pt at large

"Louisiana-Proud Radio" - Music by the mile

The soundtrack for driving through the prairies and swamp lands of southwest Louisiana is right on your car radio. Hit the scan button while driving from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, Henderson, Lafayette, Lake Charles, then down Route 27 to the gulf coast towns of Creole, Cameron, and Holly Beach, and you’ll hear old time religion, some top 40, and then POW, you’ll hit upon 100.3 FM and its neighbor 101.1 FM. If the reason you’re in Louisiana is to dig the indigenous music and dance culture, you’ve found the Holy Grail. And you’re in for a sociology lesson on where pop music’s deepest roots are buried.

If you’re under the tender age of 40, you’ll find out what radio used to sound like before it became solidly commercial. There’s “KBON, brought to you by Southern Barbecue Sauce, a Cajun tradition since 1957.” 101.1 FM in Eunice plays a gumbo of Cajun, Country, Blues, Swamp Pop, Zydeco, Oldies, most of it played and sung by Louisiana musicians.

The endless flatlands lining I-10 become drenched with some of that Southern sauce when accompanied by Little Alfred singing Louisiana Soul with “You Can Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye,” Wayne Toups and The Jambalaya Cajun Band playing a sweet little Cajun waltz, and an impromptu interview with Terry of Terry and The Zydeco Cowboys, who happened to drop by the studio with his wife.

Louisiana versions of “Sixteen Candles” and “I Want My Baby Back Again” with the distinct doo wop beat that characterized the late fifties appear in the midst of this. The writer imagines a whiff of Aqua-Velva and recalls his first awkward close dance with a girl at the Friday night dance at the Boys’ Club in small town America. This trip, meant to create memories, momentarily plumbs them.

We tuned in one day to hear “I want to wish Happy Birthday to Loyce ‘Topsie’ Babineau and (several other people named too fast for us to write) who live in Eunice, Crowley, and Houma.” Between “songs coming up by Red Beans and Rice and Louisiana Boogie with Kim Brasso, brought to you by Cypress Bayou Casino and Shorty’s,” we heard the daily fishing report. This is exactly what their target audience of 35 to 64 year-olds wants to hear.

Every time KBON’s signal faded we tried clicking down to 100.3 FM looking for KLRZ, “The Ragin’ Cajun,” out of Larose. It took about a hundred miles to discover it shares the same bandwidth with 100.3 KRRV FM out of Alexandria.  At KRRV, we got an earful of Johnny Allen’s  “You’re Nobody’s Darlin’ But Mine” and Ronnie Milsap’s “I’ve Got A Houston Solution in Mind” rather than the spicy Cajun, Blues, and Swamp Pop mix we were looking for on KLRZ.

All the stations got mixed up in a spicy aural jambalaya that fed us for days. Ping pong back and forth and you’ll hear a Cajun version of “I’m Just A Gigolo,” then a Louisiana cover of Waylon Jennings’s “I’ve Always Been Crazy But It’s Kept Me From Going Insane,” and occasionally be startled to hear a song you recognize like The Rolling Stones “Beast of Burden.”

There’s a Cajun force field in the bayous that will not submit to commercial radio. You won’t hear the same song twice in a day. You will hear news and weather at top of hour, plus a health tip of the day brought to you by a local pharmacy. This is “BWM” radio (Before Wall Mart), where sponsors include The Cajun Trading Post in Carencro that advertises - “We have motorized ice chests you can ride, “ and “The only thing we can’t fix is a broken heart.”

Listen to KBON long enough and you’ll hear the forebears of blues - horns and all, rock ’n roll, and soul, along with zydeco and Cajun music. The common denominator is a dance beat. Whether you’re Sunday driving down a two-lane road or ripping along a Louisiana interstate, your fanny will be wiggling in your seat. The music isn’t everyone’s cup of gumbo, but if it’s yours you’ll spoon it up every time you get in the car.

Cafe des Amis: Morning Thunder on the Dance Floor

From brass bands playing on street corners in the French Quarter to Cajun bands playing mixes of zydeco, blues, swamp pop, and country in roadhouses all over southwest Louisiana, you're never far from music - and a place to dance to it.

“And Saturday morning, we can go dancing from 8 until 12 over in Breaux Bridge,” says my traveling companion.

“You mean Saturday night,” I reply.

People don’t dance at breakfast time. It’s just not done. I mean, you might be dancing Saturday morning at around 1 AM but that’s really Friday night. Saturday morning you’ll be bagging a few extra hours of sleep, and upon awakening you’ll listen to the quiet gurgling of hot water dripping through a filter basket of fresh ground coffee and stare at the large print of the morning paper, confirming that war hasn’t broken out somewhere. Somehow or other, dancing, which requires energetic motion and hip-torso coordination, doesn’t come to mind until well after noon.

Not so, Bucko. You’re in southwest Louisiana where zydeco dancing and coffee are as common a combination as red beans and rice.

By the time we arrive in Breaux Bridge, the outer walls of the Café des Amis are twitching from the happy sound of Cajun and Zydeco music and god knows how many feet pounding on its floor. One step inside is as unlikely a world as this Yankee has ever witnessed.

The five-piece band on a makeshift stage is deep into a two-step, a hundred people or so are packed onto a dance floor created by removing half the tables and chairs in the place, and another hundred or so are either watching the action from the bar on one side of the room or from the handful of tables jammed up at the rear of the café.

 The smell of coffee, bacon, and biscuits hangs in the close air. If you could roll it into cigarette papers, you’d be high on it all day. It felt like the whole place had been struck by an errant lightning bolt of energy.

The joyful music seems to create a “One World” vibe in which truckers and tourists, motorcyclists and accountants, blacks and whites, rub elbows and wise-crack with one another. A school of sardines couldn’t pack themselves any closer onto the dance floor and definitely wouldn’t be having as much fun.

If you’ve ever wondered how so many people can squeeze out of one of those clown cars at the circus, you’d conversely wonder how you and your honey could possibly squeeze into the dense pack of people on the dance floor.

By the time the song is over, you feel like you’ve been dancing in a crowded elevator with miraculously friendly people. No one’s feet have been stomped and you don’t feel jostled. And that person hollering with joy as the fiddle and accordion match solos is you. Cajun music was made for this. And you haven’t even had lunch yet.

 “Those people sitting at the tables are the tourists,” one guy in a cowboy hat says to me. I’ve apparently acquired a stamp of approval by squeezing onto the dance floor with my partner for every song since arriving. The sweat running down our faces, not to mention our goofy grins at the utter joy of finding this place, has elevated our status. Plus the fact that we’re pretty good at dancing, if I do say so myself.

Other than one break the band took to sit down and eat breakfast (photo right), the music lasted till exactly noon. It was about that time we became card-carrying honorary citizens of Southwest Louisiana.

Bourbon Street to Jackson Square - the many faces of New Orleans' French Quarter

The French Quarter is a tiny piece of New Orleans that packs a big wallop. Eat muffulettas at Central Grocery or po'boys from Johnny's for lunch, find one of the good restaurants on Royal Street for dinner, and never be too far from the sound of a brass band the lure of a tarot card reader. Much of the Quarters' architecture dates back to the late 1700s. It's a piece of old world charm wearing a baseball cap.

On any night, Bourbon Street is a sea of college-aged fun seekers, intent on consuming as much alcohol and having as much fun as humanly possible, and an equal number of tourists entertained or horrified by watching the spectacle of it happening.

The gaudy street with the boozy name runs the length of the French Quarter, from Canal Street to Esplanade. By late afternoon, this sleazy sleeping giant awakens. Like the plant in “Little Shop of Horrors”, you can practically hear it yawling, “FEED ME!” By dusk, the police have closed the street to four-wheeled traffic. By Saturday night, the street becomes a Mississippi River of humanity.

The entire mass, like a two dimensional conga line, weaves its way through the street, bathed in the garish glow of the neon lights of saloons, restaurants, strip joints, and trinket shops that live off it.  Shills line the street entreating passersby to come on in and sample whatever is on the other side of their doorways- “Big Assed Beers,” lap dancers, “men who look more beautiful than women,” packed bars and bands playing music with enough volume to tickle the soles of your feet as you walk by.

Occasionally, glitter seems to fall from the heavens. Look up on the wrought iron balconies of the Omni Parker House and you’ll see tourists, mostly of the male persuasion, laden with arm-loads of Mardi Gras beads, intent on getting the attention of partiers of the female persuasion who just might do something provocative enough to attract a blitz of said beads. As a social experiment, I got the attention of a group of these men in an effort to snag one of the baubles and had the experience of feeling invisible for the first time in my life. I would have done way better had I been equipped with a good pair of bazoombas. Oh well, next lifetime.

It is entirely necessary to have witnessed the nocturnal version of Bourbon Street to appreciate the matinee version. As if a cosmic hand pulled the plug, quietude reigns. Like the college students who roamed it hours before, the street seems to be sleeping it off.

