What am I doing here?
I am at the Old Vienna Revival in Hopkinton on Aug. 17 and wondering the same thing. After all, there’s three-time Grammy-winning songwriter Lori McKenna (“Humble and Kind,” "The Crowded Table" and “Girl Crush”) over there talking to another great songwriter, Cliff Eberhardt (“The Long Road"), and there’s Bonnie Raitt’s guitar player, Duke Levine from Worcester, talking to his band of incredible pickers Kevin Barry and Marty Ballou.
I mean, there’s music royalty here.
The occasion is the 29th anniversary of the closing of the legendary Old Vienna Kaffeehaus in Westboro and it’s being held on a beautiful property owned by Phil Antoniades and Barbara Kessler in nearby Hopkinton.
I started going to the Old Vienna’s open mics around 1991. Before that I played harmonica (badly) and before that — little-known fact — I was a part-time bartender at the OVK in the late '80s. They had the craziest system ever. In the middle of the pre-show rush, the second-floor bartender — that would be me — had to go down three flights of stairs to the basement to get certain beers!
But the open mics on Thursday nights were always magical. You never knew who would show up — but you knew they'd be good. One time I was slotted between Dar Williams and Ellis Paul.
Talk about pressure to perform!
Robert Haigh, the MC at the open mics (always had a good word) and one of the Revival organizers, told the Revival attendees that the Old Vienna changed his life.
“What an amazing tribute to the Old Vienna and all the performers,” he said into a microphone while standing on the roof of a sound truck. “It was so much a part of my life and so much a part of yours.”
The reunion started at noon and was still going strong at 9 p.m. when Christine Lavin sang “Sensitive New Age Guy” backed by a dozen of the performers.
Nobody wanted to leave.
But it was getting late, Someone suggested it was a mini-, gray-haired Woodstock.
Tim Mason, the tall — and, yes, graying — OVK booking genius and resident poet, estimated the attendance at about 1,000.
“I stopped counting the RSVPs at 800,” he said as he stood and looked out at the crowd.
The 28 players and poets and MCs — Mason called them “a tour of eclectic performers” — were overwhelmed by the day.
“The Old Vienna — oh my God,” Peter Mulvey said when he took the stage, a deck 12 feet off the ground with the original Old Vienna Kaffeehaus sign below it.
Mulvey said romantic evenings at the OVK often led to more romance later.
“There are humans on this earth that owe their existence to the Old Vienna,” he said
Emilia Ali, blessed with the voice of her mom, folkie Barbara Kessler, and the in-the-pocket timing of her dad, drummer Phil Antoniades, surveyed the crowd from the stage.
“This is so cool,” she said. “You're all in my backyard.”
Both of her parents played with her, only fitting because the Old Vienna always had the feel of a huge family affair. Jazz harpist Deborah Henson-Conant (if you’ve never seen her, know that she can imitate Jimi Hendrix — on a harp!) said, “It is so fun being here. It is so fun that we were all able to get together.”
One of the many people who got their start at the Old Vienna was McKenna. The Stoughton native said she was “nervous as hell" when she climbed the stairs to the old Old Vienna in Westboro with a guitar she borrowed from her brother in 1996.
She blew the room away.
Haigh chased her down the same stairs when she left that night and said, “Please come back soon.”
She did and the rest is musical history.
Standing in the green room on Aug. 17, I told McKenna that my favorite song of hers is “People Get Old” and that Walter Crockett and I would play after her.
“You’ll be a tough act to follow,” I told her.
McKenna suggested I spin it.
“Tell them Lori McKenna opened for you,” she said with the sweetest laugh.
It was that kind of day.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Of folk and family: Old Vienna Revival concert shows music venue's continuing influence
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