Molly Parmenter, "U Know I'm No Good"

I'm back to work this week, but taking a vacation from the blog.  Scott Lajoie fills in . . .

We started doing two new annual features for Cape Cod Magazine back in January. One is our annual "People of the Year," and the other, which has ultimately turned out to be the most fun, is our "People to Watch." As you can imagine, we encounter a lot of people we would love to put in the magazine, but for some reason they don't warrant their own feature, or they don't fit into other articles. "People to Watch" is a chance to cram a bunch of profiles (albeit short) with great portraits (after all, nobody reads anymore!).

I had heard raves about Berklee College of Music student Carly Tefft through various media and had chosen her first as one of our three "upcoming performers." I rounded out the trio with two other women: Rayssa Ribeiro, a native Brazilian with a booming voice who has fronted a few local bands, and Centerville's Molly Parmenter, a bartender at the Island Merchant who had stepped out from behind the bar to do acoustic nights there and had been garnering some buzz.

We gathered the women one afternoon at photographer Dan Cutrona's studio. As is the case with any photo shoot that amasses complete strangers, there is some awkwardness. I wondered whether Carly's reputation, her studio familiarity, and experience playing at some Boston venues would perhaps intimidate the other two. Not Rayssa. During her moment, she grabbed a microphone from her car as a prop (we didn't have anything to plug it into!) and belted out a song with no musical accompaniment.

Uh-oh. What would Molly do? I kinda winced. She started playing her guitar, a few bars of a melodic strumming riff. She closed her eyes, and she started singing. Over the next couple of minutes, it was as if her heart had opened up on the spot and her own gorgeous lyrics bled out. I don't think Dan took too many pictures. After she was done, both Carly and Rayssa complimented her profusely for such a great impromptu performance. As for me, I was happy for the confirmation. I am not a music scout, but it was evident I had chosen these special ladies well.

All three are worth seeing live for a night out, but I post Molly's YouTube video of her cover of Amy Winehouse's "U Know I'm No Good," out of sheer irony. Check her out at the Island Merchant in Hyannis tomorrow night. She goes on at 8 p.m.


Hear the song on Youtube.