Our Friends
This is what we do. We play music we love in live situations to audiences that hopefully like the same type of music or will like it if we play it well......and we've been doing this for many years......way over a thousand times......at hundreds of venues.
What happens is what a band hopes will happen, a fanbase develops that will follow the band to wherever they play. If the band can realize their place or "niche" in their field and capitalize on it, they may keep their fans and build more.
I feel pretty safe to say that all bands in the beginning have hopes of making it big in some way. What means more is what the band does when that doesn't come to fruition. We have seen and heard many instances over the years of bands breaking up because of that. But Lichen is a survivor of sorts. We always keep plugging along, doing what needs to be done.
We were put to the test in 2021 when John was diagnosed with tongue cancer and had to have surgery to remove most of it. We were shot from a cannon so-to-speak out of our comfort zone of 40 years of our roles playing in our band. But we did not give up! Johns recovery took many months including simultaneous chemotherapy and radiation treatment, but he recovered in most ways better than before.
After those months, we began a new process of choosing new music and learning to sing songs we didn't sing before. We chose new music: to do something different, to choose songs with a positive message or just because they are fun to play. Some of the songs we always played were tricky to play our parts and now singing it also.
When we found our niche in the earlier years and we were playing every week for almost 20 years, we kept it exciting and fresh by doing over 300 songs. We were not a Dead cover band, but we could have been if we wanted to. We love so many bands, singers, songwriters, that we played all kinds of songs and "Our Friends" loved it and the variety kept them coming and interested. Some of the venues would change owners/names and we would still be playing there.
We realize the great importance that our friends have made in our Lichen life and we are thankful. We also appreciate everyone for their support and patience as we work through changes.
We have lost some dear friends recently and in recent years and it is hard to look out to the crowd and not see them there or hope to see them in the future. There are pictures of our friends and family and Lichen players on other pages at this website.
click on the links: https://www.lichenarchives.com/lichen-friends
Tonight we are playing outside at the Stark Brewery from 7:00-10:00. Hope to see our friends as we send our instruments and voices out over the Merrimack River in beautiful downtown Manchester because.......this is what we do.