Dancing at Chez CVS

August 25, 2020

6:00 PM, dusk fading to evening

LIVE MUSIC!   I haven’t heard live music since the Ides of March, 2020. No matter that it’s coming from a masked bearded guy in a white cowboy hat playing an electric keyboard powered by a cable he runs from his car to his outpost on a slab of concrete at the end of a row of parking meters. The music is a merry mix of American Songbook, Blues, and Rock ‘n Roll. And it’s good!

I haven’t danced anywhere but my kitchen for months. I’m Fred Astaire wishing a masked-up Ginger Rogers would detour from heading for CVS or the  Bank ATM machine across the parking lot and join me in a Covid inspired lead and follow from six feet away.

Show time. I chivalrously extend my hand. In a virtual twinkling, there she is, in heels, a glorious smile of approval on her face as I lead her through a series of swing, fox trot and a rumba routine, brilliant and spontaneous. Just the kind she likes. She’s missed a live connection too.

Phil, “Dutch Phil” he says, Is bringing the joy to the quiet parking lot behind CVS on Main Street in Watertown. He got his affinity for music by listening to his mother playing piano and singing when he was a kid. After learning music theory at the Berklee College of Music, he joined a bunch of rock ‘n’ roll music bands.

“Early on, we got a gig to open for Ray Charles. After we finished, they put us in the wings at the side of the stage. I’ll never forget watching him and the Raylettes perform.” The word starstruck comes to mind,

Situated across from the back door of CVS on Main Street, there’s always lots of foot traffic.

Street musicians go through stretches of time where people pay more attention to the parking meters than to them and their music. Guys like Phil need to perform in parking lots because Covid has dried up all their gigs. A few bucks in the tip jar is good, might pay for their dinner but won’t satisfy their jones to perform.

When they perform solo, they’re playing for their muse and to feed their psyches with the creative process that, like a songbird from its cage, needs the freedom to stretch its wings and explore the world before returning.

 

There is a lotta magic that Phil coaxes from his Yamaha electric keyboard. All the more incongruous that it’s powered by a cord attached to the battery of his car a few spaces away from his makeshift bandstand.

Musicians like Phil have a vast library of standards tucked away in their memory banks. It amazes me that he can switch from blues to the American songbook to swing to rock ‘n’ roll at his own whim or a request from a passerby.

His sense of phrasing and tempo is elegant. His spontaneous riffs and quotes from other songs appear then disappear back into the main frame of the song like the beams of the headlights that disappear after passing his bandstand.

An improbable sight, his bushy gray hair poking out from under a white cowboy hat, slouched in a faded saggy camp chair, he is in his own universe, playing for an unseen audience he clearly feels. The gray concrete parking lot is Phil’s proscenium.  This man is on stage with the improvisational spirit of a Keith Jarrett. The audience is a bunch of empty cars and the occasional shopper at CVS or visitor to the ATM machine at the bank next-door. If that bothers him, he doesn’t show it.

As for me, this is the most fun I’ve had on a dance floor since March 15, 2020.

Comments

[Nona Bock]

Very cool PT!

[Susan Sullivan]

Love it Paul!. Stay well/safe. Find that dancer.

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

I heard that Phil was there tonight, brought a friend down to the parking lot, asked Phil to play some swing... two masked dancers had a grand time. A REAL time, not virtual! I could imagine Fred and Ginger cheer us on while hoofing it on the celestial dance floor.

[Susaan S]

Love the video!

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr aka pt at large]

Dutch Phil is the real deal!

[Mary S]

Nice one, Paul!
Saludos,
Mary

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr, aka pt at large]

Thanks, Mary, on that night, a parking lot was as good as dancing on a hardwood floor, I dance by myself in my kitchen all the time. A chance to break out my moves to live music was a chance encounter of the first order…sort of bittersweet - fun doing it and underlined how much I miss being able to mingle with people, hold a woman in my arms and dance to live music. For now, I’m grateful to listen and dance to an accomplished musician in a parking lot a ten minute walk from my house!

[Mishy Lesser]

Delightful! Thank you, Paul. I’m so pleased you got to dance. Have you seen her again?

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

Ginger is a regular virtual partner BUT last Friday a friend spotted Phil, called me, I met her, masked up, we danced a few feet away from his keyboard. CVS is a tiny improbable Wonderland Ballroom dance floor!