Kim Riley has been one busy lady lately. She is a member of the newly reformed Napoleon In Rags, a Bob Dylan tribute band. Aside from a monthly gig at J’s Tavern in Milford, New Hampshire, Rags is hosting a Dylan birthday bash for Dylan’s 71st.
“We’ve got just so many people on the bill,” she exclaimed. “(Rags leader)Bobby Livingston puts that together every year. This is the third year.” Riley is busy at work learning new songs for the tribute, which is also a fundraiser. The event, to be held at Whippersnappers in Londonderry, New Hampshire on Thursday, May 24th, will benefit the Brad Delp Foundation and also the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. Donation at the door. Riley recommends people get there early.
“I’m playing violin,” Riley added. “I’m accompanying Lisa Guyer and Laurie Geltman who’s flying back from LA to do this. She was very well known in Boston. She’s a good friend of Bobby Livington’s and she’s coming back to do this. We have Charlie Farren, Chad LaMarsh, Mama Kicks, Fat Back. Everybody’s going to be there.” Woody Giessmann from the Del Fuegos and a Dylan performer from Italy are also on the bill.
Riley is also working on a CD with producer Hank Decken at his Dizzyland Recording Studio in Rochester, New Hampshire, with Tom Davis on bass and Ron Stewart(Johnny A) playing drums. “We’re working on getting a bunch of releases out very soon, in the next few months,” Riley said. “We’re just releasing some tracks that we’ve been working on.” Decken is the songwriter as well as producer. Riley said there is not yet a name for the recording project the three musicians have been working on with Decken.
Rile has become a fixture on the southern New Hampshire club scene, playing out three to four nights weekly. Her name dots the local newspapers’ listings pages. She occasionally plays a gig in her native south shore area where she is originally from, having recently made an appearance in Quincy.
“I’ve been up here for a little over nine years,” she said. “But I started down there. I played south shore, Boston”’ Bass player Tom Davis is also Riley’s boyfriend and she came up here to be with him. The two used to have a band called The Other Kim band, which featured Riley and another female singer named Kim.
“She was from my neck of the woods, the south shore in Massachusetts. So we were playing down there and splitting time and just ended up here permanently. It‘s really not cost effective to travel.” Riley was, back then, widely known and identified for her Parker guitar, which allowed her to go from electric to acoustic with a the flip of a Switch.
Riley, these days, plays out as a cover artist. Sometimes she mixes in some songs from the upcoming CD project. Sometimes she throws in some songs she wrote with another songwriter, Robin Brodsky, one of Riley‘s Massachusetts collaborators. “We had a couple of releases,” Riley said. “We recorded at Moon Tower Records in Cambridge a couple of years ago. We’re just talking about doing some more. I’ve got one of them on my website.”
Riley earned her plethora of gigs in southern New Hampshire by working through booking agents and club owners. “I’ve been doing it a while so I kind of got my name out there,” she said. “Perseverance, and just getting out there and getting your face out there. I remember when Kim and I started years ago, we did open mics. We got very popular down where we were from. We were working a lot as a duo.”
Riley plays out solo acoustic, in a duo with Tom Davis, in the three piece with Davis and Ron Stewart, and she also sits in with Mama Kicks front person Lisa Guyer quite often. Derryfield, Murphy’s Tavern, and Fratello’s in Manchester, Gaslight in Portsmouth, and The Coach Stop in Londonderry are among the rooms that host her and her combos.
“It’s absolutely incredible how much talent and how many incredible musicians are here,” Riley exclaimed. “Moving up here and starting up here, I had no idea. Again, I came from Boston.” She gets a charge out of working in the Dylan tribute band Napoleon In Rags.
“We have amazing players,” she said. “We do very cool material that people don’t do all the time, very old school stuff, very rootsie, organic stuff. We have Steve Baker on keyboards, from Beatlejuice, one of the finest musicians on the planet; Scot Gibbs playing guitar, a monster player; Mike Dupont on drums who we know plays with everyone. We have John Brunner on bass. He plays in several projects.” Aside from their Dylan selections, Napoleon in Rags plays material by The Allman Brothers, The Doors, Lucinda Williams, and even some songs from the 1980s. “A little bit of everything,” Riley added.
“I do do a lot of stuff that’s on the radio,” she said of her set lists. “I do try to keep up with everything, current stuff, classic rock.. If it’s a rockier crowd, obviously I’ll do a lot of rock and roll. I have about 500 songs in my repertoire.”
Riley takes requests by passing around a book with all of her song lists. “People love that,” she said. “They get involved in the show. They grab the book. They have a list of songs they want to hear. And hey, I’ll do whatever they want to hear.” She will eventually be playing trio rock shows once she and her project mates release their recording.
Riley, a striking though diminutive blonde, gets notice being a female fronting on guitar and vocals her trio project with Davis and Stewart. Working with Tom Davis and Ron Stewart presents musical challenges in that they are top players. “They’re amazing,” she exclaimed. “Ron is one of the best drummers in the country, period, hands down. I’m very very blessed to be playing with the both of them. And Tom’s had a very successful career too. He was in New York doing sessions for years with some very big names. I’m very fortunate.”
The material on the upcoming CD will feature work that Hank Decken had recorded previously but completely changed up for this project. Some songs are brand new. Early fall is the closest they have to an exact release date.
“We did a showcase a few years back of the material,” Riley said. “It was at the Muddy River Smokehouse, which isn’t there any more, out in Portsmouth. We did a preview show to see how people responded. It went great.”
“Hank is one of the unsung heroes,” she continued, “He’s absolutely brilliant, on every level. He not only writes this material, he is a master musician, and he produces everything. He records in this incredible studio. He also masters all the material. He built this studio with his hands. There’s nothing he can’t do.”
Riley quite frequently sits in with Lisa Guyer, one of her favorite formats, two girls rocking the guitar all night. “We’ve done a whole night together. We’ve done it at Derryfield. We’ve done it at J’s. We have a ball,” Riley said. “We rock it out. I get to work with Lisa. She’s the most talented person. It’s really awesome.”
Riley will be assisting Guyer’s project called Lisa Guyer Music Empowerment Program, a week long learning experience for teenagers. “It’s basically unleashing all of their creative and artistic stuff,” she said, “playing instruments or singing or learning a musical background. I’m one of the teachers. The program that we’re doing is very cool.” The empowerment program will take place during the last week of June at the Alpine Grove in Hollis, New Hampshire.
The ubiquitous Riley is sure to be seen by anybody traipsing about the southern New Hampshire music venue scene.
[…] Kim Ricley dominates southern New Hampshire music scene Kim Riley has been one busy lady lately. She is a member of the newly reformed Napoleon In Rags, a Bob Dylan tribute band. Aside from a monthly gig at J's Tavern in Milford, New Hampshire, Rags is hosting a Dylan . […]