Yearning for music in a park? Try Homemade Serenades in your backyard

Remember when there was music in parks?

It actually wasn’t that long ago. Even this summer, a few small physically distanced events were starting to pop up, but rising numbers of coronavirus infections around the state put a stop to that. Live entertainment is banned.

Those craving local music reminiscent of summers past will have to settle for online offerings such as West Central Park’s online Homemade Serenades From Around Puget Sound.

The Olympian suggests taking your device and a picnic outside, sitting on a blanket or lawn chair, and thinking back to summers past. (Bonus: If you have the picnic at your house, there’s very little chance of getting sick from spoiled food, and regulations about drinking alcohol won’t apply. And the videos aren’t long, so if the mosquitoes start biting, you can head inside quickly.)

Recorded by past performers and friends of the park, the serenades are a digital stand-in for the nonprofit community park’s usual summer lineup, which in the past has included Luminary Processions and tributes to Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead.

Dave Humphreys, who’s on the board of the park at 1919 Harrison Ave. NW in west OIympia, came up with the idea not long after the governor ordered residents to stay at home to slow the spread of COVID-19.

“I’d been watching the Jimmy Fallon show, and people are submitting songs,” he told The Olympian, “and I thought it would be a good idea to do it on our website.

“Even if everything had gone back to normal let’s say in May, we wouldn’t have had time to put together our concert series,” he added. “We decided we just weren’t going to have anything in the park this summer at all.”

There are four mini-concerts online, including one by Devin Damitio of Seattle guitar rockers Lovely Colours, who moved to South Sound with his family as a teenager and graduated from Lacey’s Timberline High School in 2011.

Until he moved to Seattle eight months ago, Damitio was a longtime fixture on the open-mic scene and did solo gigs at several local bars, including the Westside Tavern, owned by his parents, Dean and Lisa Damitio.

“I started working there as soon as I turned 21,” he told The Olympian. “It’s right on the corner next to the park, and a few of our regulars managed the park.”

Though he never played a show in the park, Damitio attended shows there, and Humphreys asked him to play the first virtual show, a 15-minute set that mixes Lovely Colours originals with covers, including the “Yesterday” by the Beatles.

He’s been focusing on his music — and posting weekly covers and other music online — throughout the pandemic, and he and bandmates Skylar Faucett, Patrick May and James Rosales are at work on a debut EP they hope to release in September.

The collection will include a song called “Quarantine Blues.”

“It’s a love song about having to be separated from a loved one because of the pandemic,” Damitio said. “It’s kind of a fun but sad one.”