It's night Side with Ray.
I'm WBZ, Boston's new radio.
Thank you al our number two of Nightside. And let's say you live in Watertown and you come out your front door, open the windows, and you hear music and you're scratching your head. Where's the music coming from? It turns out to be coming from the porch across the street. There are musicians over there playing music. And here's a gentleman that started this, mister Matt Hannah. Matt, thank you for joining me here on night Side. Welcome to WBZ, Thank you, thanks for having me.
Morgan.
So, Matt, tell me about porch performances.
Yeah, So, Porch Fest is something that we started in Watertown the first year Dismay, and it's something that's not new to Watertown. It's been done in the New An area at least for since at least ten fifteen years ago. It started in Itsaica, New York. And it's just a day of free music where neighbors can go out on their porches and have bands come or play themselves and it's just a great community event. And when we did in Watertown this May, we didn't know what to expect.
It was our first one, and there was just a group of us in a room trying to organize it in January. I'm like, we'll see we can get one done this May. And it came together. Hoping for like fifty fifty bands. Maybe we got over one hundred and fifty bands playing all throughout the city, just on people's porches on a beautiful Saturday.
It was supposed to.
Rain and had wound up not It was a great day and people could just walk around the city and just hear music by you know, singer songwriters, by jazz bands, by hip hop bands, by fusion bands. It was all different genres, neighbors and people from traveling around and it was just a great community event. So yeah, it was a great success.
Now what instrument do you play?
Me? Personally?
I play piano and.
Guitar, Okay, not at the same.
Time, usually not very well, if I blame at the same time.
Okay. And what made you have a love of music? I'm sure it started when you were young, elementary, high school somewhere in there.
Yeah.
So when I was when I was younger, I would fall asleep listening to music on the radio. I was just obsessed with music from an early age. So my sister can tell you. She would knock on the on the wall, tell me to turn down the radio because she's trying to sleep, and I would just stick on. So yeah, it was just always there as far as back as I can remember.
I just loved music.
Yeah, and if I'm not mistaken, I'm going to stick with discussions about porch Fest. But a little bird told me that you as well teach music. I'm sure teach piano and guitar to people who call you and say, can you come over and teach little Johnny and little Sue how to play the piano.
I do teach and Astley. It's not usually little little Johnny or little Sue, it's grown up Johnny and grown up Sue. I teach adults. I find it really rewarding to teach people who, maybe, you know, thirty years ago they tried it and it didn't go well for them, and now they've been wanting to do it but regretting it ever since. So I really enjoy bringing bringing those type of beginners and intermediate people back into the world of music. And it's better as an adult than they may realize.
So that's that's what I have to do you just described to me as it was in the second or third grade, and we lived in an apartment building, four different apartments on four different floors. We lived on the third and the woman on the floor below us had a piano, so my mother and grandmother coordinated with her for me to come by on Wednesday nights for an hour and take piano. And oh god, I hated it. I did not want to learn the piano. Let me see your index finger. You place it on middle C.
That's where you start blah blah blah blah blah. And I could still right now play if I needed to. The first four or five songs I had to learn Birthday Party and Dolly did stand man's neer and come on boys, join the fun. Baseball days have begun. That is from when I was in the third grade, and I haven't been in the third grade for sixty two years. But I I was made a promise that if I got through until June, I could stop if I wanted to. My mother and grandmother expected that I would just learn
to love it and get addicted to it. But they gave me a finish line to cross. So when I get to that finished line, hell, of Loujah. I'm done with piano, but years later I regretted it, and I wish, I truly wish I had stayed with it, because that is such an art to be able to sit down and play the sheet music and do a good job doing it. I really wish I had stuck with it.
Well, it's never too late, Morgan. You can always jump back in.
I don't know now, my fingers get a little twinge of arthritis every now and then. And tell you what I'll think about it. Matt. That's the best I can promise you. But before we go any further, tell people how they can get in touch with you a website or what have you.
Yeah, so my website is Matt h Music dot com and yeah, I have some of my music up there and ways to get in touch me for teaching if if you're local to me and Watertown. And yeah, it's again. I love teaching those adults because they're they're just like you. And I've taken many of those people from that feeling you were just saying to playing some of their favorite songs. And if you know, as an adult, you have a lot more than you might realize, skills you've learned other
skills over the years. Those apply over the music, right and yeah, and I teach through the songs that people love, and I think that's an important thing for people too. When you're a kid, you don't know what you like and you're those songs you're mentioning. You weren't in love with them, right.
