Displaying items by tag: saratoga springs

“It was a wild ride sometimes and you never really knew what to expect from him, but we were all really close. He was always kind to us, always respectful and without a doubt the funniest guy I’ve ever known.”

–Teri Coté, longtime drummer of the David Cassidy Band, who will perform in a special one-off David Cassidy Tribute Concert in Saratoga Springs Aug. 14.

Teri Coté was 6 years old when the popular Partridge Family TV show concluded its four-year-run of 96 episodes in 1974. A year or two later, inspired by the music of Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind and Fire, she was drawn to the drum kit.  

“That’s when I discovered I wanted to be a drummer, or, actually when the drums chose me,” says Coté, who became a member of the David Cassidy Band in 2003. It is a role she filled for more than a decade.

“He was a really nice guy and it was a lot of fun. We had some wild moments - he was a wild character, you know? But, always very loving to the band, even during the times when he was having a rough time,” she says.

Cassidy’s musical inspiration came from people like Jimi Hendrix and the Yardbirds, but his massive popularity as a teen idol in the early 1970s cemented an image ultimately impossible to shed. “It was a cage he couldn’t break out of - and he did try - but it didn’t work. I think he had a lot of frustration with that,” Coté says.

As a bandleader, Coté says Cassidy liked to keep things fresh, at times changing pre-written setlists at the last instant and creating unpredictable moments. “He liked that energy, creating that intensity. After being who he was in his heyday, I think he really craved that energy, creating excitement in his shows. One way or another he would make sure that was happening.”

Cassidy’s fan base, while not as large in number as once had been, was nonetheless just as energetic and intense. “We saw a lot of people in the front rows who were regulars. They would come from all over the world - which boggled our minds. They just loved him,” says Coté, who makes her home in Massachusetts, just north of Boston.

During some show segments, Cassidy and Coté would swap onstage roles - she picking up the microphone at center stage to sing the Pretenders’ song “Brass in Pocket,” and Cassidy taking a seat behind the drum kit, keeping the beat.    

“When he sat to play the drums, he looked like a 12-year-old kid with this huge smile on his face,” Coté says. “He was just…so ecstatic. I admired that he would just let it show like that. I think sometimes he just wanted to disappear into the band and just be an I’m-one-of-the-guys kind of thing.”

The brief role-swapping scenario was played out in a March 2017 show at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square. Coté, who took a short break from the band a year-and-a-half earlier, returned that night for a special appearance with Cassidy’s band. The set began with a performance of “C'mon Get Happy,” and concluded 15 songs later with a performance of “I Think I Love You.” It would be the final concert Cassidy and the band would play. Less than nine months later, the 67-year-old singer died from liver and kidney failure.

Coté and a varied alumnus from the Cassidy band will perform for the first time together since Cassidy’s death in a special tribute on Aug. 14 in Saratoga Springs. The show will also serve as a fundraiser for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation - an organization close to the singer’s heart. Vance Brescia, longtime guitarist and music director for Peter Noone, will handle a good portion of the vocal duties. Popular horse trainer and bass player Gary Contessa is also expected to join the band onstage.

“It’s going to be exciting. Everybody’s a great player and we’ll be getting together to rehearse the day before,” says Coté, who maintains a busy schedule between teaching assignments, performing gigs and showcasing her own jewelry line. She and her husband, who is also a drummer, operate a drum shop – soon to expand to three music shops in the state - where she teaches the art of percussion.

After more than a decade of performances with Cassidy, one of Coté’s everlasting memories of Cassidy was his sense of humor.   

“David would make us laugh so much. He was really funny. He got that from his dad (Jack Cassidy), I think. He really believed his dad was the funniest person he ever knew,” Coté says. “We had a good friendship, a joke-filled relationship. I have some friends who have a great sense of humor, but David really took the cake. His sense of humor…I really miss that.”

The David Cassidy Tribute Concert will take place 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 14 at the Horseshoe Inn, located at 9 Gridley Ave., Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and will benefit the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

Tickets are $50 and available by calling TRF at 518-226-0028 or online at https://www.trfinc.org/event/david-cassidy-band-special-guests/.

Saratoga Springs’ native son Pete Donnelly has released a new album, a corresponding music video and is preparing to hit the road in October with an all-new combo at his side.

“Phases of the Moon” signals a departure of sorts for fans familiar with Donnelly’s work as co-founder of The Figgs. Ten of the album’s 18 tracks are instrumentals and include recreation of works by Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Oscar Pettiford.

The Figgs – who formed in 1987 when Donnelly collaborated with fellow Saratoga Springs High School students Mike Gent, and Guy Lyons – have released more than a dozen albums and staged some 1,500 shows at hallowed venues like the QE2, CBGB’s, and the Whisky A Go Go. And while Gent and Donnelly continue to perform together, the solo record, “Phases of the Moon,” features a nod to the bass player-turned-guitarist’s younger musical ears - which heralded an appreciation for Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk, as much as for bands like Black Flag and Hüsker Dü.

The piano serves as a driving force on “Phases of the Moon,” merging seductive jazz riffs laced with a sweet soul muse, topped with the familiar jingle-jangle of an electric guitar, a permeable dose of catchy songwriting throughout and adorned with a class rock and roll beat THAT JUST SWINGS.

Donnelly - who calls Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey home these days - asked director Geoffray Barbier to coordinate a New York City rooftop video shoot for the album’s debut single, “Dr. Richard.” The result maintains a rock ‘n’ rebel tradition not seen since The Senders rocked tar beach with their "My Baby Glows in the Dark" rooftop video in 1990 - look it up! – and the Jefferson Airplane sang and strummed atop a Manhattan rooftop a generation earlier.

