THE BLACK BOX to Feature Bands of Roy and Madden

Did you know your local Rep. rocks out on guitar and that your local car dealer has been playing keyboard for most of his life? This month, on April 8 at THE BLACK BOX, Rep. Jeff Roy’s band, Ben Gardner’s Boat, and Barry Madden’s (of Franklin Ford) band, The Chick Magnets, will play together for a fun night out.
Last summer, Raye Lynn Mercer, director of the Franklin School for the Performing Arts, approached me. I had heard Jeff Roy had a band as well. At the time she said, ‘I’d like to get a couple people here and do a night, like a cabaret night with two different bands.’”
That night actually took place on November 13, which, unfortunately, turned out to be the same night of the Paris terror attacks.
“That kind of put a tough spin on it, but we still managed to pull close to 100 people in,” says Madden. “Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. When we finished the night, Alan Mercer said to me, ‘Let’s do this again.’”
“It was a lot of fun,” says Rep. Jeff Roy. “It was the first time we had played with another band. Neither one had heard the other band play, so we were a little uncertain, but both bands complemented one another. It was four hours of nonstop music. At end of the show, both bands got up together and played a couple of songs. It was a tremendous experience.”
The two bands are very different. Ben Gardner’s Boat is a group of five who have played together since the 1990s, four of whom went to high school together, including two from Milford, one from Uxbridge, one from Framingham and Roy, from Franklin.
While Roy’s band centers on guitar, Madden’s 7-piece group, most of whom play other instruments, including brass, does a lot of Rhythm and Blues and older rock and roll, including songs Madden calls “a lost jukebox selection.”
Madden, who’s been with his group for two and a half years, says he plays for the joy of doing it. “I had my first rock and roll band before I had a driver’s license,” he says. “My Dad, Jack Madden, before he went into the car business, was a guitar player in a big band, a 12-piece orchestra along the genre of Glenn Miller, and he had us all take music lessons when we were young. I started when I was 5 years old and have been playing piano since then.”
Madden says making music “gives me tremendous enjoyment and tremendous stress release. It’s an alter ego to what I’m doing during the day. Rock and roll keeps you very young.”
Similarly, Roy, who says he picked up his first instrument as a second grader and began as a cello player, has played guitar since high school. His band mainly plays for charity events, such as Best Buddies, the Pan Mass Challenge and school functions, but they get together every Thursday for practice, something he calls akin to a bowling league.
“It’s cathartic, getting together to make music,” says Roy, “I tell people I wish more people in government would think like orchestras do. The violins complement what the cellos do. Everyone works together to make the others look good.”
Admission to the April 8 show at THE BLACK BOX, 15 West Central St., Franklin, is $15, and the show starts at 8 p.m. For information or to buy tickets in advance, visit www.theblackboxonline.com.