Asleep at the Wheel Is Still Speeding Ahead by Eve Samaha | A Gathering of Artistic Friends and Influences by Chet Domitz | Words That Attend and Listen by Dorothea Samaha | Expanded Music Festival Comes to Wellfleet by Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll | Shedding Layers and Sharing Humanity by Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Asleep at the Wheel Is Still Speeding Ahead
Asleep at the Wheel has had more than 100 members in its 55 years of existence. The reason, says singer Ray Benson, is that “being on the road isn’t suited for older musicians.” That rule doesn’t apply to him though: at 75, he’s still at it. “I can’t imagine doing anything else,” he says.
The Western swing band’s latest album, Riding High in Texas, was released on Aug. 22, and listeners can expect to hear selections from it, along with older material, at Payomet Performing Arts Center (29 Old Dewline Rd., North Truro) on Sunday, Aug. 31 at 6 p.m.
With seven members, Asleep at the Wheel is a large band. “It has a big sound, too,” says Benson. “We combine country music with big band swing.” The instrumentation includes steel guitar, fiddle, saxophone, piano, drums, and guitar. Benson adds that fiddler Ian Stewart, one of the group’s newest members who sings four songs on the new album, is also “quite a singer and a yodeler.”
Part of the band’s philosophy is maintaining tradition while making room for new ideas. “I tell all the new people who come into the band: ‘I want you to play what came before, and I want you to add your personality and point of view to what we do,’ ” says Benson, adding that the band’s concerts “always kick off with the same two songs”: “Miles and Miles of Texas” and “Route 66,” both released in 1976.
Riding High in Texas is a 10-song album of covers, all of which honor the state of Texas, where Benson has lived for 50 years. He describes the state as “like a whole other country” with a tapestry of Mexican, German, Czechoslovakian, Scottish, and Irish influences. “It comes out in the music,” he says. “There’s everything from old-timey fiddle to Western and big band swing to cowboy music to polka to blues.”
On every song, Asleep at the Wheel’s members seamlessly paint a musical picture of Texas. The title track, written by American bluegrass musician Peter Rowan in 1980, features guitarist Billy Strings and vocals by Stewart. It chugs along with a classic hopping drumbeat and twangy guitar while Stewart yodels, his voice sailing easily to the far reaches of falsetto, while Strings’s agile fingerpicking tumbles underneath.
Tickets are $38-$52 at payomet.org. —Eve Samaha
A Gathering of Artistic Friends and Influences
“I Am Myself: Bob Thompson and Friends,” currently on view at Hammock Gallery (361 Commercial St., Provincetown), is a version of a previous exhibition at Steven Harvey Fine Arts Projects in New York City last winter. Its curators — Steven Harvey, Martha Henry, and Kevin Rita — brought the exhibition to Provincetown, where much of the work was produced, and added new selections that visually connect to the Outer Cape.
The artists in the show were part of a mid-20th-century movement that was later identified as Figurative Expressionism, which explored figuration while larger trends in the art world were focused elsewhere. Bob Thompson was important among them. Born in 1937 to a middle-class Black family in Louisville, Ky., Thompson came to Provincetown at the urging of his instructors while pursuing a degree in fine art from the University of Louisville and spent the summer of 1958 on the Cape. He produced a prodigious amount of work in the following years before his death in 1966 at age 28. Nearly 60 years later, he is at the height of his popularity, and his paintings of figures in classical compositions are forerunners of much contemporary figurative work by fellow Black artists.
The nine works by Thompson on view include Wilting Flower, a large canvas of a lone figure seated at a table. The shallow space, flat swaths of color, and simplified forms are harbingers of work to come.
Two other paintings in the show are by Jan Müller (1922-1958) and Gandy Brodie (1924-1975), who greatly influenced Thompson’s work. Müller’s 1953 canvas, unusual for its large size, is composed of mosaic-like patches of color with two figures that emerge and recede as the eye scans the surface. Müller died before Thompson came to Provincetown, but Thompson knew Brodie, whose Boat on the Bay is a flurry of brushwork with a subtle white triangle representing a sail. Brodie’s untitled works on paper extend the iconography of the painting with gulls and piers and are additions to the Provincetown edition of “I Am Myself”; they have never been exhibited previously.
Works by Lester Johnson (1919-2010) were also added to the current show. His Untitled (Provincetown, Black Pier), a watercolor with pilings of black strokes evocative of Chinese scroll painting, has a mirage-like quality. Other additions include a sculpture by Mary Frank (born 1933) — like a Provincetown Venus of Samothrace — and a 1961 work by Mimi Gross (born 1940) that portends Thompson’s mature style, demonstrating how these artists were mutually influenced by one another and their shared investigations.
The show is on view through Sept. 12. See hammockgallery.com for information. —Chet Domitz
Words That Attend and Listen
Elizabeth Bradfield says her fifth and newest book of poetry, Sofar, is about listening — “across time, between people, across differences, and between species.” The title refers to the book’s reflections on Bradfield’s personal history, but it’s also an acronym for the “sound frequency and ranging channel,” which Bradfield says is “a layer of water in the ocean that acts like a fiber optic cable and allows sound to transmit over huge distances.” That metaphor, she says, runs through the book like a current.
