Levitt AMP concert series hitting stride
Local legends Steve Smith and the Naked Truth bring big sound and a big crowd to downtown Woonsocket
WOONSOCKET – Steve Smith and the Naked Truth played River Island Park Friday evening for the third show of Levitt Amp Woonsocket concert series and it appears city residents are catching onto the entertainment offerings along the Blackstone River.
Steve Smith and his nine bandmates are well known enough in Rhode Island and beyond to draw their own crowd wherever they play, but some in the crowd filling the park lawn in front of riverfront stage may also have wanted to enjoy the perfect summer weather Friday while doing something new.
For Shirley Robinson of Woonsocket, it was a little of both. Robinson went to the concert with her friend, Lori Thuot, and Lori’s granddaughter, Lillian, and explained she is definitely a Steve Smith fan.
“I like them and it is definitely exciting,” she said.
But even with the good bands, you also couldn’t ignore how nice was just off Bernon Street and Harry S. Truman Drive Friday with temperatures in the high 70s and a light breeze moving through the shading trees. “You couldn’t ask for a better night,” Robinson said.
Thuot said she was a fan of both bands playing in the park Friday night, the headliner act, Steve Smith and the Nakeds, and also the warm up act, the Lexies, a three member group performing a mix of classic rock, blues, and pop. Performing with the band’s drummer, Kathleen Dona of East Greenwich, were two city residents, Jared Cournoyer and Ryan Tremblay. “I love going to any city event,” Thuot said.
The Levitt Amp Series is a grant-funded line up of 10 concerts in River Island Park that will be offered on Friday evenings through Aug. 31.
Steve Smith and Nakeds were the third concert of the
series and will be followed next week by HuDost, a French Canadian band from Montreal and Morgantown, Kentucky, playing a mix of neo-folk, world rock and sufi and kirtan music.
Garrett Mancieri, a member of the Levitt Amp Woonsocket Committee and found helping motorists find parking off Bernon Street Friday, said the concerts have been drawing more people to River Island Park as the series continues.
“I think it is a great opportunity for the city,” Mancieri said. “It is something we have been working on all year to bring this music opportunity to Woonsocket and we had to vote online to win the grant funding to offer the series,” he said.
“This park is normally very under-utilized and the idea is to bring in more people to activate a local park,” he explained.
“Typically on a Friday evening we don’t have a lot of people in the park but tonight there are hundreds of people here in a beautiful park on a beautiful summer evening,” Mancieri said.
“It definitely presents the city well and brings new visitors into our downtown area,” he said.
The formula for the concerts is pretty simple. Each one offers the two performing acts, a smattering of food offerings and soft drinks, and also adult beverages provided by Ciro’s Tavern and Ravenous Brewing.
The concert series has one food vendor for each of the concerts, and on Friday it was pizza from Olly’s Pizzeria on South Main Street.
The Mill Race Kitchen chefs also provide catered items up the street at 40 South Main St. as a separate offering to the park activities.
WNRI’s Roger Bouchard was serving as master of ceremonies on stage Friday and said he was enjoying the duty. “This is my audience so I am meeting a lot of listeners and they are enjoying this group,” he said of the Lexies.
Bouchard said he also was looking forward to listening to Steve Smith and the Nakeds noting that if you are a Rhode Islander they rank as one of the state groups everyone follows. “Steve Smith and Nakeds, John Cafferty and Beaver Brown, and Roomful of Blues, they are the ones that always draw Rhode Island crowds,” Bouchard said. As local band leader Jeff Gamache walked by, Bouchard also slipped in the band Runaway Train just to be safe.
There are still seven more concerts to go in the series and Meghan Rego, communications director for Neighborhood Works and an organizer of the concerts, said she hopes as it continues, people will just come down to park to hear the entertainment without even thinking about who will be playing.
“The thing I am so excited about is that everyone is working as a community to make this happen,” she said. Rego pointed out that while Bouchard of WNRI was working the stage, Dave Richards of WOON, his competitor in the local radio market, was broadcasting him out in the live coverage of the event. “It is so good to see everyone come together to do this,” she said.
The concert series also drew strong praise from Steve Smith Friday evening just before he headed onstage with the band.
“It’s great, it’s really a fantastic venue and it is a great thing for Woonsocket,” Smith said.
The band has played Autumnfest for many years, Smith noted, and always gets a great reception here. It also joined John Cafferty and Beaver Brown and Roomful of Blues for the Rhode Island Music Legends Concert at the Stadium Theatre. Like that event, Smith said he hopes the Levitt Amp Woonsocket series will become an annual event.
“We love to play here,” he said.
As a band popular throughout New England and beyond, Smith said Steve Smith and the Nakeds typically perform an average of 3½ nights a week over the course of the year, with more shows during the summer when they get additional festival and outdoor bookings.
Occasionally they make trips to other states, like South Carolina, where they performed at House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, or Gaithersburg, Tenn., where they played the Hard Rock Cafe. Of course the promoters have to come up with transportation costs for the band, and with the 10 band members and their support crew that can be an expense for a long-distance trip, he noted.
Of the group’s regular Rhode Island venues, there are plenty of places Smith enjoys visiting but he also made a point of mentioning a special favorite, The Ocean Mist, down near where he likes to spend a lot of his free time in Matunuck.
For the concert at River Island Park, Smith said the band planned no set lineup of songs, but would just see how the night went.
“Every night is different and we like to change it up,” he said. There would be some of the band’s own rhythm and blues material, “songs off our own CDs,” and some of the material the band covers, he said.
But the mix would be one for people to enjoy and have fun with, he explained.
“It is just going to be a party, fun-filled night and we want people to have a good time,” he said. “We keep it fresh, that is the way we like it,” Smith said.
The Levitt Amp Woonsocket Music Series concert line-up can be found at www.levittamp.org/woonsocket. The Steve Smith and the Naked Truth schedule is available at the website, www. thenakeds.com.
“It’s great, it’s really a fantastic venue and it is a great thing for Woonsocket.”
— STEVE SMITH