No, I was.
But when you're an adult, you can pick like, oh, these are my favorite songs, and we can simplify those and work your way up through those. So that's a great way of doing it as an adult, which is something you don't have when you're a kid.
I was on this subject about three or four years ago one night and a woman called in because I had mentioned those very songs, and she said, do you remember the book you learned them from? And I said, well, it was a book with a red cover, and those are the first three or four songs in the book. And she said, we're still using the same book. That might have been the third printing and now they're up to the twentieth printing, but that book is still being
used to instruct people. We had to place your fingers on the keys, and what the notes represent, and how to identify arrest note. And it's amazing to me that all these years later they're still doing it. Is that a signal? Am I? At the end, it was at a beat that means no more time.
No.
Sorry, that was from somewhere else in the room. Sorry.
Okay, We'll tell you what. Let me take a break, and I've got much more to ask you about porch Fest. I called it porch performances, but porch Fest in Watertown. Let me give the phone numbers again in case people in Watertown or other communities want to call in and talk about the six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty eight, eight, eight, nine to nine, ten thirty. This
is night Side. Please give us a call. I would appreciate it, and my guest Matt Hannah he as well, will appreciate it to hear from you here on night Side. Time and temperature nine p fifteen seventy nine degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World Nightside Studios on w BESY News Radio.
We're talking music here on night Side. There is a good a good Field story. There are a group of people that go around the community of Watertown and it's porch Fest. They go on the various porches front lines of the homes in Watertown and play music, all kinds of music. It's almost like an impromptu concert. And the coordinator is mister Matt Hannah and Matt, we've got a phone call, so I'm want to take the phone call. Then I'll go back to talking about the specifics of
porch Fest. But Suzanne, thanks for taking the time to call in. Welcome.
Well, thanks Morgan for taking by call. I am the other poor musician, but I've pleased to be while at dead Way calls Americas back with.
You, okay, and I'm happy you're here.
I had Tiato lessons as child. I had a little chart in it. I pushed out the third figure of the second figure that the first, and if I did it the other way, this is you could tell from my old age that I'm not a natural pianist, right, but I have had other you know, I sing and not too well, and I've had many good times and bad times listening to music both at Carnegie Hall.
And oh you know, would would this concept work in Newton? I live in Newton, so would the porch Fest concept work in your neighborhood? I don't know what part of Newton. You live in Newton's broken up.
I'm kind of a Newton Lower Falls. That was it. We do have music, but I'm kind of.
Retired from.
But if a group, if a group of.
Musicians as fabulous, because you know, there's so Mandy, there's Root sixty, there's Wellesley, there's there's Yeah, I think it would be fabulous.
All right, Matt, do you think you guys might consider extending way? A town and Newton almost touch each other. So what do you say, Eric?
It actually is a Newton porch Fest as well? Uh, there is someone who are organizes that in your city.
Okay, Well, I had tried to lift watertowns, so I've visited there too.
So Matt, Matt finished your point, go ahead, So I.
Guess they do it in June. I just looked it up here. It looks like they had it on doomb first, and it looks like they have a plant. So there's still plenty on doing it, all right, Newton Porch Fest.
And is Newton Lower Falls within this schedule?
Newton dot porchbesk dot info and it says here it's in Auburndale Lower Falls and Lobbing Center.
See that Lower Falls well, my goodness, I tell you, mister White, your show brings all times of magic.
By well, I'm thankful for that. Call me Morgan, and.
It's is standby on vacation.
Or is it's on vacation. He'll be back on Monday.
Okay, Well, so thank you very very much, and you have a musical happy weekend.
Suzanne, thank you for the call. Bye bye bye. All right, And Matt the songs I mentioned, do you remember your introduction into the first time a teacher told you we had to place your fingers on the keys and any of those songs ring a bell in your early days?
Not for me, I'm I'm so. I took about a year piano when I was a kid, and then I kind of had a similar reaction to you that I wanted to be done with that, but I wasn't done with the instruments, so I self taught myself from that point up until college. So I kept on playing. But I i those early ones because they didn't stick in my head.
