A musical feast
05 June 2015
We've had a week filled with beautiful blue water vistas, great food and great friends highlighted by soaring, toe-tapping music. We caught up with The Yes Team again Monday night at the Ocracoke Bar and Grill, right across the street from the condo where Licia and Philip are staying. They packed the place and lifted everyone's spirits with their incredible voices and music.
Tuesday night, we went to the Community Center to hear Coyote Plus One. Coyote, made up of husband-and-wife team Marcy Brenner and Lou Castro, performed with Martin Garrish, an Ocracoke native and incredible singer and guitarist. The concert was the first in a 15-week series during which Coyote will perform different genres of music with different musicians throughout the summer. Marcy and Lou, both very versatile musicians, left the Ocracoke bluegrass band Molasses Creek because they missed jazz and rock and in order to travel less. I was fascinated to learn that their concerts are being broadcast live over the Internet using a new technology called Concert Window. Any Tuesday night during the 15-week series, anyone anywhere in the world can tune in at concertwindow.com/coyote and listen and watch for $1. Their performance filled the Community Center with cheering fans who were treated to Marcy's mandolin and Lou's and Martin's guitar virtuosity and their terrific vocals. Licia posted some really good photos of Marcy, Lou and Martin on her Facebook page.
After the performance, we rode out to Lifeguard Beach with Licia and Philip. The full moon on the water made it a magical night. We climbed on the lifeguard platform and used the apps on our iPhones to identify some of the bright planets and the stars we saw in the sky around the moon- Venus, Jupiter and Regulus in a line pointing to the moon (or at least I think it was Venus, Jupiter and Regulus...).
Our musical feast continued with Ocrafolk Opry on Wednesday night where we heard Molasses Creek, which now includes bass player Kim France, whose bass riffs and great voice give the band a delightful new sound. We loved Molasses Creek with Lou and Marcy and were sad to hear they had left the band, but after hearing both Coyote and the new Molasses Creek, my feeling is that we now have two great bands to follow instead of one. The Opry also featured The Yes Team giving us the opportunity to hear TJ Moss's "Mother Ocean" live for the first time. It's a truly beautiful song, already one of my favorites. The band also played a song they composed at the request of a state senator from Maryland in the wake of the violent protests in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. On their website they say that, as singer/songwriters, the request reminded them that it is their job to be historians/story tellers, even if the story is hard to tell. I was interested to see how such an upbeat, positive band would handle such a sad event and was not surprised to find that they hit just the right tone.
Thursday afternoon we joined Licia and Philip and dock neighbors Karen and Bob at the Jolly Roger to listen to YES - The Yes Team -again. OK, we've already become groupies. From the Jolly Roger we wandered over to the Deepwater Theater to hear a full evening of Molasses Creek. The band, which had an album in the top five on the national folk charts for the second year in a row last year, gave a rousing first performance of the season, including a beautiful new waltz composed by fiddler Dave Tweedie.
More friends from Hendersonville arrived Thursday and we're set for the Ocrafolk Music Festival to begin Friday evening with what looks to be a rich and varied lineup.