SPRINGFIELD - Marquee names from the area’s rock’n’roll past will come together Nov. 3 to launch an annual charity concert at the Paramount Theater. Joining in a promise to rock the Paramount like it was 1969 or 1979, musicians Peter Newland of the band Fat, Boston blues legend James Montgomery and the Spampinato brothers of NRBQ announced the benefit...
Anthony Cignoli, (center), president of A.L. Cignoli Company, joins area business leaders and musicians to announce a special concert on Nov. 3 at the Paramount Theater on Main Street in Springfield to benefit Open Pantry Community Services.SPRINGFIELD - Marquee names from the area’s rock’n’roll past will come together Nov. 3 to launch an annual charity concert at the Paramount Theater.
Joining in a promise to rock the Paramount like it was 1969 or 1979, musicians Peter Newland of the band Fat, Boston blues legend James Montgomery and the Spampinato brothers of NRBQ announced the benefit for the Springfield-based The Open Pantry Community Servcies Inc.
Newland said the show will kick off an annual concert series to raise money for the Open Pantry’s food programs and give the city a signature rock’n’roll event.
“We’re going to bring rock’n’roll back to Springfield and back to the Paramount,” Newland said at a press conference at the Main Street theater.
The 83-year-old theater, now owned by the New England Farm Workers Council Inc., hosted dozens of top rock acts from the 1960s through the 1980s, from Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan to the Velvet Underground and the Allman Brothers.
Newland and Montgomery both called on local music fans to help them summon the spirit of those hot, smoky nights from 1960s and 1970s in the now smoke-free, 2,400-seat theater.
“Let’s have a party and feed some people,” Montgomery said, adding he wants a large, spirited crowd.
Later, he put the challenge another way while performing a Muddy Waters with Newland and bass player Guy Devito.
“I’m ready, ready as anyone can be; I’m ready for you; I hope you’re ready for me,” the singer, dressed in a black suit and black and white shoes, declared.
Heriberto Flores, the top executive of the Farm Workers Council, said he was delighted to have the show at the agency’s theater.
Besides helping the Open Pantry’s food program, Flores said the concert will mark a return of rock’n’roll to a theater that once made Springfield a mandatory stop for national touring acts.
Flores said he had seen Newland’s band Fat and James Montgomery at the University of Massachusetts during the 1960s, including playing a show at the campus pond during a student strike.
He said the Nov. 3 concert, which will be sponsored by radio station Rock 102, would be the last before renovations begin at the Paramount.
Among those attending the event were Raymond Catuogno, whose company Catuogno Court Reporting is also sponsoring the show; Allison B. Maynard, executive director of the Open Pantry; Judith A. Matt, executive director of Spirit of Springfield Inc. and Anthony Cignoli, of A.L. Cignoli Company, who served as emcee.
More details coming in The Republican