Here we go in a road to a birthday party that was going from middle C to the right and going from middle C to the left. Dolly Dear sam E's neer soon you will be sleeping, and you got it. It's stuck in my mind. People who've heard me here on BC over the years, you know that the weirdest things, especially if there's a musicality to them, are embedded deep in me and won't be yanked out no matter what.
So tell me about other students that you've had. Be a teacher with pride, pump you chest out and talk about this person of that person who you've taught how to play the guitar, how to play the piano and they've taken to it like a duck to water.
Yeah.
I mean, like I said, a lot of my students
are the same type of Either there's two categories. It's the people who have your type of experience and they haven't touched the instrument in you know, forty years or something like that, and you know, just getting them to play something like I had a student not too long ago wanting to learn how to play amazing grace and you know, just getting them to that first song of a song that they wanted to play and it sounded like that real song and it wasn't fully fledged out,
but it was enough and you know, just to light up on their face when they could do that and realize that, yeah, I can actually do this, even though I tried decades ago and it didn't fit because they're in a different place now. And then there's the people who have been for decades going along on their own,
but they've never been really happy with their skills. They wish they were better, and those people will have what they I have one student who I've been teaching for many years now, and he calls them his Holy Grail songs, and as we check those off, you know, he'd been trying on his own for thirty years to play them.
And then you know, in a couple of years, we've worked our way up to these and now he's got like three or four what he calls Holy Grail songs under his belt, and he's getting ready to do a concert for his family at this point of about like twenty twenty songs.
Wonderful.
Yeah, and his family is he's been practicing really hard because his family is not forgiving, he says. So it's the ultimate test.
We've ignored you with the guitar because you mentioned both instruments. What was it about the guitar that attracted you when you first put your hand on the neck of a Gibson.
So piano was my first my first one, and then I discovered guitar. It wasn't in college for me, so I I, you know, I don't know what it was about it. I just came across an old guitar that someone was getting rid of. And I was a tinkerer. I was a I studied competition mainly in school, and I just loved now picking up I played the piano, but I loved tinking around on the computer and figuring out different sounds and just picking up anybody's random instrument.
But when I got guitar, it's it was something where I felt like it I could use my piano skills on it. I did a lot of finger picking, so I could do a lot of that fast finger work that I couldn't do if I, like picked up a trumpet because I had to blow into it or something. So that transferred over easier for me. But it gave me the whole world of different options that I couldn't do on the piano, and it just from there it stuck around and it's been part of my life ever. James College, So yeah.
My grandmother had a friend who was the landlord, and potentially people would check in and check out of his apartment building, and invariably people would leave things, and somebody left a guitar. Now I'm about eight, nine, ten years old, and he gave it to me. But the thing to me was huge. Now, you see people on TV and you get the concept. You put your fingers around the neck and you press down on the different strings and you know where your other hand goes to play it.
But I just never got it, and it wound up collecting deaths in my room. And that's another instrument. Gosh darn it. I wish I had taken it seriously or more serious than I did and learned to play the gosh darn thing.
You can't blame an eight year old bill too young to understand.
Thank you. Now I feel better. Ari was only eight, and between that and the piano, the TV was much more attractive to me. Tell you what, let me take another break throwing a quick hit of news. Anyone out there who wants to call in and talk about porch Fest. It's in the community of Watertown, we heard as well, it's in the community of Newton. Maybe you have it in your community, or maybe you would like to have it. The person who created this is Matt Hannah, and he's
my guest between now and ten o'clock. If you want to call in six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty or eight eight, eight, nine to nine, ten thirty. You know, Matt, you're being heard in thirty eight states and parts of Canada. So maybe somebody from across America wants to start one of these in their city, town, hamlet, whatever the case may be. If you do call in, maybe Matt will give you a heads up on how
to start it where you live. So on that note, let me throw it to Rob Brooks, who's my producer and an excellent producer. He is here on night Side time and temperature nine twenty nine seventy nine degrees.
If you're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's.
News radio, Dan's off will be back on Monday, I promise. I'm Morgan. I've been part of night Side for five of the past six nights Side shows, and my guest tonight at this moment is mister Matt Hannah, and he has helped coordinate porch Fest and the concept is he and musician friends of his go around Watertown and play. Play all types of music, whether you like classical music or you like something much more contemporary jazz, what have you?
