Summer's here: Music to our ears

As we officially begin our Long Island summer season in four days, we welcome opportunities for fun, creativity, and entertainment. The past few years, as the pandemic isolation dimmed, my husband, Tom, and I have found an abundance of local concert series by performers who take the summer stage, removing our winter doldrums.

Like pirates plotting to find hidden treasure, we strategically display printed summer concert schedules across our kitchen table and chart our plans for the upcoming months, focusing on our musical preferences and proximity to our home base. We maintain a paper calendar as a back-up to our digital phone calendars. When there is overlap and we have a difference of opinion, which has occasionally occurred, we flip a coin and have never regretted the winning decision.

Although our parents were considered the “Greatest Generation,” I surmise that we grew up with the greatest generation of music during the 1960s and ’70s. In recent summers, we have averaged about two concerts per week. The music genres, including new, original, folk, soul, and rock, are sweeping, running the gamut of groups. The ’60s groups slip into the ’70s and the music of the Allman Brothers Band, for example. Ramble on!

With myriad series available throughout the Island, we usually limit our choices to Suffolk County, with one exception being the Jones Beach Bandshell series, which offers the added bonus of a stroll along the iconic boardwalk.

Regardless of one’s personal musical preference, attending a concert with the music of the Grateful Dead will, at the very least, provide a visual show of vibrant bead-wearing wonder. Last year, a Grateful Dead tribute band at the bandshell brought out the group’s fans, Deadheads, in droves, wearing psychedelic tie-dyed shirts bearing photos of the late singer Jerry Garcia as well as the slogan “Make America Grateful Again,” offering a moment of comic relief.

Other concerts atop our carefully concocted agenda are the lunchtime Bay Shore Brown Bag Series, the Sayville Wednesdays at Rotary Park series, Bellport Village, Bayard Cutting Arboretum in Great River, Veterans Memorial Park in Mattituck, and Tanner Park in Copiague, where we once saw a Dave Matthews tribute band that was so talented and seemingly authentic that we expected Matthews to walk out on stage and introduce himself.

Orient Beach State Park, a long yet relaxing drive even for eastern Long Island residents, has my personal favorite summer concert series. It routinely includes a vintage, turquoise-colored Volkswagen as a center stage prop that serves the dual purpose of a steel, sturdy life-size windbreaker.

Perhaps the best news is that these concerts are free! There is no charge to attend any of them. In addition, most are child- and pet-friendly. And if you realize the local economy could use a boost, as we do, food trucks and ice cream vendors usually are available at these shows.

So, with folding chairs and hooded sweatshirts gently tucked away in our car, we are ready to rock and roll on short notice. Whatever the musical venues we find ourselves indulging in these next few sun-filled months, we always remember there is no place like home on Long Island, especially during summer.

READER MARY ROULETTE lives in West Islip.