Music: 5–8pm • No cover • Food: Yes, plenty. • Full bar, plus self-pour beer and wines
Dancing (optional)

THE Band

Dave Limina (keyboards, vocals)
Dave performs and records with jazz, blues, funk and soul artists from around the world including a 25-year stint with the award-winning Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters, Redtenbacher’s Funkestra, Mighty Sam McClain, BB King, RL Burnside, Joey DeFrancesco, Scott Hamilton, Chuck Berry and many more.  As the piano department chair at Berklee College of Music, he has shared his musical knowledge and passion with thousands of students.

Myanna (saxaphone)
Myanna, one of the hottest saxophonists around, plays music that mixes jazz improvisation with funky rhythms, expressive playing, and catchy tunes. She has won awards for Best Jazz Artist several times from both the Boston Music Awards and The Boston Phoenix readers’ poll. She has recorded three or her own CDs, and is featured on multiple recordings with The Love Dogs and as a side player on many other recordings.

Eddie Scheer (vocals, percussion)
Eddie has been one of the pillars of the Boston Blues/R&B scene for more than 20 years. As the leader of his award-winning band The Love Dogs, he’s toured the U.S. and Europe and recorded four critically acclaimed CDs. He’s played with virtually every top-level musician in the Northeast at one time or another, and has hosted his “Tuesday Night Allstars” series in Brighton for more than a decade.

Craft Food Halls​

Craft Food Halls Boxborough offers a space built for gathering and connection. The venue blends a warm, open layout with an interactive pour-your-own beer and wine wall that features dozens of rotating options, giving you the freedom to explore new favorites throughout the night. Settle in with a full meal or keep things casual with our bar menu over the course of the evening. CFH Boxborough offers a setting that keeps energy high and the atmosphere loose, giving you a place to enjoy local talent without making the trip to Boston.

Fugitive Stories and Old Frog Pond Farm in Harvard are partnering again for four afternoons on the farm. August’s theme is “Epiphany.”

Hearing a true story in a live performance is fun, moving, and transformative. Every event brings surprises. As always, Fugitive’s featured tellers include Moth and Massmouth Story Slam Winners and Champions, theater professionals, comedians, authors, podcast producers, teachers, and university professors. Several folks from the local community will also be telling their tales, some for the first time.

$15/online • $20/door
Online sales end at noon on the event date. Plenty of tickets at the door.

Seating starts at 2:30pm. Storytelling starts at 3pm. We recommend purchasing tickets in advance. This is an outdoor event. In case of rain, please check our website after noon on the day of the show. Our back-up location is the Harvard, Mass. UCC Church, 5 Still River Road (on the Harvard Common).

Please put Old Frog Pond Farm, Harvard, in your GPS. (The street address sometimes take you to the other side of the woods.)

ABOUT OUR CO-HOST, OLD FROG POND FARM
Old Frog Pond Farm is a 25-acre farm in Harvard and one of the few Certified Organic Orchards in Massachusetts. In the fall they open for pick your own apples and raspberries. Every year, the farm hosts an Annual Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit and gathers for Plein Air Poetry.

Visitors to the farm can purchase a ticket to take a self-guided tour around the pond and through the woods discovering the sculpture, native plants, and abundant wildlife that’s makes their home here. The self-serve farm stand is filled with fresh certified organic produce. fruit@oldfrogpondfarm.com

FEATURED FUGITIVE TELLERS
In addition to several local, hand-picked tellers, Fugitive brings regional, award-winning storytellers (see below).

Matthew Dicks
Matthew is a record 64-time Moth StorySLAM champion and 9-time GrandSLAM champion whose stories have been featured on their nationally syndicated Moth Radio Hour and their weekly podcast. His stories have also appeared on PBS’s Stories From the Stage. He is an elementary school teacher and the internationally bestselling author of the novels Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, Something Missing, Unexpectedly, Milo, and The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs. He is the founder and Creative Director of “Speak Up,” a Hartford-based storytelling organization. Matt loves ice cream cake, golf, tickling his children, staring at his wife, and not sleeping.

Harold Cox
Harold Cox is professor at Boston University School of Public Health. Storytelling is his latest passion to go along with camping, knitting and skydiving. Harold has told stories on “Risk,“ “Stories From the Stage,” and “Riot Theater.”  He was a recent Moth Grandslam and MainStage participant. Harold likes to tells stories about simple and goofy things that have happened in his life. His life is full of simple and goofy things.

Cheryl Hamilton
Cheryl is the founder and director of Stellar Story Company, a Boston-based business that helps people and institutions deliver extraordinary stories and unforgettable events that lead to meaningful change. In addition to its work with nonprofits and businesses, Stellar identifies and coaches talent for the national media program Stories from the Stage, filmed at GBH studios. Cheryl is also the creator of Suitcase Stories, a series that explores global migration. 

