CAPE COD – Live music didn’t miss one day on Cape Cod and now that summer is practically here, it is being reshaped for the second time since the worldwide pandemic swept onto the peninsula.
“If the state gives the go forward for folks to sit down inside a restaurant, I don’t see why one person can’t sit down with a fiddle or a guitar and play,” said Josh Shea, owner of O’Shea’s Olde Inn in West Dennis, which featured music seven nights a week during pre-pandemic times.
Friday The 13th of March, Or Maybe It Was St. Patrick’s Day – The Day the Music Died
Spampinato’s band had a regular gig the first Saturday of every month at O’Shea’s Olde Inne, but, he said, the band cancelled its gig in early March.
“When this was all coming down, we didn’t know how bad it was going to be,” said Spampinato. “We basically played it more safe than sorry,” he said. One member of the band is immune compromised, he said, “and I’m over 60.”
Josh Shea, owner of O’Shea’s Olde Inne. PHOTO COURTESY OF JOSH SHEA.
“As it was approaching,” said Shea, “it was becoming more clear that things could be closed.”
“That last week before St. Patrick’s Day,” Shea said, “We definitely saw it coming. We started ordering less food because we knew it could come any day.”
The day the order came to close restaurants in Massachusetts was Friday, March 13. It became effective on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day.
Caroline Brennan, a singer-songwriter who plays in a number of groups, including with her husband, Sean, said, “That period in early March, it was still unclear on how everything was going to develop. But based on Italy and China and the news we were getting, we were worried.”
They both play Irish music and when St. Patrick’s Day was approaching, she said, “Both of us got really nervous.”
Brennan, who has a compromised immune system, had a gig planned in Plymouth on St. Patrick’s Day but the thought of performing “in a crowded bar made me really nervous, so I cancelled beforehand,” she said.
Kathleen Healy, who is one of the hosts of open mic at O’Shea’s, as well as a solo performer and lead singer in the band, Heyday, said, “My band played the Thursday before everything got real. It was a real quiet night. People definitely had it on their radar.”
“There was one older woman who kept saying, ‘Alcohol kills the virus,’” recalled Healy. “It was kind of funny. She had to be about 70 and it didn’t slow her down at all.”
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