Billed as a journey through the city’s rock ‘n’ roll past and present, Soundscape Tours string decades of Boston music trivia into a 90-minute stroll through Fenway-Kenmore.
There are some obvious stops on the 2-mile jaunt, which starts at The Verb Hotel: the former locations of venues like the Rathskeller and Storyville, the classic record store Nuggets, and the Verb’s own lobby, which brims with a rainbow of rock ephemera from the David Bieber Archives.
Then come the moments revealing detail-rich surprises, including a rumour that headbanging was invented in Boston at a legendary English band’s performance, and the fact that Kurt Cobain loved a certain Boston band so much that he once told Rolling Stone he ought to be a member (but hey, no spoilers).
“Everybody, I think, overlooks this area now as part of Boston’s music scene,” said Bowker, reflecting on the high concentration of music history in the neighborhood.
After a winter break, Soundscape Tours begin for the spring season this weekend, offering walks on Friday and Saturday afternoons through November.
The experience layers Bowker’s unique qualifications as a Boston musician (check out his group Mount Peru), a former anthropology student, and a travel guide trainer.
When mapping out the tour, Bowker pieced together information from music biographies, a rock history course by the late Boston music journalist Steve Morse, and stories he’s gleaned from his decades as part of the area’s music community.
“Boston has been an incubator for some of the most revolutionary ideas and figures in American history, and my contention is that the same principle can be applied to folk, jazz, and rock in the 20th century,” said Bowker.
As he walks guests by long-gone landmarks and snapshots of Boston’s rock heritage, Bowker’s enthusiasm is hard to miss.
He carries a tour-branded boombox and a backpack filled with record covers, and keeps a few pertinent cassettes — like Marky Mark and The Funky Bunch’s “Music for the People” — tucked in his jacket pockets.
Throughout the tour, he summons pieces of this on-the-go collection, be it an old clip of Peter Wolf rambling on air as a WBCN DJ, or album art for The Velvet Underground depicting the band in front of the long-shuttered venue The Boston Tea Party.
“I think they’re a tactile way for people to interact with music,” Bowker said in reference to the physical media.
“Some people come on my tour, they’ve never touched a cassette. They’ve never touched a record.”
“I’m trying to make this like an actual museum, and that’s the best thing that I can do, is to get these artifacts,” he added.
Although sometimes, the best demonstrations of music history can’t be planned.
Bowker recalls bumping into Evan Dando — leader of Boston alt-rock band The Lemonheads — who was playing guitar in the Verb’s lobby at the start of a previous tour.
There’s likely no better sign that Boston music lives beyond the lore of decades past.
“He joined our discussion,” Bowker said.
“I like to think that he would have stayed on the tour had his assistant not come in and got him.”
GIG GUIDE
The House of Blues bustles this week with visits from Midwest indie rock favorites Bright Eyes (Friday), California rapper Tyga (Sunday), pop-rock anthem-maker Myles Smith (Tuesday and Wednesday), and electro-R&B songstress Nao (Thursday).
Across the street at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, Lucy Dacus unspools the gentle alt-rock of her new record “Forever Is a Feeling” on Sunday and Monday.
Dacus also performed multiple dates at the Lansdowne Street venue in 2023 as a member of the supergroup boygenius, which includes bandmates Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers.
Trio LA LOM let their surf and cumbia instrumentals — like their new single “Te He Prometido” — sizzle at Royale on Friday.
After launching his North American tour in Rhode Island this week, rapper FERG (f.k.a. A$AP Ferg) comes to the venue on Wednesday with his November album “DAROLD,” a nod to his birth name.
Yukimi, vocalist for Swedish electronic group Little Dragon, forges her own synth-studded career at The Sinclair on Saturday with material from her debut solo album, “For You.”
Rock bands Friday Pilots Club and Circa Waves share a headlining bill on Monday, supplying danceable cuts from their recent records “Nowhere” and “Death & Love, Pt. 1,” respectively.
Ani DiFranco brings a three-peat of performances to the Somerville Theatre on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday in honor of her boldly-titled 2024 record “Unprecedented Sh!t.”
Elsewhere in Somerville, Japanese jazz trumpeter and composer Takuya Kuroda, who previously attended Berklee, visits the Center for the Arts at the Armory on Wednesday with his winter opus “EVERYDAY.”
Genre-smashing solo artist Bartees Strange supports his February album “Horror” at Brighton Music Hall on Wednesday; on Thursday at the venue, English shoegazers Swervedriver toast the March release of their “The World’s Fair” EP.
NOW SPINNING
Julien Baker & TORRES, “Send A Prayer My Way.”
Add Julien Baker and TORRES to the ever-growing list of artists who have gone country in recent years.
The pair of rock artists tap into their shared Southern roots via “Send a Prayer My Way,” a 12-track collaboration that finds the duo naturally slipping into a placid country-Western panorama.
The LP is proof that their songwriting can transcend TORRES’s roiling guitar riffs and Baker’s indie-rock stoicism.
Madison McFerrin, “I Don’t.”
Madison McFerrin has plenty of soul to spare — even when hers is feeling broken.
The Berklee grad and Brooklyn singer-songwriter primes fans for her forthcoming album “Scorpio” with the single “I Don’t,” a lament over abandoned nuptials that McFerrin polishes with her sleek hybrid of jazz and soul-rock.
Leah Nawy, “Mixing Patterns.”
How you categorize Leah Nawy’s new single “Mixing Patterns” depends on where you hit play.
The song’s middle point presents waves of plush alt-rock, yet its final minute finds the New York artist vocalizing over a jazz-steeped piano outro.
But regardless of how you define it, “Mixing Patterns” presents a clear-headed meditation on the confidence required to forge your own future.
BONUS TRACK
After its inaugural edition last year, the Boston Progressive Jazz Festival returns to the Center for the Arts at the Armory this Saturday and Sunday.
The two-night event will bundle performers and sounds from across the globe, ranging from the suave melodies of Brazilian Berklee alumna Luiza Girardello, to futuristic “e-jazz” by Barcelona trio KIW.
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