Studio 52 is a community artist space located in the heart of Allston, and is proud to support the Boston music scene and local artist community.
Road tripping around Massachusetts in the summertime is hella fun, because one minute you’re driving down some roadway that looks kind of familiar and then the next you’re in some random-ass town no one’s ever heard of, like Athol or Gosnold or Savoy or Somerville.
There’s really so much of the Bay State that we here in Boston don’t really know exists (we generally refer to it as “the other side of the 495 belt”), and so we’re pleased to see a young man named Noah Wisch has set out to shine a light on each of Massachusetts’ 351 cities and towns. Wisch has done this armed only with ambition and his ukulele, spending the summer recording a song called “Sidewalks” in each and every city and town in the commonwealth.
“I recorded this song over the course of three months in the summer of 2017. There are 351 notes in the melody, one for every town in Massachusetts. Every note was individually recorded in a different town.”
The Massachusetts native got the idea after his own world travels and cross-country road trips made him realize he didn’t know too much about his own home state (understandable). So he grabbed his uke and set out all over Massachusetts, and played “Sidewalks” in front of each destination’s town line sign.
“I wrote the song, and then over the course of three months in the summer of 2017, my girlfriend and I went road tripping (and ferry tripping) around Massachusetts to record it,” Wisch writes. “In every town, we stopped at one of the state’s distinct white town line signs, set up the camera and a mic, and recorded a single note on the ukulele. Yeah, there were some long days, but it was absolutely worth it. Massachusetts is such an incredible and beautiful state; from the big cities to the small farm towns, there’s a place for everyone to enjoy themselves. I highly recommend getting out and exploring more of the area you live in. I would do it again in an instant.”
Wisch adds that he was honked at and yelled at by certain passerby during his journey, and that’s really the most heartwarming part of this entire ordeal. Massholes gonna Masshole.
Listen to the song below, or buy it for $1 via Wisch’s Bandcamp.