At this Riverhead church, local musicians get a spotlight for their original songs

The musicians sit in a row on a brightly lit stage, taking turns singing and strumming original songs and telling the stories behind them. One performs a breakup song they wrote about a dog. Another sings a lament about traffic on the LIE. (“Damn this 495.”) 

The performers are participants in the East End Writers’ Round, a semiregular concert hosted by the North Shore Christian Church on Kroemer Avenue in Riverhead that allows musicians to showcase new songs to their peers, and for an audience to listen to original music from local talent. 

Modeled after the writers’ round events in Nashville — specifically the iconic Bluebird Café — East End Writer’s Round events started last year as a collaboration between Jerry and Kristen Halpin of Riverhead, the church’s ministers, and Matt Marshak of Riverhead, a musician and music educator.

There is an “abundance of cover bands” that you can hear “everywhere,” Marshak said. “But it’s sort of a rarity and unique thing to get artists who are putting out their own music.”

Marshak said events like East End Writers’ Round are important in developing support systems for musicians to get their new songs to the point where they can be hits. 

“This is how every well known song started,” Marshak said. 

Chloe Halpin, a songwriter and performer from Riverhead, and Jerry and Kristen’s daughter, said there’s nothing like getting to connect with the audience through her music.

“It’s a very vulnerable feeling, but it’s cool. To me, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do, was be on a stage singing songs I wrote for people to connect to,” she said.

Marshak and Chloe Halpin — along with Frank Critelli, a musician and radio host from New Haven, Connecticut — performed their original music last Thursday in front of an audience of more than 20 people. The songwriters take turns performing their work. Although there are some regulars at East End Writers’ Round that have performed multiple times, such as Marshak and Halpin, the performers are never the same each time.

“A lot of these are stories about Long Island, life here on the East End. And people get to hear your perspective on life and some of your views, and you try to kind of paint a ‘song picture’ for people,” Marshak said.

Critelli, who grew up in Levittown, said he drove roughly four hours to Riverhead with a friend to spend the day on the North Fork and play at the round.

“We play music and that’s what we do. And it’s always a nice thing to play for people in different places and meet new people and hear new songs and see new stuff,” Critelli said. “That’s where you get inspiration from.”

Each performance runs from 7-8:30 p.m.. It costs $10 to attend, with the money going to the artists, Jerry Halpin said. The church provides free light refreshments, but the audience is welcome to bring their own food and drinks.

“People that come love it, they can’t believe how good it is. Not just the quality of music that we get from the performers — because we’ve picked people from the island — but the sound quality, because we set it up like a listening room,” Chloe Halpin said. Each show is recorded by the church’s state-of-the-art sound system, giving musicians the opportunity to post their performances and get even more exposure.

“I just think we don’t have a lot of places here that do that — that really focus on everybody sitting quietly and paying attention to the artists,” she said.

Pat Carr of Speonk, a regular audience member, said she enjoys hearing the artists talk about how they wrote the songs and what their writing means to them. “The intimacy of it gives it a whole special thing compared to just going and listening to music without that interaction,” she said.

Charlie Mckenna of Centereach, also a regular attendee, said he enjoys the music and the connection he feels with the artists. 

“Everyone is here for that reason — to hear the music. They’re not here for the beer — we bring it with us — but [it’s not] like in a bar, where everybody’s talking while the musician’s playing. Here people are listening,” McKenna said. “It’s sort of an intimate, personal kind of a feeling that you get sitting here and listening to it, and we love it.”

“Best $10 deal in town,” he added.

Information about upcoming East End Writers’ Round events can be found on its website and its social media accounts, including through Facebook.