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Dirty Cello goes live, in Ashland By Joe Zavala of the Ashland Tidings Jul 31, 2020 03:47 PM A A Rebecca Roudman should be lugging her cello case down a cobblestone street in Paris this week, strolling through art galleries and sipping cappuccino by the gallon. Luckily for entertainment-starved Ashlanders, the lead singer, cello and fiddle player for Dirty Cello will have to settle for a bed and breakfast off North Main Street. Dirty Cello, a blues/bluegrass/classic rock band that would be shredding its way through a five-country tour of Europe if not for COVID-19, will perform at the Bayberry Inn Sunday night in front of a maximum of 30 fans. Normally, the band is booked six months to a year in advance, but all its shows were canceled after the pandemic took hold, so Roudman and her band mates have been taking gigs as they come, sometimes only a couple weeks beforehand. A chance meeting between Roudman’s family and Bayberry Inn owner and innkeeper Francesca Amery two weeks ago led to Sunday’s performance, which besides providing an opportunity to catch a unique-sounding band on a warm summer night will also qualify as an experiment of sorts. Live shows of any kind have been hard to come by since April, and the rules and restrictions venues are attempting to implement to safely do so are evolving. In the case of Sunday’s show, scheduled to run 7 to 9 p.m., guests will be asked to wear masks when not seated, and sit with the people with whom they came. Beer and wine will be served and guests may spread out blankets to sit on, Amery said. “Safety will be thoroughly enforced,” according to the press materials, and not more than 30 tickets will be sold — they can be purchased at https://bit.ly/3eU31MR (about half were sold by Tuesday). When Bay Area-based Dirty Cello was looking for a place to stay ahead of its July 19 patio concert in Dunsmuir, California, Roudman immediately thought of Ashland. Dirty Cello had stayed in Ashland several times before while in town to perform at the Green Show, which it has played four times before. Its fifth scheduled performance, in fact, was smoked out in 2018, robbing the band of playing in front of one of its favorite crowds. “Everybody’s so friendly, it’s a warm audience,” Roudman said of Ashland. “Everybody is just really happy to be out there in the sunshine enjoying good music, and as musicians we feel that good energy, and it feels good to us.” A connection through family members of the band brought Dirty Cello to the Bayberry Inn, at 438 N. Main St. Amery suggested the band consider Ashland on a Plate, a platform designed to reduce the town’s reliance on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival by promoting micro-festivals that include food, wine and live music. Roudman, whose band will also be performing at RoxyAnn Winery Friday, had other ideas. “It was wonderful,” she said of the Bayberry Inn, “and we met (Amery), and we noticed she had a beautiful garden in the back of the inn. And we said, ‘Hey, we’re musicians, we noticed you have a beautiful outdoor area where people can social distance, would you be interested in having a concert?’ And she said absolutely, this could be a lot of fun. And I know a lot of people are craving live music right now but they want to do it in a safe way, so we have been doing a lot of live shows in a safe way so we knew how to prepare for this show.” Though not typically used for such an occasion, the Bayberry Inn’s garden is a nice spot to stage its own micro-event, complete with a view of Mount Ashland. COVID-19 has hurt bed and breakfasts as much as any small businesses, and exposure like that could only help, but Amery was apprehensive considering the virus’ ability to rapidly spread. Staging a show before a small audience safely, however, was something Dirty Cello had mastered almost as much as its instruments, and Amery was convinced it could be done. “I don’t know where this is going to go,” she said, “I’m not quite sure with COVID-19 how we can do it, but they said we have little tables and people sit six feet apart. Everyone wears a mask, it’s all outside and we have a limited number of seating that we sell so that we keep everyone safe. And we can try it and see how it goes. I said, ‘Sure, let’s do it.’” Like other bands, Dirty Cello has, in the wake of the virus, broadened its horizons, booking shows it normally wouldn’t consider and searching for new ways to expand its audience. When the pandemic got going, Roudman said, she and her band mates assumed they’d be out of work for a while, but in a surprise twist exactly the opposite has happened. Dirty Cello’s busy itinerary has included livestreams for Google’s legal team, a commercial produced by Facebook, and live shows at the Oakland Zoo, a buffalo ranch in California, an apple orchard, and in a cul-de-sac headlining a block party. While making the rounds playing for the animals at the zoo, Dirty Cello made a special connection with a parrot named Brock. A video of their duet went viral. “And now we’re going to be playing at a B&B,” Roudman said, “so it’s forced us to have concerts where we normally wouldn’t, but it’s been unbelievably rewarding.” Amery hopes it turns out to be a big hit in Ashland. Or at the very least, therapeutic. “It’s a small venue, but I think people need music in times like this,” she said. “Music brings us together and makes us feel human, and music is apolitical. Music is a beautiful thing and I told them that if it goes well and everything goes fine, I don’t see why we wouldn’t do it again, even if it’s just a small jam session.” Joe Zavala can be reached at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. Dirty Cello was supposed to be in Europe this summer, but COVID-19 intervened, so the band will play a spontaneous gig at Bayberry Inn in Ashland Sunday. Courtesy photo