WINDSOR — What Doth Life, the collective of musicians that orbits Windsor, held its first music festival a couple of years ago. There were bands; there were food trucks; it was fun.
The event was a kind of dress rehearsal for 2020, the 10th anniversary of making music under the What Doth Life banner.
So much for that, what with the pandemic.
But the What Doth Life crowd is nothing if not persistent, so the festival is back. Starting at 2 on Saturday afternoon, the Windsor Exchange on Depot Street will host eight Upper Valley bands, most of them affiliated with What Doth Life, on two stages. The shows will be held outdoors; masks and vaccination are strongly encouraged.
“We feel like our fairly small-scale little festival is probably safe, and we’re outside,” Brendan Dangelo, a founder and core member of the collective, said this week.
The festival presents a welcome opportunity to look in on What Doth Life, one of my favorite ongoing Upper Valley arts stories. An overview: A group of musicians who grew up together in and around Windsor set up a co-op, write and record their own stuff, support their friends’ creative visions and provide an outlet for other up-and-coming bands. They’re now in their mid- to late 30s, with jobs and kids and houses, and they’re still at it.
And, most importantly, the music put out by some of these bands — Derek and the Demons, Carton, The Pilgrims, Chodus and others — is very good. Indeed, some of it is great, so full of originality, wit and spirit that it fills the heart. When I dip into the extensive What Doth Life catalog, which anyone can do on the collective’s website, whatdothlife.com, I kick myself: Why am I not listening all the time?
The collective’s members know they’ve got something special going on, a collaboration that goes back to the middle school years for some of them.
“It’s a consistent opportunity to hang out with our friends to do things we like,” said Dangelo, a 37-year-old Windsor native who still lives in town.
Getting into music when they were younger was “a saving grace,” he said.
“When you have that, it becomes like the basis of your community,” he said.
The idea for a co-op emerged at a New Year’s Eve house party in Windsor, with multiple bands playing. Every band had shared players, Dangelo said, and they thought “maybe we should put an umbrella over this entire thing.”
The collective made it easier for them to put music out into the world, via a website, and to book shows.
If the group’s shape is ill-defined, that’s by design. While there’s a core group of players and three prolific bands — Carton, Derek and the Demons and The Pilgrims — other musicians come and go, sometimes joining to make a record or two before moving along.
“It’s great, because we all sort of speak a similar language now,” Kiel Alarcon, who’s a member of Carton and Derek and the Demons and was part of McAsh, a ska band that dates back 20 years. (A planned McAsh reunion on Saturday had to be put on hold as one of the members had a case of COVID-19 in his family.)
The overlap among the bands can be a bit dizzying. Dangelo and Alarcon are both in Carton, with Ryan Hebert and drummer Bruce Black.
Alarcon is a member of Derek and the Demons, with Derek Young and Chris Egner. Dangelo, Alarcon and Egner are in The Pilgrims, with Chris Rosenquest and Davis McGraw.
Dangelo, Hebert and Black have backed up the wildly prolific Luke Chrisinger in Giant Travel Avant Garde.
This crew also takes younger musicians under their wing. Enfield native Hannah Hoffman performed as Hannah and the Wooden Spoons, and Chodus is a young band from Claremont that has worked with What Doth Life.
In the meantime, they all have day jobs. Dangelo works at Dartmouth-Hitchcock as a program manager for a rural health careers grant. Other members work in computer programming, or teaching, or engineering.
Rosenquest was one of three members of The Pilgrims to work at Hanover Strings, which he now owns.
The collective’s membership has never worried that much about fame and fortune.
“Every music biopic that comes out says that that’s not the way to happiness anyway,” Dangelo said.
The joy of the enterprise is in the camaraderie and creativity. The website calls What Doth Life “a brand with nothing to sell.”
The music kept the bandmates close to home, Dangelo said.
“If we can keep this going to the end of our days,” he said, “that’ll be a pretty good life.”
The What Doth Life Festival is planned for 2 to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Windsor Exchange. Admission is free. As the organizers say on the event’s Facebook page, “Masks and vaccinations are highly suggested, ya knucklehead.” Bands include Carton, Chodus, Derek & the Demons, Folquinette, Grief Counselor, The Pilgrims, Trevor Robinson and Time Life Magazines.
Kim Souza, in her original manifesto for Revolution, her vintage and locally sourced clothing store in White River Junction, pointed out that in the Upper Valley, fun isn’t going to come looking for you. You have to make your own.
Souza does that on a large scale a few times a year, and one of those is this weekend. Saturday night at 7, Revolution and Nancy the Girl (aka clothing designer Nancy Heyl) host a fall fashion show in Northern Stage’s Courtyard Theater. Admission is $20, to benefit the Hartford Youth Council. Masks are required.
The Jenny Brook Bluegrass Festival was called off last year, but it returns next week at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds.
I’m not going to make an exhaustive list of the performers, except to note that despite a Grammy nomination, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys are apparently too poor to afford a second O, an R and a G. (Also, one of the ‘Boys’ is a woman.)
If you’re into this kind of thing, you should know that the grounds open early for camping on Tuesday, Oct. 5, with performances Oct. 8 through Oct. 10.
For tickets and more information, go to jennybrookbluegrass.com.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