The hum of automobile tires coasting slowly down the street replaces the cochlea rattling decibel level of the evening before. Piles of plastic beer cups, soiled napkins, and party beads are swept into refuse trucks. Tanker trucks hose down the street with a sweet smelling wash of water and suds. Without neon, Bourbon Street in daylight looks like an aging actress, relaxing with a cup of coffee after she’s removed her stage makeup.

The rest of the French Quarter has remained well mannered day and night. Away from Bourbon Street, the Quarter wraps its arms around you on early morning walks down narrow streets, showing off her brightly painted three and four story buildings with shuttered floor to ceiling windows graced by wrought iron balconies, many spilling over with the dense green foliage of hanging plants.

The scores of hotels, eateries, shops, and galleries that fill this small section of New Orleans curled against an elbow of the Mississippi River in the southeast part of the city will soon bustle with activity. The clip clop of horse carriages on sun-bleached streets, music from street bands, and the clatter of foot traffic over slate and brick sidewalks are the leitmotif of a day in the French Quarter.

Jackson Square, an emerald gem set in the midst of the Quarter, is surrounded by historic buildings. The famous Café du Monde lies one block beyond. By day, the promenade around the square is given over to artists and musicians. 

By dark, most businesses in the buildings have closed. Luminous islands of tarot card readers and psychics, their small tables and chairs bathed in candlelight, glow gently in the dark. Readers sit pensively and softly solicit couples that walk by. The adventurous, perhaps seduced by the pungent scent of patchouli or a whim to hear their futures foretold in such a romantic setting, choose a chair and hope for the best.

 A tourist destination for thousands every day, the Quarter is also home to people who live in apartments and condos hidden behind wooden doors that line the narrow streets. It’s always a surprise to see a resident pop out of a door, brief case in hand, and head to work. And more of a surprise to catch a glimpse of a daintily manicured courtyard behind one of those doors

New Orleans is of European lineage, founded by the French in 1718, ceded to Spain in 1763, reacquired by Napoleon in 1801, then sold to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The French Quarter, rebuilt by the Spanish after two disastrous fires, is the oldest part of the city (Vieux Carré). The buildings with their floor to ceiling wooden shuttered windows that open to narrow balconies with wrought iron railings are architectural remnants of the late 1700s. Like Paris, this enclave has old world elegance.

The Quarter has its own scale and style. Magic? Yes...

Cajun Country: The Beating Heart of Southwest Louisiana

Southwest Louisiana breathes music. pt at large spent the past ten days sampling gumbo, Dixie Beer, red beans and rice, and spending nights and one memorable morning dancing to Cajun music. The fiddle, accordion, bass, and drums that comprise most bands capture a range of joy and heartbreak with a rhythm and levity that displace every thought but one...find a partner and step out on the dance floor.

Forget about Louisiana as a state. It’s a state of mind. Full of crawfish po' boys, gumbo, and shrimp, what really holds the state together is music. Nowhere is this more evident than in bayou country.

Southwest Louisiana breathes music. It exhales from radio stations, juke boxes in restaurants, and bars and dance halls in places like Lafayette, Breaux Bridge, and Henderson. Zydeco, Cajun two-step, pretty little waltzes, Whiskey River jitterbug, and swamp pop at close quarters so you can taste the sweat on your honey’s cheek when you pull her close and move as one to the rhythmic beat, and oh yes, the absolute joy of inhaling that music.

This is roots music. No fancy clothes or shoes necessary. Just the ability to open your heart for a couple of hours to music born of sunshine, toil, and the displacement of the Acadian people two centuries ago. Now it’s the music of fishermen, farmers, truck drivers along side college kids, smooth-shaven lawyers, young professionals, and more gray haired grandparents than you’ve ever seen within a country mile of a dance floor. Women wearing cut offs and cowboy boots, sundresses that stick to their perspiring bodies, and tank tops with black jeans are just as down as any of the bluejeaned men in the dance halls. When a woman is of a mind to dance, she marches straight to the first man she sees who’s shuffling his feet in time with the music and pulls him to the dance floor.

There may be some mating games going on amongst all the happy hip shaking couples, but the custom is four or five minutes of whirling to the sounds of accordion, bass, fiddles, and drums then look around for another grinning partner with whom you can spend the next few minutes on the dance floor. Sitting down is out of the question until the band decides to take a break. Hell, you’ve got all week to sit down. This is the weekend in Cajun country. There’s a possibility that you’ll catch up on some sleep, there’s a likelihood that you’ll do some laundry and stop in at the local grocery store. But there is no doubt whatsoever that you’re going to find a place to dance.

There’s the big ol’ Whiskey River Landing dance hall in Henderson tucked between the levee and the shore of the Atchafalaya Swamp where there’s dancing on Sunday afternoon from 4 pm to 8 pm. An 82 year-old farmer dances with his wife, his weathered face wearing a devilish grin that just might have been responsible for his wife saying “I do” five or six decades ago. The man’s been up since 5 am feeding cattle and here he is wearing his wide brim hat, clean jeans and pounding the floor with his leather boots just as vigorously as any young buck in the crowd. From the jammed dance floor to the walls lining the building, the place was packed. Jeffery Broussard The Creole Cowboys made sure of that.

“You don’t come from around here, do you,” says Jean Prejean, a wiry man with a shaved head and one gold earring, as I’m taking photos of the band stand and the swamp just beyond one of the huge picture windows that line the rear wall of the Whiskey River Dance Hall. My T-shirt and shorts don't look out of place but only a tourist would want to take that photo. For everyone else the place was as ordinary as a 7-11.

Prejean is a 56 year-old carpenter who lives three miles down the road. “I used to truck up to Boston, still know some people there from when we kept track of each other on our CB radios,” he says. Dressed in his black T-shirt and jeans, the man has some of the most original dance moves I’d ever seen. “I’m self taught,” he says proudly, “been dancing since I was a baby. I’m the man who laid the dance floor at Café des Amis in Breaux Bridge,” he says.

Any zydeco dancer within a hundred miles knows the Cafe des Amis is the place to go for live music and dancing from 8 am till noon on Saturday. This is not a typo. Let me put it this way. When the band begins playing at 8 am, most of Louisiana might be on their second cup of coffee; the people at the Café des Amis are on their feet dancin'.

For people down here dancing isn’t recreation, it’s a way of life. Saturday night in Lafayette, Randol’s was full of men and women and their children, couples, singles and exactly two tourists- this writer and his dance partner. The restaurant has a sprawling dining room, a small bar and a pine-paneled dance floor surrounded by a low wooden railing. Two fifty apiece, “for the band,” got you a wristband to enter the dance floor.

The band was kicking up a storm of zydeco, waltzes, and Cajun jitterbugs. Over the hand-lettered sign proclaiming “Salle de danse” was a shelf loaded with pieces of parade floats and Mardi Gras costumes. Two giant fans whirred cool air onto the dance floor to neutralize the 90-degree humidity that sat like a fat cat on the countryside just outside the rough-hewn pine paneling.

This is the kind of place Jean Prejean probably had his first dance. Amongst the couples nearly every dance you’d see a mommy or daddy whirl around the perimeter with a toddler in his/her arms. Grade school kids sat with their parents tapping time to the music. Every so often Parain and Marain (grandpa and grandma) or mom or dad took a turn leading one of them through a dance.

There was nary a shred of self-consciousness from the children. They were as at home on the dance floor as a catfish lazing around the bottom of the swamp. The kids’ eyes were bright with excitement. This music was more than happy notes coming from diatonic accordions and ancient fiddles. This was birthright, a sense of belonging that would never be erased by distance or profession.

Music floats lazily over the whole of Southwest Louisiana. Like the Spanish moss cascading over cypress trees in the Atchafalaya Swamp, it’s fed by nutrients floating naturally in the hot, humid air. Hurricanes, floods, and man-made assaults may affect what is on the ground. They will never still the music in the air.

Dylan Dobbyn: Nothing Better Than Messing About In Boats

If there’s a way to enjoy the waters of Westport, Dylan Dobbyn will find it. The Juniper Road resident owns an impressive array of things that float, glide, putt-putt, sail, and paddle and deploys them here twelve months a year. His first taste of life in Westport was when his parents trundled him off to visit relatives here in the summer.

 Ten years ago, when scouring the coast to find an ideal spot to launch his nautical toys, he found that Westport floated to the top of his list. During the work week, Mr. Dobbyn, an electrical engineer, commutes to his job at Terradyne in North Reading. Every weekend Mr. Dobbyn and his wife of four years, Ellen Culliton, leave Harbor Towers in Boston and hit the road for Westport. Outside their house, and at their pier, and on the harbor, you’ll find windsurfing boards, kayaks, and motor boats. Recently, his wife Ellen was seen relaxing with a good book on a beach chair on their East Branch pier while her husband learned to ‘drive’ his latest acquisition, an AquaSkipper.

Job at Terradyne?
“Terradyne builds equipment that tests chips for any electronic device you can think of. One of our big customers is Broadcom, which makes cell phones and communication equipment. As an engineering manager, I oversee the design efforts to verify that the chips used in our chip testers actually work.”

