Peter Stampfel Brings The Unexpected

“Oh, you have no idea what’s gonna happen to you tonight,” said folk legend Peter Stampfel, climbing onto the small stage in the side room of Never Ending Books, at 810 State St. He pulled his chair closer to the mic, plugged in his electric ukulele, and opened a plastic water bottle and a bag of cherries. Supplies in place, Stampfel prepared to bring his audience into a new realm of music: hopeful, nihilistic, at once pushing boundaries and revisiting tradition, and all perfumed with the earthy scent of marijuana.

Peter Stampfel made an indelible mark on American music in the early 1960s as a founding member, with Steve Weber, of the Holy Modal Rounders, a group that infused traditional American music with a heavy dose of psychedelica and, in so doing, became one of the points at which the oldest and the most far-out music in the United States met. Scholars have credited the group’s 1964 song ​“Hesitation Blues” as the first to use the word ​“psychedelic” in a lyric. For a time, the band included playwright Sam Shepard. The Holy Modal Rounders’ influence reverberated beyond their 1960s and 1970s notoriety, as in the decades since, they have acted as the gonzo cousins to Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, inspiring countless other musicians to take deep dives into American folk music to find the dark and weird within.

The crowd packed inside Never Ending Books made the most of the space (“I’ve never seen them put so many chairs in here,” said one audience member). The cramped quarters contributed an air of intimacy to the room, fostering communication and collaboration. Stampfel recalled a traditional storyteller as he sat on his plastic chair, making eye contact with each person in turn as he spoke and sang directly to them. His movements wild but deliberate, he commanded the stage more with a turn of his head than if he had flung his body around an arena.

Stampfel has dysphonia, a vocal impediment that causes hoarse and breathy speech. But he wielded his voice with the same prowess as his ukulele, every false note an intentional component to an elusive and organic sound. ​“I’ve been working with people who help me with it, so my voice tonight is unprecedented,” said Stampfel. ​“You’ve never heard my voice like this before.”

Everything that Stampfel did or said felt unprecedented, and it felt easier to succumb to his magnetic force than to try and find the logic in its ebb and flow. He opened with a song called ​“Down There,” harnessing the audience’s energy: ​“Come on everybody, we’re gonna have some fun down there.” 

Throughout the performance, Stampfel interrupted his set list to improvise little chants and ditties. An engaging performer, he alternated between characters, fluctuated from howls to growls, whispers to shouts. His passion filled the room like a drug, stronger even than all the weed. ​“I applaud the music, I applaud the muses!” Stampfel shouted, before breaking into rhyme with the ease of a tenured songwriter: ​“The muses nine are mighty fine.”

Between his personal anecdotes and the fresh verses that seemed to come to him without effort, it took a while for Stampfel to notice that he had only actually performed a single song. The audience didn’t seem to mind, but Stampfel awarded himself a penance for his distraction. ​“My penance is to restrain myself,” he said, promising to sing the next three songs without talking to the crowd.

“We’ll see about that,” said someone.

“We’ll hold you to it, Peter!” chimed in another voice. Already, an established camaraderie had formed between audience and performer, like a group of old friends reuniting to pass around some tunes.

Stampfel next played ​“Graveyard,” a song that married sly implications of graveyard sex with Hamlet-like musings on mortality. He followed it with the equally fun and morbid ​“Zombie Cowboy,” and the at once hopeful and hopeless ​“I Don’t Know.” ​“Are we gonna make it? I don’t know / Think the world can take it? I don’t know / Do I have an answer or a fucking clue / Why the fuck would anybody think I do?” asked Stampfel, a jaded master bestowing his wisdom upon the group of rapt disciples.

Having successfully completed three songs without interruption, Stampfel allowed himself to address the audience again. ​“I’ve written a whole bunch of short songs — I’m calling them shorties — using aphorisms,” he explained. Stampfel rejected the first aphorism ​“Find a way to love everything,” after some consideration. Some things he simply couldn’t love; he used child rape and the Holocaust as two of his examples. Instead, Stampfel amended the aphorism: ​“Find a way to love everything that happened to you / There is always something you can do / Two ears, one mouth, for a reason / learn something from everyone,” he sang.

During lockdown, Stampfel explained that he had decided to use his extra free time to learn to meditate. After finding that Facebook held more answers to his question than Google or Wikipedia, he purchased a book on mediation written by a collection of monks. ​“One of the points was when you start your meditation you project love,” he said, his speech peppered with additional profanity. ​“I thought, how do I try to articulate that?” He answered his own question with a song called ​“Love to Every…” that sought to uncover the affection buried in every living thing. ​“Love for every single atom of every sentient being that ever existed or ever will,” he sang. ​“Love, love, love.”

Next, Stampfel presented his take on the classic ​“bad guy song,” updated to represent the absolute worst human being he could imagine. ​“New Fiddler’s Dram” captures the dark heart of a ​“father-raping, matricidal, eye-gouging skullfucker,” in Stampfel’s own words.

“That’s cool!” said an audience member.

“That’s bad,” agreed another, in an equally admiring tone.

Stampfel challenged the audience to find the one fake name in a list of fiddle tunes that comprised one of the verses. To everyone’s surprise, ​“Diving for Clams” nor ​“Can’t Hold a Candle” both proved real, and the believable title ​“Bonny Blood Sword” proved false. Stampfel agreed with the audience that he would have to write it someday.

Justin Joffe joined Stampfel on stage to perform ​“Euphoria” by the Holy Modal Rounders. Joffe played the mandolin and sang backup vocals as the crowd raised their voices to sing: ​“Euphoria, when your mind starts wheeling and a‑walking / Your inside voices start squealing and a squawking / Floating around on a belladonna cloud / Singing eu-phoria.”

Stampfel took a 15-minute intermission where he sold CDs, vinyls, and copies of his book, Stampfel On Weber and The Complete Boston Broadsides 1964 – 1967. His fans lined up to purchase merchandise and get Stampfel’s signature — on vinyls, books, and even a guitar that one audience member brought along specifically for that purpose.

The second half of Stampfel’s set proceeded, smaller and more subdued. He performed a selection of covers, such as the ​“bent” version of ​“Buzz, Buzz, Buzz” by The Hollywood Argyles. Stampfel alternated between poignant melodies like ​“Candle in the Wind” (not the Elton John classic, but an original of the same name) and political powerhouses like ​“Moments to…” inspired by the ​“lice-beard dickwad” Brett Kavanaugh.

Stampfel finished the night with ​“Got to Get a Girl,” a song he found in a 1920s book of 1,000 songs. He had made true his promise from the start of his set. Stampfel brought the audience inside Never Ending Books from rollicking laughter to meditative thought with all the skill and ease of someone who knows what they have to say, and how they want it said. He shocked, he amused, and he conveyed a startling message on the state of the world. In short, Peter Stampfel did everything except the expected.