The Celestia Theater

Wadsworth OH

Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026

By Rob McCune

About halfway in to a set at The Celestia Theater, about 40 miles south of Cleveland, The Verve Pipe’s Brian Vander Ark exorcised “the ghost of a 1950s principal” from the former high school auditorium, urging the properly seated crowd to thumb their noses at the aura of authority, get on their feet and rush the stage.

The Verve Pipe then tore the figurative roof off the place.

Vander Ark, who with his brother Brad founded the band in 1992, professed that he was “having the time of his life in Wadsworth, Ohio,” and it was evident in the show that these alt-rock veterans put on.

Van Arlo, an Ohio-based band led by Ben Marthey, warmed up the crowd on a frigid January night, supported by a full band, including a four-piece string orchestra that added an ethereal ambience, especially on a cover of The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight.” The opener closed with some crowd participation on an original, “Slow It Down.”

With 10 albums, including a “Reconciled,” released in 2025, and two children’s albums, two EPs and a trio of compilations, The Verve Pipe could have easily packed a 90-minute set on their own. Instead, the band played for nearly two hours, cut Samurai-like with several surprising snippets.

Starting with “Ark of the Envious,” off the band’s “I’ve Suffered a Head Injury” EP that dropped in 1992, and then “Photograph,” off their breakout ’96 album “Villains,” the set weaved wondrously through 30 years of Verve, deftly withholding the biggest hits for later while keeping the crowd on their toes.

Vander Ark early on played with a couple of verses of Kansas’s “Dust in the Wind,” reminiscing about the music he grew up with. A little later, as his band abandoned the stage briefly, he stood solo in blue spotlight and played a riff that rang familiar with the audience, teasing: “You know this one?” Wielding his guitar like a lighting bolt, he roused Mount Olympus itself with a stirring rendition of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” that would’ve made Chris Cornell proud.

As the crowd rallied around the stage, The Verve Pipe rocked out on “Villains,” the title track off the ’96 record and “Tattoo,” a favorite track off of the new album that is likely to imprint on both faithful and new fans.

Face-melting solos center-stage by guitarist Lou Musa, who joined the band in 2008, and the thunderous assault of original drummer Daine Hammerle punctuated a performance unprecedented for this old-made-new venue.

Meanwhile, the band’s newest member Channing Lee, joining in 2014, was sensational on backing vocals, keys, tambourine, her own solo – an echo-pedal-powered acapella on “Bridges Are Burning” – and in a penultimate take-no-prisoners mashup of “Happiness Is,” and Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.”

The night ended with a 20-minute, full-out jam on Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” that left hearts pumping and feet stomping, proving that The Verve Pipe has never lost its verve.

Rob McCune is Every_Thing_After_Photo on Instagram, where he shares his concert photography and reviews, as well as clips from his “Every.Thing.After” podcast, with interviews with musicians and bands.

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The ’shrooms might’ve been optional, but the trippy vibes were not as Australia’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets lit up Cleveland’s Globe Iron stage.

That vibe was elevated by a light and projection show that gave the impression that this concert was taking place inside a high-end kaleidoscope. The myriad mystical montages of pictures and patterns scattered across not just the stage, backdrop and performers, but also bounced off the walls and the heads and shoulders of the crowd.

Setting the trip in motion was opener Ghost Funk Orchestra, an 8-piece psychedelic soul-disco-funk ensemble out of New York that blends raw guitar power with sax sizzle, trumpet and bone-rattling percussion. The brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Seth Applebaum, the band is fronted by a fierce female duet, shaking more than just tambourines. GFC’s set sparked palpable excitement, drawing from the band’s two albums, “A Trip to the Moon” and “A New Kind of Love.”

The Porn Crumpets kept the psychedelic train on track with a bass beat that at times felt primal, ala Primus’ Les Claypool. Their 16-track set pulled punches from eight studio albums with trippy titles such as “Found God in a Tomato,” “Hymn for a Droid,” “Lava Lamp Pisco” and “Cornflake.” A two-song encore closed with “Hot! Heat! Wow! Hot!” and “Cubensis Lenses.”

