For as long as I can remember – 13 years? maybe? – the great Tim Barry has made an annual appearance at a traditional-style Irish pub in the old mill town of Manchester, New Hampshire. It’s a seemingly random place for Barry to make a stop that is almost exclusively a one-off, not part of a greater tour of the Northeast or a stop on the way to/from a place like Pouzza. And yet, in many respects, it’s almost a perfect spot, as Manchester shares a parallel history with Barry’s beloved hometown of Richmond, Virginia; Shaskeen is a nondescript spot on a main drag in a generationally working-class city that traces its roots to pre-Revolutionary times based around a mighty river and which has influenced numerous cycles of rise and fall and reinvention. (And yes, we know that Richmond has a neighborhood named Manchester that Barry named his third solo record after in 2008, although it seems that the two Manchesters draw their names from different sources, oddly enough.)
For the last handful of these annual Shaskeen shows, Tim Barry has been joined by a couple of New England heavyweight singer/songwriters, Matt Charette and Lenny Lashley. Like Barry, both play largely acoustic Americana-tinged music that doesn’t stray too far from their respective punk rock roots. Charette was first up on this night, and in a unique turn, he was joined on acoustic guitar for the evening by his partner, Isabella Febbroriello. The pair were both severely injured in a motorcycle accident back in May and a broken bone in his left wrist has left Charette unable to play guitar for the foreseeable future. Luckily Febbroriello is no slouch with a guitar, which she normally dons in her own band, The Welcoming Committee. The duo kicked things off with “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” from Charette’s brilliant 2015 record Back East, a three-and-a-half-minute singalong that is always heavy and is especially poignant given the events of the last year. Same goes for the equally singalongable “4X4” that closed the set. While maybe frustrated that he couldn’t play and stomp along as he’s been accustomed to for a few decades, Charette soudned as good as ever and appeared appreciative of the opportunity to get back out on stage, now with Febbroriello by his side.
Lenny Lashley filled the middle spot on the bill. Len’s been one of the more unique and vital voices in the Boston punk scene for as long as I’ve been around it, even as a 61-year-old roofer by day circa 2026. Lashley’s brand of punk-tinged Americana works in a variety of settings and musical formats; we’ve seen him run a gamut that ranges from totally solo to fronting full rock bands featuring horn sections, and we’ve seen him pair with any number of stringed instruments manned by talented local artists. That was front-and-center at Shaskeen on this occasion, when he was backed by Tom West on accordion and Troy Caruana on pedal steel. This particular combination allows Lashley to lean into the sometimes melancholy side of his songwriter chops, adding a certain beautiful heaviness to the texture. Particularly weighty were “Gone World” from his latest full-length, last year’s Pray For Death, and “Bruiser” which is an ode to a lost pup as written but took on extra gravity given the very recent loss of Boston scene icon Babs O’Brien, which left nary a dry eye in the house.
As he is wont to do, Tim Barry kicked things off with “Dog Bumped,” a barn-burning anthemic ode to a friend who’s doing a few decades of prison time for doing what he had to do. It’s been more than two decades since began his full-time solo career as a Martin-wielding working class troubadour. Barry is at his best – and his most punk rock – in venues like Shaskeen and among crowds like that from the greater Manchester area. Blue collar, honest people who aren’t afraid to dance and sing at the top of their lungs about love and loss and redemption and picking yourself up and keeping things moving. There’s frequently very little difference between audience and performer at a Tim Barry show. There’s a sense that we’ve all worked through some shit – and maybe that we’re still working through some shit – and that it’s better to do that in a communal setting. It leads to maybe not a religious feel but certainly a revivalist one, even to the new Clear Blocks Ahead tracks like “WW Pool” and “Waltzing The Cell” and “Hello From Roanoke” and especially the somber “Loads East, Empties West,” that are already peppered into the setlist like the classic singalong staples that they’re destined to be. Barry seemed as happy as we’ve seen him in a minute and it lead to maybe the best set we’ve seen from him in a long time; free, passionate, energetic, at one with the crowd.
Check out more shots from a cathartic night at the galleries below!
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