“Fun, family-friendly, and upbeat.”
That’s Stacy Swider’s prediction for the atmosphere when she and her band, Stacy and the Party, take the stage on Thursday beginning at 7 p.m. for a 90-minute set. This is the second installment in the Recreation Department’s weekly summer concert series on the outfield grass of E Field, west of Town Center’s brick wing.
“We’ll have some new covers, some new originals,” said Swider. “There will be some good, basic sing-alongs.” She added, “People should just remember bug spray – it has just been such a wet summer.”
Stacy and the Party, which was also part of the 2022 outdoor concert lineup, has been together for a decade. Swider, a vocalist who can play multiple instruments, is joined by three other local residents, guitarist Ron O’Brien, drummer Chris Murphy, and bass player Gian Criscitiello, whose wife Judy was Swider’s classmate at Page School.
Swider, who describes the band’s musical style as “rootsy pop,” said the group expects to soon release three selections for downloading. “We’ve been busy in the studio,” she said, working with Alex Francesconi and his Electric Treehouse Studio on Old Billerica Road.
“We haven’t put out any records for five years, so we’re trying to get out there a bit with something fresh,” she said. “I think we wrote all of them during Covid. We’re going to listen to the mix again and then send it out for some mastering. I’m trying to work on these recordings so we can promote our band better.”
Swider subscribes to a service that not only created her website (stacyandtheparty.com) and handles social media but also sends the band’s music to “everywhere – Spotify, Apple Music, whatever platforms where people can find it.”
“In the old days, people would travel and get paid for shows. In the ‘80s the shows sold the albums. Now it’s flipped on its head, and the albums sell the shows,” she observed.
Swider, a vice president of investments with Mass Ventures, said her musical career began with fifth-grade clarinet lessons and singing at Page School. Her Bedford High School resume was replete with musical landmarks: marching band, wind ensemble, jazz band, and in the orchestra pit or on stage for the annual musical.
Department Chairs Keith Phinney and Bill Toland “set the groundwork for a really great music depot” at BHS, she said, recalling that Toland asked her to learn to play bassoon freshman year. As an undergraduate at MIT, she wound up as a bassoonist in the Harvard Symphony Orchestra.
Now, 38 years from those days at BHS, she is still engaged. “Some people play tennis,” Swider said. “I play music.”
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