Essays, Articles & Poems Our musicians can also write, you know. On this page, you will essays from musicians who have performed at recent events. Sarah Cahn, a violinist, writes about her performance on March 5, 2005 at the Music & Arts Fair. John Weeks, singer/songwriter and acoustic guitarist, writes about a band he manages in Boston. Also, we invited two young writers, Suzy and Greg from Sterling's Chocksett School to read their poetry at our event. So read on ... and marvel at the creativity these young folks have.
Our Performance at the Sterling Town Hall - by Sarah Cahn Last Saturday, my friend Bryn and I performed at the Sterling Town Hall. I played the violin and Bryn played the piano and violin. Our music filled the room and I felt tremendously happy. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little girl smiling and looking at me. She watched me throughout our whole performance. Her smile gave me courage to continue to play. I knew she was enjoying our music. When we were done playing our songs, the little girl came up me. She told me that she has always wanted to play the violin. She told me that she plays the French Horn. I really did love talking with her. She made me feel important and special. After that, Bryn and I decided that we should perform a lot this year, because playing in Sterling had been such an enjoyable experience for us.	LOST By Greg Dumas I am lost, looking, Looking for someone in space, looking for myself.
Suzanne Hager Why Day one: It was dark. As dark as the rains with clouds swarming everywhere. As dark as space, when nothing could be found, but yourself. As dark as sky at night when nothing could be seen up there. Day two: I wait. I wait in a small cramped up corner for someone who doesn’t care much about you. I wait for someone who doesn’t care about life. I wait for me. Day three: I pray. I pray for someone to listen to me, to cherish me, to hold me, to know. Day four: I listen. I listen to the soft blow of the breezes, flowing through my face with a soft touch. I listen to everyone, but nobody listens to me. Day five: There was light. There was god. There was me. Day six: There was life. There was creation. There was me. Day seven: I saw freedom. I lived the freedom that was in my soul reaching out to grab it in me with all my might. Day one: It was dark. fin	Veneer of a Cover Band By John Weeks When Mike Reardon founded Veneer in the summer of 2003 he was so strapped for cash the PhD candidate in Biology at Boston College asked me to lend him the money to buy a new guitar. I said no. Then he played me two of his original songs. I coughed up the money. And agreed to be the band’s manager. Almost two years later Veneer is one of Boston’s hottest acts…and no one has seen them perform an original song. Veneer has been masquerading as a cover band to pay the bills. And it hasn’t been easy. Veneer’s first show took place in a popular dive bar near Bridgewater State College. During the summer. The place was empty save for the band’s friends and some local alcoholics. That didn’t stop Mike, now 25, and his band mates (Joe Holloway, 25, on lead guitar, Jeff Mittler, 26, on drums and Daniel Pelland, 26, on bass) from pounding through their set of Nirvana, Green Day and Billy Idol covers. Veneer style. Veneer was willing to play anywhere. House parties, cookouts and of course…dive bars. Mike, who grew up with me in Worcester, wanted his band to gain experience performing together before working on original material. “Veneer is a democracy,” the front man told me. “We needed to trust each other before we could create our own songs.” By the summer of 2004 Veneer had landed a regular Saturday night gig at The Attic in Newton. Their first night there, Mike wielding his Fender Stratocaster like a weapon, they packed the place. It was an important night for several reasons. For one, it demonstrated the band’s ability to create instant buzz. On Saturday night in Boston the city is filled with roaming groups of college students, young adults and hip people in general, looking for a good time. They all have cell phones and the individuals who happened upon Veneer that night felt compelled to call their friends and tell them The Attic was the place to be. The success at The Attic also brought the band some money, which they used to buy new speakers and a professional PA system. The band gained valuable experience and nailed down their timing.
Meanwhile, Mike was writing original material and putting it before the band. I brought a publicist to one of their practices and after hearing the band grind through their own material she described it as a “cross between late sixties pop and early nineties grunge.’’ That’s the sort of pap response you’d expect from a publicist. Veneer has a style all their own. They do turn the speakers up and they have no inhibitions about distortion (You never forget Veneer uses guitars). But they also value melody, harmony and timing while Mike’s voice is as pure as the Virgin Mary and Mittler’s drumming sounds like a carpet bombing raid As the band landed gigs in obscure towns outside of Boston, packing bikers into dive bars for Zeppelin covers or aspiring models into dive clubs on “Ladies Eighties Night,” they continued to rehearse their original songs. “We’re going to save up the money to make an original demo and then pull the plug on covering songs forever,” Mike said in January. Money is something the boys of Veneer never seem to have. Mike barely gets paid to conduct important scientific research while Holloway barely gets paid to teach, Pelland barely gets paid to work with the mentally ill and Mittler barely gets paid as a hotel employee. “I had a little nest egg saved,” Mike said. “Then my car died. The rest of my money goes into the band.” Veneer is currently in negotiations to perform at the Paradise in Boston. They have been putting in ten hour practices to make sure they’re ready. “Veneer has gained a following as a cover band,” Mike said. “I hope people like Veneer songs better than the covers. When was the last time you heard a song and really loved it? We want to play those kinds of songs.” With a unique sound and a working class ethic, Mike is happy he took the time to get his band ready before throwing their original work at audiences. “The Boston cultural scene is dominated by wealthy kids posing as the economically oppressed,” Mike said. “Veneer is for everyone who loves rock. We don’t want to get into some hip, exclusive niche and wind up working at law firms.” I couldn’t agree more. Take the “punks” who congregate outside of Starbuck’s on Newbury Street. People with trust funds should not demean Gap employees. Or take the emo (emotional) girls who extol DIY (do it yourself) publications all while having daddy’s corporation run off a few thousand copies of their latest zine (as in maga-zine; a pamphlet detailing the many hardships of growing up rich in a “suburban wasteland”; what do you do when your immigrant maid doesn’t match your outfit?) Amidst this vapid milieu Veneer has crawled out of the gutter, guitars roaring, like a cultural version of revolution to shoot the establishment cultural scene point blank in the face, bayonet its bastard children as they grasp at the last shreds of a tattered mode of being and rock the city of Boston. And pay me back for that guitar