While football fans spent Sunday evening glued to the television, a collection of folk artists and fans gathered at Club Passim in Harvard Square to celebrate the music of George Harrison. The club donated all proceeds to cancer research.
The evening began with sound engineer Matt Smith on stage with a guitar, giving a rare performance of the George Harrison solo song "Dark Horse." Harrison wrote this 1974 song about himself. As he said in an interview, a dark horse was "the one that nobody's bothered to put any money on. That's me, I guess, the very last one anyone would have ever expected to come out a winner."
Next on stage came James O'Brien of Passim fame and the collective sounds of John McGann (guitar), Aiofe O'Donavan (vocals), and Rushad Eggleston (cello). Rob Siegel lent humor to the evening with takes on "Apple Scruffs" and "Piggies" (complete with pig snorting), and Butch Ross played a tender rendition of "Art of Dying" off the album All Things Must Pass.
The surprise act of the evening was the formation of the new band Girlyman, comprised of solo artist Nate Borofsky and the girls from The Garden Verge - Tammy Greenstein and Doris Muramatsu. Between Greenstein's drums, Borofsky's guitar, and Muramatsu's lyric vocals, Girlyman brought the house down with renditions of "Handle With Care" and "My Sweet Lord."
Later, there came performances from Maybe Baby, The Resophonics, and Mark Erelli and Dennis Brennan with friends. By the end of the evening, a true sense of community emerged.
"I've had a great time," Borofsky said. "It's like all my favorite performers playing a two-song open mic."
Mandolin player Jonathan Pointer smiled and commented, "What vinyl! I had a good time."
Many artists observed that they felt they were paying homage to their influences. "I thought the musicians either played faithful to the way George Harrison songs sound like, or they had really creative interpretations of his songs," soprano Doris Muramatsu said. "I had a really great time with my band, just finding new ways to perform his songs."
