Upstate Beat

A Shot of Adrenaline Incendiary trio Candy Ambulance made it through the lockdown and are ready to bust loose.

By Kirsten Ferguson

Candy Ambulance, a Troy-based rock trio known for combustible live shows, was on tour in March last year when the pandemic hit, and things started to get weird. First, the South by Southwest music and film festival in Austin, Texas, was cancelled, and then the National Basketball Association suspended its season after a player tested positive for COVID-19.

“We were out in Wisconsin when the lockdown started happening,” says guitarist and vocalist Caitlin Barker over a Zoom call, just a day after Candy Ambulance won a Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Award for alt/indie artist of the year.

“It was weird because I was getting sort of nervous. I was like, ‘Are we going to get quarantined in a different state? What’s going to happen?’ So, we ended up canceling the last half of the tour and coming back home because it was just so unknown in the Midwest. It was like the shutdowns were following us,” Barker recalls. “Normally, when we tour, we have friends that we can stay with, but that wasn’t happening. So, we were in hotels the whole time, just paranoid like, ‘Don’t touch anything.’”

For a band on tour traveling through regions that all had a different take on the impending pandemic, it was hard to gauge exactly what was happening. Friends back home told band members about the frenzied rush to snap up all the toilet paper in stores, but in the Midwest the news had yet to sink in. “It was just so weird getting phone calls like, ‘There are no groceries. It’s like an apocalypse movie. I’m so scared,’” says drummer Jon Cantiello. “I was like, ‘Really? I’m at an arcade bar right now in Wisconsin.’” able to continue practicing, at least, in the basement of their shared house. Gigs over the past year have been necessarily sparse, but the band played an audience-less livestream in February at the Hollow Bar and Kitchen in Albany with the band KWILLEO that was filmed by Mirth Films (available to view on YouTube). “It was like a shot of adrenaline,” Barker says. “We played just to the staff working the live stream, and it felt amazing. It felt so good.”

The past year hasn’t been all for naught. During the pandemic, Candy Ambulance recorded a yet-to-be released E.P. with two musical artists they admire: Ellen Kempner, front person of the indie rock group Palehound, and Nick Kinsey, drummer for Waxahatchee and Kevin Morby, at Kinsey’s recording studio in a Hudson Valley barn. The E.P. is a follow up to Candy Ambulance’s last full-length album, 2019’s Traumantic, a raw, emotional release recorded and produced by legendary musician Tommy Stinson (The Replacements, Guns N’ Roses, Bash & Pop).

“It was really beautiful,” Barker says of Kinsey’s farm where the latest recording took place. “You can hear crickets chirping on all the tracks, and there were dogs to pet.”

“We could just walk around and be like, ‘There’s some geese, there’s a horse,” adds Cantiello. “And it was cool because both Nick and Ellen played [on the recording]. Nick played an organ, and Ellen played guitar on most of the tracks. So, we got to collaborate with them, too.”

The last year was one of personal growth for Candy Ambulance. Cantiello and Bolduc worked on a side project called Tauroctony with childhood friends, a concept album with a breezy synth-pop feel. The pandemic also made the band even more appreciative of the local music scene, where they find themselves in kinship with artists like Belle Skinner (see last month’s column), Girl Blue, Laveda, and Dark Honey. “I’m just a really big fan of local musicians. It’s hard not to be involved with all the awesome talent around here,” says Bolduc, who works as a local recording engineer and producer (jessebolduc.com).

“I feel like everyone [in the band] just got really focused independently this year,” Barker says. “I think that’s been the most exciting thing, that we’ve all personally put in a lot of effort and grown as musicians and explored new gear. I feel like we expanded. We got closer just by calming the fuck down and not trying to go, go, go, go.”

After all that introspection and self-reflection, Candy Ambulance is ready to explode onstage. “I think we’re going to seem tighter,” Barker says of when the band resumes playing live. “I'm ready to just pack a punch. I’m so excited to play.”

Getting Your Licks In

by Karen Richman

In my town it was called Strubbes. In yours it might have been Mike’s or Wolf’s or O'Leary’s, but it didn't matter what it was called. It's what it was that was important, and what it was, was pure heaven. It was that marvelous sanctuary known as the old-fashioned ice cream parlor. Not a pre-fabricated stand, not a truck driving through the neighborhood playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" ad nauseum, but a parlor.

Just thinking about that wonderful word now I get the shivers...not out of emotion, but because I remember the cold. Ice cream parlors were always dark and cold back then...that was part of their glorious, delicious mystery and charm.

It all started at the front door of Strubbes. It was a heavy door rimmed in dark wood with a big pane of glass and blinds over the glass to keep out the hot New Jersey summer sun. It took a lot to push that door open, but the rewards were great once you got inside. Strubbes had a tile floor with a