Meg Stafford
Meg is an award-winning author of two memoirs — They are Topic of Cancer: Riding the Waves of the Big C, and Who Will Accompany You? My Mother-Daughter Journeys Far From Home and Close to the Heart — a columnist and observer of humans’ and animals’ delightful quirks, and was a featured teller on GBH’s “Stories from the Stage.” A social worker in private practice for many years, she hears powerful stories on a regular basis and always appreciates the connective tissue that telling our truths creates. And, she embraces the notion that the shortest distance between two people is a laugh. Meg can be reached at http://www.MegStafford.com. 

This one is for both experienced dancers and swing dance wannabes. Sanctuary, a gorgeous converted church, features a full stage, an enormous dance floor, and one of the best bars west of Boston.

From 6–7pm, we feature instruction with some of the best instructors in the area. Instruction will be led by Sergiy Georgiyev, the founder and director of Magenta Dance Place in Acton. who has taught ballroom across Europe and the US. Sergiy’s emphasis on maximizing confidence and minimizing stress has helped students achieve extraordinary success. He is a professor at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and collaborates with the MIT Ballroom Club and Harvard Dance Sports team. At Magenta Dance Place, Sergiy and his staff believe in the transformative power of dance and strive to create a vibrant community where everyone can express themselves through movement.

From 7–9pm, Eddie Scheer’s Swinging All Stars take to the stage. Chameleon Eddie Scheer is a local favorite, gracing us with his vocal and drumming talents with a variety of groups and styles. He has been a fixture on the New England swing scene for more than 25 years. Whether with his jump blues band The Love Dogs, the 20-piece Compaq Big Band, or various smaller ensembles, his big voice and solid drumming have kept hearts beating and feet moving wherever he plays. The Swinging All Stars is a new unit featuring some of the best musicians in Boston — leaning toward the lighter, jazzy side of swing, but still with a deep connection to and reverence for the blues. 

Sanctuary, Maynard, Mass. | Doors: 5:30pm | Instruction: 6pm | Music/Dance: 7pm | Tickets

Join Fivesparks and Fugitive Productions in an intimate setting for a performance in Harvard’s beautiful town center.

About Fivesparks
Fivesparks has been cultivating arts and culture programming within the Harvard community since 2017, creating a space where people can come together to experience the arts in many forms. They are broadening their offerings and collaborating with other community organizations to expand and serve even more people through classes, events, and exhibits. Check out their website and subscribe to their newsletter to stay up to date on what’s coming up!

About the Artists
Erin Harpe Country Blues Duo has been called “today’s country blues at its very best” by America’s oldest blues periodical Living Blues Magazine, who crowned Erin “one of the finest fingerpicking acoustic blues singers in the land”! A passionate purveyor of the vintage country blues and roots music she was brought up on, Erin has quickly become considered one of the premier acoustic blues pickers in the world today – male or female.

The group features Erin on acoustic guitars, vocals, kazoo, and foot percussion, with her husband, Jim Countryman, on ukulele bass and backing vocals. The pair’s foot-stomping back-porch blues transports the audience to the delta, with catchy and danceable vintage classics by the likes of Memphis Minnie, Mississippi John Hurt, Tommy Johnson and Blind Blake — elevated by Erin’s own interpretations — mixed in seamlessly with original compositions and country blues takes on popular songs. The act has been a hit everywhere from intimate venues to blues festivals, from the US to the UK and EU, to rum bars in Jamaica!

Erin has opened for and played with many artists, including Ana Popovic, Buddy Guy, James Cotton, James Montgomery, Ronnie Earl, Roomful of Blues, and Toni Lynn Washington.

Presales end at 4:30 on the show date. Tickets available at the door.

Doors: 7pm • Performance: 7:30–9:30pm • $25/advance (incl. fees) • $30/door

Join Fivesparks and Fugitive Productions in an intimate setting for a performance in Harvard’s beautiful town center.

About Fivesparks
Fivesparks has been cultivating arts and culture programming within the Harvard community since 2017, creating a space where people can come together to experience the arts in many forms. They are broadening their offerings and collaborating with other community organizations to expand and serve even more people through classes, events, and exhibits. Check out their website and subscribe to their newsletter to stay up to date on what’s coming up!

About the Artists
The Smack Dabs specialize in good-time Swing Blues music from the 1930s, featuring the songs of Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy, The Harlem Hamfats, and many others. 

This delightful and timeless genre features a rich variety of musical styles, ranging from mournful blues to joyful celebrations, setting the stage for incredible solo and group improvisations and delighting audiences and dancers alike.

The 1930s were halcyon days for Swing music, but not just for the likes of big bands like Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmy Lunceford, and the Dorsey Brothers. There were literally hundreds of small Swing combos from trios to octets, each with its own unique take on the music that dominated the market during the height of the Great Depression.

The Smack Dabs’ sound is influenced by a mélange of musical styles. The band gets its instrumental configuration from Tampa Red and his Chicago Five, improvisational vitality from the small Black Swing combo, and swagger from risqué Blues.

Presales end at 4:30 on the show date. Tickets available at the door.

Doors: 7pm • Performance: 7:30–9:30pm • $25/advance (incl. fees) • $30/door