He's been helping so many other musicians, his own work took a back seat. Until now

“You know the old saying,” Joe Merrick was saying, stifling a laugh, “the greatest painter never gets around to painting his own house. That’s me!”

Merrick has been busy with all sorts of things musically related in the past few years, but precious few devoted to showcasing the artist known as ... uh ... Joe Merrick. That all changes Thursday night when he headlines The Spire Center in Plymouth. In fact, this performance is already a triumph, since the venue had scheduled it for the intimate 70-person TD Bank Lobby Series, but ticket sales were so strong Merrick’s show was elevated to the main room.

(The Spire Center is at 25½ Court St. in downtown Plymouth, and the show begins at 8 p.m. with all tickets $15, and available through the venue’s website, Spirecenter.org, or by calling 508-746-4488.)

Merrick's been a busy guy

The last time we saw Merrick he was playing in a duo, opening for Vanilla Fudge at The Narrows Center in Fall River, and delighting the crowd with both his smart original rockers and some lively interpretations of covers from The Who.

Local music fans know Merrick from a variety of projects over the years, including producing records from many of the area’s best bands, like the long-gone-but-remembered-fondly funk band Two Ton Shoe. Merrick’s production work also led to having some of his music on an episode of "The Sopranos," and TV and film work is a continuing sideline.

Plan ahead: This weekend features plenty of options for local live music. Let us help you make plans

Merrick was well known as the owner/operator of Guilty Dog Studio in Hanson, but he moved to Marshfield in 2011, and had been operating out of a studio there. More recently he has moved his residence to Dennis and is building a home studio there. In the meantime, he is sharing space at Hanover’s Ultra Sound Studio, producing and mentoring a long list of aspiring talents.

Merrick’s last recorded effort under his own name was completed in December 2019, so just about the time he was ready to start promoting it with live performances, the pandemic hit and the music world shut down. He hasn’t really gotten back to that music yet, and it is not yet available online, but Thursday’s show could be the catalyst that gets Merrick’s music out there.

“Well, I had my CD release show in December of 2019, so I was not able to promote the record much after that, even though it had been 10 years in the making,” Merrick explained last week. “I wasn’t able to really get back to promoting it until now. People who come to this Spire Center show can expect to hear that music from my latest release – which is that 2019 one, as well as what I call my creative mashups. I like to do songs together that don’t go together, just to make it fun. For example, I do a mashup of (Leonard Cohen’s) “Hallelujah” with John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which you can find on YouTube.”

As for his new music, Merrick is excited about the early response to his single – and the title cut for the album – called “Slow Down, Sylvia.”

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“It’s about the late poet Sylvia Plath,” Merrick noted. “I had really enjoyed studying her poetry, which moved me in a real visceral way. I went on to read a biography, which detailed how she dealt with being very depressed, and eventually killed herself. I just imagined this song to be based on the idea if we had been friends back in the day, maybe I could’ve tried to save her, just by conversation with a friend that cared about her. So essentially, this song is about what I would’ve said. I don’t know for sure, but I’m hoping perhaps suicide prevention programs might be able to use this song and help people.”

Several Merrick singles are available online now, although the whole album is not yet.

“I have some different things from the album available out there, like a cover of (Led Zeppelin’s) 'Stairway to Heaven,' and a duet with (Hanover’s) Kiley Evans, 'We’d Be Lying.' Kiley has kind of stepped back from music to be a wellness coach, but she is a major talent.”

Merrick has been relocated to the Cape for about a year now and has been performing a regular gig at The Cove at Yarmouth, where he is featured every Friday through the winter, then moving to Saturday nights in the summer season.

“I had my song ‘Goodnight Cape Cod,’ back in 2011, which built a lot of popularity for me on the Cape,” said Merrick.

Producing work has been plentiful for Merrick

But the biggest reason for Merrick’s own music being sort of on the back burner has been his work producing a slew of other artists.

