The adventures of Zoe Lewis

By: Jeannette de Beauvoir, August 26, 2011

- Whether traveling or performing, it's all about the adventure for Provincetown artist Zoe Lewis.

When I first heard the Zoe Lewis song, Mine, in concert, I felt chills run up my spine. It was the most beautiful feminist anti-rape piece I’d ever heard. I shared it with my teenaged stepdaughter, who in turn shared it with all her high school friends, and a movement had begun

Not all of Zoe Lewis’ music is that serious. But it’s all that terrific.

Her music covers all the bases: jazz, jump jive, latin grooves, swing, international folk, funk originals on anything from piano to the spoons. It appeals to a plethora of different age groups and interests.

So how did a nice girl from Rottingdean, England, end up writing and performing from a home base in Provincetown?

“I just went on an adventure,” she says. “My gut was telling me to go. I left England and traveled a lot, down to South America, up to San Francisco,” she says, with a laugh.

“Well, I think I really went to San Francisco to come out, but that’s another story. Then I followed a girl here to Provincetown … and that was 20 years ago!”

Small world wonder

It’s hard to believe that the diminutive Lewis has been doing anything that long: like her audiences, she is ageless. Her appeal to children is clear: her song Sheep featured on Putumayo's Folk Playground compilation reached number-one in the XM Satellite Radio children's music charts in 2006 and remained in the top 20 for over 40 weeks.

That she’s popular with children is no coincidence.

“They see things differently,” Lewis says. “You see kids absolutely stunned by the simplest of things,” she reflects.

“I think that’s why I travel. It puts that sense of wonder back into the world. And hopefully you bring it back home with you, too.”

It’s not just about wonder, though: Lewis travels extensively, both for inspiration and for performances.

“You need to travel to stay creative,” she says, though she also admits that she’s staying close to home—at least for the fall.

Lewis’ group, the Rubber Band comprises three other women bringing skills to the stage that work with her unique style.

“I try and write a play list before a performance,” she says, “but it never works out that way. You see how you’re feeling on stage, what the audience is doing, and you go with your gut. Usually I just yell the name of the next song and the band follows.”

The fast track to Snail Road

But it’s not only for her musical performances that she’s staying around: Lewis’ first musical, Snail Road, opened this past summer in Provincetown and was so immensely popular—playing to consistently sold-out audiences—that she’s bringing it back in October.

Snail Road features Gertrude Golightly (“the love child of Gertrude Stein and Holly Golightly,” played by Lewis herself) is riding her bike down Commercial Street when she has an accident, bumps her head, and begins a wonderful journey through Provincetown to realize her dreams.

Lewis’ face lights up as she talks about Snail Road (which is, for the uninitiated, the first road into town off Route 6).

“It’s about easing people in and turning their minds around,” she says. “Provincetown isn’t mythical, it’s a real place, and yet it can be a euphemism for many things … a sort of land of dreams.”

Snail Road is a dream come true in and of itself, emblematic of Lewis’ changing creative life.

“I’m used to addressing the audience when I perform,” she says. “A play is something different altogether – it’s that fourth wall that you need to be aware of. It’s making me really work in directions I hadn’t gone before.”

It’s an attitude that transcends all her work.

“I know more now,” she says. “I write more like a craftsperson. Over the past twenty years, I’ve pretty much said what I think is important to say."