Training for the job?
“ I went to the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and graduated with B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering.”

Globalization?
“Of the 60 people I manage, 50 are in India and the rest in North Reading. A few years ago, we all would have been in America.”

Rewards of the job?
“Whatever I do has an impact. I can tell right away whether I’m doing a good job or not.”

Childhood memories of Westport?
“I remember Westport as a cottage-y place where the kids would spend all day messing around at the beach, then eat watermelon, go straight to a salty, sandy bed and loving it.”

Choosing Westport?
“For years, I had trailered my laser around and wanted a avoid the big production of finding a harbor to get to the water. My aunt Polly Emilita, a Westport real estate broker, showed me the place on Juniper Road that had dock access and I said this is it!”

Racing a laser?
“A laser is a 14’ Olympic racing class, one-design one-person sailboat, one of the most popular sailboats there is. There are a gazillion of them and I love racing them.”

Other boats you own?
“I have a 17’ Seaway skiff at the dock and a 28’ Cape Dory power boat in the harbor off WYC for cruising, We cruise to Block Island, the Vineyard, Edgartown, and Nantucket. I’m still trying to convince my wife to set out on Friday nights as soon as we get here but it’s usually on Saturday mornings.”

At the beach?
“My favorite place to body surf is at Baker Beach. There’s a spot off the flagpole there where the bottom contour makes the water break there consistently good. My dad was a life guard at Coast Guard Beach when he was in college and he taught me how to body surf.”

Winter kayaking?
“I love this. For safety, I did a survival test, dunked myself in the water. The struggle I had to get back in the boat awakened me to how dangerous it could be. I’ cautious now and don’t go out when it’s rough.”

Building models?
“I’m kind of a big kid and love toys. I have a Mindstorms Lego Kit and designed a model of a self-balancing motorcycle. It’s computer-controlled so after I built it, I wrote the software for it. It had a balance sensor so if it was starting to fall over, it would straighten itself out by steering that way.”

Sailing in Boston?
“We live next to the Aquarium so when I get out of work, I head for the Boston Sailing Center and cruise the harbor in a J-24.”

Latest water toy?
“I bought an AquaSkippper to use off the dock. It’s made of aircraft aluminum, weighs 26 pounds, is 6’ long, and is designed to be self-propelled. Sort of like a pogo stick. You have to get a rhythm going or you sink. Luckily, it floats.”

A nautical partnership?
“ Our first date was a cruise to see the sunrise at the entrance to Boston Harbor. On one or our early times together we did a week-long cruise up to Provincetown and around to Nantucket on boat. That’s when I figured it was going really well. If you can live a week on a boat with someone and have a great time that’s a good sign.”

Westport wonderland?
“Westport’s a water wonderland - a great boating harbor combined with a beautiful surf beach and a nice harbor behind it, all within walking distance of each other.”
“

All ages enjoy WRWA's fifth annual River Run

WESTPORT — Under clear, sunny skies, last Saturday's Annual River Run, a Canoe/Kayak Race and Family Fun Paddle, sponsored by The Westport River Watershed Alliance and Osprey Sea Kayak Adventures, was the biggest of its five-year history.

"We had a record number of boats pre-registered," co-organizer Larry Hookey said as he, co-organizer Ann Fitzgerald, and volunteers from the WRWA and Osprey Sea Kayaks helped the 90 contestants make their way to the water's edge at the Hix Bridge starting area.

Photo: Erica Sahlin and 16 year-old son Michael Miller minutes before the  start of the Family/Fun Race.

"I went from saying 'I don't want to do this' the first time to 'Yeah, let's do it!' this time", the New Bedford Voc Tech student said.

The event drew novices and racers. Before starting time, you could hear conversations between Challenge Class participants comparing notes about their featherweight carbon fiber paddles.

And you could hear at least one kayaker in the Family Fun Paddle exclaim, "I don't have a clue what I'm doing!"

It didn't matter. A safety team on the water made sure of that.

When it comes to paddling, Dana Gillum of South Dartmouth and his sister Jan St. Germain of Fall River have been there and done that. The two have logged 4,000 miles on their battle-scarred 1978 Sea Pal canoe. The veterans entered the 3.5 mile Family Fun Paddle. They left the Challenge course to the 16 kayaks and canoes that wanted to work up a sweat. The 8.5 mile course headed south to Gunning Island and veered back north to The Head of Westport finish line.

The shorter course may not have been as arduous as their passages up the Saco, Slocum, and Paskamansett Rivers but it was relaxing. "This is going to be no problem," Mr. Gillum said as he and his sister chatted with another pair of canoers before the start.

"I've had to reinforce the bottom several times after it's ridden over rough surfaces," he grinned, surveying the fiberglass-reinforced bottom ribs.

"Anyone got some duct tape?" Carol Long has just discovered that the paddle in her borrowed canoe needs fixing. Three minutes later, a volunteer pitched a roll of the grey miracle product to Long, and fellow Westport paddler Polly Gardner started taping while Josie Woollam of Westport watched.

"We sail together. We're not used to being this close to the water— and using so many muscles," Ms. Long said with a chuckle.

Jury rigging:Polly Gardner of Adamsville wraps duct tape on her Westport pal Carol Long's broken paddle as Westporter Josie Woollam  watches. Gardner and Long came in first and second in the Family/Fun  single canoe category.

The Westport River Watershed Alliance and Osprey Sea Kayak Adventures are riding a wave of good will. The long list of supporters of this year's River Run illustrates their event's growing footprint and acknowledg ment of the river's value to the town.

Major sponsors Bittersweet Farm, Graphix Plus, Lees Market, and TMJ Orthopedics, were joined by 30 entities from A to Z that provided goods, services, or cash support:

A.J. Potter Jr. and Sons; Country Woolens; Dartmouth Building Supply, Inc; Doug Brown-Durfee Buffington Insurance Agency; Ellie's Place Restaurant; Fernandez & Charest, P. C.; Graham Enterprises; Handy Hill Creamery; LaPointe Insurance; Lawton Builders; Marguerite's Restaurant; Mid-City Scrap & Salvage Company; N.A.C. Security and Stereo Systems, Inc.; Ocean's Catch, Inc.; Partners Village Store; Plamondon Electrical; Potter Funeral Service, Inc.; Rent-A-Jon; State Representative Michael J. Rodriques; Sticks. Stones, & Stars; The Bayside Restaurant; Timís Lawn Care; Village Pizza; Westport Apothecary; Westport Chiropractic; Westport Federal Credit Union; Westport Marine Specialties; WestportHappenings.com; Zibra Corporation.

After the morning of racing, medals were awarded, high fives exchanged, and food and beverages consumed by three generations of paddlers in the peaceful scene at the Head of Westport finish line.

In the end, the only requirement for participating was enthusiasm and a love of the river. Every paddler could have earned a medal for that.

The River Run's Real Winner Is The River

 

At the 10:30 starting time on a picture-perfect Saturday morning, the kayaks, canoes, and, oh yes, one tiny row boat,  were a swirling mass of fiberglass and wood on the south side of Hix Bridge.  Viewed from the bridge fifteen minutes later, the 74 vessels in the Family/Fun division appeared to be dots of colorful confetti paddling toward the Head of Westport 3.5 miles away. The Fifth Annual Canoe/Kayak Race and Family Paddle, sponsored by The Westport River Watershed Alliance and Osprey Sea Kayaks, was in full swing.

The Challenge Class had begun their 8.5 boomerang route a half hour before, looping south to Gunning Island then reversing course to pass under Hix Bridge and blast toward the Head. Many of the 16 Challenge Class would finish way before the more laid back family paddlers.

The name of the game for the racers was speed. Most sported kayaks and canoes built for competition. Many were equipped with GPS systems to monitor time, speed, and distance.

“I want to fool around and get some exercise. If I happen to pass one or two people, that’s fine,” David Crocker said as he checked over his Seda Glide Kayak prior to the race. A look at his brawny physique and the gleam in his eye belied that statement. He blew out of the start at the head of the pack and stayed there till the finish, winning himself a $50 gift certificate from White’s of Westport for his efforts.

Even the family paddlers wanted to pass at least one boat. Rosemary Crocker of Providence tapped into a nearly universal sentiment when she said, “I want to finish it and not be last in my class.” She wasn’t.

For Josie Woollam of Westport, the East Branch had a way of neutralizing the competitive instinct. “The trouble with this race is it’s too distracting,” she said. “There’s so much beauty behind each bend in the river. Every time I see a stone wall, swans, or meadows, I want to paddle nearer and get a good look.”

Woollam and her two pals, Polly Gardner of Adamsville and Carol Long of Westport, paddled lightweight fiberglass canoes. Apparently, Gardner and Long were less distracted than Woollam. They placed one and two in the single canoe division.

The venerable, somewhat battered, 1978 Sea Pal canoe entered by the brother/sister team of Dana Gillum of South Dartmouth and Jan St. Germain of New Bedford has more water under its bow than any other on the river. “By the end of the race, we’ll have traveled 4003.5 miles. We’ve been on the Saco. Slocum, and Paskamansett Rivers, “ said Gillum. “This will be no problem.”