And Matt I just recalled a song I had to play, had to learn to play the first song I learned to play with both hands on the keyboard and give me a second. Now give you the lyrics. Paype hadn'ts dead and gone, but his magic lingers on when his tunes were one of best. He wrote jolly tunes like this, and I had to play it both with my right and left hand simultaneously. And that's it. I've gone through the entire litany of what I recall from my days on a piano, gone.
Through the whole catalog.
That's it. The catalog's done. Did that song ring a bell to you?
No?
No, those like I said, those type of teaching ones were not very influential in my personal career with music.
Yeah.
Now tell people, if I live in Watertown and I want you guys to show up, how many people come with you? Do you come by yourself or there's a core of four half dozen of you that just go in the front lawn and perform.
So, yeah, I might not have done a good enough job explain this before, so it's not just me performing. So what this was was one hundred and fifty different bands, so not just me, It was all simultaneously throughout the city. There are one hundred and fifty different groups of performers that signed up to perform, so it's not just me. It was lots and lots of other people. So people
offer up there. What it was is so there was a website and people could log in to host if they wanted just to offer up their porch, and then there was a way to offer up your services as a musician or as a band, and then we matched people up to put them together and made a whole big schedule with all these performers. So it was a lot bigger than just me. So if you think about the one hundred and fifty bands, and if there's now three people in a band, you know that was about
four hundred and fifty people plus the host. It was like five hundred people all involved on this one day. So it was much bigger than just a handful of ums. And this is true for all the porch befts that people organize themselves in different cities as well. So I only organize the one in Watertown, Okay, Newton, the one in Newton.
And all the other cities.
Those are just people within their city organizing it themselves. So someone's listening and they look up and they don't have one in their city. You can start organizing it yourself. There's a there's a great website called porchfest dot info, and that guy there is great at helping people start off up their own websites or and starting to organize it yourself if you're interested.
Okay, now I heard about you through my friend of over forty years, Fred Grandinetti, and he has a show on the Watertown cable station, and you've made an appearance. I don't know if they've shown it yet, but talk about that.
Yeah, So he does. He does a cartoon where he shows kids how to draw different cartoons. He has a particular fondness for Popeye.
Yes he does.
So he asked me if I would play the Popeye theme song on guitar, and so I did, I want to.
I went in.
He recorded me playing the Pupeye theme song on it on guitar. Yet and it's supposed to be one of those moments where you know, snap fingers and the magic moment and my shirt changes after I play the song to have a Popeye song, and then yeah, I haven't. I actually haven't seen it yet either, So when it's ready, I'll be sure to take a look.
The magic of television. Yeah, Now, do you have children of your own?
I do. I. I do have a I have a son who is going into second grade this year.
Okay, I remember that's when I was introduced to a piano, kicking, screaming away from it. Does your son have an interest to pick up the guitar or sit at the piano bench?
So she went through a phase a couple of years ago where he was interested in just fucking away on there. But if I tried to make a formal thing, wasn't interested. So I never pushed it because I teach so many of those people those stories of being pushed away from it. So it hasn't caught on. But he hasn't other in stress, and if he comes back to it, I'd be happy to help him out with it, all right. I don't want to put on him, you.
Know, I understand that. You know why, if you force it, they necessarily reabell. But if you just let them go and grow towards it, a love may develop. And I truly wish I had developed that love, because by now I would be able to just sit at a piano and play any song from my history or songs that I love or songs that mean something.
Right.
Yeah, that love is a very key thing too, I mean anything, and not just music. By anything you're trying to learn. If you're not super interested in the general topic, you won't be able to put in the dedication that you need to get there. And when you love it, it's a lot more fun and you're willing to suffer, quote unquote suffer through some of the downs of practicing.
Give me your three favorite songs. They can be from anywhere, I don't know. If you have a love of classical music and you want to do Chopin's Minute Waltz or something from the Beatles catalog just top of your head, rattle off three songs, or if you can only think of one or two, but share with the audience your favorites.