For more information about “Phases of the Moon” – released as a full-length CD and a special hand-numbered double album, go to: http://www.petedonnellymusic.com/. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS - The city is reviewing a plan that would construct two 96-unit “work force” apartment buildings near Saratoga Casino Hotel.

Liberty Affordable Housing Inc. – a not-for-profit developer headquartered in Rome, N.Y., is seeking amendments to the city’s Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Ordinance that would develop the buildings on a 30.27-acre parcel, which are currently vacant and in an area near the Saratoga Casino soccer fields.

The land is owned by B.M.H.D. Inc. of Ballston Spa, and Saratoga Harness Racing Inc. with frontage along Jefferson Street and along Crescent Avenue.

The two apartment buildings will be accessible via Bunny Lake Drive, a private road. The two four-story buildings each will house 96 apartments and consist of two and three-bedroom units containing mixed income households targeting 50, 60 and 90 percent AMI.

AMI, or the Area Median Income for a family of four in Saratoga County is about $84,000, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Based on this structure, the rent would equate to annual earnings of approximately $42,000, $50,400, and $75,600, respectively, for a family of four.  

Plans call for the project to take place in two phases built in two phases. one for each building - and each phase also calls for the development of 147 parking spaces, of which 6 will be handicap accessible.

Earlier this month, Skip Carlson, vice president of external affairs at Saratoga Casino, submitted a letter to the city explaining that approximately 550 of the Saratoga Casino Hotel’s 630 employees would qualify to live in the planned workforce housing project.

“The majority of these employees can’t afford to live in Saratoga Springs as 74.1 percent live outside the 12866 zip code,” Carlson wrote. Saratoga Casino Hotel employs 630 workers. Of those approximately half earn less than $30,250 annually, one-fourth earn between $30,250- $36,300, and one-fourth earn $36,300 - $54,450 annually, according to documents submitted to the city.

Liberty Affordable Housing Inc. will also seek negotiating a PILOT agreement up to a maximum term of 40 years. The hope is to secure all municipal approvals by Oct. 15.

Photos by Super Source Media, LLC.

ON YOUR BREAKFAST plate, right next to the bacon, is a spot for blueberries.  In the town of Bacon Hill (15 minutes from Saratoga) on a little side road named Winney Drive, is Winney’s Blueberry Farm.

The road was named after his grandfather in the 1920’s but it was Byron Winney’s parents who began growing blueberries there in the 1970’s. They started out with gladiolas (still Byron’s favorite flower) but after thirty years, his father decided to switch over to selling the abundant fruit.

“My father didn’t want to be bothered with something he couldn’t eat,” said Byron. 

Sitting down on a wooden glider inside the simple red farm stand near the yellow center-hall colonial home circa 1790, Byron surveys the 85-acre farm as we talk. Birds race by, resting only momentarily in the rafters before rushing out into the open air as a steady stream of people come to harvest the happy fruit from the largest farm of its type in the region.

“Nobody has as many as I do,” said Byron.

Answering the Iron Lady

The reason why Winney’s Blueberry Farm grew as it did is largely because of Byron’s rebellious attitude. Needed to deliver flowers, he and his brother Bernie learned to drive as soon as they were old enough to turn over the flywheel to start the engine, he said. 

“It was hard. When you’re 11 years old, it weighs more than you do,” said Byron. 

The hard work, however, wasn’t as tough as his mother, who ruled the farm so strictly and with such an iron fist that she earned the nickname “Iron Lady.” 

How Byron watched over the 5,500 blueberry plants they planted was something she could always find fault with. As a result, during her lifetime he instead spent his days working at Niagara Mohawk. When she died, he planted 18,000 bushes. 

On Becoming King

The cost of creating the royal bluish-purple color pigment of paint was so exorbitant to artists working in the old world that blueberries were called “the fruit of kings.” Today, they have maintained this reputation because their high antioxidant value has placed them securely on the superfoods short list. 

“I’m going to live to 120 years old because I eat a lot of blueberries,” said Byron. 

He and Bernie snack on them as they tend the plants, grabbing a handful and popping them into their mouths one after another. Byron also likes when someone cooks him a nice blueberry peach pie, he said. 

Byron is treated like king on the farm, greeted jovially and with the utmost respect because of everything he’s learned about how to grow the best blueberries. 

“I bought every book I could on the subject and anybody who knew anything about it, I’d ask,” he said. His day starts early, runs late and the work continues year-round. When he’s not pruning the now 40,000 bushes on the property, Byron’s attending a parade of growers' meetings throughout the Northeast.

“I hit them all,” he said. 

During the growing season, Byron reads The Blueberry Bulletin, published by Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES) Cooperative Extension, for the latest research on growing and marketing blueberries. 

The best advice he’s heard is something that can benefit any grower.

“pH, pH, pH! Make sure there is 4.5% pH and prep a year ahead,” said Byron. “Sour the soil” (add sulfur to make it more acidic) and you can get your bushes to produce fruit in five years, compared to the typical 7 to 12, he said.

Pure Magic

With agricultural businesses, there are always variables out of one’s control. Bugs, the weather and songbirds were decimating his crops (until he added bird alarms). 

He’s still struggling to find enough people to pick blueberries for the farm stand.

“I hire as many as I can get, which is half of what I need,” said Byron. 

The hardest workers on the farm perhaps, are 25 hives of bees. 

