal challenges the city faces in the coming year.

Related to that, the council received a report from Finance Subcommittee chair Belinda Juran on that committee’s April 28, 2026, meeting and the minutes of that meeting. The PowerPoint presentation to the subcommittee from Chief Financial Officer Conor Baldwin on the FY27 budget process was also included. The presentation was filled with information that sets the table for upcoming council budget deliberations, so I’ll review it at length in today’s newsletter.

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The proposed budget will be presented to the city council at this week’s meeting on May 12, 2026. The council will then schedule a public hearing on the budget and should adopt the budget no later than June 30, 2026, since Fiscal Year 2027 begins the next day. Under our Plan E form of government, councilors may adopt the budget as is, make cuts to it, or reject it entirely, however, the council may not increase the budget or any item within it.

On January 22, 2026, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue certified Lowell’s “free cash” from FY25 (which ran from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025). Recall that “free cash” is the city’s surplus funds from that fiscal year. Those funds may have come from several sources: Money that was budgeted for a specific purpose but was not spent by the end of the fiscal year; surplus revenue resulting from higher than projected income from taxes; or previously unspent free cash. Before the city can use free cash, the calculations must be certified by the state Department of Revenue. After that, the city can use the money for any legal purpose. However, the best practice is to avoid using it for recurring expenses like salaries. Instead, it is usually directed towards the city’s stabilization fund (which is a type of “rainy day” account); towards capital expenditures; or towards emergency expenses that could not have been anticipated in the annual budget.

In February of this year, the council adopted the city manager’s recommendation that $7.5 million of the newly certified free cash be sent to the stabilization fund to restore the amount used to close gaps in the FY26 budget, to subsidize the city’s parking operations, and to provide more funds to the Lowell Public Schools than the city manager had initially recommended in his annual budget. Another $1.7 million was used on “traffic calming investments” (I assume that means the much-desired “speed humps”); expenses from the two special elections for the vacant state senate seat; and a few other items.

Notably, all funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) has come to an end. That money had to be obligated by the end of calendar year 2024 and spent by now. The presentation states, “Positions or programs previously supported by ARPA that continue will require General Fund appropriation.” When a financial windfall like ARPA became available, it would have been irrational for the city not to have taken advantage of it, but the question now is whether the use of those funds was finite and ended with the funding, or did it become so central to city operations that there is pressure to absorb those extra costs into the city’s regular budget and thereby increase the fiscal pressure on the entire operation.

For revenue, the FY27 budget estimates $320 million from state aid; $199 million from property taxes; $16 million from fees and excise; and $38 million from other sources. The state’s contribution, which is contingent on the legislature’s approval of a FY27 state budget, consists of $276 million for education; $32 million in unrestricted aid; and $9 million in reimbursements for charter school assessments.

When it comes to what the city spends money on, there are five big drivers of costs, all largely outside the city’s direct control:

• Pensions: $39.7 million in FY27, up 12.2% from FY25
• Debt Service: $23.2 million in FY27, up 35.8% from FY25
• State Assessments: $57.0 million in FY27, up 40.3% from FY25
• Health Insurance: $34.0 million in FY27, up 43.1% from FY25
• Energy: $9.4 million in FY27, up 8.0% from FY25

The bulk of “state assessments” are for charter schools. Since charter schools are public schools, their funding comes from the overall city budget in the form of a deduction from state aid. The amount of the deduction is determined by a complex calculation based on the amount per student the city is supposed to spend. The problem with that approach is that it oversimplifies the cost of educating a student. Fixed costs for facilities, infrastructure, administration, and other things must be funded regardless of how many students attend the district schools, so a greater share of the money remaining in the system must cover those fixed expenses. That leaves less money for the direct education of the students staying in the district schools.

The charter school reimbursement law seems to recognize this by providing reimbursements to the school district for a percentage of the per pupil money going to the charter school. The problem is that the reimbursement is “subject to appropriation” which means if the legislature does not allocate enough money to this line item of the state budget, communities like Lowell don’t get the reimbursement set by the statute. That has been a regular occurrence so this is a chronic problem which puts direct pressure on the budget of the Lowell Public Schools and indirect pressure on the overall city budget which is compelled to finance a greater portion of the school budget than would be the case if the legislature adequately funded charter school reimbursements.

These high-cost structural demands don’t seem to leave much room for discretionary spending in the city budget, which will make the coming budget sessions difficult for councilors. It’s easy to govern when there’s plenty of money; the challenge comes in tight times when you must disappoint people by saying no. Thanks mostly to the ARPA funding windfall, few of the current councilors have held office in tight fiscal times so it will be interesting to see how they handle it.

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A pair of memos from the city’s Director of Elections & Census Will Rosenberry provided interesting information about the mechanics of holding an election, specifically where people vote. Now, voting places in Lowell are almost exclusively in school buildings.

