EASTHAMPTON – Thanksgiving weekend has long served as a time for old friends – especially those who have moved away – to get together and renew connections.
But for Chicopee native Ryan Jalbert, the holiday get-together has morphed and grown into a show that is now celebrating its 13th anniversary. The annual “Jalbatross” concert will be held at the Marigold Theater in Easthampton on Nov. 28 at 8:30 p.m.
Jalbert grew up in Chicopee and became interested in music due to his parents’ huge record collection. He noted his father was a record collector and also played a bit of harmonica. “We’re going to actually make him play a little harmonica with us at the show,” Jalbert said.
He wound up taking guitar lessons and fell in love with the instrument, which led him to study jazz guitar at Westfield State University. Looking for a bit of a post-college adventure, Jalbert followed a friend to Boulder, Colorado.
“I just kind of tagged along,” he said. “I thought it was going to be about six months or a year or something, but 20-something years later, here we are.”
As fortune would have it, Jalbert almost immediately joined the band he is still in, The Motet. But he’d return for the holidays to see friends, and in 2012, he started the “Jalbatross” shows to play with his brother, Colin, who is a drummer.
“I would fly back, and it was just a way for me and my brother to have a lot of friends out and play some music. We did a lot of cover songs,” he said. “‘Jalbatross’ was just sort of an umbrella term I used for different projects. But it was really meant for me and my brother Colin. I was always writing original music. I just never got around to recording it.”
COVID changed all that. When the pandemic hit, Jalbert was approaching his 40th birthday and hadn’t achieved his goal of recording original music.
“I hadn’t checked that box,” he said with a laugh. “So, my brother came out to Colorado, and we recorded the record.”
While the record is all instrumental, Jalbert said the show will mostly feature songs with vocals.
“There’s all this vocal music I wanted to do, and because now it’s a bigger event, it allows me to augment the lineup and bring in our friend Erica Tracy who’s in a band called West End Blend and she’s amazing and I’ve always wanted to work with her,” Jalbert said. “She just brings the house down.”
The show will also have another local angle: The bass player at the show will be the one he used on the record, who just happens to be Jalbert’s old friend Tim Philpott, originally from Holyoke, who now lives in Denver, Colorado. The band is rounded out by Brattleboro-based keyboardist Kris Yunker.
“When we started it, our friends were young, and they didn’t have kids so they’re always looking for a reason to come out to the bars around Thanksgiving or whatever. So, it was kind of just a fun thing,” Jalbert said. “We never thought it would sustain for this long, but it’s turned into this sort of a reunion, and the amazing thing is that it kept growing. Even our friends who had families were still coming out.”
Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. For more information, go online to marigold.org/jalbatross/.
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