THE BLUE RIBBONS

Event is 21+ $15/$18 "The Blue Ribbons’ latest album, 2024’s “Forever, But Not For Long,” has plenty of pop hooks. Or rather, it had plenty of them before the band took sledgehammers and scalpels to most of the pretty bits. “It took a while to get the bones of some of the tunes down just so we could break them,” bandleader James Rohr told Herald with a laugh. Local champs the Blue Ribbons are a pop band in the same way that the Beatles or Steely Dan or Television are pop bands in that they like pop but “aren’t too precious about the songs,” Rohr said. Bob Bradshaw is a storyteller. And like any good storyteller, he possesses the ability to transform himself right before your very eyes, to not only craft a compelling cast of characters, but to inhabit them with complete and utter conviction. Take a listen to Bradshaw’s captivating new album, The Ghost Light, and you’ll find a true chameleon at work. One moment he’s an impulsive daredevil plunging over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel; the next, a sea-weary pirate lured to his death by a choir of sirens. More often than not, though, he’s simply one of us, just an ordinary, everyday soul searching for meaning, hope, and redemption wherever he can find it.