Bradfield will read from the book at the Fine Arts Work Center (24 Pearl St., Provincetown) on Thursday, Aug. 28, at 5 p.m. The event will also include a reading by poet Samaa Abdurraqib from her new book, Towards a Retreat.
Bradfield grew up in Tacoma, Wash. and now lives in Truro. “I’ve always loved the spell of words,” she says. Spoken out loud, “words can harmonize with each other.” She rarely writes poetry in formal verse but plays with sound and rhythm. “The way words sound against each other amplifies meaning,” she says.
An untitled poem threads its way through Sofar, emerging repeatedly as a pause between sections. “It’s about listening via a hydrophone and seeking to understand sound in water,” says Bradfield, who works as a naturalist for the Dolphin Fleet in Provincetown. “It’s about what it means to listen.”
Many of the poems are about the marine environment. “I love and appreciate and draw sustenance from the ocean,” she says. The book seeks to understand not only a life spent on boats, but the world underneath — “to attend the lives of marine animals,” especially whales.
The word “attend” is one Bradfield keeps returning to. “To attend something, to pay attention, it’s an act of tending,” she says. “It’s an act of devotion.” So far, Bradfield has devoted herself to poetry and the open water — two spheres of mystery so hard to understand that one feels compelled to slow down and listen.
The event is free. See fawc.org for information. —Dorothea Samaha
Expanded Music Festival Comes to Wellfleet
Now in its third year, the Outer Cape Music Festival has grown to include internationally known performers and expects to entertain up to 1,200 fans in its new location at the Wellfleet Town Pier. The outdoor event on Sunday, Aug. 31 will include five acts, food and artisan vendors, and activities for families.
Last year’s festival in Eastham raised about $12,000 for area nonprofits, says David White, who runs the event with his wife, Rachel, and friend, Adam Rouillard. The focus on community, says White, was why pop-punk band Wheatus agreed to bring its current international tour — which celebrates the 25th anniversary of its hit song “Teenage Dirtbag” — to Wellfleet to headline the festival.
“They said, ‘This is right up our alley,’ ” says White, who owns DJ White Welding and Construction in Eastham. “We raise money for charity through the power of music and lift up local musicians by putting them next to big names.”
The nonprofit festival began in 2023 when its co-founders realized that many of their friends were struggling to live on the Cape. This year, the event will run with the assistance of 30 volunteers and 17 business sponsors, and profits will go to the Lower Cape Outreach Council, Wellfleet Food Pantry, Eastham-Orleans Elks Veterans Fund, Friends of the Eastham Council on Aging, Lily House, and a fund to help children buy musical instruments.
Along with Wheatus, the lineup includes Cape-based bands 40 Thieves, Funktapuss, and the Groovalottos, along with the New Orleans-based Dirty Rotten Vipers, who have been performing in Provincetown the last few summers. Zach Goode, who grew up in Provincetown and is the current lead singer for the band Smash Mouth, will be a featured performer with 40 Thieves.
White says that the move to the Wellfleet pier involved considerable planning with town officials plus parking permission from three Wellfleet churches and the owner of the Dunkin’ parking lot on Route 6.
“To give back to the community, give exposure to local bands, and hang out with my friends — there’s nothing better,” says White.
The festival will run from 4 to 10 p.m., rain or shine. Free parking will be available at First Congregational Church (200 Main St.), United Methodist Church (246 Main St.), Our Lady of Lourdes Parish (2282 Route 6), and Dunkin’ (2393 Route 6). A free shuttle bus will take attendees from the parking lots to the pier to minimize disruption to local businesses, says White.
Tickets are $35, with a $100 VIP add-on available the day of the festival; kids under 12 are admitted free. See outercapemusicfest.com. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Shedding Layers and Sharing Humanity
Undressed: The Musical, which makes its Provincetown debut at the Post Office Café & Cabaret (303 Commercial St.) this week, has been entertaining New York City audiences for nearly two years. Its catchphrase — “You confess. We Undress” — sums up almost everything about it: an audience member tells about a humiliating moment she experienced, and the cast — wearing only underwear — makes up a story on the spot, complete with song and dance, to tell a comedic version of what happened.
“Getting a personal story feels unique and intimate, and the idea is ‘Let’s talk about it and you’ll find it’s really not that bad,’ ” says Alex Tracy, who produces the show with Chris Bell. The six actors had previously worked with or watched each other at New York City’s Magnet Theater.
At each performance, willing audience members write down their most humiliating moments. The entire audience votes on a winner. Bell and Tracy mention as examples stories of people defecating in their pants; a woman whose officemate was allergic to how she smelled after sex; and a tired father who tried to give his newborn boy the same name as his other son.
“Some of us in the audience or onstage have had same experiences, so it’s a shared humanity of shame and being vulnerable,” Bell says. “It’s a wild show, and it’s comedy, but the reason we do this is to connect us all in this space and laugh about it.”
So why make it a musical? It’s partly because the actors love the genre, says Bell, adding, “The reason people sing in a musical is there’s so much emotion they can’t talk anymore. I think that fits with this theme of vulnerability and shame.”
Undressed: The Musical runs nightly from Monday, Sept. 1 to Thursday, Sept. 4 at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $35-40 plus fees at postofficecafe.net. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
