Faces Of Nantucket: Jeff Ross

Singer and songwriter Jeff Ross has played every venue on Nantucket over the past two decades. His voice and guitar have been the soundtrack to countless concerts, parties, events, weddings, and fundraisers on the island, and Ross has played with just about every artist on Nantucket’s music scene over the years.

But sadly, that run may be coming to end. Ross will be losing his housing this fall when the place he’s rented on the island for 24 years needs to go back to the family of the owner.

The reality of having to leave Nantucket was setting in as Ross recently began cleaning out his basement littered with guitars, amplifiers and other musical equipment, along with records and calendars documenting the thousands of gigs he’s played over the years.

“Nantucket’s been kind to me," he said. “I do not want to abandon ship and I do not want to be that guy who you used to go hear. I want to be part of it, but Nantucket has got to make it possible for the people who make it special to live here, and I only hope I’ve been one of those.”

Ross will no doubt land on his feet, wherever that happens to be. He’s got musical opportunities, friends, and connections all over the globe. But the island might be losing one of its most talented musicians and entertainers.

“I think Nantucket is eating itself alive, I’m sorry to say,” he said. “There is no housing. The housing available is outrageously expensive. It was always expensive to live here, let’s be clear on that…But I’ve looked and I’m still looking. My lifestyle does not actually require me to be anywhere year-round, but we all need a place to land and that’s the big problem that I have. I don’t have a home for the first time. On Nantucket, it’s always been slightly out of reach.”

When he first arrived on the island in 1999, Ross came with his then-15-year-old daughter, who enrolled at Nantucket High School. Ross had already made his mark in the music industry, playing lead guitar for Lou Reed in the 1970s, then recording and playing with The Wailers in the 1980s, along with guitar greats like Mick Ronson and Rick Derringer.

So when he got to Nantucket, Ross tried to carve out a niche for himself in the island’s music scene. But back then, things were a lot different in terms of the opportunities available to musicians.

“I came with three horses, a pile of guitars and equipment thinking I was going to retire here,” Ross said. “The island got its claws into me. But at the time there were no acoustic venues, no places to play live music except for The Chicken Box and The Muse. And The Rose and Crown had stuff occasionally.”

So Ross set out to change that. He started playing Sunday afternoon acoustic sets at the former Eat Fire Spring Cafe on Old South Wharf as well as at the Starlight Theatre and Cafe on North Union Street which would eventually become his all-time favorite venue to play on Nantucket.

“It was intimate, but it was big enough to accommodate playing out there under the grape arbor,” Ross said. “We basically created the protocol there. We cheated a little bit, we put the speaker on the roof and people would hear it from up the street and come down from everywhere.”

From there, Ross said, “It snowballed. Eat Fire, to Starlight, and then out to the brewery. We would sit in the bushes and play for beer. There was no infrastructure but we created some there. Then the guys from Millie’s came. One by one we established all these acoustic venues. Now it’s a music mecca. It really is.”

Ross mentioned some of the names of the many talented musicians who he played with over the years on Nantucket - people like Travis Richard, Jake Vohs, Joel Finn, Floyd Kellogg, Michael Kopko, Tom Stoddart, and the late Andy Bullington - too many to recall them all, he said.

“There’s so much talent now, and there was so much talent then but it was treated very cavalierly - no one got paid to do anything,” he said. “I think what my contribution was was establishing that you had to pay musicians to play.”

The lineups and names of Ross’s Nantucket bands changed numerous times over the years - The Socks, The Atlantics, The Jeff Ross Band, and Fish Belly White, to name a few. At the peak, he was playing 10 gigs per week, from acoustic sets to weddings to some of the island’s larger venues.

“My favorite thing is when people would come into the Starlight and I would look up and recognize them and I wouldn’t know their names but I would remember their first dance songs,” Ross said. “People allowed me into their lives.”

These days, you can catch Ross regularly at The Sandbar and Millie’s out in Madaket, at least for the next month or so. Even if nothing materializes in terms of a new place to rent and he loses his home base on Nantucket, Ross said he hopes to have the opportunity to return and play during the summer.

“I will not abandon my families: Nick and George at the Sandbar, I love those guys,” Ross said. “They say they want me back and I’m going to do everything I can to be back. Same with Millie’s and any of the places that afforded me these opportunities.”