Vermont

Guster’s Ryan Miller talks new album, Vermont show, ‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ musical

Published

2 years ago

June 26, 2024

Guster’s Ryan Miller talks new album, Vermont show, ‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ musical

Ryan Miller is proud of “Ooh La La,” the new album from his long-running rock band, Guster. He’s excited at the prospect of Guster’s concert this weekend at the Shelburne Museum, not far from Miller’s home in Williston.

Recording albums and playing concerts are, of course, what Guster does. “Ooh La La” is the band’s ninth studio album. The Shelburne concert will be the latest of a couple thousand shows Guster has played since forming more than three decades ago.

Miller is, however, taking on one big project unlike any he’s done before. He’s writing the music and lyrics for an off-Broadway musical based on the 2012 film “Safety Not Guaranteed” that will open in previews in September at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Miller wrote the soundtrack for that movie and has followed with more than a dozen film scores. But a musical? That’s uncharted territory.

Miller called himself a “51-year-old dude/neophyte” in the world of New York musicals who doesn’t fully know what he’s doing as he works with seasoned Broadway and off-Broadway veterans. He said he’s had nightmares about the musical failing. He likes to stretch himself for projects that keep him occupied for weeks or months at a time, but a musical that might take years to fully develop sounds daunting.

And exciting.

“It’s a fascinating process,” Miller said. “I am just learning so much in real time.”

The flow of ‘Ooh La La’

Miller spoke June 21 with the Burlington Free Press on his houseboat on Lake Champlain. If a houseboat sounds like another case of rock-star excess, know that it’s a 57-year-old houseboat Miller bought with three friends for $3,000. It’s also more house than boat; like most abodes, it is incapable of locomotion.

The scruffy floating retreat fits Miller’s persona to a T. For his chat with the Free Press, he wore a cartoonish T-shirt touting the Hudson Valley, flannel pants festooned with floral prints and vibrant socks bearing the logo for the soft drink Topo Chico. His hair maintained its perpetually tousled status.

Nothing about Guster is so haphazard. “Ooh La La,” which came out May 17, is a meticulous-sounding record, brimming with brightly toned tunes with soft edges of melancholy. Miller said the lyrics reflect his own experiences but ideally bypass the “hyper-personal” to let the listener in on his perspective.

Miller, who’s married with two teenagers, has heard from fans who say it’s amazing that Guster can still relate to where they are in life after three decades.

“When that happens, that has something to do with why we’ve been able to maintain our place” of popularity with fans, Miller said, noting that the band sold out the famed Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in one day and the Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre outside Denver in three days. “I do think we are in conversation with people.”

“Ooh La La” is a very Vermont-y record, and not just because Miller and bandmate Luke Reynolds, an Addison County native, live in Vermont. Grammy-winner Rich Costey, a Waterbury native, mixed, co-engineered and co-produced the songs “When We Were Stars” and “All Day.” University of Vermont graduate Peter Katis mixed most of the album’s songs and played keyboards. Part of the album was recorded in southern Vermont at Guilford Sound.

The Shelburne Museum performance will be very Vermont-y as well. “Let’s go full Vermont as much as possible,” Miller said of his approach to the concert.

Guster will be joined onstage by James Kochalka Superstar, the Burlington band led by the big personality of the vocalist/cartoonist, and the Zeno Mountain Band from Zeno Mountain Farm in Lincoln that supports people with disabilities. Miller is counting on nice weather as opposed to last summer, when Guster’s plans to perform on the Shelburne Museum lawn were continually washed out.

“We need to go back to the scene of the crime,” he joked.

Music for “Safety Not Guaranteed’

Miller will spend much of the summer cramming to get “Safety Not Guaranteed” ready for its BAM run from Sept. 17-Oct. 20. He became involved with the film a dozen years ago after striking up a friendship with Colin Trevorrow, the director of that time-travel-themed movie who at the time lived in Burlington. (Trevorrow, a Guster fan who would go on to direct films including “Jurassic World,” now lives in London.) That well-received film and score launched Miller’s career in writing music for movies, most recently for the Ilana Glazer comedy “Babes,” which came out the same day as “Ooh La La.”