For many reasons, including that we live in a country that tolerates mass shootings on an almost daily basis, it’s vital that school officials control access to their building. That is tough to do on election day when hundreds and possibly more than a thousand strangers enter the school building to vote. Consequently, for many years, Lowell Public Schools have closed on election days. In most years, that means one closure in September for the primary election, and another in November for the general election. However, this year, because of the two special elections needed to fill the state senate seat left vacant when Ed Kennedy passed away, the schools faced two additional days of being closed. Instead, the city election office worked with school officials to segregate the space within the school used for voting from the rest of the school, especially the students, and school was not cancelled.

Turnout in the special elections was quite low, so neither posed a true test of a modified system. However, studies and past practice have shown that even small changes to voting places (such as, which door to enter or where to park) tends to reduce turnout. Also, because so many children get rides to and from school, the immediate vicinity of a school becomes somewhat chaotic at arrival and dismissal times which would make it difficult for potential voters who arrive at those times.

As for making a building other than a school a polling place, that is feasible if the place is handicapped accessible, has adequate parking, and a room sufficiently large to hold all voting functions. A facility with a liquor license cannot be used as a polling place, but any other private building, including a church, is acceptable so long as the standards mentioned above are met. However, there are at least two challenges that come with using non-school buildings: the first is the city would have to pay rent, something that is not currently within the budget of the election office. The second challenge would be consistent availability. While the dates for general elections are known well in advance, the dates for primaries or preliminaries are more fluid, and the need to hold a special election can arise without much notice. Since research shows that consistently using a place for voting tends to help turnout, the city would not want to be changing polling locations with each election.

For now, it seems voting will continue to be done in city schools.

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On richardhowe.com, please check out Dave Perry’s stellar review of last weekend’s The Town and the City Festival which includes his account of reunion appearances of several bands that dominated the Lowell music scene in the 1990s.

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This week in my Seen & Heard column I wrote about the recent dedication of Eternal Flame a new public art piece by Lowell artist Jay Hungate that was commissioned by Lowell Cemetery for its newly opened West Meadow section; reviewed a New Yorker profile of Sam Altman, the founder of the artificial intelligence company, OpenAI; commented on a New York Times article on how professional historians are observing the semiquincentennial; commented on a New York Times Op-Ed about how elderly Americans went from being among the poorest group in America to the wealthiest and most powerful; and commented on another Times Op-Ed about Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine.

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Finally, Bob Forrant and I are teaming up to lead a free walking tour on Lowell and World War II to be held on Saturday, May 23, 2026, at 10am from the Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center at 246 Market Street. The tour will take approximately 90 minutes and requires no advanced registration. Just show up.

Time of the End of the Season Part V

Time of the End of the Season Part V

By Bob Hodge

Bob Hodge grew up in Lowell and went on to graduate from Lowell High (1973) and University of Lowell (1990). He was (and still is) one the greatest runners to come out of this region. He’s also a writer whose 2020 memoir, Tale of the Times: A Runner’s Story, is available at lala books in downtown Lowell and in Kindle format from Amazon. The following is an excerpt from his novel-in-progress.

Already published:

Time episode 1

Time episode 2

Time episode 3

Time episode 4

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Louis Spyridon

Atlanta Spiridon

In the afternoon I left for Atlanta, a bus ride that would take about ten hours. I planned to sleep through most of it and re-read “A Clean Pair of Heals” about Kiwi Champion Murray Halberg. Early in his career but after he had reached an international level of performance he travelled to Europe and the United States for a lengthy tour of racing and training living sometimes right on the edge of poverty with other athletes all determined to get their kicks and hopefully “come right” on time and win a medal at a major games.

It was me against the world fighting my own battle of Thermopylae defending my own free will, just barely nineteen years old, a sometimes-lonely struggle, but in Atlanta I would be joining up with another mentor who now owned a running store and would hire me to work for him as well. I would be pointing for the World Junior Cross-Country Trials in Gainesville FL in February.

My new mentor, coach and employer was Sal Parker, a former Olympian in the 10,000 M. Sal opened a store called Spiridon a specialty store with nearly all running related gear for inventory and a knowledgeable staff.

I was not sure yet where I would be living or if I would even be making enough money to get a place of my own. Sal was picking me up at the bus station when I arrived and we would talk things through. There was a pretty vibrant running community in Atlanta with a solid schedule of cross country and road races and track meets.

Spiridon had their own running team and I would compete for them at least until cross country trials six weeks from now and probably for a month or so afterwards somewhat depending upon if I made the team by finishing in the top six.

The bus trip was uneventful, I only had a cup of coffee and a stale donut and was starving when Sal picked me up around three in the afternoon. He suggested we go for a run from the store out around Piedmont Park. At the store he introduced me to Dickie and Freddie and Annie, my new clubmates and workmates.