Race organizers Ann Fitzgerald and Larry Hookey oversaw the largest turnout ever, 74 Family/Fun and 16 Challenge Class boats. Dozens of volunteers  monitored the event on land and on water.

“Sponsors and vendors really stepped up this year,” Fitzgerald said, naming four major sponsors and 30 others who provided goods, services, or hard cold cash.

Tots, teenagers, and adults from twenty-somethings to those who’ve owned their AARP cards for more than a decade crewed the assortment of boats that passed the finish line.

Fitzgerald and Hookey handed out dozens of medals while paddlers and friends munched on wraps, pizza, and watermelons in the shade of the trees at the river’s grassy edge at the Head of Westport.
If there were a medal for Beautiful Natural Resource, the river would have won it, paddles down.

SIDEBAR OF WINNERS
Challenge Class
Racer
Paul Cordelia
Single Kayak
1. Dave Crocker
2. Mark Edwards
Over 55
1. John Cooper Mullen
2. Bruce Meacham
Female
1. Denise Hixon
2. Marcia Hathaway
Plastic Kayak
1. Bob Wilkinson
2. George Kyller
Double Canoe -
1. Halpin and Olson (first names not available)
2. Darrill Goldizen, J.F. Paquin

Family Fun Class
Overall
1. Mike Spadea, Kara Gilson (Double Kayak, 2008 Grads Oliver Ames HS, Easton,MA )
2. Rob and Jamie Pollack (Double Kayak)
Double Canoe
1. Dana Gillum, Jan St. Germain
2. Mike and Molly Sullivan
Over 55, Double Kayak
1. Ted and Tom Gibney
2. Peggy and Jonathan Stevens
Family Boat, more than 2 people
1. The Toth Family
2. The Chan Family
Fun Boat
1. Dan and Ben (age 2 1/2) Harrington in row boat
2. Tim Groves in kayak with Ruby Groves (age 4)
Single Kayak Overall
1. Edward Earle
2. Eric LaFrance
Single Kayak, under 16
1. Nicholas Gonsalves
2. Cody Flynn
Single Kayak, over 55
1. John Hiller
2. Prue Goodale
Single Canoe
1. Polly Gardner
2. Carol Long
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
SIDEBAR
SPONSORS AND VENDORS HELP FLOAT THE RIVER RUN
The Westport River Watershed Alliance and Osprey Sea Kayak Adventures are riding a wave of good will. The long list of supporters of this year’s River Run illustrates their event’s growing footprint and acknowledgement of the river’s value to the town. Major sponsors Bittersweet Farm, Graphix Plus, Lees Market, and TMJ Orthopedics were joined by 30 entities from A to Z that provided goods, services, or cash support.
A.J. Potter Jr. and Sons; Country Woolens; Dartmouth Building Supply, Inc; Doug Brown-Durfee Buffington Insurance Agency; Ellie’s Place Restaurant; Fernandez & Charest, P. C.; Graham Enterprises; Handy Hill Creamery; LaPointe Insurance; Lawton Builders; Marguerite’s Restaurant; Mid-City Scrap & Salvage Company; N.A.C. Security and Stereo Systems, Inc.; Ocean’s Catch, Inc.; Partners Village Store; Plamondon Electrical; Potter Funeral Service, Inc.; Rent-A-Jon; State Representative Michael J. Rodriques; Sticks. Stones, & Stars; The Bayside Restaurant; Tim’s Lawn Care; Village Pizza; Westport Apothecary; Westport Chiropractic; Westport Federal Credit Union; Westport Marine Specialties;  WestportHappenings.com; Zibra Corporation.

Arrrgh, Matey, A Cockatoo on the Bow!

Well, blow me down, a cockatoo on the bow.  Not since Long John Silver’s seagoing parrot has there been evidence of squawkers and their owners on the bounding sea, or in this case, the rolling river.

Dusty the cockatoo and his owner Hank Protzmann of East Greenwich, RI, showed up at the Westport River’s Hix Bridge Landing Saturday morning to man (and bird) the safety crew monitoring the kayers and canoers entered in the Fifth Annual River Run Race and Famiy Fun Paddle.

Aside from Hank, Dusty may have been the most experienced adventurer on the river.

“Dusty’s been mountain biking, wind surfing, and kayaking with me for years. This is his fourth kayak ride this week, He’s been with me hundreds of times, ” Hank said.

 Hank bought the well mannered bird from a breeder when  it was a few weeks old, Dusty spent 13 years with Hank in Delray Beach where Protzmann grew up and owned a water sports rental business. The duo has spent the last eight years in Greenwich. 

When on rescue boat jet ski, Dusty grabs on with his claws and holds on with the grit of an old salt.

Protzmann and Dusty have been friends with Osprey Sea Kayaks owners Sam and Carl Ladd for years and winged it over to Westport when invited to join the safety crew. Osprey Sea Kayaks and The Westport River Watershed Alliance organized the event.

“He’s our safety bird,” says Sam Ladd. “He’s an adventure parrot.”

The History Boys

The History Boys
Play by Alan Bennett
Directed by: Scott Edmiston
Set, Janie E. Howland. Costumes, Gail Astrid Buckley. Lights, Karen Perlow. Music and sound, Dewey Dellay.
Presented by: SpeakEasy Stage Company.
At: Boston Center for the Arts, Roberts Studio Theatre, through June 22.
Tickets, $51-54, 617-933-8600, bostontheatrescene.com

We’re living in a roiling sea of interests competing for our time and allegiance. What will help us get on in life, a deep understanding of our cultural history or the ability to reduce it to superficial sound bytes?

The question is posed, and not necessarily answered, by a rambunctious and touching SpeakEasy Stage production of ‘The History Boys,’ recently extended till June 22, at the Roberts Studio Theater in the Calderwood Pavilion.

The story unfolds in a working class boys’ school in 1984 Sheffield England. An eccentric professor, Hector, played by Bob Colonna, is a gray-bearded Socrates in a tweed jacket. "All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use," he says. The scenes of him careening between poetry, popular song, and exuberant skits to tease out lessons in history and culture to his class of eight students are filled with intelligence and a jaunty Python-esque imagination.

Tom Irwin, a young professor, is hired by the fatuous headmaster to improve the boys’ chances of being accepted at famed Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Irwin, played by Chris Thorn, encourages the boys to build their college entrance exams with froth and the reason of a sophist. They’ve been taught to write with a stone mason’s skill, laying foundation and layering point after point, “Booooring”, says Irwin.

"History nowadays is not a matter of conviction," he says. "It’s a performance." He encourages them to find the Fox News versions of their essays and abandon their training to search for historical perspective.

The eight boys are the stuff of the melting pot that is working class England. The dialogue between them underscores their wavering loyalties as they decide which of their teachers represents their best way to succeed. Dan Whelton as alpha male Dakin and Karl Baker Olson as sensitive gay student Posner are standouts. Olson’s singing of “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” and recitation of Thomas Hardy’s "Drummer Hodge” are unabashed expressions of unrequited love for another student.

Bennett’s main characters are complex and flawed. Hector’s habit of groping the boys he takes on motorcycle rides is certainly inappropriate. To his students, his behavior is a joke but there are consequences. Irwin misrepresents his credentials. Let’s just say the ending is not tidy.

Director Scott Edmiston and sound designer Dewey Dellay pull out the stops and use music, singing and lively dance routines that look choreographed for jolly soccer players as transitions between scenes.

History has not been crowded out of prime time in the British public education system, at least not in the 1984 England we see here. When is the last time your play program included two pages filled with over two dozen literary, historical, and pop culture references that will appear in the play? When is the last time you heard the names of Gracie Fields and Piero della Francesca (via T.S. Eliot) bandied about in any kind of play? No matter which way these boys write their exams, Hector’s made sure they know their history.

And I’ll bet my laptop that several references to the Dissolution of Monasteries, the destruction of 800 monastic libraries in the mid-1500s that represented a cultural and educational loss, is an echo of what playwright Alan Bennett wonders about in today’s era in which ‘history’ seems to mean last week.

We’re living in a sea of change. So many of our traditions, ways of thinking and living are becoming artifacts of history, replaced by fresh ideas, concepts, and market forces. But is newer better? The History Boys aren’t the only ones who have to decide. We have to do it every day.

Re-Build New Orleans with a wiggle and your wallet

You can take the girl out of Louisiana but not the Louisiana out of the girl. It’s been 27 years since Rebecca Wilson left behind the magnolias, festivals, and gumbo, but her soft Louisiana accent remains. Wilson grew up in a culture in which music and dancing were akin to eating and breathing.

For as long as she can remember, just about anything worth celebrating was done to music. Weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, church events, births, and a few other things best left unmentioned. In New Orleans, tears were shed when someone died but the trip to the local cemetery might have been made with the assistance of a bumptious brass band. Nothing, not even death, could muffle the music or deter the spirit there.

