nothin Goodnight Blue Moon Brings It All Back Home | New Haven Independent

Goodnight Blue Moon Brings It All Back Home

Everyone’s from everywhere,” said frontman Erik Elligers of Goodnight Blue Moon from the stage last Wednesday, as the band kicked off the Twilight Concert Series on the lawn of the historic Pardee-Morris House in Morris Cove. The sounds of light traffic beyond the hedges were the only reminder we were not in the country. The lawn filled with fans on picnic blankets and folding chairs. Encouraged by Elligers, young and old took to their feet, clapped, and danced. The lawn crowd swelled with passersby and neighbors who joined concertgoers, whether they boogied down or lounged in the dying light and the plentiful shade of a nearby tree.

Goodnight Blue Moon takes its name from two children’s books, Goodnight Moon and Tales from the Blue Moon Café, as well as the old bluegrass standard Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Their songs, which employ cello, banjo, fiddle, and trumpet along with guitar, upright bass, and drums, pull from various American styles of music, from pop and rock to folk and jazz. Its members hail from all over Connecticut and New England. But they have become fixtures of the New Haven music scene, and they put together their music in a way that seems particular to where they live. The muse for their latest EP, A Girl I Never Met, is none other than Fair Haven itself.

It’s an oyster neighborhood,” Elligers said, and so the EP’s cover art is oyster inspired; its case even opens like a well-shucked shell. One of its songs, The Ballad of Jeanne Christine,” is named after a fishing ship, as it might pass down the Quinnipiac past the house where Erik lives with his wife, Nancy Matlack, the group’s cellist. Another track, Captain’s Church,” is based on an anonymous 18th-century poem about a hurricane that demolished the highest steeple along the Quinnipiac, which sailors once used to navigate.

Goodnight Blue Moon’s love for New Haven and its vibrant history shines through every verse, and makes for a rollicking show. Last Wednesday the band sounded like it has played together forever, amplifying the vibe that swept the crowd. It’s hard to have a bad time when the musicians so clearly enjoy themselves, even when the sun is in your eyes.

The Pardee-Morris House’s Twilight Concert Series continues with Seth Adam on July 8, Prester John on July 22, and the Meadows Brothers on August 5.

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