The cavernous concert hall reverberated and rippled, not just with color but also gyrating, moshing, crowd-surfing crowd energy.

It was enough to make the straightest arrow dizzy with delight.

Rob McCune is Every_Thing_After_Photo on Instagram, where he shares his concert photography and reviews, as well as clips from his “Every.Thing.After” podcast, with interviews with musicians and bands.

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Jazz Showcase

Chicago, IL

March 7, 2010

by Dan Locke

Hiromi didn’t just walk onto the Jazz Showcase stage — she hit it like a power surge. One second the room was murmuring over cocktails, the next it felt like someone had plugged the entire South Loop into a live wire. The piano wasn’t an instrument tonight. It was a detonation device, and Hiromi had her finger on the trigger.

From the first downbeat, she played with the kind of velocity that makes you wonder if she’s trying to outrun her own ideas. Her hands blurred. Her hair snapped. Her whole body became a kinetic warning sign. This wasn’t jazz for the polite crowd. This was jazz for people who like their music with scorch marks.

Hiromi attacked the keys like a guitarist raised on stadium rock but trapped inside a Steinway. She built riffs like skyscrapers — fast, reckless, and thrillingly unstable — then tore them down with a single chromatic landslide. Her left hand hammered out bass lines with the authority of a steelworker on overtime, while her right hand flickered like neon refusing to burn out.

Her set moved like a freight train switching tracks at full speed. One moment she was spinning out delicate, crystalline lines; the next she was dropping thunderclaps that rattled the glasses behind the bar. Her trio clung to her like a municipal crew trying to keep up with a runaway power grid.

Even the ballads felt dangerous — like someone whispering secrets next to a live transformer.

Hiromi’s March 7 performance wasn’t a show. It was a controlled explosion. A neon riot. A piano turned weapon. A night where jazz remembered it has teeth.

She left the Jazz Showcase smoking, buzzing, and a little stunned — the way a club should feel after someone rewires the room with nothing but ten fingers and a refusal to behave.

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By Rob McCune

For a sit-down show at Cleveland’s The Agora, Swedish indie folk singer-songwriter José González appeared solo on a raised platform against a backdrop of trees silhouetted against a night sky and seemingly lit himself by moonlight.

With just his guitar and soft, sonorous, sometimes haunting vocal, he harmonized on hymns about love, memory, nature, unity, and conflict to a crows that was locked in and loving it.

His set evenly blended tracks from his four albums, and a five-song encore included covers of “Blackbird” (The Beatles), “Heartbeats” (The Knife) and “Teardrop” (Massive Attack).

Particularly resonating was “Line of Fire,” a song released by his band Junip, for which he collaborates with Tobias Winterkorn. The soothing but existential anthem to internal struggle posits a future of unknowable possibility, where each choice might lead to fight or flight, light or darkness.

It’s music on a precipice, like the one we all are on, and it feels vital as ever.

Rob McCune is Every_Thing_After_Photo on Instagram, where he shares his concert photography and reviews, as well as clips from his “Every.Thing.After” podcast, with interviews with musicians and bands.

Lisa Loeb

Music is Art

Buffalo NY

June 06, 2010

by Dan Locke

Buffalo’s Music is Art Festival has always been a beautiful riot — part industrial carnival, part civic ritual, part all‑ages fever dream stitched together with skate ramps, brass bands, and the hum of RiverWorks machinery. Dropping Lisa Loeb into that swirl felt like a cultural experiment: could the queen of ’90s introspective pop cut through a festival that thrives on glorious chaos?

She didn’t just cut through it — she sliced the day clean in half.

Loeb walked onstage with the kind of quiet authority that doesn’t need hype or theatrics. No smoke, no bombast — just her guitar, her voice, and that unmistakable melodic precision that made “Stay” a generational imprint. In a festival built on volume, she became the rare artist who could hush a crowd by simply breathing into the mic.

