One of last Summer’s favorites is back! Newport Live and Norman Bird Sanctuary will present the award-winning singer/songwriter The Suitcase Junket at The Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown on Friday, July 21st at 7 PM. General Admission tickets are $35 and available through EventBrite and via Newport Live or Norman Bird Sanctuary websites.
Celebrate summer with Newport Live and enjoy live music under the stars at The Norman Bird Sanctuary. Get your tickets early. Last year’s show sold out. And our first show of summer was packed. In case of inclement weather, meet us in the barn!
More on the Suitcase Junket:
“Matt Lorenz’s vision, manifest in The Suitcase Junket, developed in the tension between the grand and the solitary. Grand in its imagery, sound, and staging. Solitary in its thrift and self-reliance. What instruments he requires, Lorenz builds from scratch and salvage. What parts five players would perform, he performs alone. The spectacle of his one-man set bears constant comparison to legends of showmanship, brilliance, madness, and invention. The End is New was produced by trusted friend, producer Steve Berlin of Los Lobos.
“The things I value are under attack,” Lorenz writes. “And writing songs and making art are the methods I have for responding. I have tried to use my observations and reflections of the world bent through my fun-house-mirror mind to show what I see; a planet stressed. … We can do better.”
Growing up in Cavendish, Vermont, Matt Lorenz began playing piano at age five, and later took up violin, saxophone, and guitar. During his years at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, he studied music and adaptive instrument design, a pursuit that included building a prototype for a drummer who couldn’t use their legs, where they’d be able to play the bass drum and hi-hat through a system of pulleys.
After college, he headed to Europe on a $150 plane ticket, ran out of money in Barcelona, and spent a year playing music in the streets. “That’s where I learned how to sing loud, which got me figuring out what my voice could do,” Lorenz notes. Once he’d returned to Amherst, he formed the band Rusty Belle with his sister Kate and, several years later, started The Suitcase Junket with the aid of a guitar he’d found in a dumpster. ‘The Suitcase Junket’ is a nod to Lorenz’s longtime love of collecting old suitcases, including an antique that he’s refurbished into a bass drum, and to a secondary definition of junket, i.e. “a pleasure excursion.”
The End is New is an artist expanding his possibilities, collaborating, matching his lyrical power over eleven tracks with the epic sounds and narratives of his imagination. “Black Holes and Overdoses” riffs off the unrelenting news cycle, the numbness that wants for oblivion. “And Then There Was Fire” finds Lorenz reflecting on current events, inspired by the destructive wildfire in Australia, which seems like three years ago at this point, but took place right at the end of last year and beginning of this year. “Light a Candle” (featuring J Mascis, lead guitarist of Dinosaur Jr.) is the simmering doom of lost love. “Can’t Look Away” protests the overuse of a planet. “Jesus! King of the Dinosaurs” is a romp poking fun at extremists and biblical timelines.
“Most of the time making records for a living is both fun and edifying,” says Berlin “But every once in a while I get rewarded with a simply superlative experience, and making The End Is New was certainly one of those.” He adds, “We had a blast building these ideas into songs, and Matt’s endless inventiveness made each workday a genuine pleasure. His talent is a unique gift.”