I was immediately smitten with Annie, a little red head cute as a button beautiful and smiling. These three would become my constant companions and I gave them all nicknames. At some point Annie became “fire plug” Dickie became “jocko” and Freddie became “Hazel.”

They were all about four years older than me but somehow, I was already worldlier or world weary due to my recent lifestyle and experiences of life. We would share living space in a small house in a runner’s commune.

Dickie was mostly a road racer and pointing toward the Boston Marathon in April. He had recently run a 2:22 and won the Atlanta Marathon his first. Freddie ran the steeplechase and the mile in college and liked track racing best and Annie was aiming for the Senior Cross-Country Trial in Gainesville as well.

That first night we had dinner together with Sal and he handed us each an outline of upcoming workouts and races to prepare us for our upcoming events. We would run together every morning, usually a five miler, a combination of roads and dirt trails. In the afternoons Sal would meet with us for more individualized workouts which we sometimes did alone or with one or both of the others.

After a few weeks Annie and I ran in a small cross-country invitational with mostly college teams. I won the five-mile race in 22:45 breaking the course record by over a minute. Annie won the women’s race in similar fashion. Sal told me “Willy, I don’t really gush but that was fucking nuts. You have to be the best talent in the entire friggin country and you’re riding around on busses sleeping in parks…. WTF.”

Sal gave me and Annie the afternoon off from the store. We put together a picnic lunch and went to a nearby lake and found a secluded spot where we went skinny dipping. Annie let her longish red hair loose from its usual ponytail.

I finished up a long slog of a run known only as “the loop” by me and my old man friends who only occasionally these days, would take it on. Eight miles of up and down murderous hills with beautiful views of the Whites in the early Spring snow melting rivulets of water flowing down the roads in all directions.

Last night’s writings and dreaming’s brought me back to my youth, the days in Atlanta and Annie, beautiful Annie. None of the young women I met that year on the road wanted any kind of long-term relationship, I think knowing that at my age of nineteen and my peripatetic lifestyle I just was not ready.

Jocko had a big road race coming up the National 20KM Road Race Championship in Massachusetts. Hazel and another runner from Spiridon would also compete there as a three-person team hoping to knock off the favored Beantown Bombers, some of whom I knew from growing up in Mass.

I had only a few weeks to go until the Cross-Country Trials when disaster struck. My Plantar Fasciitis flared up likely due to the workouts I had begun doing in spikes on the grass. Sal wanted me to stop running entirely and rest but I didn’t want to so he taped it fairly effectively, problem was if you taped it too loose it was ineffective and too tight and it could make matters worse.

For a while it got progressively worse and it didn’t help that I was on my feet all day at the store, but there was nothing to be done. They needed me there. I continued to do my easy five milers in the mornings at a very slow pace but in the afternoon, I would run maybe a mile or two and then come home and stick my foot in a bucket of ice water. I took aspirin as well.

The week of the trial I finally took two days off entirely and Sal gave me a full day off from the store. It helped but there was no way I would be able to compete in spikes. Sal said, “Willy, maybe you shouldn’t run trials. “ “Sal, I’m running even if it has to be in training shoes. I am going to be on that team.”

Annie and I travelled to Gainesville together leaving on Friday morning flying down for the Saturday race. Sal was not able to make the trip but he had arranged for a friend of his to pick us up at the airport and this friend would also doctor my foot and tape it for me before the race.

Annie was a long shot to make the team and Sal had planned with her to have a conservative strategy. “Willy, what do you think about Sal’s race plan for me.” “Honestly I think you should go from the gun their fire plug because there is a good chance they will let you go since they won’t know much of anything about you and once you get that lead darling you ain’t coming back to them.” Annie smiled, “Oh Willy you give the best pep talks.”

We jogged the course together on Friday afternoon, a flat as a pancake course which was going to be fast, not good for me since I could barely get up on my toes on my injured foot. The Junior Race would be eight KM two four KM laps. I brought spikes but decided to go with flats and I had to take some of the tight turns on the course real wide to stay on my feet.

At the end of the first lap I was in the middle of the pack with a lot of work to do and I dug deep and started to pick people off. I could see a straight line of runners ahead and I figured I was about twelfth.

With about a half mile to go I went into an all-out kick all I could muster and I moved all the way up to seventh before I started to run out of gas slipping all over in my flats.

I caught the runner ahead of me but could not get past him. This was for the team I never imagined not making it. We finished in a dead heat. I was unsure if I had made the team and the officials were all huddled around conferring.

“Are you the Desmarais who was leading Senior Nationals back in November?” “Ya, that’s me.” “Why the hell are you wearing flats?” “Plantar injury.”

Annie was lining up for her race and I headed over to watch. She was right out into the lead, man if this strategy doesn’t work I hope Sal never finds out it was my idea. After the first lap she had fifty yards but the pack was closing. “You look marvelous fire plug, keep your foot on the gas!” I think she actually smiled at that.

