It's no secret that Cambridge and Somerville are petrie dishes for local acts to form, find followings, and flourish. Roslindale, a few miles southwest of Boston, is way under the radar. The Birch Street Bistro may not be the only spot in town offering live music but it's caught on with the local clientele and a good number of local musicians.
Birch Street Bistro
14 Birch Street
Roslindale, MA 02131
Tel: 617-323-2184
March 22, 2012
Hours: Sun-Tues 5-9:00pm | Wed 5-9:30pm | Thurs-Sat 5-10:30pm
It’s no secret around Roslindale but the Birch Street Bistro is the place to be on Thursday nights. The place was crowded when I arrived at 8:15.
The warm tones of burnished wood and exposed brick signal this is a place to settle into.
Divided English pub style with a shoulder high partition, half the interior is dedicated to the bar and a narrow set of banquettes. A mirrored backdrop that holds a serious selection of distilled beverages in handcrafted mahogany colored shelving occupies most of the wall behind the smooth black and gray granite bar. The exposed brick wall runs the length of the other side, occupied with banquettes for the dinner crowd.
High overhead, cordovan stained joists, cross beams, and wood planking add to the warm tones. Someone was paying attention to detail when the former office space was redesigned onto this high and deep neighborhood watering hole about six years ago.
A seasoned pro named Stephanie is keeping customers at the twenty-seat bar happy. Without a hint of stress, she takes incoming orders from the wait staff serving the patrons in the other in other half of the pub and the scattering of tables outside on this unseasonably warm March night in which Boston broke the temperature record for daytime heat at 82 degrees.
By the end of the night there was serious heat generated from the front corner of the bistro where Bill Walsh and his band Common Ground (Diane Gately, drums, Gary Barcus, bass) hold forth every Thursday.
Guitar player Walsh has invited vocalist/ guitar player Big Jack Ward, tenor sax/flautist Amadee Castenell, and keyboardist Joe Bargar to join his trio this week. Any one of these three could be a main draw. Three of them together and we hit a music trifecta.
The first set gets in the groove with Amadee Castenell laying down a smoky blues number and everyone else following suit. The five of them may never have played together but it takes this group of seasoned pros exactly one song to work out the kinks and start firing on all cylinders.
I notice the man I’ve identified as Big Jack Ward sitting in back, waiting a couple of numbers before striding down to the tiny bandstand.
“I heard people asking how you were doing, do you mind saying why they were asking?” I ask Big Jack. At 6'2" and about 210 pounds, the "Big Jack" nickname is warranted.
“I had a quadruple bypass in November. I have the zipper to prove it, ” Jack says with a smile. “I had plenty of warning so could plan it. I’m getting my energy back slowly, I started doing some gigs recently, playing again is part of my personal rehab, makes me feel good. I think I’ll be back in shape by next November. Most Tuesdays you’ll find me at Smoken’ Joes in Brighton.”
“You’re about to make a bunch of people feel pretty good tonight,” I say. “How long have you been playing?”
“My whole life, actually since before I was born. My mother was a singer, she sang until she was eight months pregnant with me, I’ve heard music from the womb. I began playing drums when I was three. ”
By the time Big Jack Ward walks up and delivers a sweet swing number a few dancers squeeze into a space smack in front of Birch Street Bistro’s front door.
The set rolls on with upbeat or sultry covers of swing and a little funk but blues seems to be the coin of the realm here. Once the applause dies down, these guys look at each other, one of them tosses out a title, the others nod, and we’re off to the races. Big Jack launches into a cover of B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone,” Joe Bargar and Bill Walsh take turns soloing and Amadee Castenell picks up his flute and lays down hauntingly poignant lines.
Amadee Castenell, Joe Bargar, Big Jack Ward and Amadee Castenell
Big Jack belts out “Big Boss Man, ” an R & B classic that’s been covered by everyone from Elvis to Jimmy Reed to The Grateful Dead. The little area in front of the door is packed with a dozen dancers.
This is a strangely bipolar room. Patrons at the far end of the bar are intent on conversation or the goings on of March Madness on the solitary TV on the wall there. Mercifully, this is one bar where plasma screens aren’t strung like Japanese lanterns across every wall and corner.
The patrons interested in music have snagged the seats at the bar, a few booths closest to the band’s corner, or stand a few feet away. The music is big enough to make a statement and cuts right through the chatter.
Bill Walsh, Diane Gately, Gary Barcus
During the first (and only) break, I meet Brian Sullivan, call me “Sully,” a friendly regular who could double as an enthusiastic press agent for the place.
“You’ll probably see a few different keyboard players sit in for a song or two in the next set. That’s Mellow Mel,” he says, identifying the burly black man blissfully seated like a Buddha, playing his tambourine as mystically as if he were meditating. He’s in his eighties, pulls up a chair here most Thursday nights, and patrons walking in for the second set greet him warmly.
“He can pull out a comb and a dollar bill and make it sound like a real mouth harp,” Sully says.
“This place is a great deal. No cover, good pours, lots of free parking nearby. The crowd is mixed, race and sexual orientation are non-issues in the six or so years I’ve been coming here. Head liners like Diane Blue show up and sit in up here for the second set, they do it for fun,” he says.
The second set is loose. A keyboard player and at least two guitar players join in for a song or two. (I learn later that Wali Ali who played and recorded with Marvin Gaye and the Temptations, Taj Mahal, Peter Tosk, and others names you'd recognize, sat in for the first set).
Singers named Delaware Floyd, Sweet Judy Teo, and Ron The Voice, join the band and croon everything from “Just My Imagination,” to “You’re Gonna Miss My Lovin’,” “At Last,” and “Try Me.”
It’s 11:30. Most of the socializers have departed, a handful of the dancers and the listeners are still here. Sir Cecil steps up to sing what Sully tells me is the official good night song, “Crying Time Again.” To cement that point, several in the crowd sing the chorus.
Just another Thursday night at The Birch Street Bistro, a local hangout with a hunger for music and Bill Walsh's Common Ground Band and their friends to provide it. I don’t know whether every Thursday is as packed with talented musicians but it will be worth the effort to find out.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Health Care Debate: Civil Discourse At The Highest Level
March 30, 2012
How refreshing. For two hours, until the radio signal faded as I drove west to the Berkshires Thursday morning, I listened to lawyers argue their case for or against the Affordable Health Care Act passed by Congress and signed by President Obama on March 23, 2010. No shouting, no fabricating, no demonizing, no put downs, no flag waving - just solid argumentation based on legal precedents and references to the powers of the United States Constitution.
The judges probed the lawyers' arguments, asked thoughtful or philosophical or practical questions, even cracked a joke from time to time. It was like listening to a chess match and it was fascinating.
Airing the proceedings was a brilliant idea, a fabulous teaching moment that reintroduced me to the mechanics of how our government works, the checks and balance system between legislative, judicial, and executive branches.
Conservative and liberal philosophies of jurisprudence are still in play but the contention is civil, serious, and based on reason. No matter which way the case is decided, it is a breath of fresh air into the ultra polarized rant climate in the country today.
March 30, 2012 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (14)