Three of the North Shore’s most beloved songwriters and performers converge for A Seaside Yuletide, a night of rootsy holiday spirit and song featuring Jon Butcher, Allen Estes and Sal Baglio.
JON BUTCHER
Cape Ann’s Jon Butcher is one of a select handful of influential recording artists comprising the legendary Boston music scene. Numerous MTV videos and hit songs comprise the underpinnings of a recording and touring career that continues today. A handful of critically acclaimed recordings, Positively The Blues, Barefoot Servants, Electric Factory, 2 Roads East and 360º mark Jon’s enduring love affair with the very fabric of American music. Butcher’s signature sound and particularly his guitar work represent a skillful mix of Americana — rock, r&b, jazz and folk, all of it focused through a prism built from the blues.
ALLEN ESTES
Songwriter Allen Estes grew up in a musical family, the oldest son of professional musicians Estelle and Phil Estes in Gloucester, MA and began playing at age six. Phil packed the family up in the car and literally took to the open road for musical adventures eventually leading to the forming of the Estes Boys, Allen’s seminal band. The Estes Boys performed in and around New England and by the mid 80s Allen moved to Nashville, TN, writing and working with Tammy Wynette, Robert Ellis Oral, Lori Morgan, and Shania Twain. After 10 years, Gloucester called him back, and in the 90s Allen recorded with writer Frank Tedesco. This turned into Allen’s last recording, the Souls of the Sea album. Souls of the Sea is a collection of songs about the historic seaport and fishing town of Gloucester, MA and the people who live there.
SAL BAGLIO
As a singer, guitarist and composer, Sal Baglio has touched all the bases that have rounded out a successful musical career. But with his recent work as a solo artist, Baglio embarks upon a new path that looks backward in the most delightful way. Baglio’s music and solo performances dial up a past that is easily imagined in a less-distracted age where music bursts boldly out of a car’s AM radio on a summer drive or floats in the imagination of a young solitary artist learning to strum his first guitar. Free of the demands of the music industry, Baglio is liberated to recall the past without sentimentality but with a flourish of great stories that underpin his new songs — songs that aim for the gentle heart. Baglio will never be separated from the impulsive spirit of “American Fun,” the hit he wrote with his legendary Boston band, The Stompers, that remains absolutely joyous in its sing-along refrain. Yet, as he ages — and we with him — Baglio reveals where all that great music began and why.