NJ-based Ortolan will take the stage at 8:15pm August 14. They're hot off rave reviews at SXSW and a European tour.

First off, I must say congratulations to the newly-engaged Scott McEwen and Erin Hollenbeck. Scott founded the concerts and Brewster Productions with Harry and me several years back, and Erin is always helping out with the shows and being all around awesome. We’re all very happy for the two lovebirds, and you should be too.

Now onto the big FREE music festival we’re putting on this Saturday. When I say big, I mean real big. We’ve got 9 bands. The headliner Ortolan just finished their first European tour, and is hot of rave reviews at South By Southwest in Austin, TX this year. The eight local bands sharing the stage with them are an incredible bunch themselves, including: Emma Ate the Lion, Doug Ratner & the Watchmen, Boston & Bosco, The Okay Win, BarRoom Heroes, Pride of the Atlantic (with guys from the Widescreen Edition), One Way Karma, and The Hiding Spot. Go to the Schoolhouse Rock page for all the links and even more info: http://brewsterproductions.com/concertseries/schedule/schoolhouse-rock/

If the incredible amount of awesome independent music from cool young local bands wasn’t enough, there’s going to be a GUITAR RAFFLE! Yes, we’ll be raffling off a Takamine acoustic guitar, and 4 weeks of free guitar lessons, both courtesy of Thunderbolt Music. Buy your tickets for $1 early and often from our table – the more you buy the better chance you have to win.

You will also have an opportunity to donate to a great cause, Vh1 Save the Music. This foundation helps support music education programs throughout the county’s public schools.

A huge huge thank you goes out to our co-presenter this year, Tranzmission, the indie music blog by Ryan Wood. He’s helped us out a ton in bringing Ortolan to the show and putting the whole thing together. Also thank you to Thunderbolt Music on Main St. in Plymouth for donating a guitar and lessons.

See you at the festival! (don’t forget, it’s FREE!)

- Jon

Amy Mercier performs at Hedge House Lawn tonight 7/30. Show starts at 6pm.

Howdy everyone,

We’ve had quite the hectic July, putting on 3 big main stage shows and running all over creation to make them happen, and now we’re back at the good ol’ Hedge House Lawn for the rest of the summer, except 1 show (the HUGE Schoolhouse Rock Music Festival at the main stage 8/14).

Molly Pope will open up the show tonight 7/30 at 6pm.

To welcome all of our loyal audience members back to the 200-year-old house’s lawn, we’ve got the talented pianist/singer Amy Mercier and singer/songwriter Molly Pope taking the stage tonight. Click on the links to take a listen to them, and then come on down to the show! I suggest grabbing some food, a blanket, and/or some lawn chairs and have a nice relaxing night of music and food. For free. Well, beside the food, unless it was a gift.

Also, since we like to be pretty open about how we run things around here, we have to be totally honest and say this past month has run us pretty dry as far as funds go. If you can, please come to the show and make a donation – it will help us make the last shows of the summer awesome.

Thanks for all the support and for coming out to the shows! See you tonight!

Jon & the School’s Out crew

The Eagle Hill Band capped off the show on Friday 5/28 at the Hedge House, kicking off a summer of great tunes.

Friday night was a great success and kicked off what is sure to be an amazing summer of music. We got a bit of a late start (Hedge House shows will regularly run til about 9pm), but the crowd stuck around and we all had a great time. Check out the photos and get ready for the next show: June 4 @ the Hedge House with Jeff Conley and Brian Carroll.

Also a huge thank you to everyone who came out and donated! We’re also excited to announce the return of a great sponsor from last year: Seabreeze Inn Bed & Breakfast!

Happy Memorial Day!
- Jon

Thanks to Alex Dorn for most of the photos.

Emma Ate the Lion will be performing at Schoolhouse Rock, a benefit for Vh1 Save the Music on 8/14.

I believe more than one of us said, way back on September 4, 2009, the last show of last summer’s series, that we can’t wait to get started again. It’s hard to believe, but it’s only 10 days until the 3rd year of the School’s Out Summer Concert Series starts.