Another Guster fan, Nick Blaemire, approached Miller with the idea of contributing music for a stage version of “Safety Not Guaranteed.” “My answer was, ‘Sure,’” Miller said, though he had no real idea what writing the songs for a musical might entail.

He traveled to New York and found that Blaemire, who’s writing the book for “Safety Not Guaranteed,” assembled several Broadway and off-Broadway actors and a guitar player to present a version of the production with Guster songs as placeholders. Miller said he was impressed by the narrative of the story but didn’t want “Safety Not Guaranteed” to be a jukebox musical framed by Guster songs, so he chose to write more than an hour’s worth of original songs for the production.

Miller said he’ll work on a film soundtrack for four to 12 weeks, but a multi-year musical is a different animal for someone who likes to take on a variety of projects. “I respect the medium,” he said, “but it’s not my workflow.”

He’s getting into the flow now as “Safety Not Guaranteed” makes its way to BAM’s 875-capacity Harvey Theater. Miller would like to see the show move to Broadway one day. “We’re not trying to be done with it at BAM,” he said.

“Safety Not Guaranteed” has already influenced Miller’s work with Guster. He said the band’s recent “We Also Have Eras” tour, which told the story of Guster in a theatrical-styled musical performance, was shaped in part by the work he’s doing on “Safety Not Guaranteed.”

“I almost felt like maybe we’re more of an art project than a band,” Miller said. “This sort of theater experience I’m having will remain conversant with the band.”

His work on film scoring, off-Broadway shows and presenting “super-special” shows with Guster “gets kind of gooey,” blending in one creative pot, according to Miller.

“It helps me to recontextualize what the band can be,” he said.

If you go

WHAT: Guster with James Kochalka Superstar and the Zeno Mountain Band

WHEN: 6 p.m. Saturday, June 29

WHERE: Shelburne Museum

INFORMATION: $55 in advance, $59 day of show; free for children 12 and under. www.highergroundmusic.com

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

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Vermont

New owners of Vermont Packinghouse plan for local growth – The Vermont Journal & The Shopper

Published

9 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Press Room

New owners of Vermont Packinghouse plan for local growth – The Vermont Journal & The Shopper

Members of the Vermont Packing & Trading team stand with the owners of Vermont Family Farms. Photo provided

NORTH SPRINGFIELD, Vt. – For years, limited meat processing capacity in Vermont has forced many farmers to sell their livestock out of state. A recent ownership transition at a meat processing plant in North Springfield aims to change that by helping ensure locally raised meats can continue to be processed, packaged, and sold in Vermont.

The Vermont Packinghouse (VPH), located at 25 Fairbanks Road in North Springfield, was recently sold in two subsequent transactions to a new ownership group led by longtime food service and distribution leader Louis Helbling.

The 50,000-square-foot United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) facility processes and packages beef and pork from small- and medium-sized farms across New England. The sale of both the business and the building marks a new phase of growth and stability for a key regional meat processing operation that has been managed by multiple entities in recent years.

Longtime Springfield businessman Mark Curran, of Curran-Birge, purchased the former Ben & Jerry’s manufacturing plant in 2013 with the goal of easing a major bottleneck for Vermont meat producers by expanding much-needed processing capacity. Curran and his former business partner Steve Birge worked with Temple Grandin, a renowned designer of humane livestock facilities, to develop a slaughter facility that minimizes stress on the animals.

The facility was operated by Minnesota-based Lorentz Meats from 2014 to 2020, and later by Walden Local Meat Co. from 2023 to 2026. Throughout that time, Curran maintained ownership of the building, carefully stewarding an asset he believed held long-term potential for the region.

On May 29, Curran sold the property to a new ownership group led by Helbling, a veteran of food service sales, operations, and senior management. Under the newly formed Vermont Packing & Trading, Helbling is focused on expanding market opportunities for locally grown meats while creating jobs and supporting local farms. With a passion for the food industry, Helbling was drawn to Vermont’s specialty food culture and deep agricultural heritage.

