HOLLIS – Musician Joe Birch is back in town.

After eight years of gigging in Florida, the Hollis native will be performing at Alpine Grove for an acoustic evening on Aug. 14.

“I just moved back here,” Birch said. “I used to play around here a lot. You could almost call this a return.”

Birch did come back to New Hampshire to play a gig or two during the summer months, when the heat index in the Sunshine State shoots mercury straight out of a thermometer.

When asked what brought him to Florida, Birch replied, “a woman.”

“She wanted to move down there, so we tried to make it work,” he explained. “The gigs were good and the tips were great. I could play a million tiki bars, so music-wise, it was pretty successful. And then COVID hit.”

Opportunities to play bars and restaurants quickly dried up and Birch had to rethink his plan.

“Since my relationship didn’t work out, I thought, ‘Why am I in the 100 degree heat?'” he shared. “The music had stopped. So, I decided to come back where I grew up. I figured this was the right time to make the move back and I’m happy I did. It feels great.”

A graduate of Hollis High School, Birch had his sights on music even before he was a teenager.

“My dad bought me a guitar when I was ten,” he said. “And he took me to my first concerts, which were B.B. King and Eric Clapton. He always loved the blues.”

Birch’s dad had an impressive record collection, which he quickly discovered. And he learned he had a great knack for playing by ear.

“From then on, I loved that guitar,” he said. “I would run home from school just to get to that guitar and put the hours in, which I’m glad I did.”

With no cell phones or video games back then to distract, Birch dedicated much time to his music and playing songs by Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.

“Hendrix was like having an epiphany,” he said. “I’m definitely into some of the greatest music and guitarists that ever played. It was that late ’60s, early ’70s era.”

Birch quickly went electric, with a new guitar from Hampshire Music.

“That was a cool place,” he said. “I wish I had taken pictures of the building back then. You’d go in there and there were these alleyways full of music instruments and equipment.”

Playing gigs now, Birch mixes songs that people know and love to hear. But he said they’re not necessarily the most predictable songs.

“I like to play the cooler, less-heard songs,” he said. “I’ll throw a couple of original tunes in, but 90 percent is good stuff that people remember. It kinds of brings them back. The nostalgic stuff really seems to work.”

Those songs were especially popular in Florida, with many retirees wanting to hear the songs that they grew up on.

Now Birch has a 13-year-old son who is getting into that same music as his dad did when he was that age.

“It think it’s great that young people are listening to classic rock,” he commented.

Birch did take a few guitar lessons for a couple of years, but he soon reached the point where if he heard a song, he could quickly replicate it.

“I could put a cassette in and once I got to the level where I developed my ‘ear,’ I could just put on a song and copy it. I’ve been that way ever since. Reading music kind of faded away a long time ago.”

Now that he’s back in the North East, Birch, who has only been here a month, said he hasn’t really sized up the music scene yet.

“I sort of took a little break,” he said. “I wanted to land on my feet and get settled. Alan and Michelle Archambault at Alpine Grove are friends, and said they were developing this music series. So, I decided to try one.”

Birch hopes to play more gigs and is entertaining the idea of getting a band together. He used to play at UNH and in the seacoast area, in Portsmouth, Durham and Newmarket.

During his high school years he was in the band, Coldfinger with fellow Hollis high graduates.

Musically, he likes the band Greta Van Fleet, who many audiophiles say sound like Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.

“They’re brothers,” he said. “They’re like 16 and some people were calling them ‘a young Zepplin.’ To me, that is really cool.”

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