Brian Lindsay wanted to make a record about summer, and he's done just that. It's not too hard to imagine the guitars and imagery of Esperanza blasting out of passing car windows on a beautiful summer day. Brian Lindsay & the Bootleggers will be playing the songs from the band's new album Friday, May 29, at the Keg, the Gregory Street club at the German House that's trying to step it up in presenting local music. With two excellent albums now, Lindsay clearly has the songs to step right into that job. From the opening track, "Lay Your Burden Down," Lindsay continues to bring to mind the Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town-era Springsteen, with his guitar, harmonica, and songs of desperate love and haunted, overheated young heads. But while Springsteen's references from this era are the Jersey Shore, Lindsay's are the east side of Rochester. "Summerville" — "My wife grew up there; I thought that sounded like a great title for a song," he says — is a tale of broken romance and memories drawn from the community at the end of St. Paul Boulevard. Also appearing is Esperanza, the Greek revival mansion overlooking Keuka Lake in Bluff Point, Yates County, where the Underground Railroad once passed and where now "angels and ghosts roam these old halls, to remind us of freedom's cost." Lindsay lives on Irondequoit Bay, and you can hear it: "There's a cold wind blowing across the bay, with autumn hanging in its sway." It's a lot of the same territory that Lindsay explored in his 2005 album, The Crossing, particularly the Lindsay-defining moment, "East Side of the River." "King of the Mountain" is a spin on the kid's game where you spend the afternoon pushing each other down a hill, relating it to years later and the financial center of Wall Street, where everyone's pushing one another over a pile of money. But perhaps most interesting is "Brothers in Arms," inspired by a journal kept by Lindsay's great grandfather, a U.S. Army medic in the Civil War, hopeful that each day's fighting will be the last. Here, Bruce Diamond's fiddle and mandolin add just the right vintage touch to what Lindsay concedes are words aimed at his dismay with Bush's invasion of Iraq: "Can we learn from history, will the next generation fight for peace?" Interesting metaphors that, again, bring to mind Springsteen. "I definitely get that a lot, and he is an influence," Lindsay says. "Any of the good storytellers are good influences. Steve Earle, Elvis Costello, classic rock, Bob Dylan. "I guess people like that touching stone. You know, 'Oh, OK, I get it.' When you come down to it, marketing is very important." For more, go to