But Buffalo refused to behave. Kids with melting snow cones wandered through the crowd. A rogue brass ensemble from another stage tried to photobomb her sound. A skateboarder wiped out mid‑verse with the kind of slapstick timing tabloids dream about. Loeb didn’t flinch. She tossed off a dry one‑liner, smirked like she’d been booked to headline a circus, and kept playing — turning the festival’s noise into her own backing track.

That’s where the hybrid tone comes alive: Rolling Stone would call it mastery. The Post would call it a showdown she won without breaking a sweat.

Her setlist moved like a curated memoir — radio staples, deep‑cut gems, and newer material that revealed a songwriter who’s evolved without losing her emotional clarity. The real peak wasn’t “Stay.” It was the quieter, newer songs where she talked about writing, parenting, and the strange endurance of sincerity in a world addicted to spectacle. When she finally did hit “Stay,” the crowd didn’t erupt; they softened. It was less a sing‑along than a communal remembering.

Music is Art is built on access, plurality, and creative collision — punk bands, school choirs, EDM kids, singer‑songwriters, all sharing the same oxygen. Loeb didn’t dominate the space; she harmonized with it. She proved that intimacy can be louder than distortion, and that a well‑aimed lyric can outshine a wall of amps. And I would like to thank Robbie Takac for having me there.

In a day full of noise, she wasn’t the loudest thing. She was the clearest

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By Rob McCune

The Bear is back, and as fierce as ever.

Seven years after their Farewell Tour, Minus the Bear is adding an asterix to their rockography with a reunion tour to mark the 20th anniversary of their second album, “Menos el Oso.”

The Seattle-born indie, math, experimental rock band that formed in 2001 released six studio records and twice as many EPs in the 17 years before they disbanded, playing what was billed as their final performance at The Showbox in their hometown where it all started.

Fans who weren’t so fond about that farewell snatched up tickets for shows on this tour, many of which sold out quickly, including the stop at the House of Blues in Cleveland, where wiggle room was bare and grooving was mostly of the vertical variety (jumping).

Warming up the crowd first was opener Into It. Over It., an emo-indie rock band out of Chicago that has released six studio albums since forming in 2007. Frontman, guitarist/vocalist Evan Weiss—with Matt Frank on bass guitar, Joe George on lead guitar, and Adam Beck on drums—got into it with a 10-song set that featured the live debut of a new song, “Hypermobilisation,” that blends power chords and an aggressive beat with otherworldly geometry. The group mixed in more grounded tracks like the misery-with-company “Upstate Blues” off their 2013 album “Intersections” and the poppy solarplexus “A Trip Around the Sun,” off a compilation album, “Interesting Decisions.”

For their set, Minus the Bear reminded us what we all already knew, opening with “The Game Needed Me,” and then playing the full “Menos el Oso” record in tracklist order. Songs like “Pachuca Sunrise” added both pep and poignancy, putting “this night to tune” and making the crowd move to the rich vocals of lead Jake Snider, while others like “Fulfill the Dream, with its rapid-fire riffs were a playground for Dave Knudson on lead guitar and Cory Murchy on bass. Alex Rose, meanwhile, worked the synthesizer like a seahorse on speed, providing the electronica underpinning essential to almost every piece.

The second part of this headline set featured a selection from the band’s other five albums, with playfully tongue-in-cheek tracks including “Let’s Play Clowns,” “Get Me Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo” and “Lemurs, Man, Lemurs.” For the requisite encore, the Bear looked “Into the Mirror” and finished with the landmark “Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse,” off their 2002 debut, “Highly Refined Pirates.”

Could this tour be yet another farewell from the arithmetical ursine poets? We can hope not, but even if it is, there are at least four more 20-year album anniversaries right around the corner.

Add those to the calendar.

Rob McCune is Every_Thing_After_Photo on Instagram, where he shares his concert photography and reviews, as well as clips from his “Every.Thing.After” podcast, with interviews with musicians and bands.

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There’s something unmistakenly timeless about the sound of 10,000 Maniacs, a band that has been making music and touring on and off, in various permutations, for more than 40 years.

