My Secret Career 7: Farewell Rhode Island, From Theatre-By-The-Sea, Summer 1994

There are times in your life when you suddenly find yourself thrown in with a new group of people. Even though it is a new dynamic it immediately asserts itself. Rituals are born. It’s like watching a cable bridge get built in hi-speed photography. First there was nothing. Then, a bridge.

My 1994 summer had a bridge like that. I don’t remember how we were flung together, Tanya, Mike, Terri and I, but it happened.

We gathered in an apartment on Main Street. It was not the hustle and bustle of today’s Main Street, Wakefield. There was no ice cream place, no theater, no restaurants to speak of. It was a graveyard at night.

This meant that I could play my acoustic guitar and sing at the top of my lungs. I was grieving many things that summer: my band was gone, my acting job was gone, my Providence life was over, and all my old wounds seemed to rear their ugly heads at once. 

I had torn my life down and swore I was going to New York City. But I wasn’t there yet. I necessarily had to regress, move back in with my parents, go back to work at the group homes, go back, go back, go back.

The only positive about going back was discovering new friendships with people I went to high school with. And they humored me in my need to share my music. They served as an audience when I guess I needed one. In fact, they were the entire crowd at the last musical performance I would give in Rhode Island. Even to this day.

And, fittingly enough, it was at Theatre-By-The-Sea.

A family friend had taken over the adjacent restaurant at TBTS. I knew I was going to New York and I wanted to capture the acoustic sound I was in the middle of cultivating. I needed a recording that would serve as an audition tape, a demo that I could use to get acoustic gigs once I got settled in the city. She agreed to let me use the cabaret room to record myself.

One afternoon, we all trooped over to Matunuck. In my memory it is only Linda the chef, Tanya, Mike, Terri and I who are there. I powered up the PA, set up Justin’s Tascam 4-track, and played a show. For four people. 

The tape ran out on the last song. I didn’t even bother to bring a second tape. So if you listen (and you will probably be the fifth person ever to do so) you will hear “Your Favorite Song” get cut off mid verse.

I’ve done many shows since, each important to me in their own way. But that day was monumental for me. My friends showed up for me. They listened. They cheered me on. 

I’ve never had fans so I don’t know what that’s like. Sometimes friends are enough.

So, without further ado, please let me share with you my final appearance on a Rhode Island stage. It serves as the back half of an album by my moniker at the time: “Rhode Island Red: Cocksure?”.

The album comprises the tracks I recorded solo at Danger Studios, the tracks I recorded for “True West”, and this, a concert at a place I’d been going to since I was a kid. A place where I had my first Equity acting gig. A place I had been a waiter.

I’d been singing to my new friends all summer. Then they held up the cables and built me a bridge out of town.