Goodbye, 2016

2016 sucked for a lot of reasons, but the Frost Heaves try to look on the bright side. Here are some of our highlights from the year that’s ending, thank goodness.

One of the reasons 2016 sucked was that it involved so many seminal musicians dying. Luckily we got to be a part of some great local tribute shows honoring David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen.

We also had the good fortune of playing with two fabulous drummers this year: Christopher Wilkey (who currently sits the throne) and Willem Sytsma. We miss you, Will, come hang out soon!

In the spring we learned a bunch of songs from the excellent Big Lebowski soundtrack and played them before screenings of the movie at Pothole Pictures. We’re already at work on an even more ambitious Potholes project for this coming April. We’re going to make a big deal out of it.

We rehearse every weekend in Daniel’s basement, but twice this year we pulled back the Andy Warhol soup-can curtain and invited some friends down for concerts in our inner sanctum: once on New Year’s Day and once in the summer to celebrate Daniel’s new job.

It was a good year for house shows. In addition to the basement performances we played a living room in Montague Center and on a porch in Turners Falls. We were going to play a garden in Somerville, too, but that got moved inside a bar due to a thunderstorm.

And then there was the time we were the house band for the Turners Falls Lost & Found Fashion Show, where we all took a walk on the wild side.

Way back in March we debuted a bunch of acoustic songs at the Greenfield Musicians Coop’s annual All Cooped Up concert. The folkies were all stunned that we could pull off four tunes in 10 minutes.

We’re going to cram even more music, per volume, into 2017, with more shows and a new album in the cards. We can’t wait.