At Fenway, Hot Stove charity jam yields lots of cool tunes and cold cash
Hot Stove, Cool Music — the Fenway Park Sessions
With: Fountains of Wayne, Ben Kweller, Bronson Arroyo, Buffalo Tom, Kay Hanley, Juliana Hatfield, the Gentlemen, and Peter Gammons and the Hot Stove All Stars
At: Fenway Park, Saturday
It's a lot easier to strap on a guitar than it is to throw a knuckleball, which is probably a good thing for the annual Hot Stove, Cool Music fund-raiser.
The cream of Boston's indie-rock community joined forces and shared amplifiers with baseball's musically inclined elite on Saturday to raise more than a quarter of a million dollars for Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein's A Foundation to Be Named Later, which benefits at-risk youth.
Now in its fifth year, Hot Stove, Cool Music relocated from the Paradise nightclub to Fenway Park for its first summertime version. Despite the loss to the Yankees earlier in the day, the event was a spirited and spirit-lifting effort, and there's little doubt that the setting inspired a particular generosity among concert-goers.
Not to suggest that ESPN commentator and HSCM cofounder Peter Gammons didn't wow the crowd with ''She Fell From Heaven," a barn-burning original that is, by all accounts, the first song ever to use Karl Rove as a verb. But it was the prospect of a ''Night of Love," complete with four monster seats at a Sox game, that fetched $7,000 during one of the evening's many between-set mini-auctions.
In addition to reconvening local heroes Buffalo Tom, Juliana Hatfield, Kay Hanley, and the Gentlemen, event coordinators upped the ante this year by booking power-pop darlings Fountains of Wayne and alt-rock singer-songwriter Ben Kweller. Kweller opened the show with a fabulously scrappy set that included a cover of the Beatles' ''One After 909," featuring Boston's Phil Aiken on keyboards.
Tim Wakefield must have managed to squeeze some lessons in during the off-season; the Stetson-topped pitcher provided solid rhythm guitar during Gammons's Hot Stove All Stars' set. And a gum-chewing Epstein, who later confirmed backstage that he did indeed close his eyes and pretend to be Pete Townshend, inhabited his Buffalo Theo alter-ego for a jangle-rock love-in with Buffalo Tom.
Without his heavily credentialed backing band, cover boy Bronson Arroyo -- who performed tunes by his favorite '90s bands -- erred on the side of mellow. The swaying female fans, however, hands clasped in prayer position, didn't seem to mind.
Fountains of Wayne closed the show with a set featuring, appropriately enough, a big hit -- ''Stacey's Mom" -- and sent the crowd of more than 4,000 home with a grand-slam medley of Billy Idol's ''White Wedding," Steve Miller's ''Jet Airliner," and their own ''Radiation Vibe," which celebrates the rise and fall of a crooning pro athlete.