I watched as they came out of the woods for the final half mile, Annie had fallen back to fifth and was passed by one other but she made the team. Annie and I did a short cool down run and my foot was killing me. Sal’s buddy took us to the airport, no shower no time no room anyway off to Atlanta.

“I hope you are on the team with me. Willy, it would be great to travel to New Zealand together.” “Ya, thanks fire plug, guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

I ordered a beer on the plane, the first of many I would have that evening.

Sal was in touch with the US Track & Field Cross Country Committee that week and the Manager/Coach for the team wanted to put me on it as a sub after it was determined that I had finished seventh.

But that would not be happening. USATF weren’t known for being magnanimous.

The plantar was still hurting in any case even worse than ever after trying to race on it. Annie and the others tried to cheer me up but I was despondent. Dickie had finished second in the National 20KM and looked to be coming right for Boston. Freddie had just run a four flat mile indoors.

I continued to limp through the five miler each morning and then after work, on the days where I didn’t go for ultrasound treatments, I would go by the library and borrow some books and then buy a six pack and sit with my feet up reading all night.

I realized the truth of athletics that all athletes get injured no matter how careful they are. The human body will have its way, no matter how strong you are mentally you cannot outrun that fact. No question I was in a funk and Sal came over one night and saw all the empty beer cans and piles of books. “Willy, you look like a frat boy college student.” “I had no use for college Sal, that’s why I’m here with you.”

I staggered off to bed around midnight looking forward to my run the next morning hoping the plantar would be better. I pulled back the covers and there lay sweet little fire plug Annie, resplendent, naked as a jaybird. I right then forgot all my troubles and all my cares.

The next morning, I was up early making breakfast coffee for me and Annie whistling and smiling stupidly when Hazel walked in and said “Willy, you have the look of I just had sex repeatedly all over you.” “Ah Freddie, just looking forward to another great day.” “Well from the sound of things you had a great night.”

On our run that morning I never even thought about my plantar and it was like the injury had never even happened. I went for ultrasound that evening and the therapist could not believe the difference from just a few days before. That evening I ran our ten miler alone in fifty-one minutes singing “sexual healing” in my head and smiling the entire way!

I rolled out of bed legs creaking back and hip achy I shuffled my way to the bathroom slowly waking up ever so slightly easily slowly and then downstairs kettle on the boil newspaper retrieved from outside slice of toast nicely burned with lots of butter the sit down on couch roll foot on roller old plantar injury and stare out the window while I slowly sip my coffee bringing it all back home.

The days in Atlanta were some of my best days and memories but Massachusetts still tugged at me in New England in my bones, family there and friends who thought I had gone mad.

Annie left for New Zealand and I was so very happy for her and envious too, but now that my own running was coming around my outlook on the world had improved and also through my reading I was beginning to broaden my horizons and Athletics was the prism I saw this world through.

I did some long runs with Jocko and Hazel, one a twenty miler at 5:15 per mile, the pace that Jocko hoped to run at Boston. It felt okay, not as hard as I thought it was going to be and Jocko was cruising.

“Jocko, you can handle 5:05’s no problem.” “Kid, what do you know about the marathon?”

He was right, I didn’t know much.

Me and Freddie went to the Florida Relays in March where Freddie ran a 3:39 for 1500M qualifying for Nationals which would be in Knoxville in June. I won the 5 KM in 13:44 a huge PR but I had never actually raced a 5KM before only three miles.

Sal planned for me to run a 10KM on the track in May to hopefully qualify in that event as well. Sal gave me fatherly advice and explained that I had some bad luck mostly brought on through inexperience and just plain bad luck.

Yes, luck plays a part I’ve learned and mine had been running well but I had worries and concerns I was not immune, no.

Back home in Mass. My Dad had had a stroke and his recovery went well and my brother and sister made sure he and my stepmom were going to be okay, but out here on my own engrossed in my own obsession, hesitate to call it a career where none existed, I wondered if I was doing the best right thing.

Annie ran great in New Zealand and didn’t come back cause the fire plug went and met her a fella, a New Zealander international.

She sent me a long letter, so I knew she loved me, but I was just a dumb kid and needed to mature, my interpretation.

I felt elegiac.

I was hurt but truth be told my running was going great and she was my real mistress.

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Darlingside – Futures official music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sy0YM71i0Y

The Town & The City: Origins & Reunions

The Town & The City: Origins & Reunions

By David Perry

The gang’s all here.

On this Saturday night, the final evening of the three-day Town & The City Festival, The Attic of The Worthen feels particularly like a clubhouse, packed with old friends. Their numbers, like hairlines, have thinned over the years.

But it’s clear to anyone packed into the room – Poorhouse still matters.

The set by the Poorhouse Records Allstars celebrates a homespun label that captured a snapshot of Lowell’s 1990s music scene and offered a learning space. The name? Simple – everyone was broke. But the musical clan that formed around it spun a thread that still runs through the Mill City more than three decades later.

