From the same open mic 96th birthday tribute to Harry Connick Sr.

That's me up on stage with the incomparable Christine Lavin, featured performer at the first annual North Atlantic Folk Festival in Rockland ME on August 15, 1999. I'm the one in the green raincoat, wearing my leather western-style hat, my harmonica in-hand, part of the chorus for her screamingly-funny "Sensitive New-Age Guys". Did it with Christine again on October 3 at the Circle of Friends Coffeehouse in Franklin MA.

Ever since I picked up a harmonica and played it successfully, I've been seized by the urge to perform before just about anyone within earshot. Fortunately, the Olde Vienna Kaffehaus was then operating in my then hometown of Westboro, with a vibrant open mic night. I clambered onto the stage there one such evening, and the rest is history.

Since then, I've highlighted shows at a handful of Unitarian church coffeehouses, as well as assorted other venues ranging from gin-mills from Maine, Cape Breton, and Ottawa in the north to Belize and the Commonwealth of Dominica in the Caribbean, to old-age homes, Masonic Temples and assorted open-air concerts both day- and night-time. I've been the feature act at Hopkinton's former "Night of the Stars" and presented a full two-set concert in the Summer Sunday Series at Riverbend Farm, the visitor's center of the Blackstone Valley Heritage Corridor. I've performed at the former "Sally Johnson presents" shows, at the Natick Center for the Arts, at the Webster House in Worcester, at the Stagecoach Inn in Groton MA, and the New Moon Coffeehouse in Auburn MA. I won a contest in Cape Breton. When we returned to the US from Dominica we settled in Black Mountain NC, where I performed at the White Horse, the Pishah Brewery, Dark City Cafe, and the Straightaway in Black Mountain, the Mountain Gateway Museum in Old Fort NC, Woody's Original Mountain Music, Killough's Music and Loan, the Spillway Cafe, and the Wooden Door in Marion NC, Flesher's Nursing Home in Fairfiew NC, Given's in Arden NC, and Trinity View and The Feed and Seed in Fletcher NC.

What I really enjoy is getting the audience involved. I tend toward extensive use of sing-along material, teaching lyrics in the process. I often write my own comic lyrics to well-known or easily learned melodies, and I'm not above providing the words on posters for the crowd to follow.

I like to joke with an audience and tell stories that usually include some poignancy and a punch line. I often even sank to bringing along our miniature schnauzers, which are painfully cute and always much-loved by crowd.

About the harmonica

from The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: