The Bourbon Sunset Trio in Harmony
“The joke is that ‘Tequila Sunrise’ was taken,” says banjo player Lynda Shuster, one of the three musicians who make up Bourbon Sunset along with Chris Miner on mandolin and Peter Waful on guitar. All three do vocals, says Shuster, adding that they initially came together to share their “love for three-part vocal harmony.” (All three enjoy bourbon, too, she says.) They will perform at the Eastham Public Library on Sunday, Feb. 3, at 1 p.m.
Harmony is a central part of the group’s identity. “Our focus is on trying to find songs that lend themselves in creative ways to three-part harmonies,” says Shuster. “It’s always a little different with a female voice in the mix. Sometimes I sing the melody. But if I sing the harmony, we have choices: do I go high tenor, do I go high baritone?” By experimenting with different harmonic structures, Bourbon Sunset tries to make old songs new again.
The program in Eastham will include a mix of traditional bluegrass, country, contemporary, Americana, folk, and gospel. While many of the songs they perform are familiar, Bourbon Sunset doesn’t shy away from the more obscure. Shuster poses a question that the band members ask themselves as a starting point when deciding what they’re going to play: “How are we going to find something people may never have heard before and turn it into something they love?”
The concert is free. See easthamlibrary.org for information. —Dorothea Samaha
A Concert to Benefit Young Musicians
The Chatham Music Club will present its annual keyboard and instrumental concert at the First Congregational Church of Chatham (650 Main St.) on Sunday, Feb. 4 at 2 p.m.
The club was founded in 1999 as a nonprofit by Ruth McKendree Treen, Marie Williams, and Mitty Ticknor. “We’re a group of about 100 people,” says Bob Williams, the club’s publicity chair. “We’re singers, musicians, and people who just love music in general.”
The club puts on two or three public concerts every year, Williams says. All money raised goes to the Chatham Music Club Scholarship Fund, which provides grants to assist young classical musicians across Cape Cod through a yearly competition each spring. Since its inception 25 years ago, the CMC has given out more than $50,000 in scholarships.
The Feb. 4 concert will feature piano, organ, cello, violin, and flute selections, with works by composers including Beethoven, Debussy, and Liszt. The musicians will be a mix of CMC members, past winners of scholarship awards, and young musicians who hope to compete in this year’s scholarship competition.
The suggested donation is $20. See chathammusicclub.com for information. —Eve Samaha
Grant King Shares the Love at Snow Library
For singer-songwriter Grant King, lyrics almost always come first. Writing songs is a constant process. “I’ll write on anything that I can get my hands on, whether it’s a scrap piece of paper or the back of an invoice,” he says. He keeps notebooks, too — “many, many of them.” While some of his lyrics remain only in their written form, others are transformed — slowly and thoughtfully, with plenty of revision — into songs that he admits are “largely confessional.”
King will perform some of those songs at Snow Library in Orleans on Saturday, Feb. 3, at 2 p.m. as part of the library’s “Warming Winter With Music” series.
King grew up on Long Island, N.Y. and attended Buffalo State University before moving to Provincetown for four years. He then moved to Manhattan, where he lived for nearly 40 years. When a friend told him he looked miserable in the city, King made the decision to move back to Provincetown. It’s not that New York City lacked a creative community, says King. But the Outer Cape provided an immersive creative culture that he says “heals and inspires” him.
“Writing a song is like solving a puzzle,” says King. “What’s the problem? What do you want to say about it? You have to do the research.” He describes the research as internal and emotional. Many of his songs are about long-distance relationships — something King has experience with. (“I’m mostly pegged as a love-song writer,” he says.) There’s something therapeutic, says King, about writing those songs that examine feelings that might otherwise be hard to articulate.
At Snow Library, King will perform songs from two earlier albums and from his newest, the forthcoming Revived. One song that will definitely be on the program is “Old Hippie,” a nod to something he jokingly calls himself — maybe in recognition of his inclination toward love and understanding, especially through music.
The concert is free. See snowlibrary.org for information. —Dorothea Samaha
Go to Jail With John Waters
“Everyone looks good under arrest” wrote writer, director, and artist John Waters in his 1986 essay collection Crackpot. While they’ll have to take care of the getting arrested part themselves, four of Waters’s fellow filth aficionados will get to experience a night in an actual prison with Waters himself as part of the Provincetown Film Society’s fourth annual winter fundraising auction.
The auction, which begins on Friday, Feb. 2, features several celebrity-focused items including a personalized voicemail greeting by Kathleen Turner and a private dinner for two with Emmy Award-winning actor and sometime Truro resident Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus, Tales of the City, Looking).
But “A Night in Jail With John Waters” — described as “a once-in-a-life sentence experience” — promises to be the top lot. After a private meal served by Chef Jacob Hetnarski, four winners will have an opportunity to spend the night in the Provincetown lockup with Waters in July 2024, where they can remain in their cells (or “prowl the corridors in the hopes of making friends,” according to the auction description) until their “parole” the following morning. (Previous auctions included private dinners with Waters at the Provincetown Transfer Station.)
Other auction items this year include a week-long stay in a Provincetown dune shack; luxury rentals in Provincetown, New York, and Palm Springs; an African safari; a private pickleball clinic; gift certificates to local and regional restaurants and shops; and passes to the 26th Provincetown International Film Festival, which runs June 12-16, 2024.
The auction will run until Feb. 11. Registration is required at biddingforgood.com/ptownfilm. See provincetownfilm.org for more information. —John D’Addario
Building Community, One Portrait at a Time
The art of portraiture as a means of personal connection and building community is the subject of an event and new exhibition at Wellfleet Preservation Hall this week.
On Saturday, Feb. 3, artist Paul Schulenburg and members of the Schulenburg Studio Figure Painting Group will gather to paint Wellfleet oysterman Richard Blakeley in an open studio at the hall. Painting will continue through the start of a reception that afternoon to mark the opening of the month-long exhibition of Schulenburg’s figurative work and portraits. More than a dozen artists are expected to participate.
The exhibition will include Schulenburg’s portrait studies of local musicians, fishermen, artists, and other members of the Outer Cape community, including Wellfleet Preservation Hall artistic director Alfre Woodard.
Schulenburg has been painting scenes of the oyster and fishing industries on the Outer Cape — and the people involved in them — for several decades. “One reason I am drawn to painting the fleet is because the work is foreign to me,” he said in an artist’s statement about the exhibition. “These men and women risk their lives in an unprotected environment. I paint on dry land, working to produce a painting, to capture a tradition. Humans have long caught fish for nourishment, and they have drawn — in the sand and on cave walls — for pleasure and to communicate. Today, with diminishing fish stocks and AI, our ancient endeavors hang in a precarious balance.”
The painting group that Schulenburg leads has also contributed to the recording and preservation of the Wellfleet and broader Outer Cape community. “I have people sit for my painting group in my studio on a regular basis,” he says. “Painting the people of Cape Cod is a great way to get to know our neighbors, and painting with the people of Cape Cod is a great way to make friends.”
Blakeley has been a well-known member of the community since he began growing clams and oysters in Wellfleet in the 1980s. “I’m not so sure about this aging thing,” he said in a profile in the Independent in 2020. “I’m still moving, just moving a little slower … My tank might be emptying, but it ain’t on empty yet.”
The studio session at Wellfleet Preservation Hall begins at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 3, and the opening reception for Schulenburg’s exhibition begins at 5 p.m. Both events are free. See wellfleetpreservationhall.org for information. —John D’Addario
