Anne Marie Menta Trio
Audio Feed
Connecticut Old State House
Hartford
Sept. 24, 2024
Summer is officially over, but the Summer Series continued at the Old State House with the Anne Marie Menta Trio.
I arrived at the concert just as the trio was finishing an acoustic rendition of “Got to Know” from her third album, Seven Secrets. I wish I had gotten to the performance just a few minutes earlier, as the ending harmonizing that I heard among Anne Marie Menta, the lead singer, Armand Morgan on guitar, and Dan Martin on bass instantly entranced me. The studio version is good, but has nothing on hearing it live.
According to Menta, who’s from the New Haven area, the trio performs folk-based Americanna with country influences. She said that country was perhaps the largest influence on her music, as she’d spent many years in country music bands during the 1980s. I could definitely hear it in her lyrics, which dealt with lost love to the struggles of everyday life.
The penultimate song of the set was a song called “Miner’s Luck.” Menta sang the tale of a family trying to make ends meet while avoiding the dreaded mines with tenderness that doesn’t pity the subjects of her songs. That’s one of the key aspects of Menta’s music. Aside from the beauty of her voice, Menta modulates her style to match with the overall themes of her music. It brings the subjects of her songs to life in a way that not many other performers can.
This year is the 25th anniversary of her first album, Untried and True. To celebrate, Menta decided to reconnect with Morgan and Martin, the artists she’d recorded that album with, for a show. They had so much fun playing together again that they’ve been working together ever since. She’d been very happy with their “unexpected reunion.”
For her concert at the Old State House, Menta said that she decided to dig through her entire catalog. Although she has a new album out, she realized that people like me had never heard her previous works before.
That led me to ask her a question I’ve wanted to ask a singer forever: How does it feel to play her old music? Did it get boring playing something that she’s played so many times already?
“It feels fantastic bringing back old songs,” she said. “We’re 25 years in, so we’re improving them, and bringing that many more years of playing and experience to them.
“Not to down my younger self, but I hope I’m better now than I was then!” she said with a laugh.
I appreciate Audio Feed’s promotion of outdoor music because it allows people to stumble through and discover wonderful artists like Anne Marie Menta and the other artists who performed this season. I was a little frustrated though by the incredible amount of ambient noise that nearly drowned out the great music I was hearing. I had to scrap several recordings that I intended to use in this review because of construction sounds and sirens blaring as emergency vehicles raced down Main Street. I suppose there’s not much that can be done about that, but it was a damper on what was otherwise my favorite concert of the season.
In any case, all of Anne Marie Menta’s music is available online, so you can listen without the distractions of city life. I highly recommend that you do.
NEXT
The Anne Marie Menta Trio next performs at Nightingale’s Acoustic Cafe in Old Lyme.
Jamil heads to his old school to check out some art.
