Ina Chadwick

Though the joint ain’t officially open, this combo is our very own Jazz band straight from Hudson, NY, where I found them in a parking lot pop-up vintage sale.

It was the Saturday right after the fiscal crisis hit in 2008, and it was my husband’s birthday. He’s a musician. And a dentist part of the time, too.

I actually bargained with owner, who was asking $2500. I’d never bargained before, but I was able to take the guys in the band home for $1400.

We put them on the top of a stairway landing. They’re composite and so very retro 1950s bar window decorations. We even bought a Louis Armstrong Jazz at Radio Station WNEW poster to hang over them.

When we began a renovation that repurposed my husband’s dental home office--he’d moved locations-- we had the back wall in what we now call “the West Wing” faux-painted. We then created a “bandstand,” using a piece of live edge wood my husband found at Monger’s Market, a salvage warehouse in Bridgeport, and wrought iron brackets that had belonged to my mother before being relegated to our basement.

At last it was showtime.  And it remains so these many years later. We’ve got ourselves a house band. And I swear, I can almost hear them when the lights go down.