The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Mark Mulcahy in solo gig at Lyric Hall
NEW HAVEN » You might say Mark Mulcahy is back — but at some point soon, maybe we’ll have to stop saying he’s back.
After a long absence from the local scene, the former (and now resumed) Miracle Legion frontman is returning Thursday for a solo gig, following on the heels of visits to the area by the reunited Miracle Legion and his post-Miracle Legion band, Polaris.
This time, after full-band visits to the College Street Music Hall and The Ballroom at The Outer Space, Mulcahy will get up-close and personal with a solo show at the intimate Lyric Hall, a similarly resurrected former Vaudeville house on Whalley Avenue in the wilds of Westville.
In fact, Mulcahy, now a resident of Springfield, Mass., will play his solo album, “The Possum In The Driveway,” in its entirety.
Showtime is 8:30 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $20, available in advance at http://bit. ly/2t6miE2, or at the door if any remain. Lyric Hall is at 827 Whalley Ave.
For years in the 1980s and 1990s, Mulcahy and Miracle Legion, his first big band, were among the things that put New Haven on the world’s musical map.
The band, favorably compared in some quarters to R.E.M., seemed to be on a similar trajectory at one point. But that came crashing down in a legal dispute with Morgan Creek Records that kept Miracle Legion from releasing music for years.
Mulcahy, who once booked such classic New Haven joints as The Grotto and Ron’s Place, rebounded in the mid-’90s.
He re-emerged as the driving force and frontman of Polaris, best known as the house band for Nickelodeon’s mid-1990s alternative television series “The Adventures of Pete & Pete,” and perhaps best remembered for the song “Hey Sandy,” which was featured in the opening credits.
After “Pete & Pete” got canceled, Mulcahy began playing solo, releasing albums on his own Mezzotint label from his transplanted home of Springfield.
In recent years, he has reunited both bands as well as toured as a solo act, releasing several albums and playing locally at the Daffodil Festival in Meriden, as well as College Street and The Ballroom before finding his way to Lyric Hall.