The Cape, Martha's Vineyard, and people who do good work

here are some people in this world who just do really cool work. I had the pleasure of joining my friend, Kathy Moser, for a week of songwriting workshops and performances on the Cape (Cape Cod, MA) and Martha's Vineyard. I met Kathy at the North East Regoinal Folk Alliance meeting a number of years ago, and we've been pretty good friends since then. Kathy does some pretty rad work in drug treatment and recovery facilities working with the clients there. She helps them find the similarities between writing a song or excercising creativity and sobriety. After one week, Kathy led three different groups of people from all different backgrounds in writing a song on a recovery topic. That was pretty awesome. AND! I got to play bass with her during the performance portion for each of those groups, which was pretty awesome. This trip also marked the first time that I every took a ferry to a gig! Talk about things that you don't really think about until you have a gig on an island. Kathy and I played at Alex's Place at the YMCA on Martha's Vineyard... Tony, who runs the venue we were on the Vineyard to play at hooked us up with some sweet rental bicycles (thanks, Tony!) and we spent the first half of the day riding bikes around the island!

After our ride, I found the most delightful cup of coffee at this place called Espresso Love. I don't say this lightly: it may have been one of the best cups of espresso that I had ever had in my entire life... but I digress... We then made our way over to the Y for sound check (on an awesome stage with GREAT sound reinforcement and a full compliment of lights) and a fabulously intimate performance. Needless to say, it was a pretty awesome but emotionally intense week... and I can't wait to do it again.