Coffee house night brings music and beyond to the Northwest Corner

This year's first installment of the 12 Moons Coffee House open mic and performance kicked off to a packed house despite bracing weather on Saturday, Jan. 4.

“This is the best thing you can do on a freezing evening,” said the night’s featured performer, singer-songwriter Erin Ash Sullivan. Applause and murmurs of assent filled the vaulted interior of Falls Village’s Center on Main.

The event, which is funded entirely by donations, occurs on the first Saturday of each month and has, except for hiatus during the pandemic, been running since 2012. Since taking over in 2022, the night usually draws between 30 and 50 attendants, said John Nowak who organizes 12 Moons with his wife Nancy. “Tonight we have about 60,” Nowak said.

The evening’s structure followed the standard 12 Moons layout, starting with an open mic session which was then followed by the featured artist taking the stage at 8 p.m. Nowak explained that he sees the night as a showcase of the deep and thriving music community in the region, as well as a supportive platform for newer performers to showcase their work.

The event has a strong regular following — “We have people who come every month,” Nowak said — but continuously draws new participants. “There has always been somebody new for the open mic for two and a half years,” Nowak explained, referencing his tenure as the event’s organizer.

Saturday evening’s open mic showcased the varied and vibrant Northwest Corner talent pool, closing with David Capellaro reciting his own original poetry, a few lilting tunes from local legend George Potts, and a couple of traditional songs performed a cappella by South Kent resident John Milnes Baker, who runs his own folksong night on the second Monday of every month at the Bulls Bridge Inn.

One of Milnes Baker’s songs related an amusing tale about a traveler who unwittingly gets wrapped up in a strange barter system involving mink skins in Arkansas. When asked where he found the song, he said he wasn’t sure — he’s 92, and heard it as a teenager.

He said he grew up on the south shore of Long Island among a rich balladeering culture, and has a good memory for a tune. “I literally know hundreds of songs,” he said.

After a short break, it was time for Ash Sullivan to take the stage as the night’s featured act. “What we try to do is get local, professional artists to be our featured act — and we have,” said Nowak, noting that they now are exploring artists from further afield in New England.

Ash Sullivan, who hails from Harvard, Massachusetts, thanked the crowd and other performers before diving into the set. “This is like the best open mic I’ve ever been to,” she said to cheers from the audience.

The songs Ash Sullivan played stuck close to home, focusing on her hometown, friends, family, and intimate moments shared between loved ones. She sang about her grandmother, who was cast on the original Broadway staging of Oklahoma but backed out to marry Ash Sullivan’s grandfather, and how she wished she could have gotten more stories from her when she had the time. She also sang about motherhood, memories of going to the beach with a difficult teenage friend, and a difficult summer at home after college.

The songs were simultaneously tender and humorous, the vocals primarily accompanied by her finger-picked guitar except for one for which she played the ukulele. “Ukulele players are like vampires — they tend to sire other ukulele players,” she said, explaining that her husband’s ukulele playing had inspired her to take up the instrument.

She closed with a song about rejoining — and winning — a hometown pie eating contest as an adult after having won it twice as a preteen. The refrain encapsulates the air of levity and sentimentality that was consistent throughout her set: “Sweetness brings a sweetness that money just can’t buy.”