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NEMO: The line-ups for the sixth annual NEMO Showcase and Conference — New England’s answer to NYC’s CMJ New Music Marathon and Austin’s South by Southwest — are beginning to trickle out. Highlights will include a hip-hop showcase with Kreators, Akrobatic, and Kabir at the Middle East; a singer/songwriter showcase at Club Passim with Bill Morrissey, Ellis Paul, Gordie Sampson, and others; a Lizard Lounge pop blowout with Tracy Bonham and Kevin Salem; and a metal meltdown featuring grrrlcore faves Kittie. Also look for performances by Boston hardcore warhorses the Freeze, former New Kid Joey McIntyre, rap-metal kids Reveille, Kay Hanley, Gary Cherone’s Tribe of Judah, and the Sheila Divine. You can catch Hanley, Tribe of Judah, McIntyre, Bonham, the Sheila Divine, Morrissey, and Reveille — not to mention Godsmack — at the Boston Music Awards on April 11 at the Orpheum, the event that leads into NEMO’s two nights of mayhem in the clubs, plus a full arsenal of workshops and trade shows, on April 12 and 13. Tickets for the BMA show are $15 to $50; call (617) 931-2000. For more info on NEMO, visit www.nemoboston.com or call (781) 306-0441.

TASTES: If you read Chris Wright’s squirmy investigation into Boston’s rat crisis last week (see News, March 15), you’ll grasp the functional propriety of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay’s seventh annual "A Taste of the Back Bay" fundraiser, which features signature dishes from a couple dozen area restaurants and microbreweries. The advantages are twofold. First, you’re getting rid of the excess food that brings those rats running. And second, the event helps the NABB’s work as it addresses such issues as "crime, cleaner streets, traffic congestion . . . rodent control, and uncontrolled commercial development." Hey, there could be rats in those big office towers, too. A Taste of the Back Bay takes place April 5 at the Top of the Hub’s Skywalk, in the Prudential Building. Tickets are $65 in advance, $75 at the door. Call (617) 859-7787.

NEXT WEEKEND:

Doc Watson

Doc Watson has never practiced medicine, but the sound of his fingerpicked acoustic guitar and Southern-accented singing has a genuine soothing power. Maybe that’s because over a half-century of performing Watson, who makes a rare appearance at Club Passim’s annual benefit concert next Friday at Sanders Theatre, has distilled something into his music that seems timeless.

His repertoire is so diverse that it wipes away modern-era pressures — he draws on everything from the folk music of the hills around Deep Gap, North Carolina, where he was born 79 years ago, to Hoagy Carmichael’s "Little Old Lady" to the Moody Blues’ "Nights in White Satin." His virtuoso guitar playing is fine-chiseled and rich in its melodies; his notes are as warm and relaxing as summer raindrops. And his singing? Well, even when he made his big-city debut at New York’s fabled Gerdes Folk City in 1962 and ’63 — in a series of concerts that were finally compiled on album last year by Sugar Hill — his voice had the oaken tones of a wise and kindly grandfather.

Watson explains over the phone that age has taken a little from the low end of his voice and left him slightly hard of hearing. But he’s no less lively and compelling in concert. If anything, the blind guitarist’s white-and-silver-haired visage now seems closer to the vintage of some of his oldest songs, which deal with carrying crops to market and plowing behind mules, as well as with doomed romance and eternal love.

"I was born in the mountains," he points out, "and my folks were kind of old-timy, so that old music has never got away from me, even if I’ve learned a lot of more modern things, like ‘Nights in White Satin,’ as they came along. I suspect that subconsciously I’ve tried to keep playing songs like ‘House Carpenter’ and ‘The Dream of the Miner’s Child’ because they talk about a time in American history that’s past and I kind of like keeping those songs alive so young folks can take a good look at the spiritual building blocks of the country — the foundation we started with. I don’t know how to talk in a big, intellectual way. I mean, I couldn’t give a lecture if somebody told me they’d shoot me if I didn’t. But I can talk about those things in the music."

Watson is being modest about his oratorical powers, as anyone who’s been captivated by his on-stage county humor and between-songs storytelling can attest. His stage charm is also captured on the new live disc ’Round the Table Again (Sugar Hill), in which he’s paired with his late son Merle’s band Frosty Morn; it’ll hit the stores on April 1.

Although he announced his retirement in 1990, Watson still plays about 35 handpicked dates a year. At the Passim benefit, he’ll be joined by blues-and-roots singer/guitarist Geoff Muldaur, singer/songwriter Lori McKenna, and the all-female Canadian trio the Be Good Tanyas. The benefit is the leading fundraiser for the Cambridge folk-music institution’s music school, its Culture for Kids program, and its folk-archive project. "I love the Passim audiences," Watson explains. "They really pay attention and love good music, so this is one I’m really looking forward to."

The Club Passim Annual Benefit Concert takes place next Friday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m. at Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street in Harvard Square. Tickets are $25, $35, and $100; call (617) 496-2222.

BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Issue Date: March 21 - 28, 2002
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