“It’s pure magic. They did a good job this year. I’m amazed they got all these plants pollenated,” he said. 

Jars of honey are for sale at the stand, along with freshly-picked quarts of that day’s best varieties. 

A Pleasing Pick

Winney’s 25 varieties of blueberries include Old Standards Duke, Blue Ray, Collins and Jay. The new Aurora extends the growing season with berries that burst onto the scene in September with fabulous flavor. 

 “I see a lot of smiles and happy people. It’s always a good time,” said Byron.

He’s seen people start as early as 6 a.m. to pick as many as 30 quarts to freeze and last all winter.  In an ideal world, they would find a bush they like and pick it clean before going on to the next, he said. 

“When you start tickling a bush, it encourages growth and picking it clean, there’s less chance of having so many on the ground,” said Byron.

The average person spends about an hour on the farm, driving to the fields only to end up picking from the same outside edge bushes that get chosen time and again. 

“If you’re young and bright, or older and bright, walk to the back of the field. The best berries are in the back of the field,” he said. 

Having a Bear of a Time

Animal scavengers usually prefer the fields of grain, oats, rye and barley surrounding Winney’s but they do get turkeys, deer and bears.

“Believe it or not, we have bears all the time. They’re curious animals but they don’t create any problems,” said Byron. 

Petting the 18-year-old one-eyed tailless farm cat Max, Byron said that after he recovers from the hip replacement surgery he needed after a fall in September, he’ll build a packing house and buy a machine that will pick the berries. 

What he’s been doing so far however, has been working.

“I’m doing it my way and I’m happy,” he said. 

Winney’s Blueberry Farm, 113 Winney Drive in Schuylerville accepts cash or checks only. Call 518-695-5547 for more information.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – As an artist, Amy Lee is restless, as all artists with anything worth saying must be: searching; growing and endlessly re-defining.

“Challenges,” she says. “Pushing myself to the next place. At this point in my career, the challenges are the fun parts.”

Seeking a different path led the lead singer and co-founder Evanescence, perhaps surprisingly, down a road previously traveled. Once there, she discovered secret passageways with untainted, offshoot roads that pointed to some new place. She named this synergy between past and present “Synthesis.” An album was released last November and the summer leg of the tour - which features co-headliner Lindsey Stirling – will play the big stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center on July 28.

The show includes the added dimension of a full orchestra – an orchestra not touring with the band mind you, but rather, a different orchestra with an entirely new set of musicians on each night who will perform with the band.

“It makes for a very high-energy, tightrope-like feeling and in a very beautiful way different every time,” Lee says. “It creates these very raw, vulnerable and quiet moments where you have to just be so comfortable in your own skin that you totally focus and make beautiful music. That’s what makes it so exciting to me, to do something so different.”

The band first meets the orchestra on the day of the show during soundcheck where they’’ll run through parts of three or four songs then collectively perform live together for the first time in front of a live audience. Some live collaboration between Lee and Stirling during each of their respective sets is anticipated as well. Setlists from the early part of the tour indicate songs that span the band’s career from 2003 to 2018, as well as an occasional nod to the Beatles “(Across the Universe”) and Ozzy Osbourne (“Alive”).

As nerve-wracking and exciting as staging a performance in front of a live audience for the first-time may be, Lee says the addition of an orchestra creates “an electronic, awesome, cool different world.” Allowing her imagination to run free, Lee says she can envision some of her own favorite bands doing likewise.

 “I think it would be really good to see the Smashing Pumpkins do that. That would lend itself to it very well. And Portishead - Oh, that would be incredible! I’ve always gotten a lot of inspiration from Bjork and if I could go see the way she did “Vespertine” back in the day (2001) – it was sort of in this realm between the electronic elements and the orchestra.”  

Evanescence formed in the mid-1990s and released their debut album “Fallen” in 2003. Commercial success was immediate; the album topped the charts in more than 10 countries and sold more than 17 million copies worldwide. Lee, the group’s sole original member in the band’s current incarnation, was tagged as a goth-metal superstar in Victorian dress.

“After our first album, ‘Fallen,’ I felt a serious urge to push us forward and show other sides. It was good, but it was just this bud, this beginning picture of all that I wanted to express and all that I am. It became important to show something else. I always want to keep that open, to try new things,” she says. “To the degree that ‘Fallen’ was so huge, I felt almost frustrated that no matter what I did there’s a mass of people that are going to see me in just that one, simple, first way.”

Over the course of the band’s career, the business of music and concerts has drastically changed. Lee has changed with it.  

“We used to have lighters that we’d hold up in the audience, which was so beautifully romantic and sweet. Then people got cell phone with those lights which are so much brighter. I remember when that first started to be a thing, every artist was complaining, ‘Ah, they’re like zombies, they’re not even paying attention to the live show,” she recalls.

“We always want people to live in the moment, to live in the show, but I do take it as a sort of compliment: that they want to capture it, they want to remember it, they want to live it again. At the same time, we have this moment during special shows where we’ll have this… moment. One person with a cell phone and their light does it, then somebody next to them does it, then more and more and more and they all light up to make like these… glowing souls. Just this sea of light. It’s hard to explain, but you feel the magnitude as if in that moment every person is represented; everybody gets into it and it just chokes me up. Every time.”

Over the past 15 years, Lee expanded her collaborative circle to include recordings with Seether and Korn; she sang “Halfway Down the Stairs” – a song based on the lyrics of an A.A. Milne poem - for a cover album of Muppets songs in 2011, and one year later performed Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” for a Johnny Cash tribute album. In 2018, there are a multitude of creative reaches. “We’re just stripping all of my comfort zones away,” she says.

