When I was in the United States in June, my sister and I went to three concerts in the Worcester, Massachusetts, area from Thursday to Saturday and got a good sense of the quality and community of the area's music scene. The Thursday singer-songwriter, Sarah Louise French, often sings with Colt and the Coyotes, the rock-and-roll band on the Friday, and the Smack Dabs, the swing-blues band on the Saturday, plays the same venues as the others. Not only can local and regional musicians be excellent, they also have all kinds of reasons for not achieving broader success, from not wanting anything like stardom to all kinds of legitimate life choices. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 July 2025)