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I Wish I Were in New BedfordNovember 18, 2005 Pete Morton's playing there tonight. Pete Morton's from the north of England; he's rarely, if ever, toured in the U.S. I know his work entirely from the radio. His "Another Train," as sung by Sally Barker, is part of the Soundtrack of My Life. Other than that one cut on a Poozies CD, and Pete's cover of Les Barker's hysterical parody of the song (on Yelp! -- it begins "There's another train / but not just yet"), I have no Pete Morton recordings because they don't circulate in the U.S. Even my favorite Canadian distributor (Festival Distribution in B.C.) doesn't carry them. Anyway, last spring I learned that Pete Morton would be playing in New Bedford on November 18, and I was so determined to get there that I wrote the contact number for the venue down in my desk calendar. It's November 18, I'm at my desk, and I'm not going anywhere -- except out on another live-in horse-sitting job. Last spring I didn't know that this would be the Fall of Working Excessively, but even if it weren't -- well, New Bedford looks pretty close to Martha's Vineyard on the map, but getting there from here means staying overnight, and when you don't know someone close by that means shelling out for a motel or B&B within walking distance (or learning the bus system PDQ, or taking cabs). Yadda yadda yadda -- what it really means is that a night out costs something like $150 and almost 24 hours. Not in the budget, man. Once upon a time, it didn't bother me that I couldn't get to performances off-island. There was so much music happening here that who had the time or even the inclination? During the heyday of Wintertide Coffeehouse, the Vineyard was a regular stop for many touring singer-songwriters, as well as a place to hear local musicians and the occasional writer. No longer. The occasional troubadour passes through -- I got to hear Fred Eaglesmith and band last June -- but long gone are the days that you could troop down to Wintertide most any weekend, and quite a few weekdays, and hear someone you'd never heard before, or someone whose career you'd been following for a few years already. Usually the opener would be a local musician; open mikes were held regularly. At the end of the summer, I found myself at an up-island dinner party. Nearly all the other guests were summer people: it was very "sister from another planet," but hey, I went to college; I can pass. Someone remarked how much "cultural activity" (can't remember the exact phrase, but it was something like that) there was now. My mouth opened and then froze: Don't be rude. (I told you I could pass.) After a few seconds I managed to say that I didn't think there was nearly as much going on as there was ten or fifteen years ago. It quickly became obvious that for this individual "cultural activity" meant "imported from off-island cultural activity." For me it's "sisters and brothers doin' it for ourselves." Some people I know say that these things go in cycles, but as I see it these cycles are driven and braked by certain identifiable factors. For the grass-roots arts and performance scene, two big factors are the cost of performance space and the availability of volunteer energy. These days the spaces are hard-to-find, expensive, and/or labor-intensive, meaning you have to scrounge your own sound system and crew and maybe even the stage. Volunteers are harder to come by than they used to be: we're working two or three jobs to pay much higher rents and mortgages, and plenty of us don't stay because we can't find housing and, well, unless you live here already it just isn't worth it. The embers are still smouldering down there somewhere, but it'll take a lot of concerted effort, along with some extra cash, to get the fire going again. I don't wish I lived in New Bedford, but wouldn't it be cool to hear Pete Morton and other performers without having to take a ferry and fork over $100 for a place to stay overnight?
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