The Boston Calling music festival was supposed to take place last weekend at the Harvard Athletic Complex in Allston. Headliners were to be Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers and a reunited Rage Against the Machine.
It was, of course, canceled due to coronavirus.
The three-day Newport Folk Festival, set for July 30-Aug. 2, also fell victim to the pandemic. It was to feature Randy Newman, Grace Potter, Drive-by Truckers, The National and a host of up-and-coming musicians.
Concerts at the TD Garden, Xfinity Center and the pavilion on Boston’s waterfront, as well as smaller rooms in the city and local venues like Lynn Auditorium and the Cabot, have been canceled or postponed through at least June.
I yearn for the day we can all get together to enjoy live music in person. I miss it, more than words can say. Enjoying live music has been an important part of my life, ever since my first concert (The Kinks, April 10, 1974, at the Music Hall; Elliot Murphy opened; but I can’t remember what I did last week!) I’ve been fortunate to have averaged about three concerts a week.
Boston Calling and especially Newport Folk both hold a special place in my heart. I’ve attended and written about both for many years, and the memories are priceless.
Boston Calling started in downtown Boston, on City Hall Plaza, with fests in both the spring and fall. The first few years, starting in 2013, my nephew Liam took the bus or train from New Jersey to spend Memorial Day weekend with his Uncle Bill discovering new music and spending time together. A poster from that inaugural festival adorns the wall in the apartment he shares with his girlfriend, and Liam has followed his musical dream; he’s a music teacher/orchestra conductor at a New Jersey high school. He was to perform at Carnegie Hall June 17, but that’s been pushed out to 2021. (His first concert — 2009: Cheap Trick, Poison and Def Leppard at Great Woods in Mansfield — with his dad Jon and me).
I treasure the time spent with niece Casey, a Connecticut native who had just graduated from Fitchburg State and moved to Medford in the fall of 2015 with a friend. I met her under the steaming kettle near Boston City Hall, and we spent a day listening to music and grabbing a bite at Quincy Market. She has attended Boston Calling every year it’s been at the Harvard complex, and was planning to attend this year with her boyfriend and school pals.
Liam’s dad and I also spent two days in the fall of 2014 at Boston Calling; one night, we left early to see Steely Dan at the Pavilion, the next to the Garden to see The Eagles, two of his favorite bands that he’d never seen.
The historic Newport Folk Festival, founded by Lynn native George Wein, has been a high point of my summers for nearly two decades. My best friend, Gene, and his wife, Mary Jayne, fly in every year from Chicago, Nashville, Charlotte, or wherever they’re living at the time, and we spend three days on the Rhode Island coast. The girls browse through Newport’s shops while Gene and I head to The Fort; we meet up for dinner and to talk about our days. So many priceless memories, spending time together and watching superstars and young artists who would become superstars wow the crowd. Every year, unannounced guests appear: last year alone, Dolly Parton joined Brandi Carlile and a host of women artists on stage, and James Taylor surprised even Sheryl Crow during her set. Newport Folk is in a league of its own. It sells out well before a single act has been announced, and attendees are there for the music, supportively cheering for new acts as vociferously as they do the headliners. It’s special, and the Newport Festivals Foundation distributes musical instruments to students and thousands of dollars to non-profits endorsed by its performers.
Gene and I have attended hundreds of shows together through the years, starting in the ’70s up to the present, with memorable stops at the Grand Ole Opry and the Forecastle festival/bourbon trail in Louisville, Kentucky. I pray there will be many more memories in the future.
My job allowed me to take my dad to see jazz greats (Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams, Preservation Hall Jazz Band), and his favorite country stars (Reba, Kenny Rogers) at the Centrum in Worcester. I can still see my mom smiling while watching Tony Bennett and other crooners at North Shore Music Theatre.
I attended nearly every show the first three years Great Woods opened, repeating that nasty drive from Lynn to Mansfield night after night. So many memories and laughs: My pal Tom firing up a charcoal grill in the press parking lot at Great Woods while an incredulous security guard raced toward us in a golf cart.
Oblivious, dimwitted Bill once invited a friend who needed cheering up after having broken up with a longtime girlfriend to join him at a show on Boston Common: the Everly Brothers; every song was about a busted romance. I invited a friend, who had just kicked an addiction to alcohol, to a George Thorogood show where every song was about drinking alone and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.”
Promoters and venue owners are staging shows in innovative ways these days. Tupelo Music Hall in Derry, N.H., has turned its parking lot into a drive-in concert hall. Music is performed on a makeshift stage. For the first show, attendees paid $75 for two adjacent parking spots — one for their car, the other to use while sitting in their lawn chairs. Food was available for purchase while observing social distancing guidelines. It was a success, and more shows have been scheduled.
It’s an ingenious idea. People are starved for the communal spirit of live music. But I can’t imagine it compares to the real thing.