That is until Katrina, an unwelcome guest that barged into New Orleans with mayhem in mind. The hurricane wreaked havoc on a city, a culture, and a musical heritage. We saw photos and video of the devastation, people holding on for dear life on their rooftops, then the aftermath of displacement and despair.

It was by far the costliest hurricane to strike the United States - at least 81 billion dollars in property damage. One in 25 people in New Orleans are homeless, double pre-Katrina statistics. FEMA still pops up in the news as do stories of inability, perhaps incompetence and indifference, in rebuilding the hardest hit wards of New Orleans.

The storm swallowed the most vulnerable parts of New Orleans then puked them out in a mass of fetid muck, wooden debris, and sodden dreams. Along with livelihoods, homes, and neighborhoods, Katrina tore at the heart of New Orleans - the music scene. Fats Domino lost his home in the ninth ward and everything in it, including his Steinway piano. Irma Thomas lost her home and her nightclub was a shambles. Marva Wright lost her wedding rings, her mother’s photographs, and the home which housed them. The list goes on.

Wilson’s a dancin’ girl. The sound of funky blues, zydeco, or Cajun music gets her looking for the closest piece of real estate she can find to dance to the music. She’s been known to pull off the road to haul her companion from the car, turn the car radio up to ten, and dance to her heart’s content.

The still-unsettled future of New Orleans gnaws at her. A Mardi Gras party at Ryles in February jolted her into action. “There were three different bands playing various types of music that originated in New Orleans. All that joie de vivre came from the love of all things New Orleans – the music, the outlandish celebration of Mardi Gras, the let-the-good-times-roll spirit, among others.  I felt a pang of sadness at what a treasure New Orleans is and how it’s struggling to fully recover and get its mojo back.”

“I’ve attended the benefits organized by New Orleans musicians. Their sadness is palpable,” she said. “Many shed tears as they performed. They told of losing prized instruments, music awards, and their sense of community.” Money, always tight for musicians, is scarce, and many have yet to rebuild. Their community, once close, is now spread over several states.

From her frequent visits to New Orleans, Wilson knows the devastation was widespread and that musicians and the poor weren’t the only ones to be displaced. “A couple of middle class neighborhoods were hit hard too.  My niece has friends who lost everything, because everything they had was tied up in their homes.  Some people have established lives for themselves in other parts of the country, but many simply can’t go home because there’s no home to go back to.  With no or not enough money from their insurance companies and in many cases no way to reinsure their homes, they’re stuck in limbo,” she says.

A successful interior design consultant, Wilson is a self-starter. She believes the plight of New Orleans has dropped off the radar screen. She intends to do something about that.

Wilson is the point person for an October fund-raiser “Help Re-Build New Orleans.” All money raised, after event expenses, will go directly to Common Ground Relief to be used specifically to repair and rebuild housing in the areas of New Orleans hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina.

“I want to capture the musical heritage of New Orleans for people who want to help and to remind people what’s at stake.” she says. Two local bands, Slippery Sneakers and The Chili Brothers, will perform a mix of New Orleans style funk, blues and zydeco.

New Orleans has given the country much. If you've ever shuffled your feet, taken your love in your arms, and just felt the cares of the world lift momentarily from your shoulders as you've listened to The Big Easy’s music, it is time for you to give something back.

Here’s where to start: http://www.rebuildneworleans.net/

New Orleans photo credits:  Areas in New Orleans still suffering from the effects of Katrina
photographed in January, 2008 by Dr. N.C. Briggs and D. Brower

Miss Tess and The Bon Ton Parade:Modern Vintage

Toad
1912 Massachusetts Avenue (Porter Square)
Cambridge, MA 02140

Miss Tess and The Bon Ton Parade
First set, May 11, 10 pm

It might be 10 pm Sunday night, the work week a few hours away, but no need to hurry home just yet. There’s a little lady on stage sporting a jaunty black cap and a shiny electric guitar who’s got your foot tapping and head bobbing to an irresistable swing beat.

The twenty-somethings who crammed into this tiny neighborhood bar at 10 pm on Sunday nights have grown up on hip-hop and rap but the way they cheered every song Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade played, they could have been bobbi soxers and their beaux listening to their favorite crooner in the 1940s. Miss Tess has style way beyond her own twenty six years. When your dad is a Big Band leader and your mom plays upright bass, you tend to inherit an eight bar sensibility.

The Bon Ton Parade perches on their little float at the far end of the dimly lit bar and launches into its first set. There’s nothing old fashioned about the tight trio of saxophone/ clarinet, bass, and drums that make up this ensemble.

The group opens with a mid-tempo swing standard, “Nevertheless (I’m In Love With You)”, Saxophone, upright bass and drums each take a brief solo that puts us on notice that they’re feeling the vibe. Tess’s muted guitar licks are polished, with a lineage that harkens back to Chet Atkins and Les Paul.

Their second CD, “Modern Vintage” is loaded with a dozen originals that have the flavor of jazz, blues, and swing from the 20s to the 50s. They fill the next hour with a heady mix of these originals and standards.

Miss Tess’s meal ticket is her voice. Her supple alto has the smoke of Norah Jones and the playfulness of Madelyn Peyroux but there’s nothing imitative about it. She gets a rowdy response from the audience when, in the midst of her original "Saving All My Love", she purses her lips together and produces what for all the world sounds like a muted trumpet solo.

Tess’s vocals, her band’s coiled energy, and an engaged audience are like a slowly burning fuse. Everyone’s getting a bang out of this show.

The original ballad “Stormy Baby” is one of those songs you inexplicably find yourself humming on the way to work the next day. As she does on one or two other songs, Tess punches it up when she allows her voice to break into a higher register at the tail end of a lyric. The mid-tempo “Pokey McMumbles” gives her sax man a solo that snakes between twinkly Benny Goodman and growly Clarence Clemmons and Tess a chance to dish out another one of those lip-buzzing trumpet solos.

The only song that didn’t find a home was a Tess original "One Rainy Day."  Perhaps more cerebral than swing, it seemed out of synch with the rest of the show.

Next thing you know, Tess tosses an accelerant into the set with “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans”. Cajun lick sax solo, Tess’s deft guitar picking and velvet voice are organically matched and get the patrons at Toad hollering as the first set came to a close.

So here we are, 11:30 at night, Miss Tess sipping Jameson from a glass tumbler and crooning music you don’t hear on your radio dial. We’ve heard her cover swing, jazz, blues, country, and Cajun styles with smart interpretations of each. There’s a sunshine-in-a-bottle quality to her voice and Monday morning seems a long way off.

First set list
"Nevertheless" - an old swing standard
"Saving All My Love" - original
"Oh No" - original
"Stormy Baby" - original
"Pokey McMumbles" - original.
"It's a Wonderful World" - swing standard
"One Rainy Day" - original
"Give It Up" - Bonnie Raitt
"Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" - standard
"Train Ride to Caroline" - original

http://www.misstessmusic.com/

Eddie Izzard

Eddie Izzard began his American tour, “Stripped”, at Boston's Orpheum Theater, April 28 - 30, 2008
Orpheum Theater
1 Hamilton Place, Boston, MA 02108

Intelligent, rakish humor that doesn’t rely on bodily functions, bathroom activities, or saturated sexual innuendo is hard to come by in America. Which is exactly why an Eddie Izzard show is so refreshing. When he walks onto the stage and gets around to saying. “Tonight, we’re going to talk about… EVERYTHING!” he means it. All 4 billion years of the earth's history.

The next two hours were spent with Izzard cobbling together an oddball pastiche of comedy, history, and general clowning around. Wrap culture, language, and religion in tinfoil, set it in the microwave, and you have an Eddie Izzard show.

Watch Izzard mime about God using a crème brulee torch to create the earth or boil down the Ten Commandments to its essentials. Marvel at his downright courage to say. “Y’know, all we need is one commandment: Be kind to one another.” There is slight pause while he makes sure you registered that. Then a sharp left turn in which he acts out Moses trying to hold back the sea, or dinosaurs with little hands singing from hymnals in church, or Darwin's theory of evolution - "Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, you!"

Eddie Izzard is an updated Monty Python, crossed with Steve Martin and Richard Pryor. The English actor has a general idea of what he’s driving at but is so busy looking out the window that he gets gloriously lost amongst the trees along the way. A conversation about the existence of God might be interrupted by whipping out his iPhone to look up the definition of soup - which might been on the menu of the Jesus's Last Supper, “It’s all here on Wikipedia, you know.” And we do.

Using part of that detour as a running joke for the rest of the night, he gets a nearly Pavlovian response of laughter when he’ll pause and utter, “Soup!”

This is the first stop of his three-month American tour of  “Stripped”. By the end of the tour he’ll have shaped and somewhat tamed the show into what will become his second HBO special. The first, “Dress to Kill” (in which the cross-dressing comedian sports lipstick and black pumps), put his name on the map in 1999 and won him two Emmy Awards.