With “Synthesis,” Lee is re-imagining the band’s musical canon by collecting the shards of a melody once gifted from some ethereal place, disassembling its pieces, and then welding them with a new flame into a new composite.  

“There are parts of these songs (on ‘Synthesis’), particularly the ones I chose, where there was something about them that stood out to me, or that I wanted to push more. There was a stripping away involved and rebuilding for sure, but it’s all stemming from stuff that was all in there, underneath,” Lee explains.

“‘Never Go Back,’ for example - our first song on this album - is a very classically minded song, which is funny because production-wise it’s this heavy rock song with swatches of metal. But, it’s so related. If you think about the instrumentation and the production of music, I feel there are so many similarities between heavy, metal music and the shredders of the classical age. I mean, you could Bach up against Pantera and find total similarities,” she says with a laugh.

“I’m not saying we’re Pantera, or Bach – nothing like! But there was always this part, this big, epic beautiful bridge in ‘Never Go Back,’ that in this version now starts off the song that to me was channeling some big, classical epic drama. I wanted to experiment with taking that all the way in the other direction, seeing what it sounded like and being able to let it live in that world where it was partially born in the first place. The whole (‘Synthesis”) is kind of like that, taking things and going: here’s the other side of it that maybe you didn’t notice.”

The idea for “Synthesis” was born after Lee sat down and revisited the band’s musical history in advance of the release of a comprehensive Evanescence box set.

“I realized how proud I am of everything that we’ve done. Instead of thinking that I have to keep pushing in new directions to show everybody how different we can be, I kind of fell in love with all of it and wanted to spend a little bit of time embracing all that we are,” Lee says. “Instead of feeling that my favorite parts are the parts that I’m running from, I can go back and pour more love into who I already am. I have a new perspective on what Evanescence is and it means something to me that’s just full of love in all directions. So, I feel that’s been a beautiful turn in my heart more recently. And I don’t know what the future sound will be, but I do know it will be out of love.”

Evanescence and Lindsey Stirling will perform at SPAC on Saturday, July 28.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – David Cassidy famously traveled the globe yet maintained Saratoga as his favorite place in the world. Plans are underway to honor the popular singer and actor this summer with a special memorial race at Saratoga Race Course, according to former Cassidy girlfriend Maura Rossi.

Plans call for the memorial race to be held Saturday Aug. 18 – a day that will also feature the Alabama Stakes race and which was among Cassidy’s favorite days to attend during the summer meet, Rossi said.  

Cassidy - best known for his portrayal of Keith Partridge in the early 1970s television sit-com “The Partridge Family,” as well as for a series of chart-making hits during the same era, passed away last November at the age of 67. His passion for equines frequently brought him to Saratoga, where he bought his first yearling and where in 2001 he purchased a home.

The specific Cassidy memorial non-stakes race will be determined in the days leading up to the Aug. 18 date.

Rossi, who reached out to the New York Racing Association to name the race, said she is also coordinating a schedule for the winner of the race to be given a trophy in Cassidy’s honor, as well as for fans and friends of the singer to be able to have their picture taken in the Winner’s Circle. A Facebook page related to the event has been posted at: https://www.facebook.com/davidcassidymemorialrace/.

Cassidy has an ardent fan base. Samantha Cox, one of Cassidy’s fans, coordinated from her home in Indiana a successful social media effort shortly after the singer’s death that raised in excess of $2,500 to have placed a memorial bench in Cassidy’s honor at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. Cox also initiated a “Celebration of David Cassidy’s Life,” event that was staged in Saratoga Springs on May 20 and drew fans to the local community from across the world. Cox has since said she plans to stage an annual event celebrating Cassidy’s legacy every May 20 in the Spa City.

Meanwhile, a David Cassidy Tribute Concert – featuring members of Cassidy’s band – will take place 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 14 at the Horseshoe Inn, located at 9 Gridley Ave., in Saratoga Springs, and will benefit the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. Tickets to the concert are available via the TRF website at: https://www.trfinc.org/event/david-cassidy-band-special-guests/

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Her songs have been covered by everyone from Ray Charles (“Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma”) and Mott The Hoople (“Lay Down: Candles In The Rain“) to the Dollyrots (“Brand New Key”), and her rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” is arguably the only time anyone has out-muscled The World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band on their own turf.

Melanie – who alongside other iconic music-makers like Cher, Beyonce and Adele is quintessentially illuminative to be able to get by on a first-name-only basis – will perform two shows at Caffe Lena on Aug. 2.

Her discography counts dozens of releases and spans several decades, but perhaps is most notable for a song she wrote after her appearance at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, capturing the mood of the moment and providing a theme for a generation. Getting to play on the bill at Woodstock seemed simple enough.

“It sounded like camping for three days out in the country, so I asked the promoters, 'Can I do it?’” Melanie recalled, during an interview with this reporter when she visited Saratoga Springs to perform at Caffe Lena a few years ago. “They said: Sure, kid.” She was 22 years old at the time and as showtime grew near, the reality of performing in front of hundreds of thousands of people brought with it a dose of anxiety.

“I thought, 'Oh my god, there's Janis Joplin. I could hear Richie (Havens) singing: Freedom...Freedom...Freedom... It was scary. I'm just a girl with a guitar, they're never going to put me on that stage,” she said. “I started getting this real deep bronchial cough. Joan Baez heard me coughing and she sent an assistant over with a pot of hot tea. It was like nectar of the Gods.”

