It's all Gloucester all night tonight in one of the main rooms of the Boston music scene.
That's when Inge Berge will rock the House of Blues famed front room with his Berge Band, following a 9 p.m. opening set by the newly-formed, Gloucester-based Bandit Kings.
And a bus full of Gloucester music fans will be going along for the ride, thanks to a charter provided by the two groups.
For Berg, whose big guitar acoustic sound has long been a staple on the small stages of Gloucester's late-night scene, the House of Blues gig is a golden opportunity, but Boston's Fenway neighborhood is familiar territory.
It was nearby Berklee College of Music that first drew the Norwegian native to America's shores back in 1989 when the young virtuoso — he plays 15 instruments, not including his voice — hoped to add his name to the legendary list of Euro-talents scoring films for the big silver screens of Hollywood.
Instead, Berge found himself recruited by the Gloucester Stage Company, scoring music for productions as resident music director. It wasn't Hollywood, but it was a highly respected spawning ground of original talents and material that gave Berge free reign to experiment — writing, arranging and performing for productions which included debut works by prolific playwright, Israel Horovitz.
When the curtain went down on an evening's production, Berge would get down to serious jamming with local musicians, and over the next few years, he banded and disbanded with a few of them, cultivating quite a cult following on Cape Ann, and finding in the comfort zone of kindred spirited musicians a bond that felt like family.
That bond will be much in evidence at the House of Blues tonight, when Gloucester bassist Joe Cardozza crosses over to play with both bands. Cardozza, who along with Gloucester drummer Leo Sharamitero, plays regularly with Berge, is also a member of the newly launched Bandit Kings.
"Gloucester's like that," says Bandits' founder and Gloucester native Dan King. "Everyone jams with everyone, the lines get blurred, and it's all just about making great music."
For Berge, who's theatrical resume also gets him frequently recruited off-island to play the bigger billboards of Broadway-sized productions, the past 10 years have, among other things, seen him on lead guitar in a national tour of "Footloose: The Musical" and The Who's "Tommy" in Tokyo.
But no matter where he is, he is always working on several fronts.
One of them is the recording studio, where his film-scoring background becomes apparent in his multi-layered, texturally complex electronic soundscapes. He loves the shock and chaos of discordancy, but his reviewers seem to love his more lyrical work, with its more subtle, sophisticated phrasing.
Reviewers are drawn to Berge as a musician's musician, and their observations have a lot in common. He is widely regarded as a natural melodist to whom catchy, pop phrasing comes easily. Perhaps so easily that he undervalues it.
"Berge goes to great lengths to be as discordant and perverse as possible," says one reviewer, "but his underlying musicality is always apparent, especially in his moving cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Alexandra Leaving.'"
His new album, "Ten True Things & A Filthy Lie" is getting a good reviews, and he'll be filling his 90 minutes on stage tonight with material from it.
Much of it will be familiar to Gloucester regulars at his weekly Sunday nights at Main Street's Dog Bar. The Bandit Kings will also be debuting material from their new album tonight.
The Gloucester invasion of the House of Blues comes in a week when the Lansdowne Street musical mecca has already featured 1980s punker Billy Idol on Tuesday night and former Guns N' Roses guitar wizard Slash on his latest solo venture Wednesday.
Meanwhile, after wrapping the summer with a bravado performance at Labor Day Weekend's big "Celebrate Gloucester" waterfront concert, Berge and his guitar will get a breather this Sunday, when Dog Bar closes for a staff wedding.
Joann Mackenzie can be reached at 978-283-7000, 3457, or at jomackenzie@gloucestertimes.com.
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