Izzard plays dodge ball with the ideas that streak into his brain. His stream of consciousness delivery is a three ring circus in which he is the daring young man on the flying trapeze, the tightrope walker, and one of the clowns squeezing out of the tiny car all at the same time. That’s a nearly death defying trick for a comedian working without a net on new material.

He took dozens of detours on his 4 billion year history tour about Everything. Aside from a few well-timed F words, the show was muscled along on brain cells, not testosterone. You just don’t realize how starved you are for stimulating comedy until you’ve heard this man in concert.

Youtube has bunches of Izzard's stuff from "Dress to Kill"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiFq_nk8pE0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ope-1Zb5t-k

Whizzin’, a pissa of a show

Whizzin’
Musical by Ryan Landry and Billy Hough
Directed by Ryan Landry and Rick Park
Set, Windsor Newton, Costumes, Scott Martino
Presented by the Gold Dust Ophans
At Machine, through May 24, Tickets $28, 866-811-4111 or theatermania.com
Running time 2 hrs 15 min including fifteen minute intermission

It’s not that often you can see a true-blue campy drag show in Beantown. OK, the black walled basement of Machine on way upper Boylston Street is not exactly the Theater District. And Whizzin’, with book and lyrics by Ryan Landry and Billy Hough, is not a family musical. It’s the raunchy, over the top, un-self-conscious fun that a gay-themed production should be.

When the 6’2” black-clad, tattooed bouncer greeted me at the entrance to Machine last night with a “Hi, Honey,” I knew I wasn’t in Kansas any more.

The plot strays from the original Wizard of Oz but only purists, who are not likely to have this venue bookmarked in their Blackberries, might object. Social satire is often embedded in gay theater productions and Whizzin’ aims its share at cell phone users, Internet pornsters, and botox and plastic surgery addicts. Whizzin’ also refers to Dorothy’s bed-wetting problem.

Several inspired theater effects had the audience roaring with laughter. The imaginative props that cost no more than a collection of tin foil, coat hangers, bits of muslin, and foam rubber were gems. The gray fabric tornado might have cost ten bucks and had the audience in a grand stitch. The costumes were hilariously outlandish.

The theater is nothing more than about a hundred folding metal chairs spread out on a black cement dance floor facing a makeshift stage at one end of the sprawling Machine’s basement. The posters on the bathroom walls leave no doubt as to the proclivities of the patrons.

With impeccable timing, stage presence, and facial expressions, Olive Another’s Glinda delightfully dominated every scene in which she (he?…cripes what’s a reviewer to do about personal pronouns here?) appeared. Most of the other actors had their lines gobbled up when they ran them over audience laughter.

Megan Ludlow’s Dorothy had a fine show girl (and she is a girl) singing voice. Her re-imagined version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow was heartfelt and moving. Ryan Landry as the Wicked Witch squeezed every syllable from his rakish delivery.

As a matter of fact the whole production was full of heart and, dare I say it, gaiety.

Enthusiasm often trumped talent but the acting is so exuberant that it doesn’t seem matter. Like the Lion’s derriere, the production sagged with its own weight from time to time and could use a little kitch-o-suction. But if you want to sit amongst a very mixed crowd and listen to a collection of ballads and bodacious rocker song and dance routines, call the Gold Dust Orphans Company. Their “machine’ is running until May 24th.

Photo courtesy of golddustophans.com

Mr. Samsung, meet Mr. Maytag

“What the heck is that buzzing sound in there,” I thought to myself as I started pulling clothes from the washing machine. “And what's that under my work pants? That black thing...that's  bleeping.  It can’t be a cell phone. Cell phones don’t belong in washing machines.“

For a second, reality does not compute. Cell phones, as any idiot knows, don’t belong under water so it can’t be a cell phone. My mind refuses the data.  But it IS a cell phone. MY cell phone.

I kept staring, hoping that if I looked long enough, the vagrant phone would disappear. Or at least stop that low moaning bleeeeping.  Neither happened.

There are many ways to feel stupid. Emergency Room stupid, Relationship stupid, Road Rage stupid. And now Cell Phone stupid.

More embarrassingly stupid than your cell phone ringing while you're in the theater, or ringing in the crucial first three minutes of a blind date. Worse than misplacing your cell phone or leaving it under your napkin in the restaurant. You may sheepishly recover from such faux pas.

It is not possible to say to your cell phone, “Gee, sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you in the pocket of my work pants when I threw them into the Maytag,  I'll make it up to you.”

You just stand over the white porcelain tub staring at the poor bleating piece of technology that has become more important to you than your opposable thumb. How the hell could you have been so careless?

In addition to the indignity of having to spend a pile of dough to replace something you already own, are you going to admit why you need to purchase a new cell phone? You know that in time this is going to be an amusing story you can serve up, with the help of two glasses of Shiraz, at some chatty cocktail party believing it will trump all comers.

But at this very moment, staring at the bubbly glass eye of your phone, you feel as dumb as you've felt in a long time.

The White Owls:Gritty Blues, Gritty Bar

White Owls Band
Sally O'Brien's Bar and Grill
335 Somerville Ave, Somerville, MA 02145
617-666-3589
Open 11 am - 1 am

If you’re looking for a launch pad to rocket your blues lovin’ soul into the work week, head over to Sally O’Brien’s Pub on a Sunday night. The resident rocker scientists, headed by Dennis Brennan, will put you in a feel good orbit that will have your feet tappin’ and bottom shakin’.

Brennan fronts the White Owls, a cover band that produces two liquid nitrogen-caliber sets of hardcore blues every Sunday. Sidemen Mike Dinallo (guitar), Dean Casell (bass), Steve Sadler (laptop steel), and Andy Plaisted (drums), rock like it's still Saturday night.

Blues is Brennan’s oxygen. He’s been writing, singing, and scratching out a career since 1992. If you can imagine the hardscrabble life of a musician perpetually just outside the gates of fame and fortune, you damn well know Brennan is pouring it out from his gut. After he grabs a down and dirty ballad or up-tempo number by the throat, there’s no way his bandmates can mail in their solos. They’re too proud and too good to do that anyway.

Tonight’s crowd was thin but Mike Dinallo and Steve Sadler played as if booking agents filled the place. While tipping their hats to the gritty bluesmen that preceded them (see Brennan’s set list below), they gleefully lay down their own inspired licks. Dinallo’s soaring, imaginative riffs had Sadler grinning as he plucked, thrummed and at one point induced amp feedback as part of a solo that careened deliciously into the rafters.

Sally O’Brien’s is one of a handful of Cambridge/Somerville pubs that serve great live music with the beer. Lest anyone lose sight of the bottom line, the two 42-inch HD plasma TVs set upon the brick wall behind bar are dwarfed by the Guinness sign. The ten taps halfway down the bar finish the motif and can wash down the authentic Irish, Mexican, Italian, and American foods on the menu.

A small stage set on a dias, a postage stamp dance floor, and a scattering of high cocktail tables are on the far side of the waist high wall that separates the bar from the lounge. On this night, a few dancers boogie, swing, and grind away. If you’re a dance and blues hound, find this place on mapquest.

The place is a local hangout. You will not see BMWs parked on the street outside. You will hear brogues still thick from the trip across the pond. And on most nights you’ll hear very American music. Check it out for yourself.

Partial list - first and second sets.
The music honors early bluesmen who blazed a trail while battling cultural bias and lack of means.

"Route 66", blazing treatment of 1946 Bobby Troup song
"Strange Things Happen', written by Percy Mayfield 1950 slow blues
'I Aint Mad At You', originally performed by Maggie Campbell, Thomas Johnson 1928
'Whole Lotta Rockin Goin On'
'Stranger Blues', The Crusaders 1960
'This Is The Last Time I Fool With You'
'Mona', written by Bo Diddley 1957
'That’s All Right', written by Arthur Crudup 1954
'I cant do it all by myself', Sonnyboy Williamson II 1955
'Somebody Got To Go', written by Gatemouth Moore 1945
'Fever', written by Little Willie John 1937

Spin

Spin
A play by Robert J. Sherwood
Directed by David J. Miller
April 18- May 10, 2008
Thursdays, Fridays 8:00 PM
Saturdays 4:00 and 8:00 PM
Sundays 3:00 PM

At the Plaza Black Box Theatre at Boston Center for the Arts
Boston Center for the Arts
539 Tremont St in Boston’s South End
Tickets: $35
Seniors & Students $30

The first act of Spin feels like shooting Niagara Falls in a barrel. Profane dialogue whooshes by at a dizzying rate, most of it uttered by a gonzo campaign manager who would sell his mother if it would help his candidate win the presidency.

The play opens with Samuel Champlain’s campaign manager gloating over a fifteen-point lead in the polls before the final debate that will occur in two hours. Two minutes later, the adversary’s campaign manager breezes into his office and lights a fuse to a scandal she’s ready to use to derail Champlain’s aspirations.

Boy, do we need a zany play like this. We are numbed by 24/7 politics. He says, she says, she spins, he spins. How much distortion is tacked on to a kernel of truth? Is anything off limits? Does it have anything to do with the candidate’s ability to do a good job?