Shortly after Ravi Shankar performed, the sky threatened rain. “People from the Hog Farm, or some other group were saying some inspirational things about lighting candles to keep the rain away,” she recalled.

As the candles began to flicker, Melanie was told it was her turn to take the stage.

“I had to walk the plank and I watched the hillside completely lit up with candles, like the flickering millions… I had an out of body experience.” A few days later, she put the experience to song. “I started thinking about it, about what literally was right in front of me.”

A year later the song she’d written about the experience - “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” - was being played on radio stations across the country. It sold more than 1 million copies, showcased the singer with the childlike, yet other-worldly voice, blessed with reams of slicing vibrato, and began a longstanding concert tradition of audiences striking matches and thumbing lighters and holding the flame aloft in music halls across the world.

Melanie’s Woodstock moment spawned a music career with sprinkled with high points – she was introduced to a crowd of 600,000 at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival by Keith Moon after she took the stage immediately after The Who – and strung together a number of hits through the 1970s. More than 80 million copies of her records have been sold to date, she's had her songs covered by singers as diverse as Cher, Dolly Parton, and Macy Gray.    

Melanie performs at Caffe Lena Thursday Aug. 2. Shows at 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Tickets: $45 general admission. $40 café members, $22.50 students and kids.

SARATOGA SPRINGS - A.M. Homes has been coming to Saratoga for nearly 30 years. During that time, she has published a dozen books - novels, memoirs and story collections among them - created a variety of original television pilots and saw the screen debut of a then pre-teenage Kristen Stewart in the film adaptation of her book “The Safety of Objects” – which also featured Glenn Close in a starring role.

Homes’ newest release, the short story collection “Days of Awe," was published earlier this month and the links to this region, she says, are substantial. “As much as this is a work of fiction - which took many years—in my heart it is set in Saratoga.”

The ties to local geography and events are sprinkled throughout the book’s 12 stories, albeit disguised at times beneath the cloak of fiction. There are visits to local ice cream shops, journeys to go apple-picking and trips to the mall; there are inferences – though neither is named - to the City Center during the staging of a gun show, and to Temple Sinai, which in “real life” stands directly across the street on Broadway. Segments of Homes’ work have also been scribed in Saratoga Springs, during her many residencies at the Yaddo arts colony.    

The town has climbed out of a depression by branding itself, ‘America’s Hometown’. Flags fly from the lampposts. Signs announce the autumn harvest celebration, a film festival, and a chamber‑music series at the Presbyterian church. She parks behind the conference center and slips in through the employee entrance and down the long hall to a door marked THIS WAY TO LOBBY - “Days of Awe” 

“I’ve built a relationship for myself with the town: going to the library, going to the Farmers’ Market, going to the YMCA. People and places have always meant a lot to me and have always been very inspirational,” Homes says. “In the new book, there’s a story about an ‘everyman’ who’s nominated to run for president that’s set in a big box store. In my mind that is somewhere over where Target and all those stores are.”

The story, “A Prize for Every Player,” depicts a man introduced to shoppers as candidate for President of the United States. The announcement is made over a microphone appropriated from a karaoke machine in the electronic section. As reporters descend upon the store, the local high school cheerleaders welcome the candidate by performing their rah-rahs outside, in the Keep Clear fire lane.

The strip mall location marks a literary return to the parcel of land Homes first discovered during a Yaddo residency early in her career.

“The Pyramid Mall floated in a sea of parking spaces…” – from “The Safety of Objects.” 

“Some of the works that I got done during the early visits to Yaddo were in the book the ‘The Safety of Objects,’” Homes says. “I was fairly young (when I first came to Yaddo). It was before my first book was even published. I grew up as a writer hearing about Yaddo and being a huge fan of John Cheever and one of my teachers, Doris Grumbach, had been there before and knew all the people. It was thrilling and intimidating. There was a sense that being invited to come to Yaddo was a vote of confidence in you as a young person of exceptional promise. It’s a question of going to dinner at night with all the artists and we were terrified, hoping to sit next to somebody who didn’t reveal you to be a total fool, or a fraud.”

While in residence at Yaddo, Homes met Jay McInerney, who had a few years earlier achieved fame with his first published novel, “Bright Lights, Big City.” They decided to visit the Pyramid Mall.

“At one point I went over there with Jay McInerney. I guess we were going to the movies or something and they had one of those contests, you know, where you keep your hands on a car for as long as you possibly can. I found it just riveting. And that’s in one of the stories in “The Safety of Objects” - set in the old mall - the one they tore down - that used to have Jo Ann’s Nut House and a bible supply shop called Praises,” Homes says. The Pyramid Mall, which opened in 1973 with 50 stores, was demolished in September 1999 and later replaced by a strip of big-box retailers such as Target. The story, “The Bullet Catcher,” features a fact-meets-fictional world where characters go shopping at Sears, the Wire Wizard, and King Pin, and listen to the radio, which is tuned to Z-100.

“An even stranger thing happened 10 years later when that story was made into a film. I remember being in a shopping mall in the middle of the night in Toronto watching Glenn Close and a bunch of different people who were in the film re-enacting this scene.”

“I had a vanilla-and-chocolate twist with a dip into the chocolate that hardens. They called it a Brown Cow… the Farmer’s Daughter” – from “Days of Awe” 

“I really do just love the history of places. Saratoga is obviously very important to me. And North Adams (Massachusetts) is where my grandmother’s family grew up, so it’s fun for me to play with all those things,” says Homes, whose work has been translated into 22 languages. “I’m a local in heart and spirit. When I’m there what I do is I drive from Saratoga (Springs) to Schuylerville, out to Greenwich and all over the place,” Homes says. “And I love a good thunderstorm in Saratoga, in the afternoon, when it gets so warm and there’s this intensity… these incredible cracks of lightning.”    