Town and The City festival producer Chris Porter (right) chatting with Poorhouse fan Mike Flynn. Photo courtesy of Jeff Caplan.

It’s just a small part of The Town and The City Festival, producer Chris Porter’s annual feast of music in his hometown. Over three days (April 30-May 2) 50 acts play 13 stages in Mill City venues.

The seventh edition of the festival included L.A. punk pioneer and X frontman John Doe, Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate/Baseball Project, David Lowery of Cracker and Boston mainstay Tanya Donnelly, this time with Chris Brokaw and their madrigal-based project. Bigger names are mixed with regional and local acts. And always local acts. Western Education, The Evolutionists and Lowell’s hot young band The Ghouls among them.

It sounded like a bit of everything. The Ghouls covering Black Sabbath, complete with roaring, distorted guitars, black dusters and oversize crosses, a bumper crop of “bummer pop” by Future Teens. hip-hop and soul with The Evolutionists, an evening of comedy at Cobblestones, electric blues from GA-20, folk, jazz, funk and more. And at LaLa Books, Chris Wrenn talked up his book Fenway Punk.

Two Saturday shows, the Poorhouse Allstars and The Deliriants (down the street at Thirsty First) were reunions. The Deliriants billed their set as a “last ever” gig.

Poorhouse

Poorhouse began in 1993 with a weekly open mic session and continued with a CD compilation that highlighted a crop of talented songwriters and performers. Several continue to make music. Frank Morey, who sings gruff folk-blues, funk-soul woman Jen Kearney and Dee Tension, the former rapper now fronting a rock band D-Tension & The Secrets, who had to cancel a Town the City slot a couple weeks before this year’s fest.

In an era of DIY, Poorhouse was the epitome of doing it yourself. Its dual heartbeat was Scott Pittman and Kevin Stevenson. Chops? These are guys who once led a band through a set of Motown songs done as ska.

They met in 1984, recalls Stevenson.

“I’d heard about this great drummer right in Tewksbury, over on Whipple Road. So I went over to his house, knocked on the door and said hey, my name is Kevin Stevenson, I’m putting together a speed metal band and I heard you’re a great drummer.”

Pittman sized up the visitor.

“I hate that shit,” he said.

A few years later, the duo played in Duck Duck, a band unafraid to explore any style of music.

“That was ’89 to ‘93,” recalls Stevenson. “That was one great band. And fun. We were having the time of our lives, non-stop, A musical family.”

Though he has lived with multiple sclerosis since 1999, Stevenson remains one of the finest musicians to ever play the Mill City. He toured with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones during their ‘90s heyday, played in a band with Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo.

The Shods slam into “Mill City,” with (from left) bassist Eric Faulkner, singer/guitarist Kevin Stevenson and drummer Scott Pittman. Photo courtesy of Jeff Caplan.

But his legacy rests squarely with the punk-garage-rock band he and Pittman led, The Shods, known across the region for blistering live sets and a Clash-like energy. They were attracting record label attention when Stevenson’s diagnosis dropped.

It put the brakes on the Shods. Stevenson could no longer consistently perform as he had before. The explosive shows they were known for were gone. (He is feeling “pretty good for a couple of months after a run of feeling crappy.”)

“Man, he can play the guitar,” says George Zacharakis, singer/guitarist for The Deliriants. “On a good night, no one could touch him.” (Members of The Deliriants also played supporting roles on Poorhouse recordings.)

And this reunion is a good night, with Stevenson peeling off snarling blues and country licks, rockabilly riffs, crunchy rock.

Pittman opens the set on guitar and vocals with “Art is the Handmade of Human Good,” a ballad he penned based on Lowell’s motto. (The Shods were always proudly, unabashedly of Lowell. They wrote songs about the city, mentioned their roots in interviews and titled their 1993 debut EP I’m in Lowell, MA.)

Known for his wit and an ability to present himself in new ways each year, Pittman is the lone artist who has played every Town and The City fest.

“He’s the one act I want to play every year,” says Porter. “He’s such a character, a local legend and he brings something fresh each time.”

The Festival

Festival producer and Lowell native Porter, 60, first had visions of “some form of” this festival more than a decade ago, after his time programming Seattle’s massive Bumbershoot fest ended. He lived in Seattle but was soon trekking between coasts, booking Once Ballroom in Somerville. (His professional life has only become busier, as he now helps produce San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass fest and is programming director for the historic Sweetwater Music Hall, across the bay in Mill Valley.)

He ventured to many of the annual, Austin-based South by Southwest festivals and wondered if Lowell’s downtown club scene could support a festival where fans would pay a single price to enjoy a cobblestone and concrete smorgasbord of acts in multiple venues over multiple days and nights.