Oh so that's a that's an impossible task pretty much. But so because I mean, I am truly a lover of music in general. Like I when I get a student who comes in and wants to learn songs that aren't what I would generally think of something I listened on my own, through the through the process of teaching them, I fall in love with it too, because there's the relationship with it. So that is I will try and absolutely answer that for you. But I want to say
that that isn't because of that. It's very hard to pick three things out. Let me see what well.
You mentioned A student wanted to learn how to play Amazing Grace, and that's a song that has great appeal to all types of people. And you think of Amazing Grace as something you hear when you walk into a church, or the religious aspect of that song. And I don't know what that song meant to you other than well, student X wants to learn it, so I'll teach it.
Yeah.
So I had never had really any relationship with that song. I known about it, of course, but I had no personal relationship with that song. But because the student was so enamored with it and wanting to learn it, it became a song that I gave more importance to and have more association with. Because music is more than just that. The notes also the memories that can bring up in you and all the relationship number. So that's why it's
so much deeper than just the song itself. It's hard to explain the song I like without having the stories behind it and why, and it's a deeper conversation.
Music can be a magic copt right through your memory to take you back to the time you first heard that song, or back to the details that surround that song, because it was playing on the radio when X, Y or Z thing happened. And that's the beauty of music. It does that. I just a few minutes ago mention the Beatles by saying the Beatles. There's so many people right now and they cannot help it. They're hearing their favorite Beatles song playing in their mind just because I
mentioned the Beatles. And that's the way music works. When you say classical music. I gave the example of the minute Waltz by Chopin, and there are people right now they hear the piano keys of the minute waltz. That's the way music works. And you're part of it, and you are. You're like the bus driver on that magic carpet.
I'll scrive on a magic carpet. I've never been given that role before.
I like, Okay, well you may use that. I have no copyright on the words to come out of my mouth. But it is a magic corp not not to go back to Steppenwolf, but it's a magic carpet ride through our memories, the songs, the arrangements. I'll just say one name and people listening right now will not be able to help. But think of his catalog Sinatra for forty
years from the thirties into the seventies and eighties. Think of the music that man brought forth and working with composers like Nelson Riddle, Jobin, etc. He knew how to reach us deep in our psyche, deepen our soul, and you get to do the same thing.
Well, it's more I think of it is I'm letting people do that for themselves rather than necessarily me doing it for them.
Right, it's everyone.
Can bring out that magic in themselves, and they just need the help of realizing that they can, especially if they had bad experiences earlier in their life or something like that. But everyone can can bring out a magical musical experience in themselves. They just need a little little nudge and a little guidance. But everyone can do that for themselves. They don't need the Sinatra. You have it in you and they.
And they surprise themselves. Going back to your example about the individual who wanted to learn how to play Amazing Grace, I'm sure they surprised themselves when they could sit down and play that absolutely and the lyrics, you know, amazing great, how great, amazing grace? How great thou art that? Save the wretch like me? You know, to be able to sit down and play that for yourself or play for other people is impactful, It really is.
Really you can see that the change in people sometimes when they learn those first few songs. You can just see something shipped in their brains about that the way they identify themselves. They switch from someone who wants to be able to play music to someone who can play music, and just that confidence switch. It's incredible to see. It's like, it's very fun to see that switch happens, and.
Those two words going from want to cam and there's power there. Let me take my last break of the night for this hour. If you want to call in and join the conversation Matt, Hannah and I are having here on nights Side, please do six one, seven to five, four, ten, thirty or eight eight eight, nine to nine, ten thirty. This is night Side here in BZ time nine forty seven seventy nine degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Amazing grace, how great the sound that saved a wretch like me. Rob and I were just talking about some people's reaction to being called a wretch. And Matt, I'm about to introduce to you, maybe not for the first time, a music legend in this part these parts he was on. He and his brother armed me earlier in the week. So Matt, let me introduce you to Bill Winnaker. Bill, let me introduce you to Matt Hannah.
Well, Matt Hannah, a pleasure to talk to you and to hear you. I'm just gonna say one thing you, Morgan, and then I'm gonna ask the man a question. Morgan. The next time we see you, we're gonna play I believe in you.
Thank you from uh. How to succeed in business that really try?
Yeah, you spoke about it last night on the air. I did, and I said to Bow you know, yeah, I said the boat we have to revive that tune. I've loved that tune. It was written by Frank Lesser.