“Lately, I’ve been working in the studio with South Shore singer April Oddo, who’s very good, and also a young kid from Duxbury named Tyler Richard. Then there is Austin Mo, a promising young kid who found me online, got in touch, and has been flying in from his California home to record with me. Austin is the next big blues guitar star, in my opinion, and he’s going to make a big splash when his album comes out.”

“Some other exciting new talents I’m working with include Marshfield’s Alex Sennett, a Berklee College of Music grad who plays in an Americana style,” Merrick added. “Then we have a kid from the Cape, now living in Quincy, named Nick Tassalugo, who’s making a really nice reggae album. I’ve also worked on stuff with Scott Nichols, now based in Florida but originally from Andover, a songwriter who excels at the type of down-to-earth songwriting John Mellencamp did in his ‘Rain on the Scarecrow’ days. And I can’t forget my work with The Grabb Brothers, out of Randolph, who are about to release a great video of a Tubes cover.”

In addition to all that production work, Merrick also finds time to teach on Tuesdays, instructing music students on piano, guitar, voice and drums.

“I’ve done music for a living for so long and learned so many things, I’ve kind of become the guy who does a little bit of everything,” Merrick said with a laugh. “But I still love to get out there, try different things, and experiment. This night at The Spire will be just me solo, with piano, guitar and some loops. And it is not difficult to play all my songs solo, because that’s how they all start, before we go into the production stuff you hear on the records. My philosophy is you have to make the basic song work before you worry about any of the production.”

Andersen to perform in Boston and Fall River

Canadian singer/guitarist Matt Andersen may have made his name initially in the blues scene, but as we noted in a 2019 column, his music really can be seen as the melting pot of rock ‘n’ roll, or perhaps Americana, since it encompasses rock, soul, gospel, story-songs-with-country-twang and visceral honky tonk. As we said in that column, Andersen is “the best genre-mixing-rocker-with-vocal-chops since Delbert McClinton was a pup.” The New Brunswick native got his first blast of notoriety by winning the Solo/Duo portion of the 2010 International Blues Challenge, an honor which vaulted him from the grind of 200-dates a year to international notice.

This year, Andersen is touring behind his latest album, “The Big Bottle of Joy,” with two area dates worth catching; Thursday at The Narrows Center in Fall River, and then Sunday when he does a "brunch" show at noon at City Winery in Boston.

The new album shines with Andersen’s smart songwriting, but it is his voice that continues to be utterly stunning in its power and emotion. There’s chugging Memphis rhythm and blues in the tune “So Low, Solo,” with its Rufus Thomas echoes. Andersen provides a heart-tugging ballad with “Miss Missing You,” and a gospel-flavored ballad on “Only an Island,” and in both cases the power of his voice is enhanced by the wonderful nuances he brings. The yearning in the soul ballad “Keep Holding On” is so palpable it should earn it anthem status.

But Andersen and his band can also kick it up, with full-bore rock material like “Aurora.” And we’d note, along with his potent baritone, Andersen enunciates flawlessly, a major advantage for those of us who savor good songwriting and want to hear the words.

Remembering Halifax musician Tim Sweeney

The South Shore rock community was mourning Halifax musician Tim Sweeney last week, who passed after a long battle with cancer. Sweeney was perhaps best known as the bassist in 1990s Boston rockers Bone Dry System, fronted by his longtime pal Kristian Montgomery.

The singer was on WMFO radio the other night remembering his friend, with whom he’d formed the band Laugh at the Monkey in high school. The group established an identity quickly with sellout shows at the old Deringer’s club in Brockton, even as the members were just 16 and 17 years old. Sweeney studied film in college, and both designed the cover for Bone Dry System’s “Small Cages,” and made a documentary about making the album.

More recently he worked on the "Spiderman" movie that had filmed in Boston. Montgomery said his multitalented buddy was always a reliable source of belly laughs, and Sweeney was the authentic wildman in Bone Dry System – which is high praise coming from him.

“Tim was my best friend,” said Montgomery. “But then, Tim was the kind of guy who was a lot of people’s best friend.”

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Joe Merrick, formerly of Marshfield, set to headline The Spire Center