PROVINCETOWN – “I think what has made Cape Cod cool was all the broke artists. All the cool funky people,” said Will Harrington, a longtime busker in Provincetown and the leader of the New Orleans and Provincetown jazz band, The Dirty Rotten Vipers.
“Nobody has a place to stay anymore. There are still a lot of artists there but it is pretty much impossible for anybody new to come and be set up in Provincetown. You have to be making insane amounts of money just to move here and find an apartment. And it’s almost impossible to find an apartment even if you did have the money.”
In response, Harrington has recently spearheaded the effort to start a new 501c3 non-profit called “Keep Cape Odd.” The goal of the nonprofit is to provide housing, short-term and longer term, to creatives who want to bring their talent to the Cape but cannot find an affordable place to stay, said Harrington.
According to the website, KeepCapeOdd.org, “Our long term goal is to acquire homes and creative spaces through donor funding, grants and estate planning that would be deed restricted as creative housing but in the short term, we aim to raise enough money to rent rooms from guesthouses and local landlords who are willing to offer short and long term housing at affordable rates while being able to offset that cost with a tax deduction via a donation to our 501c3 non-profit.”
Provincetown, first named the “biggest art colony in the world,” by the Boston Globe in 1916, has long been a mecca for artists, writers and musicians. It has continued to modern times, including Harrington and his band, the Dirty Rotten Vipers.
“All of these musicians collaborating have created such a vibe of conviviality and magic in the town,” said Michaela Davenport, a board member of Keep Cape Odd who is helping Harrington organize the nonprofit. “We lose that when we become a place artists can’t afford to be anymore. At some point, we become a colony of galleries rather than a colony of artists,” she said.
“Provincetown is like an incubator of creativity where people feed off of others,” said Davenport. “If we can foster that, that’s the goal.”
Davenport met Harrington last summer when she asked him to play at her then-upcoming wedding. Harrington, who spends winters at a house he bought in New Orleans, asked Davenport to help him set up a nonprofit, which became Keep Cape Odd.
“He had friends from New Orleans, musicians who wanted to come and play on the Cape,” said Davenport. “Provincetown historically had always been a place where creators would come and live nicely. But the boarding house culture has changed significantly,” said Davenport. “There’s pockets of it left but it’s definitely a rarity,” she said.
Harrington, of Dennis, first began busking on Commercial Street when he was 14. He is now 30. “When I was like 16, I had an apartment in the center of town across from Twisted [Pizza]and I paid $100 a week in rent. “Now that apartment is $4,500 a week.”
The problem “started with the Airbnb’s, and it just got worse when everybody sold during covid,” said Harrington. “Property values went way up during covid and everybody cashed out.”
“Now everything is short term,” he said. “If [landlords] aren’t getting their short-term rental price, they just keep it empty,” he said.
For eight years, Harrington lived on a sailboat in Provincetown Harbor in the summers. A couple of years ago, he sold his sailboat and bought a house in New Orleans, where he spends his winters. In New Orleans, he busks with his band, the Dirty Rotten Vipers.
He met several of his band members in New Orleans and brought them up to Provincetown in recent summers. “I bought a home in New Orleans because I can’t afford anything here,” he said. This summer, he has been staying at his parents’ home in Dennis.
So Harrington, through his friends and his own life, saw a need and developed a vision of what needed to be done. And then he found people who could help him execute his vision. One was his sister, Lily Mae Harrington, who is also a performer.
Another was Davenport. “This is Will’s love child and I’m just sort of the facilitator,” said Davenport. “He knew this wasn’t in his wheelhouse. But he’s very good at putting people together. His dedication to this, and his professionalism, have been impressive.”
“He knows the importance of this,” said Davenport. “Will was able to harness this idea of bringing Provincetown back to its roots,” she said.
“Will was able to harness this idea of bringing Provincetown back to its roots.” – Michaela Davenport, board member of Keep Cape Odd.
When she was asked to help, Davenport reached out to Anthony Panebianco, an attorney who has worked on several nonprofits with Davenport.
“Will saw the sort of unavailability of housing for artists to come and perform,” said Panebianco. “He saw it and lived it every day.” And because Harrington spent half of his year in New Orleans, “he knew people who would be a great fit here, that the community would love, but they couldn’t afford stay,” said Panebianco.
Panebianco said, “There is a diverse musical and entertainment atmosphere on Cape Cod. People want to come and do an artistic showcase for a month or two. And we want to showcase them even if they only come for two nights. And Will was seeing housing as being a deterrent to having great and unique acts visit.”
