‘Music with the Mayor’ fills the Kyrouz with music | News


The taping of the latest episode of 1623 Studios’ “Music with the Mayor” on Friday had the melodious indie rock sounds of Gloucester band Surname filling the Fred J. Kyrouz Memorial Auditorium upstairs in City Hall.

“Music with the Mayor” is a local access show hosted by Mayor Greg Verga, a bass player and guitarist who plays in his own band and has in the past hosted the podcast “Unfinished Music.”

“Music with the Mayor” is a collaboration of Verga and 1623 Studios, and it is meant to highlight the musical talents of those on the i,sland, giving local musicians the ability to showcase their talents and chat with Verga, who took office in January 2022.

Past episodes have featured Allen Estes, Chris Fritz-Grice and the Island Cowboy, John Jerome, with Geoff Small filming in the corner of the mayor’s office. Vergahas also hosted in his office Annette Dion and Corey Wrinn with those episodes to appear in the coming months.

On Nov. 4, however, 1623 Studios set up lights and brought in four cameras and a crew to film Surnames, whose lineup on stage in the Kyrouz featured Liam Anastasia-Murphy on lead vocals and guitar, Christian Towler on bass and vocals and Jessie Kessler on drums. All three are from Gloucester and all three are Gloucester High graduates. Verga also played some tunes with them.

“I just think it’s the next step in the ‘Music with the Mayor’ series,” Verga said. “This is the first time we have had a band. We’ve had mostly solo artists, guitar, vocals … This was too big for the office so we moved it up here. We would like to do this with more, bigger bands, you know.”

Verga said the Kyrouz might make a good event space, someday. He was telling Anastasia-Murphy it used to host boxing matches and there was a circus held here over the years.

“I pointed to the mayors up there with the muttonchops. This is an old building so a lot of stuff was going on,” he said, “because this was pretty much it back in the day. I think Gloucester is well known for painting, sculpture, things like that. We’ve always had the music, too, but it’s been played in the bars and the clubs, so I just want to bring it back to the forefront that we do have a lot of not just cover bands, which I think are great, but a lot of original music being written around there.”

Members of The Surnames also have another band called Rob Banks and the Money Makers, Verga said, a cover band which is the house band at Blue Collar Lobster Co. on Rogers Street.

“I was really excited when he reached out to me months ago and we could set it up and we loved to be on his podcast back in the day and it lined up really well with us because we were just starting to play live again,” Anastasia-Murphy said. The band took a hiatus but now they have three new tunes that came out in the past few months. “This was great timing to do a little studio performance like this,” he said.

Ethan Forman may be contacted at 978-675-2714,or at eforman@northofboston.com.




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