On Sunday afternoon, students, faculty and University administrators attended a benefit concert for Waltham Fields Community Farm, a local non-profit farming organization. The concert, held in the Slosberg Recital Hall, featured the Barbara Cassidy Band, which consists of Barbara Cassidy MA '98 (vocals and tambourine), a graduate of the Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies program and former arts project coordinator at Brandeis, and her husband Prof. Eric Chasalow (MUS) (guitar), the Irving Fine Professor of Music.
Several guest musicians joined the Barbara Cassidy Band, including Peter Mulvey (guitar), David "Goody" Goodrich (guitar), Prof. Robert Nieske (MUS) (upright bass), Dave Mattacks (drums and piano), Joe Kessler (violin) and members of folk band Pesky J. Nixon, Ethan Baird '02 (guitar) and Jake Bush (accordion).
In varying combinations of musicians, the groups performed 20 songs, ranging from slow ballads to rock and roll. Cassidy, Chasalow and a few accompanying musicians began the concert, followed by Baird on the guitar and Bush, also of Pesky J. Nixon, on the accordion.
Mulvey and Goodrich played a couple of songs together on the guitar before the intermission, including "Old Fashioned Morphine" and "Everybody Knows." In the second half of the concert, the Barbara Cassidy Band returned to the stage, playing songs such as "Simon Simon," named after the couple's teenage son who was in the audience, and an upbeat song called "If Time Stood Still." Cassidy and Chasalow played an encore song at the end of the performance.
All of the songs had a folksy tune that helped foster an intimate atmosphere for the performance. This atmosphere was reinforced when performers shared anecdotes with the audience and explained the personal backgrounds of certain songs.
Cassidy and Chasalow talked about their collaborative experiences writing and composing music. They explained that they bring their skills together in the band to compose original songs. Baird and Bush touched upon their earlier experiences at Brandeis, joking about past fears before tests and assignments.
Baird joked that he double-majored in Music and English at Brandeis, which his parents said were two different ways of asking: "Would you like fries with that?" His band recently released its second album, which is charting the top-10 in Folk DJ charts.
During the intermission, the bands' albums as well as photographs donated by University Photographer Mike Lovett were on sale with all proceeds benefitting the community farm. The amount raised for the farm was not known by press time.
The Waltham Fields Community Farm is an organization that promotes "local agriculture and food access," according to its website, through education and farming, using 15 acres of rented land from the University of Massachusetts. WFCF also operates a community supported agriculture program, which provides their locally-grown produce to shareholders.
In an email interview with the Justice, Cassidy said that she and her husband first became involved in the WFCF by becoming CSA shareholders in 1999.
Her decision to raise funds for the organization stemmed from her appreciation for the organization's mission. "I appreciate the hunger relief work that Waltham Fields is engaged in-and that the focus is local-from food to table for everyone to have access to locally grown food, regardless of economic status," Cassidy explained.
When asked to reflect on the concert later that evening, Cassidy wrote that "Eric and I were extremely pleased to be in the company of such amazing musicians."
Referring to the diverse group of musicians who joined her and Chasalow on stage, she expressed her delight at the different performances, commenting that "This afternoon [we] came together with a group of old and new friends who are immensely generous and talented."