Oh, speaking of Sinatrac, a great writer and the key, the key of that song. He's singing it to himself just just to convince him, yes to just to go for greater things. And that's you mean, the greatest love song ever in Broadway.
I love that song so much. We haven't played it in many years. We're gonna revive that and play it for you. You uh, you know who wrote so Frank Lesser wrote that He also wrote baby it's cold outside.
I really can't say for him. That's right.
Well, man, it's time to address you now. You know, everywhere I go I always ask people what are there three or four most favorite songs? After I get to know somebody, I asked ask them that because it's really helpful because sometimes we don't think of certain songs. So I'm picking everybody's brain all the time. So I want I want your answer to that. What what would be five songs that you love to perform that would help me?
Well, first of all, A nice to mutube buildings and yeah, so I would. So if you're talking about performing songs.
Yeah, well, what would be five favorite songs for you to perform.
So I actually get the most satisfaction athlete from performing my own music, not someone I certainly enjoy playing other people's music, but there's something I studied composition, and I grew up writing. I've written so much music, and for me, that's the greatest joy in music for me personally is coming up with a song, chiseling it down to what it is in over years, fine tuning it, and then when I finally get to that point, playing that, knowing all the work that I put into it and that
this is mine. That for me is actually if you want the true answer of what's the most satisfying for me to perform, it's that it's my own music.
That's great. Well, what Jondred do you write in? What stylish for music?
So over the years it's shifted, but I say it's the classical folk indie blends do instrumental music. So no lyrics, unfortunately, Morgan for you to have stuck in your head.
Okay, Matt, Matt, let me give both Bill and his brother Beau a proper introduction to you. They have been doing music in the Greater Botson area for over fifty sixty years. Their father taught them how to play instruments if their father had his own band. They played all over New England, all over the country, and Bill and Bow Winnaker have played at the White House, They've played major venues on the Cape and here in Boston. So
they are known for treating musical notes properly. And the fact that he has called in just because you're here, I think that's kind of a tip of the hat to you, Matt Hannah for what you do. Would Porchfest wonderful?
What you did was a wonderful thing. You provided the whole you organize so that the whole city of Watercowne. Is it a city or a town, it's.
Officially a thing now yeah.
Okay, so you provided one hundred and fifty porch is filled with music, and music just makes the world go around.
It makes us all feel good. So you you did it, did a wonderful thing. And you got.
Me remembering songs that I hated to learn way back when.
I love hearing that story. I didn't know that you took piano lessons.
That was great for one year and I was told if I stuck with it every Wednesday night until June, the end of school was was June still is, and I looked upon that as my finish line. And once I made that finish line, my mother and grandmother kept their word. Okay, you don't have to do it anymore. This Tuesda, this Wednesday would be last week.
Yippie. It's a shame, though, because nobody loves music of any more than you do. You love music.
I do you know that, I truly do know.
And I got one more thing, one more thing go okay. So the same thing happened to Bo and myself when we were three or four years old. My father said, you need to learn to play the piano. He wouldn't teach us. He got us a private teacher and he forced us to take piano lessons. So after one year of piano lessons, we both quit and my father was despondent. We hated it, and he just thought.
That we would never ever be musicians. But when the school did the demonstrations in the third grade and Bo heard the all the he said, I came, he came home. He said, I want to play the trumpet, so and I said I want to play the drums. And that was it. You get forced to do it.
It doesn't work, but when you see something you love, you go towards it. Bill, I only have about forty five seconds, so thank you for calling.
Good night.
I appreciate and Matt, in the time that I have left, tell people how they can find out your schedule for porch Fest.
So Watertown's Porchfest. Dot lerg where you can find out about Watertown porch Fest. If you want to find out about all the other porch fests again that I don't organize, but they're great things going on, check out porchest dot info. There's still more coming up this year in the Boston area. Check that out and see if there's one near you.
Matt, thank you very much. I wish you continued success and we'll do this again one night.
Okay, thank you very much.
You're very welcome. You to enjoy the rest of your weekend. And my old buddy Jack Hart, we're gonna get on his trolley tour bus in our imaginations and go around the city of Boston and find pertinent spots where history has happened. Time and temperature nine point fifty eight seventy nine degrees