The Bargain
Eli Whitney Barn
Hamden
Oct. 4
The band The Bargain played a show in a barn on Saturday night. That is not a typo. It was not a bar, but a barn — the Eli Whitney Barn, to be exact.
The show kicked off October in the Barn, a new series being presented at the 200-plus-year-old building on the site of the inventor’s actual farmstead which is located, appropriately enough, across the street from the Eli Whitney Museum on — yes — Whitney Avenue.
While the barn has been the site of many regular events over the years, it has not held regular concerts in a long time. The Bargain began this latest series — one that will include two more Saturday night concerts as well as the two day-long Amplify the Arts event that has been held there since 2023 — with a show that emphasized the best of what live local music is all about: bringing folks together in community to share, listen, sing, and even dance a little if you are so inclined (and faithful readers will know this reporter is always inclined).
The Bargain is a trio of singer-songwriters – who can also be described as best friends/brothers in song – who include Frank Critelli on vocals (and on this evening an occasional tambourine), Muddy Rivers on guitar and vocals, and Shandy Lawson on guitar, mandolin, and vocals. They often record and play live as a full five-piece band, which is what happened on Saturday night. That band included Bobo Lavorgna on upright bass and Jim Stavris on drums and percussion. Another bonus: singer-songwriter Brian Larney joined the band on keys for the evening. Critelli noted that Larney was originally only supposed to be contributing to five songs, but when he joined in on songs he didn’t know, he sounded so great that they decided to have him play the whole show (fabulous decision, guys!).
The band dived right into the first set with “Baby, You Tell Me” which begins with the line, “Ain’t nothing to do today but smile and smile.” How apropos, not just because it’s the opening song of their January 2025 album aptly titled Smile and Smile, but because that’s pretty much what to expect from The Bargain live: lots of smiles. Their catalogue of songs, which are written around Critelli’s kitchen table, is at times playful, poignant, poetic, and even sort of prayerlike, mostly in the sense that you want to repeat them, take their lessons to heart, and share them with the rest of the world.
Critelli led the way through most of the evening, offering brief explanations of what the songs were about, asking everyone if they needed anything or wanted to talk about anything themselves, and even paying homage to another local music legend, the late Rob Callahan, who Critelli called “an absolute wonderful champion of the Connecticut music scene” who not only led the Greater New Haven Acoustic Music Society, but also booked shows at the barn back in the ’90s. Critelli himself said he had played there back then as well, opening for Aztec Two Step.
And speaking of two-step, a couple of times as the band played Critelli made his way off the stage, which was in the loft area of the barn, to the crowd below, even swinging from the beam over the stairway and dancing through the crowd, encouraging others to dance along with him. While introducing the song “Lady Mondegreen,” he said “this is a singalong, all of our songs are singalongs” and if you have been to more than one of The Bargain’s shows you most likely have had some of those lyrics settle into your soul, enabling you to easily join in.
Before the break, during which Critelli said the band would be coming down and saying hi to everyone, the band played the song “The Last Sunrise” which he said was a song about “the last day of your life.”
“How do you want to spend your time if this is your last sunrise,” he sang. As always, there was much to ponder.
During the break many made their way to the food truck parked outside called La Cocine De Sandra, which on that evening was offering each concert ticket holder an order of pupusas, a tortilla stuffed with various fillings and topped with curtido, a pickled cabbage slaw, and a side of salsa. My husband ate both of ours as I was too occupied reporting (I did get to eat some of the crisp and tangy curtido though). He enjoyed them and said they reminded him of a stuffed fried dough.
Before the second set began Lavorgna came to the mic and took a moment to thank Ryan Paxton, executive director of the Eli Whitney Museum, for opening up the barn for music again. And when the music began once more, it was from the trio – Critelli, Rivers, and Lawson – who came down to the floor right in front of the crowd with no mics for two songs, unplugged but no less impactful.
When they went back up to the stage and joined the rest of the band, they added what Critelli described as a “sexy” song, a song about “driving around,” and a song called “A Novel Idea” which Critelli said was about a “really bad idea.” Lawson seamlessly floated between guitar and mandolin, sometimea even within the same song, as he and Rivers, always smiling while strumming, both harmonized with Critelli. Stavris and Lavorgna kept the rhythm kicking, and Larney added in his own sweetness via his keys. It was the perfect mélange of music, and when the trio came back down for two more short songs to end the night, Critelli performed part of one of them on bended knee. I almost genuflected myself. They were that good.
The crowd loved it all as well, with many staying afterwards to talk it up with the band about the music and the barn itself, some having been there before even as far back as the ’80s for shows. Paxton also spoke to us as well as others as they were leaving, talking about the history of the museum and barn, as well as plans for even more events in the future.
“We’re bringing the barn back to life,” he said with a big smile.
And we too left the barn under the light of an almost full moon with a smile and smile.
For more information about The Bargain’s music and future shows, please see their Facebook and/or Instagram pages. For more information about October in the Barn events, please see the Eli Whiney Museum website and/or their pages.
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