The Commonheart is ready to light up Stage AE
The Commonheart was on a pretty good roll before we were rudely interrupted by the pandemic. The powerhouse Pittsburgh soul-rock outfit had been touring extensively with JJ Grey & Mofro and had just done a few shows on the Los Lobos tour.
For 2020, it was asked to play one of three shows, along with Girl Talk and The Clarks, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Stage AE. It would be the band’s first shot on the outdoor stage after ripping it up there on a few occasions indoors, one of those times opening for Gary Clark Jr.
On Saturday, The Commonheart finally gets to play that anniversary show and, as frontman Clinton Clegg notes, they are more than up for it.
“They came to me and said, ‘Hey Clinton, do you want to play one of the biggest stages in town?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ “Ok, you have to wait two-and-a-half years.’ ”
During that time, The Commonheart completed a third album, “For Work or Love,” recorded at The Church studio in Carrick with Los Lobos producer and saxophonist Steve Berlin. It won’t be released until September, but in advance of the band’s AE show, the band is teasing it with a pair of singles, “How Do I Do This” and “Hustler.”
“On my first day in the vocal booth at The Church,” Clegg says, “my dad passed away that night, so this record took an interesting and way-more-personal turn for me when I started tracking these songs. Some of the lyrics were deliberately speaking to him, in some ways, before he passed and then when I was in recording, it was very surreal. I feel like his spirit is all over this record and that’s an important thing to note, especially with a song like ‘How Do I Do This.’ ”
Judging by the lyrics, that song easily could have been a mournful ballad. Instead, it’s an upbeat funk-soul track. “Hustler,” a harder-driving rocker, sprung more from the imagination.
“It’s a fictional tale about a street hustler, and it’s about navigating life and hardships and trying to find joy,” Clegg says. “It’s kind of a rocking tune reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield-type songs.”
The Commonheart will release two more singles, in July and August, ahead of the September release.
As for the Stage AE show, which will be opened by funk-rockers Jack Swing and flannel glam-rockers Limousine Beach, Clegg says, “We’re going to be doing a lot of new music and revisiting a lot of the fan favorites as well. I think the goal is to celebrate summer and people going to shows again. We really wanted to bring a high-energy vibe to the show, which is why I chose those two bands.”
Doors are at 6 p.m. Tickets are $10; axs.com.
• Congrats to the Millvale Music Festival for breaking the even-year jinx. The event, which launched in 2017, had the power knocked out midday in 2018 and the pandemic shutdown in 2020.
Last weekend, the event, which presents more than 300 acts on 30 indoor and outdoor stages, went well and narrowly escaped disaster.
“We thought all hell was gonna open up around 8:30 [on Saturday],” says organizer Paul Bossung. “We had some tents blow over, and I think Andre Costello had to lean forward into the wind to not blow over, but not a drop of rain. It looked just north and we wondered if Hartwood got hit.”
Going into the weekend, there was much discussion online about the Maple House Music Festival at Hartwood happening the same weekend, but, in the end, it didn’t have much impact.
“It’s hard for us to estimate,” Bossung says, “but I would guess we were around the same attendance Saturday. We’ve estimated 10K Friday and Saturday, but really that could be a lot more and it’d be hard to tell with people in and out. I’m elated with how well things went. Stages all went off seamlessly. Bands played great. The crowd was huge, having a blast, and was so positive!”
• Josh Verbanets, who fronts the band Meeting of Important People, is actually a pretty good person to meet with important people.
That’s why Visit Pittsburgh chose the singer-songwriter as a sort of musical ambassador for its trip to London this week celebrating a new direct flight from Heathrow to Pittsburgh. He is one of several Pittsburgh cultural figures on the trip, which includes a private event at the Tower Bridge walkway.
“I’ll be playing a full set at the reception,” says Verbanets, who wears his
Kinks influence on his sleeve, “and talking a little bit about the regional arts and music scene. I’m going to cover a bunch of songs from hometown artists.”
Such as?
“I’ll attempt a Donnie [Iris] song, some national tunes like Vogues, a jazz tune, a blues, all the way down to friends’ folk songs like Boca Chica.”
• Speaking of Donnie, during Huey Lewis’ visit to Pittsburgh to promote the IMAX film “Wings Over Water,” I asked him if he had any connections to the Pittsburgh music scene. It took him a second before said, “Donnie Iris. He was great. We played a lot of shows with him.” That would have been back in the early to mid ’80s when Lewis was touring behind “Picture This” and “Sports” and Iris had hits with “Ah! Leah!” and “Love Is Like a Rock.” An archive search doesn’t turn up any record of that pairing happening in Pittsburgh. In another interview he did, Lewis laughed about having to contend with the trains at the Station Square amphitheater and said that it invariably happened while the News was doing its a cappella segment.