“One pass for all the shows,” he says over coffee at Nibbana Café one drizzly morning a month before the festival. “I looked at Zorba Room, Warp & Weft, Uncharted and other places. I loved the idea of people just going from venue to venue, offering a variety of acts to choose from.”

He wanted to give his hometown something to savor and brand it with “a Kerouacian name” in tribute to the late Lowell scribe. The Town and The City is a nod to Lowell native Jack Kerouac’s first, Lowell-centric tome.

“I saw Lowell as a growing creative community,” Porter says.

The festival debuted in 2018 and save for a couple of COVID-era skips, has become an annual event.

“The first year proved we could do it, but it was quite a monetary investment. We did it again and it grew. If I keep seeing growth, I’ll keep doing it.” What would really sustain the festival, he says, are sponsorships, donations and grants. Such support in 2026 was down from previous years.

The biggest year was 2022, as an antsy, entertainment-starved populace headed back into venues. This year’s crowd was “roughly the same as the past three years.”

On With The Show

Saturday’s 75-minute Poorhouse show was a communal confab, gathering many of those who played on the 1994 CD, The Poorhouse Sessions Vol. 1.

That CD included 19 tracks by budding musicians who mostly hung out at The Sugar Shack (motto: “We may not be fast…but we’re sloppy!!!”), the coffee spot Alyssa Winslow Faulkner opened in 1994 on University Ave, in the shadow of UMass Lowell’s North Campus. By night, they played out or recorded.

Stevenson and Pittman took over the weekly open mic at The Last Safe & Deposit Co., the Merrimack Street bar.

Soon, young musicians were flocking there to play. Jen Kearney, a freshman UMass Lowell music major, showed up with her first song.

School was work. This was play.

Using “a crappy fake ID,” 19-year-old Kearney became a regular at the open mic. “It was so fun. It was easy to go before social media, to just see your friends and make music because there wasn’t that distraction.”

Stevenson and Pittman, who had formed The Shods, decided to commit the community to tape. Pittman’s father had a bunch of tube equipment at home. It became part playground, part classroom. A lab. The room in his parents’ Tewksbury home became a studio.

Inspired by Colin Escott’s writing about the workings of Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios in Memphis, they figured out how to mic a room to capture different configurations of players. Folks gathered to listen to records to see how various studios – Chicago’s Chess, Stax in Memphis, Abbey Road.

“We had to know—how did they do that?” recalls Pittman. “We had that mentality that we didn’t know anything until we knew everything about a song…We always looked backwards.”

At the time, record companies were invading U.S. cities to sign fresh talent – Seattle for grunge, Minneapolis for Princely funk, Athens, Ga. to breathe in the chem trails of R.E.M.

“I knew there was never going to be some record company coming to Lowell,” says Pittman. “So we said, let’s make our own thing.”

The musicians backed one another. Pittman, Stevenson and whoever else was around.

One song per day. That was the rule. Never more than one song and they’d work past midnight if needed. Everything in mono. No overdubs.

“The thing is, you only got one shot, just like life,” says Pittman.

Kearney, who now teaches piano, voice and guitar and maintains a recording and performing career. “It was what I loved doing. It just lit me up. I knew that was what I wanted to do. It gave me direction that nothing else did.”

She is featured on three songs on the Poorhouse CD, one solo and two with Rick Fuller as Ricker & Jen.

“I can still listen to that CD,” says Kearney, who was also among the artists featured in the documentary Beautiful Was the Fight, about women musicians in the Boston community. “It was like Lowell itself. Non-pretentious and not following trends.”

Kearney closed out Saturday evening’s Town and The City slate at The Lass Stop with her band.

“I consider myself really fortunate to have been there when this happened,” says Frank Morey, whose bluesy growl has been spread across several CDs and echoed from many stages. “I got lifetime friends out of it. A bunch of us still write and perform. Jen Kearney is doing the best work of her life now. Melvern Taylor is an amazing songwriter.” Taylor, also known as Nick Orfanedes, made it to The Worthen following an afternoon gig in Maynard.

“It was all like lightning in a bottle,” Morey, 53, says. “There was character to it and commonality, love for how ‘50s rock and roll got made. Scott and Kevin had an encyclopedic knowledge and passion for music. Me? I could hardly get a third chord into anything I wrote. But we all learned from one another.”

With his long white beard and crumpled fedora, Morey serves up the second number of the night at the Worthen reunion, Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” Stevenson falling in with searing blues riffs. Morey followed with his own infectious “Blame it on the Devil,” plenty of folks singing along.

Donny McHale is a constant on guitar and backing vocals. He does an impassioned version of his “Mishawum.”

Two days later, he is in Ireland where his band The McCritters, will play a pair of gigs and record a bit in a studio in Derry.

Jenny Riddle died last August 15, so her niece, Amber Riddle, sang two Riddle songs, backed by her aunt’s longtime band The Gents.

