Bob Dylan's Grandmother gathers back together to play trio of dates

By Heather Crabtree

The Entertainer

ALBANY - It was in August 2006 that Tom LePage, lead singer and guitarist for mid-valley band Bob Dylan's Grandmother, headed off to Troy, N.Y., to pursue a master's degree in architectural acoustics.

With LePage gone and his North Albany home - the band's practice space - up for sale, it seemed the "Grannies" had dissolved with no idea whether it would be a permanent state.

One year later, the question has been answered.

Bob Dylan's Grandmother will take the stage from 8 to 10 p.m. Friday, Aug. 17, at Boccherini's Coffee & Tea House, 208 First Ave., in Albany.

It is the first of three performances, with the second set for 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 24, at Jamocha Joe's, 6020 N.W. William R. Carr St., in Adair Village.

The third show will be at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 1, on stage two in the South Beach Marina in Newport. The band will open for Johnny Limbo and the Lugnuts as part of "Happy Days on the Bay," a fundraiser for the Lincoln County Children's Advocacy Center.

LePage is back in Albany with a degree in hand, and the band even has its old practice space back, because the house never sold.

It made a smooth transition for the Grannies - who met and first started playing together in 2001 at area blues jams - to regroup.

During the hiatus, bassist Bill Veley and drummer Mike Sessa didn't play that much. Veley occupied his time by occasionally going to a blues jam and handling bookings for several area venues - a job which LePage previous handled.

Sessa had no desire to play without the guys he also views as friends.

"We were wandering in the night," Sessa said regarding the lapse.

Then when LePage returned, it was like they had never missed a rehearsal, Veley said.

The set list for each of the shows will include about half-a-dozen originals as well as some Dylan classics.

"I wrote a song about the perfect day in the fall," LePage said. "By the time I got done with it, it was 10 minutes long, and I knew there was a single in their somewhere."

That song, "A Perfect Day in the Fall," will be on the play list for the Grannies at each of the performances.

"It's part of a piece we call the 'Bennington Suite'," LePage said. "It's a story about my trip to New York in a sense - what was good and what was not. We took the part that was best and made it a separate song."

The band is working on a demo of original material.

For more information on Bob Dylan's Grandmother, check out www.sonic

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grandmother.