“I just love the marriage of soul with these kinds of jazzy elements and improvisations … It’s just a good time … That’s something I really identified with.”
Uncle Johnny s Band performs during the Hippie Hour at the Midway Cafe on the 10th anniversary of the popular weekly Grateful Dead residency. (Amelia Mason/WBUR)
When Massachusetts shut down in March of 2020, Jay Balerna figured his Jamaica Plain bar, the Midway Cafe, would only be closed a few weeks. So he hired someone to give the club a facelift while it sat empty.
“I m like, ‘Put a coat of polyurethane on the bar every day,’” Balerna says. “And then after three weeks he s like, ‘That s 20 coats, should I keep going?’ And I m like, ‘That s more than is on a boat!’”