As they were applying for 501c3 nonprofit status, allowing donors to write off their donation, Harrington staged several fundraisers and made new connections.
He connected with two landlords, and the group rented two houses, one in Truro and one in Wellfleet. This summer, the organization housed 16 artists and musicians for various lengths of time in those two houses, said Harrington.
The landlord of the house in Wellfleet is John Wolf, a Wellfleet Select Board member and a longtime musician who has played trombone with many Cape bands, including the Dirty Rotten Vipers.
Will Harrington
“I’d kind of known Will for a few years. I used to run into him and say hi on the street. And then when he put together the Vipers I would sit in with the from time to time at the Old Colony Tap,” said Wolf. “He always impressed me that somebody that young was so into and so knowledgable about the roots of jazz.”
After bonding over their love of music, Wolf found out about Harrington’s quest to find housing for visiting musicians. It turned out that Wolf had a re-purposed 1930s-era garage that he had added a bathroom and wiring that he had been renting out as a short-term rental through a national company.
“I got tired of dealing with that [short-term rental] company. So when I fell in with the Vipers, Will asked if I knew of a place that could house some visiting musicians, I said ‘I’ll cut you a deal on the cabin.’ This was before he got the nonprofit going officially,” said Wolf.
In August, Keep Cape Odd was officially granted a 501c3 nonprofit by the IRS, allowing donors to write off any donations to the organization.
As a performer who moved to the Cape from St. Louis in 2009, Wolf also knew interesting musicians from off-Cape. “I want to bring out a couple of colleagues from St. Louis and get a couple of gigs for them.”
But Wolf said, “One of the main obstacles to getting interesting performers to come from off Cape is that it can be more expensive to put up the performer than it is to pay them.”
Wolf, however, had put his St. Louis colleagues up and he was ready to help with Harrington’s effort. Although there is more money in short-term housing, Wolf said, “I would rather make less money answering a need for visiting artists housing.”
One visiting musician who has found housing through Keep Cape Odd is Kristi Lee Pariseau, originally from Westport. “I moved here and got a new start. I am more than thankful,” she said.
Pariseau, who is trans, said, “I moved here with the intention that I want to live here permanently. The town is totally accepting, especially being trans.”
Before she moved to Provincetown, she said, “When I transitioned, I got fired for it. I lived in my van for two years,” she said.
When she first came to Provincetown trying to make it as a performer, Pariseau parked her van in random places and showered at Herring Cove Beach. “I was struggling and eating tuna and Chef Boyardee out of a can in a car,” she said.
And then she met Harrington, who heard her story and told her to fill out an application, recalled Pariseau. “‘We can probably get you a bed,’ he said to me.”
This summer, she stayed in a house in North Truro. “It has a decent size kitchen and living room area,” she said. “It has two bedrooms with bunk beds. I’ve got my dog and my piano here,” she said at the time.
She has since moved to a winter rental that she can stay in until June.
Other tenants in the Truro house included artists who do different sorts of busking, she said. One person writes poems for people on the spot, and another is a musician in the Dirty Rotten Vipers, said Pariseau.
Pariseau plays old school New Orleans style jazz on piano, much like Harrington, she said. She has a regular gig playing happy hour on weekends at Tin Pan Alley, and she has a place to stay and “focus on what I need to do to become a better performer in town. It gives me a chance to work on my craft.”
“It’s amazing to have this space,” she said. “Now that I have my piano here, I am able to practice and write new songs.”
“If it wasn’t for Will, I don’t think I would have made it,” she said. “I owe him a lot. One thing I know from knowing him personally is that he’s got a really big heart and he’s genuine. If he says he’s going to do something, he does it.”
The house she was living in is not winterized and so it is seasonal, which is why she moved. But it was because of housing provided by Keep Cape Odd that she was able to “be stable and work on my art and eat better,” said Pariseau.
While the nonprofit is in its early stage, Panebianco and Davenport have said that asking people to help with the nonprofit has been met with enthusiasm.
“Every single person I have asked to help has said yes without a moment’s hesitation,” said Davenport. “There is a way to change and to be the change you want… It feels insurmountable but if we are doing it together, it isn’t.”
And Panebianco said, “It’s an easy sell because of two factors. Trying to explain housing and affordability on Cape Cod is very easy. And your day-to-day life is enhanced by artists in our community.”
“We can do this. We just need your help,” said Panebianco.
While the focus for now is on the Outer Cape, and specifically Provincetown, Panebianco said, “We hope to eventually be working in all 15 towns.”
For more information, see KeepCapeOdd.org.
VIDEOS of Will Harrington & The Dirty Rotten Vipers
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