Mar 3rd, 2005

Photos Sue Harrison Bart Weisman (partially obscured) lays down the beat for vocalist Carol Wyeth while bass man Michael Ryle drops in the bottom.
Bart Weisman, head of the Bart Weisman Group, offers a light Latin touch on one song.

Would you like fries with that jazz?

Weisman and Wyeth add hot beat to cool eats

Sue Harrison

BANNER STAFF

It’s Friday night in late February. It’s cold and the streets are quiet. But before you start thinking there’s nothing going on, take a drive by Clem & Ursie’s restaurant on Shank Painter Road and notice the full parking lot and fogged up windows. What’s up? The Bart Weisman Jazz Group with vocalist Carol Wyeth, that’s what.

Clem and Debbie Silva, owners of Clem & Ursie’s, decided to try staying open year-round for the first time and as part of their winter experiment, asked Weisman to come and play every Friday. It took a while to catch on but now there is a solid following who pencil in Fridays as a night to catch a little jazz, chow down and run into friends from 7 to 10 p.m. There’s no cover for this concert except the napkin you might tuck into your collar to save your shirt from lobster juice or BBQ sauce from the pulled pork.

Every Friday Weisman unpacks his drum kit, Michael Ryle tunes the upright bass and vocalist Carol Wyeth with her shoulder-length, blond-streaked hair steps up to the mike. The other band members vary from week to week and include Ted Jellinek on piano who alternates with guitarist Alan Clinger and occasional stand-ins or guest musicians like keyboardist Malcolm Granger who showed up last Friday.

As the band slips into “Get your kicks, on Route 66,” the crowd settles in. There’s a low rumble of conversation but a lot of listening, some raptly. It’s a wonderful mixed Provincetown crowd of all ages and persuasions.

The audience knew it could count on the standards and the band delivered moving from “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” to “One Note Samba.”

Weisman, a ringer for a younger Paul Simon, works the drums and song list adroitly, working through an extensive song list to keep the night popping along. Wyeth, from Brewster, handles the jazz vocals very well with a dusky contralto and a nice sense for phrasing. Ryle, an Eastham guy who also happens to play with the Cape Cod Symphony, slips into a closed-eyed, hypnotic sway with his bass. Granger uses his keyboard expertise to keep the melody percolating through the tunes.

As the first set ended the volume in the room rose as diners upped their conversational levels but when Wyeth stepped back to the mike for set two, it quieted down again.

The second set started with a long jazzy piece by Miles Davis and worked into numbers like “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Teach Me Tonight.”

The tables stayed full as newcomers slid into just-vacated seats. Heads were nodding in time and more than a few toes were tapping.

A tip jar is taped to the mike stand and Weisman quips, “As [local entertainer] Suede says, ‘If it makes noise, it’s not a tip.’” Patrons didn’t hesitate to add a few bucks to the jar on the way out the door.

The band mixed in a few Latin numbers, some blues and segues into “Summertime,” delivering a version that almost made you forget the snow outside.

Wyeth, in a fitted black leather jacket, dished out “Lullaby of Birdland” and tossed a little scat into her mix. When the band worked the blues, she whipped out a harmonica and made heads all around the room snap to attention when she started to wail.

Overall, the pace is steady and easy. Everybody in the band gets ample solo time to show their moves. Ryle has a little pouch like the one Robin Hood put his arrows in strapped to the bottom front of the bass and he used his ammunition to steal the show more than once.

Wyeth is in her latest incarnation as a musician. She started as a folkie back in the ’70s and moved into folk rock and then hard rock. An early band of hers got a nationwide tour for the Prince Spaghetti company, which had them opening in musical venues for musicians like Johnny Mathis and then hitting the local supermarkets to sing the Prince Spaghetti jingles. She moved from that band to a trio and into a Cape band called Sad Bird that never quite got off the ground.

“Half of them are dead and two are in jail,” she says of fellow Sad Bird members. “I guess you could say I am a survivor. I walked away then and raised my four kids.”

She wound up taking a 20-year break. When she returned, she took three years of classical voice followed by years with a vocal coach.
“I went back into the jazz side,” she says. “I wanted to do the standards and work with those great composers from the ’30s and ’40s.”

She started her own band and has been playing regularly in the summer season on the Upper Cape. Weisman asked her to join him and she says that’s been a great gig, too.

“I love what I’m doing,” she says. “When I’m not doing that, I’m on my motorcycle, my other passion.” Wyeth says she logged more than 10,000 miles last years and plans to do the same this year if she can.

Wyeth and Weisman started recording a CD this week and they plan a lot of work for the summer.

Weisman says the band will be at Clem & Ursie’s three nights a week this summer. On Thursdays they will play what he calls party music — a mix of retro rock and blues. Fridays will remain jazz and on Saturdays, he says he’s inviting local entertainers to join the band for an ever-changing, always surprising show.

Weisman’s band with Wyeth on vocals will also be the featured musical group at the upcoming Provincetown Year-rounders Festival on Saturday, March 12. The band will play from 7 to 10 — dancing is encouraged — and will be made up of Weisman, Wyeth, Granger and Susan Goldberg on bass.