Time to say goodbye

Published 5:31 pm Tuesday, November 19, 2013

The Local Showcase series started as a way to involve the numerous local musicians on island in Orcas Center performances.

Musician Carolyn Cruso, who has been producing the showcase for about seven years, describes the series as staying true to its original intent.

“It provides an opportunity for mostly emerging talent to play in a listening room with good sound, an appreciative audience and an elegant atmosphere,” she said.

The series has been a success, but the upcoming showcase, Saturday, Nov. 23, 7:30 p.m. at Orcas Center, is likely to be the last of its kind. For tickets, go to www.orcascenter.org.

Around 70 local performers have participated in the showcase with an array of talents.  Singer-songwriters have been the main participants, but everyone from ukulele players to an Irish band to the spoken word to African mbiras have been invited to the stage. One year, Cruso produced a young songwriters showcase with teens and early twenty-somethings.

“That was a real hit, of course,” she said.

Some of the showcase artists like Katie Gray and Brian Duke have gone on to have careers in music.

Others were veterans willing to share their talents like Sharon Abreu, Grace McCune, Evan Fraser and Dustin Fox.

In the upcoming and final show, Cruso said, the synergy of the three individual acts will be powerful. The showcase will highlight singer-songwriter Alison Post from Waldron Island, Orcas Island’s David Densmore and his ukulele and Gregory Reboulet on vocals and guitar. Reboulet is also from Orcas.

Alison Post

Post has performed vocally most of her life, starting out in the backseat of the family station wagon then moving through bars and basements as a teenager with a male rock band.

Now she has a folk-roots sound with sweet melodies and simple accompaniment.

This fall, Alison has been recording a demo album of original songs with Seattle singer-songwriter Sabrina Brazier. They will be performing some of their new material at the showcase, accompanied on guit

ar by the strumming sounds of Orcas Island’s Randall Smith. Cruso describes Post as having a classically beautiful and pure voice.

“Her songs are filled with a tenderness for the world and the human spirit,” she said.

David Densmore

Densmore will share many of his new songs while accompanying himself on the ukulele.

“His songs are rich, humorous and celebratory,” Cruso said. “Like so many islanders he is a multi-talented man; a poet, lyricist, painter, sculptor, ukulele player and singer.”

He said he is not used to performing, but rather prefers painting.

“You can do the work in private then hang it on a wall for people to see while you slip out the back door, however … there is something magical that happens with an audience, and the songs don’t really come to life until you present them in front of living, breathing mammals,” he said.

Densmore got his ukulele as a kitschy joke in Hawaii about four years ago, but fell in love with the instrument.

“It is a portable friend, easy on my old gnarled hands and continues to teach me so much about music,” he said. “As they say four strings, four fingers, the possibilities are endless and I am still exploring.”

Gregory Reboulet

Cruso heard Reboulet at an Open Mic last winter and admired his voice.

“He gets some wonderful sounds out of his guitar and his chops are bold,” Cruso said. “Whether singing covers or his original songs he is compelling.”

The singer-songwriter has recently started a project of cataloguing his massive original song collection. In his efforts of dusting off old songs, he came to several interesting conclusions. The first was that he felt songs from the past were like old friends.

“There are floods of memories of what that time was like, said Reboulet.

The second realization was that he started to add up how many years he has been writing music.

“I’ve been writing for the last 50 years and my songs cover a lot of different phases of my life,” said Reboulet.

Reboulet’s earliest musical influence was listening to his father’s singing. As a teen he played a euphonium in the school orchestra as well as and sang in rock bands and a folk duo. During his college years he began touring as a singer in various rock and R&B bands.

In the early 1970s he landed the part of Caiaphas in the National Road Company’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar and toured with them in the U.S.

In the mid 1980s he trained as an audio engineer then built and operated a commercial recording studio and music publishing/production company.

He describes his writing process as this:  “Some songs come easy, some come really hard, some are beaten to death and there are some songs that come effortlessly.”

It is this last type that will be presented at the showcase. The songs will span his 50 years of work from his time as a young man touring to his time as a father of four children.

“I have worked as a singer, but song writing is a different thing, it has been my therapy, my spiritual path,” he said.