We get to ponder this as the coyote campaign manager hints that Samuel Champlain’s wife is compromised by something, described as “having to do with three letters, S E X”, that will blow her husband’s candidacy out of the water. The threat: Champlain must accept the VP slot or his wife’s secret is aired and his candidacy is toast. The decision must be made before the debate that occurs two hours later, conveniently the length of the play we’re watching.

While this is teased out, we get to see the kind of wild, numbers driven, information spinning, anything goes politicking that we suspect goes on behind closed doors. Steven Barkhimer plays campaign manager Jerry as a political operative of gleeful crackhead proportions. He speeds along on vats of coffee and has a mind that can reconfigure any fact into a coin of the realm for his boss - a coin that on one side buffs him up and on the other denigrates his opponent. He occasionally overacts but he’s got lines that will make you hoot. (“No promises! Give the impression of promises!” Jerry tells the candidate as he’s practicing for his debate.)

Packaged in this cocktail of a play are a Saturday Night Live spoof and a drama with topical relevance. It’s shaken and stirring. Jerry’s pollster (Melissa Baroni) is a numbers whiz for hire. She can mold a statistic into a roadside bomb or a comforter. The opposing campaign manager (Elisa McDonald) has graduated from the Machiavelli School of Political Warfare. She gives Jerry a sniff of the scandal she’s uncovered and baits him into confronting the candidate’s wife to determine if the ambiguous sex story is true - and how much spin he’ll have to contrive to offset the damage.

The candidate’s wife Alexandra (Christine Power) is as good at spinning her truth as the two campaign managers in the room. These four are playing for all the marbles. Loser is not a word found in any of their lexicons.

Peter Brown inexplicably underplays his role as Henry, the candidate on the cusp of victory. He’s a forty-watt bulb set amongst klieg lights. It would be a serious distraction if the others weren't so busy chomping the daylights out of their roles.

One doesn’t have to be a cynic to see where the production is driving us. In contemporary politics, the notion of truth, decency, character, and moral courage comes home in a flag draped box. We all want to achieve our destinies, our dreams. How much will we sacrifice to realize them?

There are probably some pretty heavy-duty rapscallions who serve us in congress or our communities. Did we elect them because they proved they can do a good job of running the show, or that (short of pedophilia) they are paragons of virtue in their private lives?

It’s two hours of scary fun watching the five characters try to get a grip on shreds of their humanity as the tornado of a political campaign rages around them. It’s even better that the fuse set at the outset of the play is still burning at the end.

Photo courtesy http://www.zeitgeiststage.com/

Three Tall Women: Edward Albee

Edward Albee was raised by a woman who knew a lot about horses and nothing about mothering. His fictional treatment of his early life is the play's undergirding. Questions raised about how we use or revise our memories to fit our identities will resonate with you long after you leave the theater.

Three Tall Women
A Play by Edward Albee
Directed by Spiro Veloudos, Set by Christina Todesco, Costumes by Molly Trainor, Lights by Karen Perlow, Music by Peter Bayne
Lyric Stage  Company through April 26
Tickets, $25-50,617-585-5678
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes including one 15 minute intermission

Here are three good reasons to see Three Tall Women: Anne Scurria, Paula Plum, Liz Hayes.

Another reason to see the play is that Edward Albee wrote it. Forget what you’ve heard about the playwright being inaccessible. He poured his heart out (Albee-style) in writing this 1994 Pulitzer Prize winning play in which he fictionalized his upbringing.

The result is a touching, witty charmer that seesaws between broad humor and dark reality. The combination is odd but Albee is a master of making great stuff from unlikely premises.

Albee was raised by a woman who knew a lot about horses and nothing about mothering. By the time he packed his bag, never to return, he left behind a trail of schools he’d been kicked out of and a painful broken relationship with his mother.

To reveal the play’s structure would take the wallop out of seeing it for the first time. One thing that must be revealed is that you don’t have a chance to see three high-velocity actresses play off one another that often.  The women, whom Albee named A, B, and C are played by three powerhouses: Anne Scurria of the Trinity Repertory Theater, Paula Plum, a fixture in Boston drama circles, and up-and-comer Liz Hayes.

Scurria and Plum are fully vested in their roles from the opening scene. The 92 year-old A (Scurria) shoots from the hip, not one PC bone in her aged body. Eighty one year-old Albee writes with the same rifle-bore directness.

As the shadow of death nears, do we re-imagine life’s losses and pleasures as they occurred or as we wished they had occurred?  On occasion, A’s attempts to remember accurately are like watching the proverbial camel fit through the eye of a needle. One wonders how much Albee struggled with the same question as he wrote this loosely autobiographical play.

Paula Plum’s Fifty something B, a cool breeze of mortality just beginning to chill her shoulders, uses her droll wit and deadpan black humor to ready herself for the trials of A, who might represent her own future. Liz Hays as twenty-six year old C is infused with the limitless possibilities of a life unfolding. Hayes, to her credit, inhabits her role more and more deeply as the play develops.

Albee’s preoccupation with the roiling themes of age, memory, relationships, and meaning are packed inside this freight train of a play. From the ABC of it to the XYZ of it, this is the best  production you’re likely to see in Boston this season.

Session Americana:Teeny Table, Big Sound

Session Americana

Lizard Lounge, Cambridge, MA
April 8, 2008

Ry Cavanaugh - guitar, mandocello, vocals
Dinty Child - mandocello, fiddle, banjo, guitar, accordion, keyboards, vocals
Billy Beard - drums, vocals
Sean Staples - mandolin, mandolincello, fiddle, guitar, vocals
Kimon Kirk - bass, vocals
Jim Fitting - harmonica, vocals

A bloom of oriental rugs, a few ancient church pews and assorted tiny tables and high backed chairs trademark the rouge-illuminated basement of the Lizard Lounge, the place that is a Petri dish for some of the most talented acts germinating in Boston.

The first thing you noticed tonight as you peered into the middle of this little hideaway was the teeny wooden table surrounded by a several chairs in tight formation and a collection of well-used instruments: guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo, accordion, mandocello (ok, I had to ask someone about that one) and harmonica. On the perimeter were a no-frills drum set, a dowdy looking piano and an electric keyboard sitting on a case that appeared to have been
carted over mountains by mules.

Once again, the Liz has pulled a rabbit from the hat. Actually six rabbits, veteran musicians all, who stumbled upon a concept quite by accident 3 years ago and have become a cult favorite in the area. This would be Session Americana, currently in weekly residence on Tuesday nights.

The six guys crowded around the teeny round wooden table occasionally passed instruments around like chips with the beer. One by one they leaned into the omnidirectional mike to take their solos while the others sat back and sang choruses. For all the world it looked like six friends at their Wednesday night poker game, pints of beer perched precariously on the shared table.

The set list seemed spontaneous. “Let’s do ‘Sometimes I Forget,’” says Ry Cavanaugh. A cascade of banter ensues, then Cavanaugh leans into the mike and sets off, blazing the trail for tempo and feel of the arrangement he wants to try out tonight.

I have no idea of the titles of most of the songs they sang, save one or two like a catchy rendition of Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame”, and a sweet Mills Brothers classic “You Always Hurt The One You Love.” The songs were plucked from some Great American Songbook In The Sky full of lesser known ballads, folk, gospel, and bluegrass titles.

What I do know is that the music was by turns rousing, uplifting, infectious, mournful, lilting, churchlike and profane. And the audience, some of them casually sitting around the floor near the musician’s table, apparently a custom at the Sessions concerts, was eating it up. Lurking somewhere in the intimate cellar was the spirit of the Grateful Dead. I wouldn’t be surprised to smell patchouli and see love beads for sale outside at some future concert. But I digress.

The audience became witnesses at a jam session between guys with prodigious memories, pumped-up musical abilities, and a profound ability to enjoy the hell out of each other’s singing and bonhomie.

They are singing from their hearts and from the seats of their respective pants. The hoohaaas and smiles are genuine as they end a song on the same beat with the same emphasis. Intuition and faith are running rampant here. The singers go for it, stretch lyrics, improvise, and feed on the creativity jangling all around the table. No one’s afraid of making a mistake. It would surely be greeted with a friendly guffaw, then turned into something beautiful or outrageously funny.

Three years ago, Cavanaugh, Beard, and Staples finished a set at a nearby Cambridge club. The next act was a no-show. Cavanaugh unpacked his mikes, set them on a little table, and the three of them, like Joplin’s Bobby McGee, sang every song they knew. Weeks later Session Americana was formed. They were nominated for ‘Best Live Act” in this year’s Boston Music Awards. Their website is http://www.sessionamericana.com/

These guys rock. Their catalog has amazing breadth. They are virtuosos on their instruments, and damn! - they know how to have a good time.

Next time they’re in town, check them out.

Dennis Brennan Band

Dennis Brennan Band
10 pm Show
Lizard Lounge, Cambridge, MA
April 9, 2008

Dennis Brennan is not easily intimidated.