At precisely 6pm on Friday, May 28, 2010, Memorial Day Weekend in America’s Hometown, Plymouth, Massachusetts, we will kick off the 2010 concert series with acoustic sets from Doug Logan and The Eagle Hill Band. Then after that, all the way until September 3rd, we’re going to keep the music flowing. Here’s the schedule.

We’ve managed to get some really cool supporters and sponsors so far this year – check out the links to the right and support these great champions of local music. But don’t think they’re the only ones who can support us…no, no, my friend, YOU can too! We were lucky enough to be given a page on a cool site called Kickstarter, that helps fund creative projects through a system of pledging in exchange for cool things. For pledging, you can get free CDs, autographed posters, behind the scenes tours, and even a song written and performed about you; it all depends on how much you donate.

We can’t wait to see you at the show May 28th, and all summer long. See you real soon!

- Jon

You can help support the series by clicking on this picture and pledging any amount of money at our Kickstarter page. Thank you in advance!

Our big opening night is just a couple weeks away (May 28th @ the Hedge House), and once again we’re asking you for some money to help us keep these concerts going. And this year we have a really cool new way to donate – it’s called Kickstarter, and we were lucky enough to have our project approved for a page on their site.

As you may or may not know, the School’s Out Summer Concert Series is a non-profit organization that is funded 100% by donations (questions? Check out the FAQ). And on top of that, none of the people who run it, or the musicians, make any money from it. It’s all volunteer, all the time.

The money you donate goes to a few vital things, without which we quite simply wouldn’t have a concert series: 1) Equipment and maintenance – pretty crucial, and this stuff gets worn down and broken pretty quickly; 2) State-required liability insurance – yeah, it’s not our favorite thing to pay, but the Department of Conservation and Recreation requires it to use the main stage, so we have to do it; 3) New this year, DPW fees – we’re not too happy about this one, and neither are other concert producers (read the OCM editorial and Jam Session) – we’re still working on a way around it (stay tuned); 4) Promotion! – we need to get the word out about these shows, and the web and word of mouth are great, but we also need to print fliers, get some online advertising, and we’d love to get an ad in the paper.

So how can you toss us a few dollars? (really ANY amount is incredible.) You can go over to our Kickstarter page and pledge some money. Kickstarter is a really cool new site that helps people get creative projects off the ground (e.g. indie films, albums, books, concerts, etc.) by asking people to pledge money in exchange for cool rewards. You pledge a certain amount of money and you get some cool stuff depending on how much you pledge. The only thing is, we have to reach our goal in pledges, or we get no money! It’s a cool no-risk way for us and donors to get the funding flowing. Please help us out, it would really mean a lot – click here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jondorn/the-schools-out-summer-concert-series

Remember there are a bunch of benefits to donating besides feeling really good about helping a great cause (the cause = helping young musicians get shows and exposure), so please help out. And if you are a business, you can do it too! The Internet’s great isn’t it?

So of course, start coming to the shows May 28, and follow us on Twitter for a special Concert Series Countdown – everyday til 5/28 we’ll give you a new reason why you don’t want to miss the shows.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
- Jon & the Brewster Crew

Mark Rose (Spitalfield) performed at the main stage August 7, 2009, and put on an unreal show alongside touring partner Lucas Carpenter.

Yes, you heard it right, it’s only November 17th and we already have our 5 main stage summer concert dates lined up. This means that if you’re in a band and you want to play on the big stage in Plymouth next summer, give us a shout! We’re starting everything way ahead of time this year, and our 3rd summer of concerts is going to be the best yet. Here are the 5 main stage dates, we’ll be adding the Hedge House shows soon – there will probably be about 10 of those:

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Friday, July 9, 2010

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Saturday, August 14, 2010 (4th Annual Schoolhouse Rock, all-day charity show)

Keep checking back here for updates, and if you haven’t got OUR NEWSLETTER (look to the right of this page), you definitely need to sign up for that. It’ll hit your inbox periodically throughout the year, giving you updates on all things School’s Out Summer Concert Series and Brewster Productions. And by the time summer hits, you won’t want to miss it, because we’ll be giving away cool stuff, and doing other real cool exclusive things with the newsletter. (PS: It’s totally FREE, just sign up on the side of this page, over there —>).

