There is a Myth about Worcester’s local music scene, that Worcester is home base for many original metal acts that could care less about making a buck, wedged between scores of cover bands reciting familiar chants, making sure to keep the crowd comfortable. 

Take, for example, the Green Street Strip just off of Worcester’s Kelly Square. On any given weekend night, stand in the middle of the street and you’ll be weighed down by the sound seductions from both sidewalks, absorbing both walks of life. One end of the street you may hear a lone guitar strummer singing “Sweet Caroline” in bitter harmony with drunken jibber jabbers, while on the other end you might heed to the sound of a rapidly deep base tone accompanied by death himself loosing his voice on the microphone. 

For the most part, the myth holds true, but if you know how to navigate through the electronic circus and build up enough incentive to leave your home on a cold Tuesday night, you’ll come to find that that’s not all there is.

In late October on a rainy Tuesday night, I found myself circling the middle of the street trying to gravitate toward what musically made sense. I glanced to the bar on the left and was witness to a huddle of scandalous young women inhaling a smoked conversation in the rain while exhaling their curiosity toward me in the middle of the street. The eyes of two made a few obvious glances toward my way, hinting they may need a quarterback to join their huddle, while the other three were surely blocking the goal line. I thought aloud with slow reverberation for a second, damning my knee injury this season and uneasily turned toward the opposite end of the street. “Throw me a bone,” I thought. 

Shaking off the rain like a wet dog I opened the doors to The Lucky Dog venue to hear a Howl of unfamiliar honesty that everyone should experience at least once in her or his life. 

The Howl is a three-piece musical act, with each triangular point seemingly representing quest, fortitude and fortune. 

An accordion player who knew what he was doing and also expanded his abilities to the piano, a drummer with a rhythmic representation for maintaining the right sensation, and a guitarist-singer with the right kind of knack for blurring the lines between soloing and keeping the rhythm, accompanied by a voice of a thousand echoing mountaineers  but not the kind that yodel off of some eminent cliff, but the breed that spent the entire dire day climbing an undisclosed path to the summit just to recognize the beauty that connects the environment to the human. 

In laymen terms, he tapped into a voice that will immediately send shivers down your spine, not because of the words he puts together (because you can hardly hear what he is saying) but his sensational tone and the influence it portrays off the walls. 

The Howl plays every Tuesday night starting around 9:30 at The Lucky Dog, until at least the end of November, with a show at Tammany Hall Nov. 25. Here is a link to the band’s Web site, where I’m sure someone keeps it updated for shows and contact information: http://churchofthehowl.com/.

Not everyone around this neck of the woods is performing hardcore metal or serving-up bar favorites. Worcester’s local music scene has many other talents that reside outside the realm of metal and cover acts. Most myths have falsehoods if you have the desire to look for them.