Martha's Trouble

The clamor and shouting are over, yet they buzz in the eardrum like a lingering memory. Outside, couples still high on the music laugh and call out in the cool evening. But inside the mood fades. A bartender swipes a damp towel across shiny wood. A lone figure coils amplifier cords on stage. She hunches over a robin’s egg blue suitcase as she works, her platinum faux-hawk standing at attention. She is Jen Slocumb, a woman of one-thousand haircuts, a singer of a thousand songs, a dreamer of one thousand dreams, lead vocalist for the Auburn-based Martha’s Trouble. The crowd screamed for her.