“With Louis’ decades of work in the New England food industry, there is real opportunity to open more markets for local beef and pork producers outside of Vermont,” Curran said. “Another initiative will be to retain more of Vermont’s dairy culls from leaving the state and keep more value-added processing here.”

Helbling and his team will continue to work closely with Curran, Black River Produce – a distributor with deep ties to the operation – and the owners of Walden Local Meat Co. to ensure a smooth transition of both building ownership and day-to-day operations.

“We have all worked very hard over the past six months to keep VPH open and in a position to rehire a very talented and dedicated workforce as quickly as possible,” Helbling said.

With a new management team in place, the facility is entering its next phase of operations focused on future growth.

Upgrades to the USDA facility are already underway, alongside efforts to expand cold storage capacity to meet growing regional demand. “Adding to the existing footprint with additional freezer and cold storage will give us the capacity we need to grow as a business and add to the local workforce over the next five years,” Helbling said.

He added that he and his team will continue working with Curran to revitalize the landmark facility and restore it as a source of pride for families, employees, and local farms.

“All of us involved in this journey are excited to be working and relocating to the great State of Vermont,” Helbling said. “We are operating and moving quickly to bring business from all over the Northeast to Springfield.”

Vermont Packing & Trading was formed after the April 2026 sale of the Vermont Packinghouse business and is seeking new partners and producers across the Northeast.

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Vermont

Norman Rockwell finally gets his day in new Shelburne Museum exhibit

Published

19 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Press Room

Norman Rockwell finally gets his day in new Shelburne Museum exhibit

SHELBURNE — Norman Rockwell lived for a time in suburban New York City and died and was buried in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. But for 14 years in between, the artist spent perhaps the most prolific period of his career in Vermont creating his best-known works.

That’s how Shelburne Museum curator Carolyn Bauer sees it — and how the museum’s latest exhibition treats the artist.

“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont,” which opens June 20 and runs through Oct. 25, displays 40 of the 175 covers Rockwell famously created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine during his time in Vermont between 1939 and 1953.

Also on display are prints of “The Four Freedoms,” maybe his most famed works of all, which represent American ideals spelled out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. Paintings in the exhibition include “The Young Lady with the Shiner” and “The Tattoo Artist,” both whimsical, recognizable pieces used as covers for The Saturday Evening Post.

“It’s very accessible work and approachable,” Bauer said.

The display features the three paintings that inspired the exhibition, given to the Shelburne Museum by Rock of Ages, the Barre granite quarry and monument maker. Those Rockwell paintings filled a significant gap in the museum’s art collection, which includes works by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Grandma Moses and Andrew Wyeth but, until recently, none by Rockwell, perhaps the best-known artist to have lived here.

“It feels like a homecoming in many regards,” Bauer said.

Moving to southern VT, finding ‘the every American’

The exhibition frames Rockwell’s time in Vermont around the tenor of the times in America. As the Great Depression was ending, World War II was looming and the nation was growing more urban and industrialized, much of the public was yearning for greater simplicity, Bauer said.

Rockwell was among them, leaving New Rochelle north of New York City for the quietude of Arlington in southern Vermont.

He was not alone. Contemporary artists including Mead Schaeffer, John Atherton and Gene Pelham would settle in Arlington too, creating what Bauer termed “the golden illustrator days” in Vermont.

Rockwell’s art, as the 152-page hardcover catalogue accompanying the exhibition notes, shows “how Vermont itself came to embody American ideals in the national imagination.”

Rockwell and his fellow Arlington artists used each other as models in their creations. “They really would work collaboratively,” Bauer said.

Pelham’s daughter, Melinda, is shown in the exhibition in two works: “The Babysitter,” a painting of a girl holding a crying baby that’s on loan from The Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont and an admission submission Rockwell sent to Kellogg’s of a girl clutching a cereal-laden spoon to her mouth.

Doctors, mail deliverers and shopkeepers from Arlington populated his work. Bauer said Rockwell usually gave models $5 and a can of Coca-Cola.

“He was recycling and using just about everybody in town,” Bauer said. That included himself: Rockwell added his own visage to the multiple faces in “The Gossip,” which shows him lashing out at a woman who’s started the rumor-mongering.