With “Days of Awe,” characters embark on a fictionalized journey that local residents may recognize as markers along state Route 29, from the Spa City through Schuylerville and across the Hudson River to Greenwich. Characters go apple-picking - “the orchard is ripe with families and children and bumblebees buzzing… they buy a bushel basket and head into the fields,” writes Homes - cross a Revolutionary War battlefield with rolling hills, and pause to refresh at a shop reminiscent of The Ice Cream in Greenwich – “the ice cream stand is set back from the road in the middle of nowhere… scoops are like a child’s fantasy of what an ice cream cone might be” – as well as at The Farmer’s Daughter, which is mentioned by name.

“As she drives over the hills on a two‑lane country road, the sun is dropping low on the horizon. There are cows making their way home across fields and self‑serve farm stands with fresh eggs, tomatoes, and cut flowers, and free zucchini with every purchase. The sky is a glorious and deepening blue. It’s just past sunset when she pulls in to the tiny town. The raised wooden Star of David and the mezuzah are the only outward markers on the old narrow building... the synagogue is small and lost to time. There are about thirty people between her and the rabbi. ‘What is it to be a Jew?’ the rabbi is demanding of the group. ‘Has it changed over time?” – from “Days of Awe” 

While staying at Yaddo, Homes has also spent time at Temple Sinai on Broadway in Saratoga Springs with Rabbi Linda Motzkin and Rabbi Jonathan Rubenstein, who have served as co-rabbis since 1986 - the first rabbinic couple to share the sole rabbinic position in a synagogue.

Homes attended services, baked bread with Rabbi Jonathan and brought Yaddo residents to meet with Rabbi Linda, who talked with the group about her work writing a Torah Scroll. In “Days of Awe,” the rabbinic couple are noted as “very good friends, whose hearts have supported me” in the book’s acknowledgements, alongside local history writer and independent scholar Amy Godine, musicians Laurie Anderson and Rosanne Cash, and grateful nods to Yaddo President Elaina Richardson, and Candace Wait, among others.

“I did move the synagogue out of Saratoga and to somewhere around Schuylerville,” explains Homes. “It’s what I do in my imagination. That’s what fiction writers do.”

The difference between writing short stories, such as what appear in the new collection “Days of Awe,” and the longer novel form – which comprises the majority of her literary canon – comes down to the sustainability of the story over the long term, Homes says.

“Some stories wouldn’t be sustainable in a novel, so that’s one of the ways you sort-of know. Whether it’s the tone, or the intonation of the story, whether you know what’s going to happen in it. I think they function differently. Stories have a specific compression to them in a sense that something’s already happened by the time the reader gets to the story. So, there’s a lot of history, filling-in in a story. In a novel, I think there’s a much more leisurely unfolding.”

Readers of Homes’ books will be interested to learn that one of her most memorable characters – a teenage girl named Chunky who first appeared in 1989, re-appears in “Days of Awe.”

“Chunky sort of appears in the second book of stories, in a story called ‘Raft in Water, Floating,’ and then she appears in the new book. There are two very big stories in the book called ‘Hello Everybody,’ and ‘She Got Away.’ What’s fascinating to me with Chunky, (who first appeared) 30 years ago, is that it’s really taken this long from being a 13-year-old or so in the backyard to now being a freshman or sophomore in college. And oddly those stories are part of an opera I’m writing now that will open in New York, maybe next June. I’ve never written a libretto before, so this will be the first and it’s based on those stories.”    

Many of Homes’ fictional characters are male, which she scribes in convincing fashion. “I think as a fiction writer, it’s probably in many ways easier for me to write from a male point of view than just to write from some mom’s point of view, or some lady’s point of view,” she explains. “That’s just not as much fun for me. I live in that world, and I know what that is. But, to really, truly inhabit other characters: that’s the good stuff.  

A.M. Homes, posing in front of the Yaddo mansion, shortly after the release of her novel “May We Be Forgiven,” in 2013. Photo by Thomas Dimopoulos.

Homes’ many visits to Yaddo have inspired what she calls “a very active literary part of my imagination, in part because it’s been part of me for so long.” For the past five years, Homes has served as co-chair of Yaddo’s Board of Directors and involved in projects to both historically preserve the 19th century mansion as well as help get new studios built, with an eye one the future.

“My relationship to Yaddo as an artists’ colony has changed, because when I go now I’m more aware of everything: Oh, the lightbulb has burned out; we’ve got to take care of the paint on the porch. It’s like it’s your house,” Homes says. “But, the nice thing is you get to see, since (first visiting in) 1989, is that the fundamentals of the place haven’t changed. There is this place where artists from all over the world come to do their work, and I’m always amazed at how good they are – inspired and brilliant - and that there’s this wonderfully nice mix of people who are at the very beginning of their careers, and other people like me, who have been doing it for a long time.”    

Homes was born in Washington D.C. Some of her earliest writings took the form of letters penned to people she admired.