A less assured bandleader would have turned out the lights and said goodnight after his pal, former J. Geils Band frontman Peter Wolf, stepped in to electrify the tiny club with two R&B classics, the second being the popular “Give It To Me”, which would have rocked spectators in the last row of the Fleet Center.

Instead, Brennan, whose band is the regular Wednesday night gig at The Lizard Lounge, nodded his head, grinned “What a showman,” and carried on as if the interlude had been inserted by an upstart high schooler.

Brennan has zings. He kept the train chugging with an uptempo version of Lickety Split then sweetly brought it into the station with a mighty soulful version of “Living in a Fool’s Paradise.”

The man from Marlborough, MA, has been scuffling in the local music scene since 1992. Despite solid reviews, a firewall seems to surround his popularity, relegating him to regional fame. Maybe it’s just as well. Dennis is not an arena performer. He’s very persuasive in small clubs as an in-your-face rocker and balladeer. When he belts out a song, it’s from his gut and it’s for real.

Brennan has range. Don’t be surprised to hear twangy Merle Haggard covers of “You Don’t Have Very Far To Go” and “Skid Row” follow a blistering rocker.

The miking at the Liz made it hard to hear the lyrics of his rock‘n roll songs. It hardly mattered since most of the crowd that drifts in here every Wednesday knows the songs by heart. And when Brennan reaches back to gut out Sam Cooke covers like “Living In A Fool’s Paradise,” there’s an ample sampling of booty shakin’ in the standing audience.   

A self-described blue-collar rocker,  Dennis Brennan resembles an eastern version of Lyle Lovett, craggy, unassuming, understated. His sidemen Duke Levine (on one or the other of the collection of guitars near his feet), Kevin Barry on laptop steel and guitar, Billy Beard on his well-traveled drum kit, and bass player Andrew Mazzone are cream-of- the-croppers. They’ve appeared with Mary Chapin Carpenter, Paula Cole, and Patty Griffin. Several of tonight’s songs were from Brennan’s fifth CD since 1989, a 2006 CD “Engagement”, on which all tonight’s sidemen played.

All of these guys are part of the local scene and play gigs with other bands on a regular basis. Barry and Levine can and did play solos ranging from liquid thunder to poignant heartache. You’d dig listening to any band these four guys are part of.  Tonight I missed the first three songs of Brennan’s set. I wont make that mistake next week.

Partial set for Wednesday, April 9, 2007
“If you’re tryin' to break my heart you don’t have far to go” cover of Merle Haggard tune
“Skid Row”, cover of Merle Haggard tune, up-tempo
“Personal Assistant”, on latest album Engagement
“Miss  Maybelle,” upbeat Mississippi blues
“Sugar Falls”, on latest album Engagement
Three songs by guest Andrea Gillis
“Mother-in-Law Blues,” Junior Parker cover
Two songs by Peter Wolf, first title unknown, second “Give It To Me”
“Lickety Split,” (possible title?)
“Living In A Fool’s Paradise,” cover of Sam Cooke ballad

The Shining City on Oxygen

The Shining City and the Respirator.

The Shining City
by Conor McPherson
Directed by Robert Falls
BU Theatre - Mainstage, Huntington Avenue, Boston,MA
March 7 - April 6, 2008
Running time 1 hr 30 min, no intermission

We had terrific seats. First row, mezzanine. Smack in the center of the row.

Before curtain time, my companion tugged at my sleeve. “Look, aren’t they adorable. That’s the happilyeverafter relationship I want,” she said, The woman to her right was holding her elderly man’s hand, perhaps as she did the first time they’d witnessed a play together fifty years ago.

Lights dimmed, the house quieted to a religious silence. Lights came up for the first scene of “The Shining City”, a quiet tableau showing a therapist arranging his office before a patient’s visit.

Pffffttt…pfffftt.

What was that? A sound from my right, then stillness for several seconds. A buzzer rings in the therapist’s office. He scrambles to put away an item on his desk.
Pffffttt…pfffftt from our right again.

The patient arrives up the stairs in a comically nervous entry scene.
Pffffttt…pfffftt. Like clockwork every several seconds.

Good Jaysus. Could this be what I think it could be?
Pffffttt…pfffftt.

Omigod.
Yes.
It is.

The man three seats to my right was using an oxygen tank. Loud pfffttting oxygen. And assuming the man was not going to die somewhere in scene one, the pfffftting was going to last the entire play. A play, I might add, in which there were zillions of pregnant pauses as, remember, this is taking place for the most part in a therapist’s office. And, you guessed it. No intermissions. Ninety minutes.

Pffffttt…pfffftt.

My companion’s initial delight in ideal mature matrimonial bliss was disappearing faster than ice from the Arctic pack.

“We paid $70.00 apiece for THIS?” she whispered in dismay.

Pffffttt…pfffftt.

We’ve all had experience with coughers, candy wrapper crinklers, cell phone boors, digital watch beepers, and the occasional snorer. But an oxygen tank?

How do you politely turn to a playgoer and whisper, "Say, would you mind turning off your life support for an hour or so while I and the rest of the people in your audio range can enjoy the play without that disconcerting Pffffttt pffffttting every few seconds?"

Righteous indignation was colliding fiercely with my customary tendency toward compassion. Indignation was in the lead. This was not one of my shining moments.

About forty-five minutes into the play, at the third of the five scene changes in which the lights dim for actors to scurry about to change scenery, we abandoned ship.

We scooped up our belongings and headed to the $25.00 seats in the nosebleed section of the Huntington Theater. The high five we gave each other after this guerilla move may have appeared unseemly to other patrons but never mind. The stage from there was like looking into a dollhouse but, ahhhhhhh, no more Pffffttt…pfffftting.

So here we are at the crux of the matter in our age of PC and everyone has the right to do what they please as long as it does not break the law. Rights can be defined by law but where is responsibility defined?

The man certainly had a right to be seated for the play. Did he have an obligation to forewarn his seatmates of the sound his oxygen canister emitted? Were he or his wife so inured of its sound that they didn’t hear it? Should he have asked the theater to place him where the sound would not disconcert his neighbors? Did I have an obligation to approach the couple after the play and tell them why we moved away in the middle of it?

Hindsight is always 20/20. I wish I had talked it out with them after the play. I don’t wish that they shut themselves off from culture or the community that produces it but engaging them about my experience of being jolted from the flow of the play by the sound of the oxygen tank while sitting next to them could have opened some avenues of solution.

I hope to be going to plays for years to come and lord knows what kind of medical gadgets I might need to do that. When I walk away from a performance, I want people to look at me with admiration for staying connected with the world, not wishing I’d stayed at home with a noisy machine that allows me to live.

The Shining City

The Shining City
by Conor McPherson
Directed by Robert Falls
BU Theatre - Mainstage, Huntington Avenue, Boston,MA
March 7 - April 6, 2008
Running time 1 hr 30 min, no intermission

Even if a play isn’t totally convincing, a good reason go is to see an outstanding performance by one of its actors.

The chief reason to see The Shining City at the Huntington Theater is John Judd’s performance as the patient of a first year Dublin therapist. Judd’s character John comes to therapist Ian because he’s beset by seeing the ghost of his recently deceased wife.

John’s transformation from bumbling middle class widower into a man who’s faced down his demons is beautifully organic and credible. The downside of this is that there isn’t enough going on elsewhere in the play.

Three of the play’s five scenes show John coming to grips with his complicity in his failed marriage and inhabiting a new and improved psyche in the process. John uses gestures, facial expressions and terrific comic and dramatic timing to tell his story. He’d be an ideal candidate to bend your ear all night long over several jars of Guinness.

The scenes contrast therapist Ian’s slow unraveling as patient John gains traction in reality. Ian, played by Jay Whittaker, is as conflicted a therapist as you’ll find. An ex-priest, he’s just jilted the girlfriend who has borne him a child and is painfully attempting to get a grip on his sexual preference. His struggle is inferred, internal, and nowhere as clearly delineated as that of his patient. Many of his lines are “mmm” and “yes”.  We see him appear distracted as he listens to his patient verbalize. Ian knows he’s bedeviled but hasn’t the nerve to put himself on the couch.

John’s story is the stuff of sitcom entertainment. The more interesting but untold story is about Ian, his renunciation of his vows as a priest, and his struggle with sexual identity.

Judd is comfortable keeping his Irish brogue throughout the play; Jay Whittaker, Nicole Wiesner as his girlfriend, and Keith Gallagher as a hustler waltz in and out of brogue.

Banish a ghost from one person’s life and it re-appears in another’s. The Alfred Hitchcock ending is jarring and not a little “deus ex machina” but without it the play would be dead in the water.

What Ian does with his own ghost is the next chapter in his life. Maybe he needs a good shrink. It’s a shame it isn’t addressed in this play.

Photo courtesy of Huntington Theater

Jammin' in JP, Part 2

Jammin in JP2
Jam sessions: Jazz, Latin, World Beat, Pop, Folk, Brazilian
Jamaicaway Books, 676 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130, 617-983-3204
www.jamaicawaybooks.com