"Your Dress Strikes a Chord"

Today really felt like summer as I sweated my way through performing at my first Wellfleet Harborfest. It was a fabulous event, marked by two columns of vendor tents extending the length of the Wellfleet pier, culminating in the main stage at the end. Local artists sold their wares, a couple of restaurants had food, the WHAT theater was advertising its summer program, and white-haired volunteers manned the raffle booth. One area was full of antique-looking marine gear, such as lures and navigational equipment, and displayed two cheesy but wonderful lamps with fisherman on them. As in the fishermen stood next to the lamp bases, with normal lampshades above them. One of the white-bearded men wore a yellow raincoat, and the other blue. For a mere $25 and $28 apiece, I really should have bought one, I loved them so. I was pleased, though, to see some little yellow rainboots retreating under a man's arm towards the end of the day. At least one had found a home.

I arrived on the pier early in the morning, huffing and puffing after towing my bike accordion trailer on its maiden voyage across town. I was the first booked act on the main stage, recruited by the awesome sound guy Chris with whom I worked at Yule for Fuel. His counterpart today was Lou, and the two were a fabulous duo given all the obstacles. See, the Harborfest budget had been cut, and the powers that be wanted to get rid of entertainment entirely. But Chris didn't let that happen, and was henceforth putting on a show with a minimal budget and no canopy over the bandstand. That meant all the amps/ipad/etc. overheating, but they figured it out. Between acts they played this wonderfully horribly music called, “Soft, Safe, and Sanitized.” Each track is a cover of a hit song, but smoothed over with cheesy strings and vibrato vocals and the like. Some, like “Like a Rolling Stone,” were intriguing, while others, like “Hey Jude” alleviated all negative connotations regarding the speaker system's imminent heat-related breakdown. Once it became clear that blasting this is Chris and Lou's little scheme, it became funny. I might even buy the CD to torture people myself.

I highly enjoyed being part of the lineup, hanging out in the the equipment van that I liked to thing of as my dressing room, and meeting a few of the other musicians. I rarely share the bill with other performers, and haven't since February's Really Big Show, and I love the camaraderie. The bass player of “Frightened” forgot his strap, so we tried to string together a few of my bungee cords to stand in, but failed. (On stage, Frightened introduced themselves by saying, “We are Frightened,” which got a good laugh.) I took the stage at 9:30 and played a half-hour of tunes, mostly to vendors setting up, but to the first few patrons of the day. The Wellfleet librarians were there bright and early, and proved to be a supportive audience, politely singing along to Ruby Tuesday. One began clapping her hands on one song, and unfortunately misinterpreted my focused gaze on her as dislike of the clapping and stopped. Really, I was just trying to keep a tempo off of her! I didn't give my best performance, because it was early and I'm still getting over being sick, but I didn't play terribly or anything. I just didn't offer any spunk or shtick.

Before I get to the busking, I want to touch on one more highlight of the day: talking to the Harbor Stage Company. I am a big fan of the WHAT. What? The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre. I've seen a few plays there in my time here, so naturally I am star struck by the likes of Brenda Withers, Jonathan Fielding, Robert Kropf, and the like, the big actors in the company. Brenda and I met personally at the Fish in the Fall of 2011, and have been Facebook friends ever since. The others just saw me perform this morning. Anyway, I knew there was some uproar about the Harbor Theatre, but I wasn't sure exactly what was going on. It turns out these folks started their own company, the Harbor Stage Company or something, and are entering their second summer of performances. It may have caused some tension with the WHAT, but more theater doesn't strike me as a bad thing. This trio came by while I was busking, and trying to get Flaca work, and I was tickled to have these actors I admire watching ME perform. I was even more tickled when they brought up the idea of me somehow playing with the company during the summer. How fun that would be!

After I played I had seven hours until I had to be at work, a whole festival in front of me, and I was wearing my piano dress. I think you know what I did. The pier is set up in two halves, and between them is a row of long parking spaces for trucks towing boat trailers. So I set up directly in front of a pickup truck, my back to the festival, greeting new patrons head-on as they walked down the pier. It was a great spot to play: plenty of room, but impossible to be missed. It felt so good to be playing there, in the heat of the day, sweating everywhere, tearing up my accordion, thinking I had beaten the sun with one thorough application of sunscreen. (In reality, I'm badly burned all over my neck, face, shoulders, and arms, and even weird places like my ears and ankles. My watch burn is such that there are actually pink spots where the holes in the watch band are.) But at the time I thought I was safe, and I loved the heat.