Bauer said Rockwell wanted to cultivate a sense of place by using Vermonters known for their austere self-reliance at the forefront of his work. He also found “the every American” ideal in town, Bauer said, though his art reflected a pronounced lack of diversity.

In later work, Rockwell would confront race and segregation as the Civil Rights Movement swept the U.S.

“He was progressive,” Bauer said.

Inspired by paintings donated by Rock of Ages

“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont” was inspired by the 2025 museum acquisition of a trio of Rockwell works that once hung in the Barre offices of Rock of Ages. The granite company contacted the museum asking if it could donate the paintings, Bauer said, prompting staffers to wonder momentarily, “Is this real?”

Rockwell created advertisements for Rock of Ages and gave the paintings upon which the ads were based to the company. “Kneeling Girl” from 1955, making its debut at the Shelburne Museum, takes place in front of a gravestone engraved with the name Newton.

Rock of Ages donated two versions of 1963 work “The Craftsman,” a muted draft and a more luminous final version that were first displayed at the museum last year. They depict Rock of Ages stonecutter George Seivwright working in the shadow of a memorial bearing the name “Norwell,” a portmanteau of Rockwell’s first and last names.

Bauer called the paintings “incredible works of art that were circulated widely” in ads, brochures and pamphlets touting Rock of Ages and its world-famous Vermont granite. Though Rockwell had left Vermont for Massachusetts by the time he created those paintings, they do what Rockwell had done when he lived in Arlington — show the nation and the world what Vermont and Vermonters are capable of.

“We are just eager for our visitors to see these paintings,” Bauer said.

If you go

WHAT: “Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont”

WHEN: June 20 through Oct. 25

WHERE: Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, Shelburne Museum

INFORMATION: $8-$25 museum admission; free under age 5 and for active military and Shelburne Museum members. shelburnemuseum.org

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@burlingtonfreepress.com.

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Vermont

Possible tornado causes damage in small Vermont town during Thursday’s intense storms – The Boston Globe

Published

1 day ago

June 18, 2026

Press Room

Possible tornado causes damage in small Vermont town during Thursday’s intense storms – The Boston Globe

The National Weather Service is investigating whether a small tornado touched down in Woodstock in eastern Vermont on Thursday afternoon as intense storms swept through the area, uprooting and snapping trees, and causing structural damage.

A damage survey team is expected to assess the damage on Friday morning to confirm whether any tornadoes touched down during the severe thunderstorms, the Weather Service in Burlington, Vt., said.

The suspected tornado occurred some time between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., according to the NWS. A tight vortex, a marker for rotation, was spotted on radar, although there was no debris signature detected on radar. No tornado warnings were issued at the time.

If a tornado is confirmed to have touched down, the survey team will also determine the size, path, and intensity of the twister.

Some of the damage left behind by what is believed to have been a tornado that touched down Thursday.Chris Markos

The last tornado to touch down in Vermont was just a couple of months ago. On April 16, 2026, an EF1 touched down in Williamstown, Vt., according to the NWS. An EF1 tornado is the second-lowest rating for twisters, according to the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which ranks them based on intensity.

Several supercells had tracked across northern New York into southern and central Vermont, producing large hail and damaging winds, and eventually spawning the tornado, which the Weather Service said was about a half-mile long and 200 yards wide at its peak. The damage survey team also found ”extensive wind damage between Ainsworth State Park and Jackson Center with estimated winds between 70 and 80 mph,“ which was caused by an accompanying microburst, the NWS said.

Large trees are seen uprooted near Staples Pond in Williamstown, Vt., in April.NWS

More than an hour after the Vermont storm, two tornado warnings were issued for southern Worcester County after a pair of tight vortexes were spotted on radar, indicating a possible tornado.

No structural or other damages were found, but storm spotters have submitted reports of a funnel cloud near the Spencer-Leicester town line.

Ken Mahan can be reached at ken.mahan@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @kenmahantheweatherman. Marianne Mizera can be reached at marianne.mizera@globe.com. Follow her @MareMizera.

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