Massachusetts Walking Tour: A Ramble Of Hikes And Free Concerts In The Berkshires
The Massachusetts Walking Tour will be wending its way through the Berkshires portion of the Appalachian Trail soon, with the tour founders/musicians stopping at 10 towns along the trails to present free community concerts. Billed as “the annual bipedal concert tour promoting local arts and culture,” this project might seem like it was inspired by the Berkshires admixture of culture and natural beauty. In actuality, its conception was more prosaic. Mark Mandeville and Raianne Richards, musicians who live in Webster, Massachusetts, were tired of driving around the country playing venues with little pay and support, spending what they earned on gas. They created the Massachusetts Walking Tour, about to start its 11th annual trek (the tour was founded in 2010, but on hiatus for the last two years). The couple will be embarking June 17 at the Mt Frissel Trailhead in Washington, en route to Sheffield for the first concert. In the nine days of the tour, they’ll be hoofing it from Sheffield to North Adams.
With a joint mission of promoting local arts and raising awareness of trails in Massachsuetts, the Walking Tour invites the community to participate in both the concerts and the hiking. Anyone can join Mandeville and Richards and their fellow musicians on the town-to-town hikes. Each day’s hike and concert is listed on the website, with descriptions of the length and difficulty of the trail. You can join them for as little or as much as you like. The core group starts at around 8 a.m. and walks into the town of the day with a few hours to rest up before the concert at 6 p.m.
Join The Tour
Then, the community involvement really begins. Prior to starting the tour, Mandeville and Richards send out invitations to local conservation groups and land trusts, offering them time at the beginning of each town’s program to share their missions with the audience. They also reach out to residents, inviting them to take part in the concert. Local musicians perform, others read poetry or tell stories. Kids are just as welcome to share their talents.
The husband-and-wife Americana folk duo, both self-taught musicians, travel with a couple of other musicians who join them just for that year’s tour. Every year the program is different, with the tunes, when possible, relating to the trail they’re traversing. All of their concerts are acoustic — hiking with packs means they can’t carry a PA system. It also means, Richards says, that if the concert is outside, “People have to get close to us. It creates a kind of intimacy.”
Over time, the Massachusetts Walking Tour has developed an entourage, says Richards. “We have followers in each region. They come to the first concert of the tour, then start showing up later on.”
The hike-along option has become much more popular in the last five years. “People might be hesitant to hike on their own, but if they can come out with our group, there’s safety in numbers, and they don’t have to navigate.” Plus, she adds, “Having people join us gives us someone new to talk to.” By welcoming the public on their walks, it also helps them raise awareness of the recreational trails throughout the state. (As encouragement to get people to join, Richards emphasizes that although the trails vary in intensity, most are moderate to easy, and the group moves slowly. “We’re like turtles,” she says. “We’re carrying everything on our back.”)
Learning Along The Way
Mandeville and Richards got the idea for a walking/performing circuit from a friend who had done a canoe tour from Buffalo to New York City, giving concerts at his stops. Their first year out they went from Becket to Boston — 17 days, 160 miles —too long, too many days. A lot of it was walking along Routes 9 and 20. “It wasn’t very pleasant,” Richards recalls. “It was dangerous, and we went from people in western Massachusetts pulling over and giving us water to people giving us the finger. In Boston, they were totally confused by what we were doing. That’s when we decided it would be good to try using a trail.”
The second year, it rained for nine days straight. That’s when they learned to check the farmer’s almanac and determined that the end of June tends to be the driest. That’s helpful, because they really do walk the entire route carrying everything — instruments, tents, and everything else campers need (except for a lot of food, which they pick up in each town). Although they usually camp out on the trail, on this tour there are a few nights where they’ll be pitching their tents in local hosts’ back yards.
In fact, Richards says, “Along this whole stretch in the Berkshires, people are doing really nice things for us, because they want to. They have a huge reverence for the trails that renews our faith in humanity. People choose to be kind.”
The entire project is a grassroots affair. During the rest of the year, the couple do their own grant writing (many of the concerts are funded by local chapters of the Massachusetts Cultural Council), setting up concerts (often in libraries and churches), consulting with trail managers and land trust groups to map out their itineraries, and even postering in each town.
After hiking four to five hours and up to 11 miles on a day, aren’t the musicians too exhausted to perform? With a few hours to recharge for the evening’s activities, they draw from a well deep within, despite some moments of soul searching.
“Do I love my art this much that I’m willing to put myself through all of this?” Richards sometimes thinks. The answer is always the same: “Music is our soul, our life, what we love more than anything. For some reason, it doesn’t matter how tired I am to perform.”
The Massachusetts Walking Tour along the Appalachian Trail will make concert stops in Sheffield, South Egremont, Great Barrington, Tyringham, Lee, Washington, Dalton, Cheshire, Bascom Lodge at the top of Mount Greylock, and North Adams. Check the website for trail and concert schedules and locations.
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