“I was absolutely a rock and roll kid growing up. Pete Townshend was my pen pal (while I was) in high school, which is kind of amazing,” she says. “I wrote to these people and it wasn’t like: ‘Oh, I think you’re so great,’ but more like: ‘today, at school, Isabell was mean to me’. And he’d write back: ‘I’m having a terrible time with my record label.’ So it was nice, people out in the world who would talk to me. And it’s interesting because I sometimes wrote to women writers, women musicians and they would write back very curt responses: ‘Thanks, now go away.’ I realize now, as an adult, that women are probably much more protective and feel that they could be stalked, or, whatever. And that men were, in that sense, in the world in a different kind of way. But, I feel very lucky because I’ve have a lot of non-visible mentors along the way who helped me grow up as gracefully as one can - which is not very graceful at all.”        

Paul Schrade stood atop the platform in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel. A few feet away, Bobby Kennedy delivered his speech.

A few hours earlier, the polls closed on the California Democratic presidential primary and the feeling of victory hung in the air. As Kennedy made his way off the stage to meet with the press, the ballroom filled with the exuberant chanting of his joy-filled supporters: RFK. RFK. RFK.

“As he walked off into the pantry area, heading for a press conference, Bobby said: ‘I want you with me,’” Schrade recalls. Once inside the hotel kitchen pantry area, he watched Kennedy extend his hand to greet workers. “Then I got hit,” Schrade says. “I started shaking violently. I didn’t even know that I’d been shot.”

Schrade was shot in the head and taken to Los Angeles’ Kaiser Hospital. Just over 24 hours later, at 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968, Kennedy was pronounced dead at Good Samaritan Hospital. After recovering from his injuries Shrade moved out of Los Angeles and into the desert. He set aside the memories of that tragic night for a long time.

Paul Schrade grew up in Saratoga Springs where as a young man he worked nights and weekends at the family floral business, the descendant of which maintains the Schrade name and today stands on West Avenue as the Posie Peddler. “Slave labor,” he says with a laugh. He had a busy scholastic career that included writing for the school newspaper, Oratoga, and being involved in the speech club and photo club, among other organizations. He graduated from Saratoga Springs High School in 1942 and studied at Yale College, later becoming a union organizer and getting involved in the nation’s political scene.

During John F. Kennedy’s election campaign in 1960, Schrade struck up a friendship with J.F.K.’s younger brother, Bobby. “We had a lot of great experiences together,” he says.

The year 1968 was one of conflict in America. “Bob was facing a lot of crises,” explains Schrade. “The anti-war movement, rebellion on campuses, rebellion in the black community; Dr. King had been shot and killed. The country was in horrible shape at the point and Bob provided some hope during this terrible time.”

Vice President Hubert Humphrey would later emerge from a turbulent Democratic National Convention in Chicago to represent his party. Republican candidate Richard Nixon would win the presidency in the general election.

Asked whether he can imagine how the world might be different had Kennedy survived and been elected president, Schrade says, “well he was against the war in Vietnam. He would have ended the war.” One person’s life making such a big difference. “One small bullet made a difference,” he replied.  

Sirhan Sirhan was convicted in 1969 of the assassination of Kennedy and sentenced to death in the gas chamber. The sentence was commuted three years later, when California abolished the death penalty. Sirhan became eligible for parole in 1986 but has been repeatedly rejected.

During the past several years, Schrade has re-focused his attentions on the assassination. Convinced there was a second gunman, he has been pushing for a thorough investigation. “There never was an investigation. They just grabbed Sirhan without evidence or witnesses and refused to go after the second gunman.

“I’m not going to get into conspiracy theories – whether he was programmed or not. Sirhan was there and fired (the first) two shots, missing Kennedy and shooting me. The gun was two to three feet in front of Robert Kennedy according to the prosecution’s own witnesses,” Schrade says. As he was being subdued, Sirhan wildly fired off a number of more shots. In all, six people were shot. The Los Angeles County coroner determined that three bullets struck Kennedy's body and a fourth passed harmlessly through his clothing, CNN reported in a 2012 story sub-titled, “There Was A Second Shooter,” following a 2012 interview with Nina Rhodes-Hughes, a witness to the murder. Rhodes-Hughes said she heard two guns firing during the shooting and that authorities altered her account of the crime.

“It was an eight-shot revolver and Kennedy got shot four times in the back. Sirhan didn’t have the bullets,” Schrade says. ”He was captured out of position. The gun was two to three feet in front of Kennedy and Kennedy got hit at point-blank range in the back. It couldn’t be Sirhan. It had to be a second gunman.

“The prosecution knew this, knew there was a second gunman and didn’t do anything to investigate it. They just did a quickie on Sirhan and sent him to the gas chamber. They were going to murder this guy,” Schrade says. “It was a well-planned investigation in order to convict Sirhan. They falsified the evidence right from the beginning.”

Asked for his thoughts on motivations behind the assassination, Schrade says, “we can only guess at the motivations because we never investigated the second gunman. And I don’t guess at things anymore, only facts and truth. They decided to go after Sirhan. I don’t know why. It could have been for political reasons, but ‘why’ has not been answered.

“I’m 93. The only thing I can do at this point is make a public declaration and try to get the people that have some influence involved,” Schrade says. “Hopefully it will move these organizations to do the right thing, by Kennedy, and by Sirhan.”

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Several dozen David Cassidy fans – some of whom embarked on their journey from a few thousand miles away – descended on the Spa City last weekend to celebrate the life of the late singer who had inspired them with song and for some helped navigate a clear and hope-filled path through a troubled time of adolescence.

Robin Smith, who first watched Cassidy perform onstage in 1972 in Houston when she was a young teenager, came in from Texas. Michael Oliver and Denise Kirth made the trip to the Spa City from Ohio. Marlene Habib brought along copies of her recently penned a 42-page tribute booklet, “David Cassidy: Crazy Over You in Saratoga,” and Annette Trotta-Flynn arrived with an active social media campaign to get Cassidy inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “It’s a labor of love,” she said. “David cared about his fans. We’re continuing his legacy.”

