Jeffrey Gaines
By John W. Barry
Musician Jeffrey Gaines isn’t much for the holidays.
“I don’t do any holidays,” he said. “I don’t celebrate my birthday. I don’t just blindly carry on traditions because they were already going. I don’t join a lot of parties. Valentine’s doesn’t mean extra love. I love ya all the time.
“My birthday, I had nothing to do with it. It’s just a happenstance. I’m lucky, I’m happy that I get to have another one. But I’ll keep it to myself. It’s nobody else’s news.”
This honest, authentic and transparent approach to zigging while others zag is reflected in the music that Gaines performs. The creativity he generates is raw, real and ready.
His solo, acoustic version of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” sizzles and crackles like a roaring blaze. His original song, “Hero in Me,” is haunting, reflective, yearning, insistent.
Gaines will be putting it all out on the table, for yet another audience to see, when he performs at the Colony Woodstock on Dec. 26, the day after Christmas. And maybe, just maybe, he won’t completely discard what for many is the biggest holiday of them all.
“Anytime anyone’s partying and eating too much and playing in their pleasure centers, I love that,” Gaines said.
The Colony show represents a homecoming of sorts for Gaines, back home to Woodstock.
He worked on his material at the old Bearsville Studios recording facility and performed at the Bearsville Theater—both of which are in the Woodstock hamlet of Bearsville. Gaines previously performed at the Colony Woodstock, and he’s played Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock as well.
So is there anything that Gaines finds inspiring about Woodstock, the community with which he built a strong bond over decades?
“Inspiration comes from the quiet of nature,” he said. “Being alone with the uninhabited earth. Streams, rocks, tree woods. And you have that in so much abundance in Woodstock. You can get away from someone yanking at your sleeve and telling you a weird story about some topical thing that’s happening on the internet. You can escape that and get into the woods and listen to a stream and get quiet enough to begin to hear your soul’s voice.”
But Gaines will be leading a throw-down Friday night at the Colony, and he’s curious to see what the energy level will be one day after Christmas.
“Will people have any gas left in the tank?” he said. “I’m banking on the fact that this is the party, this is the party on Rock City Road.”
Jeffrey Gaines with opening act Belle-Skinner plays the Colony Woodstock, 22 Rock City Road, Woodstock, NY, on Friday, Dec. 26. Show time is 7 p.m. Visit colonywoodstock.com for information and to purchase tickets.
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