I realized right away that Flaca wasn't going to work because the ground was slanted. I tried shimming the whole setup but it didn't work at all, probably because the ground that met my foot when it tapped was higher than the ground Flaca was on. So I ditched her and just played. This was fine, because it was a completely new audience.

Without further ado, here are the exact highlights.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

1. I got a lot of compliments on my dress. No one in Wellfleet had seen it, so I had the standard conversation about it a few dozen times. One man delivered a line about it I had never heard before: “Your dress strikes a chord!” Well played, sir.

2. The student loan sign went over very well too. Many people wished me a speedy repayment and inquired about my field of study. One woman said, “If I had $1,000 I'd give it to your cause” and another voiced that maybe a rich Cape Cod person would see my sign and pay off my loans entirely. Both nice sentiments. A third patron asked where I went to school, and when I told him, said, “You must have studied Psychology, then!” Good!

3. I love Wellfleet. In terms of time spent there as an adult, Wellfleet is even more of home than Northampton, and even though this was my first time busking in Wellfleet (not including the ten minutes I got away with at Oyster Fest 2010) I had that nice mix of seeing locals who I know and new faces. I love the support I get from the folks I know. And the surprise from my new co-workers to see me out there! One woman saw me trying to stuff things under the box to level Flaca and offered to bring some cedar shingles to the Flying Fish to give me to shim it. How nice.

4. “Pocket lint's no extra charge.”

5. “You must be good luck, I've lost my wife!” Glad to be of service!

6. One man told a nice story from his days playing brass in the high school marching band. In the seventies, this band was scheduled to play for the president of the United States, who was coming through Hartford. The president at the time had played in a marching band himself in his youth, so the band director asked if he might shake a few students' hands. He did, including this man's. Our hero excitedly went home and told his father, “I just shook Richard Nixon's hand!” The father said, “Better go wash your hands.”

7. I played the Downton Abbey theme song several times, and only one lady recognized it. She reacted satisfactorily, though (as in, totally freaked out), and asked me to play it again. Glad to have some enthusiasm!

8. One guy referred to my accordion as my “Axe.” Awesome. Gotta start saying that.

9. Newest request: Iron Something by Black Sabbath. Could be good.

10. “I'll give you a dollar for 'Lady of Spain!'” I went seamlessly into it, that tune I haven't played in over a year, probably, and he didn't even stay to listen. Glad I still have it, though!

11. My day ended with a nice visit from a fellow busker, Betty! We met once in Ptown three years ago, and have been active Facebook friends since. She plays the fiddle and busks around the Boston area, and played with Celtic bands, among others. She's really a pro, and has good wisdom about busking and music and other things, which can be seen in her blog, www.whatbettyknows.com. I didn't quite know what an amazing violinist she is, though, until she played with me today. She joined me for a few songs (which followers will know I don't let just anyone do) and improvised beautiful countermelodies and harmonies, even for the songs she didn't know. She maintained double-stops to replicate the brass riff of “Ring of Fire,” something that my five years of violin lessons taught me isn't easy. I was really blown away! Thanks, Betty!

I finally quit because it was slowing down a bit, I began to think I might be getting sunburnt (an understatement), and I realized that I should probably sit down since I was due to work that night at the Fish. So I packed up, got a bright orange iced Thai tea from the Nauset Regional High School bake sale (sold to me by a teenage girl COVERED in hickeys), put a t-shirt over my poor shoulders, and sat in the van to watch the band that was on. The one at that moment had played at Yule for Fuel with me so seemingly long ago, in much different weather.

It felt so good to pass the day in a combination of music and relaxation. It made me really look forward the summer of busking, especially since I could see one of my places of employment while I was busking, and I have high hopes for the summer. That is, once I find a short-sleeved purple blouse and a VERY wide-brimmed hat.