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“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!’”