One woman made the cross-Atlantic trip to Saratoga Springs from her home in Belgium. “I saw him in Antwerp in 1973 and it was an extreme experience for me,” related the woman, whose name is Veerle. “I was always a fan, but (as time went on) he wasn’t coming to my country anymore. I wanted to come to the U.S. to see him play, but then the bad news came that he was sick, and then he passed,” she lamented. “I made contact with some of his American fans and learned about this event, so that’s why I wanted to come.”

The event, billed as “A Celebration of David Cassidy’s Life,” was initiated by Samantha Cox from her home in Indiana. After the singer died in November 2017 at the age of 67, Cox said she took on as her New Year’s Resolution a mission to do something to honor Cassidy’s life.

“I chose Saratoga because he was into horse racing and he mentioned it as his favorite place in the world,” says Cox, who previously had never been to the Spa City. Her inquiries led her to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame opposite Saratoga Race Course which Cassidy frequented during the summer meet, and subsequently coordinated a successful social media effort that raised in excess of the $2,500 goal required to permanently place a memorial bench in Cassidy’s honor in the museum courtyard.

Cassidy, who appeared on several TV shows in a non-musical role, gained international stardom after he was cast as “Keith Partridge” on “Partridge Family” sitcom, which was broadcast from 1970 to 1974. He simultaneously launched a solo music career that saw him perform on some of the world’s biggest stages. His passion for equines dates back to the 1970s and frequent visits to Saratoga, where he bought his first yearling and where he eventually purchased a home.

At the same time Cox was mounting her Cassidy campaign, Columbia County based horse owner, breeder and veterinarian Dr. Jerry Bilinski and horse trainer Gary Contessa were also partnering on placing a bench in Cassidy’s honor in the newly named Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Courtyard. Last week, both benches were publicly unveiled, and many Cassidy fans made a long weekend of their visit to Saratoga Springs - visiting the museum and then staging a gathering at Spa City Tap and Barrel on Caroline Street Sunday night.    

“On November 21, God called David home, but I like to believe he is looking down today on us and smiling,” Cox told the group of fans who gathered at the Celebration of Life event Sunday night.  

Fans shared reminiscences of long ago concerts punctuated by deafening screams and blinding flashbulbs, as Cassidy jumped and gyrated in a white jumpsuit across the stage. Members of his band offered pre-recorded commentary via an overhead screen and Cassidy’s music was piped into the venue at varied intervals.

An announcement was also made that a special David Cassidy Tribute Concert – featuring members of Cassidy’s band - will be staged at the Horseshoe Inn on Aug. 14. The concert will act as fundraiser for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s David Cassidy Sanctuary Fund. Cassidy was a supporter of the Saratoga Springs based organization, which was founded in 1983 with a mission to save Thoroughbred horses no longer able to compete on the racetrack from possible neglect, abuse and slaughter.

Dr. Bilinski, who first met Cassidy when the performer brought his horses to Bilinski’s farm, addressed the crowd and spoke of their longtime friendship.

“When David first visited with us, we went out on the veranda and had a cigar – which we did for many years after that. The next morning, I noticed that the cigar as well as the ashtray were confiscated by (my wife) Darlene. That happened to be among a long list of memorabilia that we collected,” he told the attentive crowd.

Bilinski would go on to purchase Cassidy’s Jaguar for his wife Darlene, swap his snowmobile for Cassidy’s jet boat, take up the singer’s invitation to travel overseas and watch him perform in London, as well as end up with a bounty of signed record albums.

“He came to our farm many times. We sat on the porch discussing life and discussing entertainers: The Stones, The Beatles – some of these were heroes of mine back in the day, and he knew most of these people,” Bilinski said. “We would watch the horses, coming in and out from the fields. It became an important friendship for Darlene and I.”

Darlene Bilinski shared her own memories, which spanned from her childhood to the present day. “When I was a little girl, my girlfriend and I had tea parties. One of us would be Mrs. Cassidy and one of us would be Mrs. Osmond. There was a Bobby Sherman in there once as well, I think, but we would usually fight over David,” she said, with a laugh. “He was a great friend, a great guy. I loved him and miss him. I talked to him just before he died. I asked him: Do you want me to come down? He said, ‘No, I’ll be there next summer.’ We know that didn’t happen, but I feel he is with us, this evening.”

“David just loved it here and I can see now why this was his favorite place,” Cox said. “He was an entertainer and performer, but he was so much more to us, like a friend, there at down moments of our lives with a caring heart…I had an extremely difficult childhood. David’s music lifted my spirits. It inspired me to not give up.”

It would be inaccurate to hear a fan’s appreciation for Cassidy and categorize it simply a walk down memory lane. Many who attended the weekend events in Cassidy’s honor spoke of the music as an inspiration that helped transcend awkward and often difficult times: an escape, perhaps, or a technique more likely to carve of their own a new reality. And it was to the person who had provided this hope, to whom they were paying tribute.

The May 20 event was initially intended to be a one-time gathering, but in its aftermath, Cox expressed the desire to turn May 20 in Saratoga Springs David Cassidy Day into an annual event.

The David Cassidy Tribute Concert concert, featuring members of Cassidy’s band, will be staged Aug. 14 at the Horseshoe Inn. Tickets are $50 and are being made available via the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s web site.