The Invaders, Pittman and Stevenson’s rockabilly band, played Saturday, too, both songs from the Poorhouse CD – The Chantays’ Pipeline, lurching into Tiny Bradshaw’s “The Train Kept A-Rollin’.” The crowd bellows the chorus.

The finished with the cool-cat sound of “Look at the Birds.”

The Shods ripped through two songs, rocking hard on “Mill City” like an exclamation point.

It all lurched to a close with a singalong of Bill Ralston’s “Cat & Dog,” honoring the late singer,

“He was this cool old guy with this great song,” says Pittman. “He came to open mic night and we just took to him.”

“We played great, like the old days,” says Pittman after the show. “Everyone played on everyone else’s songs and that was what I was really hoping for.”

The Deliriants. Photo courtesy of Matt Lambert

The Deliriants

This is it.

The Deliriants, the Lowell band who released a single incredibly good power pop CD in 1999 and hadn’t played together in a decade, were putting a period on their history.

They would do it in the same Market Street room they’d last played. Back then it was Uncharted, now it’s Thirsty First.

Word got out and the faithful got busy, selling out the show in advance.

Life goes on, says singer/guitarist George Zacharakis. Kids. Jobs. Sometimes, they mix. His daughter, Paige Davis, is making a run at a music career in Nashville. Sometimes, when she needs a guitar player, he’ll fly down to pick.

People move on. Each Deliriant plays with other bands, steadily or occasionally. The band’s drummer, Sean Burgess, lives in L.A. So you do it less and then even less. Then not at all.

This May 2 gig in Lowell would close the book.

“I knew about the Town and The City, and that Chris (Porter) had been doing it for a few years and that it was pretty cool,” says Zacharakis, 57, who lives in Pepperell. “I reached out and asked is there any chance at all? Chris used to book us decades ago into Mama Kin and Bunratty’s. And I thought, if we get 20 people, it’ll be fun.”

Porter agreed.

The band sold shirts touting this one show. Got their CD up on streaming platforms. Beefed up their social media.

Burgess flew in Thursday. They squeezed in two rehearsals.

A few minutes before showtime, a black lab ambles through the crowd, outfitted in a Jennifer Tefft t-shirt. The place was packed.

At 5:04 the band – Zacharakis, Burgess, bassist John Couture and lead guitarist John DiCenso – climbed onstage and plugged in.

Zacharakis looked out and saw people he hadn’t seen set eyes on in 30 years. Folks who were big fans from the old days. Friends from his college days at Bentley.

“One person,” he notes later, “flew out from San Diego for this show.”

For the next 56 minutes, beginning with “Plunger” and closing with an encore cover of Nirvana’s “Molly’s Lips,” the Deliriants crafted a set of tight power pop bliss and driving rock, a dozen songs where one could hear the influences of Big Star and Cheap Trick, but also Soundgarden and other Seattle bands, especially when DiCenso unleashed searing leads. A cover of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” sounded more like the Byrds than reggae.

But this is all Deliriants. The crowd roars approval. Maybe some relief that they are this good after this long.

“Not bad for a bunch of old guys,” Zacharakis says between songs, smiling.

And when the band played “Simple,” in memory of the original drummer Michael Comeau, lost to cancer in 2023, Zacharakis slipped in a few lines of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

They closed the regular set with Couture’s bass rumble kicking off a cover of The Smithereens’ “Blood and Roses.”

The place went nuts.

And now?

“I honestly don’t know,” said Zacharakis the next day. “We’ve been getting texts and emails and calls since the show. Maybe we do this again? We didn’t expect all of…this. So we don’t know what it all means.”

It means you do only have one life. And tomorrow never knows.

My Movie Career

My “Movie Career”

By Leo Racicot

I was foundering in Las Vegas, couldn’t find suitable work to save myself. One afternoon, I was idling in the lobby of The Riviera Hotel when I spied a vending table manned by an attractive gal. Her name tag read: Frankie. Frankie was recruiting people to work as movie extras (in those days referred to as background talent). Throughout the 1990s, Las Vegas was a popular venue for movie productions, much less cheaper to film there than in other locales, and – it offered ready-made sets: casinos, mountain vistas, lots of neon and wide boulevards. I don’t know where I found the courage but I marched over to Frankie and said I was interested. Much to my surprise, she signed me up on-the-spot.

