Brewster Productions

A not-so-brief introduction to the beginnings of the Local Music Revolution

Folks tend assume one of a few things about the origin of our name: Either that we’re named after the Cape Cod town of Brewster, and that we are based there; or that we’re named for the Pilgrim preacher William Brewster who just happened to help found our wonderful town of Plymouth. Believe it or not (I know, it’s crazy), neither is true – and the truth isn’t nearly as exciting/interesting as one might expect based on the way I am leading up to it. We are actually named for Brewster Gardens, a park on the Plymouth Waterfront, which is named for the man who once called the land his garden – William Brewster. So we’re indirectly named for ol’ Bill Brewster. I digress.

Summer 2007: Origins

The way we came about the name is also somewhat interesting. Scott, Harry, a few other friends of ours and I used to play something we called “Midnight Wiffleball” at the park. The game is fairly self-explanatory – we’d meet up in Brewster Gardens usually after 11 or 12 at night and play in the park til the wee hours of the morning. This is the place Brewster Productions was officially conceived (so like someone who names their kid Jethro because it was concieved at a Jethro Tull concert, we took the obvious next step). The idea of putting on a big all-day concert had been floating around since the previous fall (2006), and after it had all been planned by June of 2007 (under the name Saturday’s Cod Productions), the idea of putting on more finally struck. It was a night in early June and we had been playing so much Wiffleball there in recent weeks that we’d created a patch of dead grass at home plate. Some way or another, in the post-game rehydration and conversation, the idea “lets do more than one concert next year” was uttered; then the perfect name – one that had been hanging out in Scott’s head for months – was blurted out: “Brewster Productions.” The company was born – conversation swiftly did away with Wiffleball and turned to ambitious endeavors like putting on concerts for local bands and trying to get the then-non-existent Clams of Death to do a show in the fall or winter.

So by the time Schoolhouse Rock came around on July 27th, the Brewster Productions idea was in full swing. We put on the concert and it was a hit – a hit with the bands, the people of the town and ourselves. We were able to donate $600 to Plymouth Public Schools – supporting my own favorite cause, public education – and we started talking about the months to come the second the last band stopped playing.

Fall 2007 – Spring 2008: Ideas out the wazoo

Once summer had ended I was back at school learning things and getting appendicitis – the usual fun things people do at college. Despite the physical separation of the Brewster Productions crew, the planning and talking never ceased. By Thanksgiving we had a Web site, and by December we had a show planned. Saucy Seth & the Clams of Death returned from their 14-month hiatus to headline The Big Freeze ’07 on December 30th. It was an amazingly fun show, and it featured a few guys who would prove to be among our musical go-to guys ever since: Stephen Infascelli, Shaun Dever and Stephen MacDonald.

The next few months brought us a healthy array of the positive and negative. We started off 2008 with a few great coffeehouse shows, followed in February by our introduction to the Side Street Bandits, a young ska band from Pembroke who’ve ended up being one of our favorite groups to work with because of their enthusiasm and general friendliness. March brought us the unfortunate realization that we had yet to have an unsuccessful show. On a brisk night in Kingston, we finally got it: A band dropped out last minute, the two headlining bands had members cancel last minute and neither us nor the bands did any real promotion of the show. Long story short: 37 people came and we lost $200.

We understood this sort of thing happens, so we moved on to bigger and better things. April was our busiest month to date with concerts in Rhode Island, New Hampshire and New York. There were shows at URI, Plymouth State (NH) and Skidmore College, all involving Dever and Infascelli.

Summer 2008: Explosion of Cool

While all this was going on, we had been plotting our most grandiose scheme yet: A free summer concert series on the Plymouth Waterfront; one for the kids, rather than old people who like tribute bands. Our mission was to compliment (/compete with/fill in a gap, however you want to look at it) the well-known, and well-funded, Project Arts Wednesday Night Concert Series. Obviously we support any free music being made available, but this concert series was clearly aimed at an older crowd and we felt the kids our age and younger were missing out. I’ll quote Ryan Wood from the Old Colony Memorial:

“If you’re from the Plymouth, Massachusetts area, you’re familiar with the waterfront. Summertime brings summer concerts on the waterfront, but this summer, the Schools Out! Summer Concert Series is like no other. For years, college and high school age kids have been screaming, “What about us?” They were sick of never seeing bands they liked. The brains behind the Schools Out! Summer Concert Series — Brewster Productions — just took care of that.”

So with only a bit of trouble, the School’s Out! Summer Concert series was off and running. We spent the summer putting together ragtag lineups with mixed genres from acoustic folk to ska-punk to face-melting hard rock. We managed to hook the young-uns up with some music they liked played by people their age, and even got a large turn out of adults who liked the music too (or at least the principle). We successfully put on 9 (plus one rain-out and one cancellation) free outdoor concerts, including our late summer add-in, the “Acoustic Evenings on the Harbor” series on the lawn of the Hedge House.

The summer faded all-too-quickly into fall, and planning of the collegiate nature began.

- Jon Dorn 9/8/08