Indie Bands Take on Temple Tikvah

was filled with the musical stylings of three indie performers Saturday evening as the 40-or-so audience members bopped along to the beats and enjoyed drinks from the bar.

Jesse Terry was the main attraction, who brought along his two other performing friends, Alex Wong and Carley Tanchon. Their folk-like sounds were so moving for the listeners that they murmured things like, “You don’t see this out here much on Long Island, it’s cool,”  and “[Their] voices are terrific…An indie-type venue can thrive out here.”

First up to play was Carley Tanchon, followed by the back-to-back songs from Jesse Terry and Alex Wong. A group of front-row audience members were especially familiar with Terry’s music and it was safe to conclude they were his biggest fans.

“I think Jesse is an incredible singer/songwriter, he is incredibly talented” said Mary Strauss, a friend of Terry's who has known him for five years. “He sounds kind-of like a cross between Jackson Brown and James Taylor. His song-writing is incredible, he is kind of Folk-Americana and he as sweet as he is talented.”

Terry, a Connecticut native who moved to Nashville for the last seven years and now resides in Mamaroneck with his wife Jess, has been playing his guitar and swooning audiences for a countless number of years.

“I started doing some concerts in Long Island and through my friend Mary Strauss, before I knew it I had this wonderful base of people,” Terry said. “I have been doing a lot of fundraisers this year, some for Temples, some for cancer, some for Alzheimer’s, and it’s been a real blessing.”

Terry started playing guitar and writing songs when he was 18 and attended Berklee College of Music when he was 21, followed by a professional writing gig in Nashville before heading on the road.

“Since then I’ve just been touring and making music full time,” Terry said. “My wife, who was with me for eight months of that, we lived out of our car and travelled the whole country. It was so fun; we went all the way to the top of Montana to down the Pacific Coast Highway.”

Terry is now in the process of making his second record and is raising the funds by having people pre-order his record.

“It’s a new way for an indie artist to raise money because unless we have a trust fund it’s really tough to make a record, so this is a way for fans to get involved and kind-of be a part of the whole process,” Terry said.

As much as Terry now loves performing, being a musician wasn’t his first career choice; he wanted to be a painter.

“Until I started playing guitar I had no desire to do this,” Terry said. “My parents were musicians and I think I wanted to do something different…but now that I’m doing it, there is no way I can do anything else.”