Our first assignment as extras was for a movie called Top of the World with Dennis Hopper, Tia Carrere and Peter Weller (Robocop). Extras were asked to report to Hoover Dam, at sunup. Aunt Helen, who’d always been starstruck and confessed to me and Cookie that her dream when she was a girl was to be a Radio City Rockette, got more excited than I did and told all her friends, “My nephew, Leo’s going to be in the movies!”  She kindly let me borrow Marie’s Buick Skylark so I could get to the movie sets.  Waking up for an early morning call wasn’t my idea of fun but working on a movie set was exciting, seeing the cameramen, the lights, the director, the actors assembling for the day’s work was something new, something intrinsically thrilling, helped, I know, at a much-needed time to invigorate my flagging reactions to living in difficult Las Vegas, made me see the city and my presence there in a new light. When I saw the faces of familiar actors walking around not three feet away from me, seeing how a scene is filmed, watching how even the greatest of actors (Dennis Hopper) are told over and over to “do it again, Dennis!”, I came to life. One day, I spied Hopper standing by himself nearby. I sidled over, extended my hand and told him how much I liked his work, the anthemic Easy Rider and especially Wim Wenders’ The American Friend, based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mister Ripley, one of my all-time favorite movies. I maybe gushed a little bit too much because Hopper looked me over, head-to-foot and said, “Fuck off, buddy!”    Oh….kay….

But Tia Carrere was fun to be around, just ‘one of the gang’, talked and joked with us all, as did Peter Weller, just regular-seeming folks. I didn’t much care for the long waits between scene set-ups, the director’s ordering of one take after another. Oy!  I remember shooting a scene repeatedly in the 117 degree Vegas sun — the Hoover Dam interior doubled for a prison yard — the crew racing over to each of us handing out endless bottles of water; one fellow passed out from all the walking we were asked to do. I found it tiring but so interesting. Not interesting was the next day’s shoot when we were asked to drive out to Pahrump, Nevada, to shoot a car-chase scene not outside but inside Terrible’s Roadside Casino. Dressed as cops, we were made to run after a red Miata at least 30 times before the director finally yelled “Cut’. When I got home that night, I had a hard time getting my pants off; my left leg was the size of The Hindenburg, and a deep purple. I was so swollen and sore, I had to miss the next week’s shooting schedule and didn’t mind; Who in their right mind wants to chase a tiny red automobile buzzing like a mosquito for hours?!!  This show biz nonsense sucks, I thought to myself.     But I persevered with my burgeoning “movie career” and had unforgettable fun times. I got to see and kibitz with major stars: Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello, Darryl Hannah, Kathleen Turner, Joe Mantegna (I almost died when Mantegna sat down next to me one day at the lunch canteen and was talking with me as naturally as you please until out-of-nowhere, he bellowed, “This pizza tastes like fucking cardboard, sent a slice sailing into the air like a frisbee and stormed off.)  We all on the set were agog the day JFK Jr. visited his girlfriend, Darryl Hannah, on the set. I’d never seen such a handsome man. I’m afraid I stared at him a little too long and got a dirty look back. This was outside The Jockey Club on The Strip where The Last Don was being filmed. I also, thanks to the extras work, got to meet and chat with guys who’d been working the extras circuit for many years, got to hear their stories about all the actors they’d worked with. I remember chewing the fat with Yul Yazquez, stuntmen Hal Needham and Buddy Hart (who liked to reminisce about his days playing Beaver Cleaver’s pal on Leave It To Beaver), and John Bowman who knew entertainer, Barbara McNair and took us all to meet her for a late night meal at The Sahara. McNair was beautiful, had a great throaty laugh and even laughed at all our jokes.

Thanks to my “movie career”, I got to see local places I’d never have the chance to see: Hoover Dam, Pahrump, Nevada, the interior of the exclusive Jockey Club. I, who had always thought I’d like a career in entertainment, sure learned my let go of that starry-eyed goal; the long hours on sets, rowdy foul-mouthed sets (where I heard words and expressions I’d never heard, saw things I’d never seen before or since), the disappointments (if you blink, you miss completely my three seconds of fame as “Officer Manly” chasing a buzzy Miata — it looks like the thing is chasing me!) — all contributed to killing my Hollywood ambitions (better stick to writing kid).  I remember though, most fondly, a fellow extra, Chase Kennedy, who’d quit his job as a Michigan high school coach, to come West to pursue his life long dream of stardom. He was, in truth, a very good actor; he brought me to watch him perform in a drama/comedy at The University of Nevada’s Black Box Theater where Chase really impressed.  For some reason, he took a shine to me, even developing a film project and script about the life of Tiny Tim and wanted me to play the lead.  That was when Marie’s Buick decided to buy the farm at Rainbow Cinemas and I wasn’t able to make it to future project conferences at Chase’s Henderson, Nevada home.  I heard he moved back to his native Michigan, back to his football coaching, his movie career dream left behind on the flypaper-strewn streets of Sin City. It was good fun seeing firsthand the workings on a movie set: the people, the cameras, the lights but I don’t think chasing a car around for hours in a dark casino ever leads to international superstardom.

****

Barbara McNair

Chase Kennedy

Darryl Hannah and JFK Jr in Las Vegas

Franie of Frankies Casting

Joe Mantegna on set of The Last Don

Red Miata

Terribles Roadside Casino Parhump

Tia Carrere and Peter Weller on set

Top of the World poster