Also, we’re really hoping to have a reasonable amount of funds going before the shows even start, so please help support the concert series with a donation of ANY amount (literally any amount – seriously, if you give $1, you are an incredible human being in our book). You can donate here using PayPal and your credit/debit card – it couldn’t be easier!

So that’s it from us for now. Keep checking back here as we update everyone on the goings on, sign up for the newsletter, and PLEASE DONATE! Even just a dollar or two.

Thank you for the support. Keep it real.

- Jon

PS – go to the Plymouth South HS Talent show on Thursday 11/19. We’ll be there running sound – it’s going to be a great time.

Chris Albert jokes with his friends in the crowd during his performance 9/4/09 at the Hedge House Lawn.

It seemed more like fall than summer tonight, so I suppose it was an appropriate end to our summer concert series for 2009. Despite it being a little chilly, however, we ended the summer on a perfect note – that of Braintree’s own Chris Albert (of the Affective Collective and Free Breather, performing with Joey “Pants” Pantaleo of Ette and the Affective Collective) and Tyler Rheardon (of Semester Abroad)….and NO RAIN. At all. Not a drop. Hard to believe, I know.

We’re going to keep our thank yous short this time around, but believe you me we have a ton of people to thank. First we need to thank the people who came out to the shows. As someone once said, “without the crowd, it’s just another band practice,” and we truly appreciate the people who came out, enjoyed the shows, and even contributed a little hard-earned cash to help the series keep afloat. Also we need to give a giant thank you to our sponsors, without whom we’d just be sitting with our same original SPL speakers and some crappy Samson mics….well probably not, but we’d be improving/repairing our setup a lot less: The Pilgrim Sands, The Seabreeze In B&B, Rogers & Gray Insurance…..and a HUGE thank you to The Plymouth Antiquarian Society. These guys are truly incredible – we quite literally would not be able to put on our Hedge House concerts without them, because they let us use their lawn. It’s a rare instance of people not judging us by our age and dismissing us as “punk kids” – and it’s not just that – they’ve been beyond supportive and as helpful and nice as we could ever have imagined. Please support them by going on some tours of the great old houses of America’s Hometown.

And of course, our biggest thank you of all goes out to the people no concert series could do without: THE ARTISTS. We are eternally grateful to all the awesome musicians who came out to play our shows for FREE. We’ve hung out with old friends and met some incredible new people this summer, and all these connections are what keeps our concert series going. Thank you bands, you are awesome.

Tyler Rheardon performs 9/4/09 at the Hedge House Lawn as Chris Albert and Nick Santini, among others, watch from the crowd.

On the subject of meeting people, we’ve met and seen a lot of cool people over the course of the summer, including a number of well-known faces. If you were at the show tonight (or Twittering w/ someone at it), you might’ve seen Nick Santino of A Rocket to the Moon hanging out. Here comes the famous people name-drop…get ready:

- Mark Rose, of Spitalfield
- Lucas Carpenter, of pure awesomeness
- Darren Wilson, of The Hush Sound
- Nick Santino, of A Rocket To The Moon
- The Low Anthem….just kidding, that was canceled (damn you Hurricane Danny!)
- Peter Gomes, Harvard Chaplain, swore in Ronald Regan and George Bush #1, I saw him on Colbert a little while back
- Scott McEwen, of Brewster Productions…he makes the list in my book

That’s the one name-drop we’re allowed. Anyway, the point is that the concert series has been an awesome experience and we can’t wait to get back into it next year…….BUT, until then, you didn’t think we were going to stop doing shows did you?? I didn’t think so. We’ll be around all year, but I won’t be making any more posts to this site for a while. Make sure you keep yourself posted on all the goings-on at the new BREWSTERPRODUCTIONS.COM.

Chris Albert performs 9/4/09 at the Hedge House Lawn.

And that’ll do it. Thank you again to our sponsors, the Antiquarian Society, and the amazing bands we had out all summer. Brewster Productions gets music to the young people……and not just in the summer. Viva la Local Music Revolucion.

Happy fall and see you at your local watering hole or VFW!

- Jon Dorn
Brewster Productions