On their latest tour, founding members Dennis Drew (on keys) and Steve Gustafson and John Lombardo (both on guitar) back up Mary Ramsay, the Maniacs’ queen bee and vocalist since the departure of Natalie Merchant in 1994.

The Maniac sound made signature in the late ’80s and early ’90s—the jangle of the guitars and the lyrical lilting—remains, but enhanced by experience, is also eminently current, classically contemporary.

In large part, this resonance emanates from center stage, where the light converges on Ramsay, shimmying and shimmering in a pair of cat-eye sunglasses with a charm both vintage and vibrant, as well as ageless.

When Ramsey, a classically trained violinist since age 5, soothingly saws the strings of her ZETA Strados Modern 5-string violin, it combines with the instrumental chorus to create a sound that feels like it could serenade the aurora borealis.

Fitting since this band was founded in Jamestown, New York, a place which offers an above-average chance of viewing the Northern Lights.

During a tour stop in northeast Ohio, at The Kent Stage in college town Kent, the atmospheric, otherworldly sound of 10,000 Maniacs occupied two sets and a three-song encore. The performance blended the best bits of five out of nine studio albums with a thoughtful medley of melodically matched cover songs, including Patti Smith’s “Because the Night,” Roxy Music’s “More Than This,” The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” and a version of “Peace Train” by Cat Stevens that marked the group’s first mainstream success.

The hits of the band’s heyday from 1987 to 1992 dominated the setlist, with six selections from “In My Tribe,” an album featuring chart-topping singles “Like the Weather,” “What’s the Matter Here?” and “Don’t Talk,” along with the no-less-poetic “Hey Jack Kerouac,” “City of Angels” and “My Sister Rose.”

The evening ended with a rousing rendition of arguably the most distinctly Maniac melody, “These Are Days,” which aptly summarized the experience:

“These are days you’ll remember. … It’s true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.”

Rob McCune is Every_Thing_After_Photo on Instagram, where he shares his concert photography and reviews, as well as clips from his “Every.Thing.After” podcast, with interviews with musicians and bands.

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Next, The Strains, punk rock veterans from Detroit (via Germany and Dayton, Ohio), brought the Motor City rev and edge. Lead singer Paul Grace Smith, in a slouch hat, bantered with the crowd between blistering tracks, backed by Gretta Smack (with an infectiously boisterous spirit and ear-to-ear grin) and Jamy Holiday on guitar and backing vocals. The Strains’ bassist Kellen Muller and drummer Al King also pulled double duty, supporting headliner Frank Meyer and his multi-instrumentalist sidekick Ozzy Carmona.

More than anyone else, Meyer brought the magic. In a set that featured songs off his debut album, “Living Between the Lines,” and rocked right on til midnight, the frontman and founder of LA punk rock ‘n roll band The Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs, delivered a concert-hall-sized performance that engaged every soul in Smedley’s. He ripped epic guitar riffs, belted earworm-styled lyrics about love and lawlessness, took a drag off a proffered smoke and opened his heart on jams blending blues, soul, punk and classic rock.
Starting with a Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs song, “Let Me Out” rattled the walls, while singles off the solo record “Blue Radio” and “Baby Dynamite” blew up the place. Meyer also treated the crowd to some spaghetti, with “Knock My Teeth Out,” a track from his collaboration with The Supersuckers’ Eddie Spaghetti. But the impromptu encore jam, which brought back members of The Strains and The Robert Conn Band, on a cover of Johnny Thunders’ “Blame It On Mom,” was where the magic really was undeniable—propelled by both a penetrable beat and a camaraderie that felt rhythmically genuine.
On this relatively brief tour, a rollick through the Midwest and Northeast, magic could be found in unlikely, even hidden, places, where anyone lucky enough to witness might be forever after chasing that rabbit, or cheetah.
Rob McCune is Every_Thing_After_Photo on Instagram, where he shares his concert photography and reviews, as well as clips from his “Every.Thing.After” podcast, with interviews with musicians and bands.

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