Marcia Mello’s cottage. [2022, Dunlap]
[2022, Dunlap]
Marcia Kostick, who performs as Marcia Mello. [2022, Dunlap]
Glass by Etta Kostick, Marcia’s daughter. [2022, Dunlap]
[2022, Dunlap]
Painting by Marcia Mello. [2022, Dunlap]
Paintings by Marcia Mello. [2022, Dunlap]
Painting by Marcia Mello. [2022, Dunlap]
[2022, Dunlap]
[2022, Dunlap]
Paintings by Ada Rayner. [2022, Dunlap]
[2022, Dunlap]
Marcia Mello’s 2022 CD, Queen of Portobello. [2022, Dunlap]
Marcia Mello performing in front of the Public Library. [2022, Dunlap]
Performing under the name Marcia Mello, Marcia Kostick is one of the most renowned, talented, colorful, and enduring of Provincetown’s contemporary buskers. Finger-plucking ragtime and blues on an acoustic electric guitar, her toe-tapping repertoire includes her own compositions and covers of early 20th-century musicians like Blind Blake, Memphis Minnie, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Wash Phillips.
She is a Cape Cod native who is descended, she said, from Massasoit, the sachem of the Wampanoag confederacy in the 17th century, through his son Wamsutta. Marcia studied with Francis Andrews in her teens, Donny Rubenstein in her 20s, and Paul Rishell in her 40s. The Irish musician and actor Jonjo Mayo gave Marcia the sobriquet “Queen of Portobello” when the two met and befriended one another in 2003 busking at the Portobello Road street market in London. Queen of Portobello is also the title of her latest CD, with 21 songs arranged by Marcia and Youth (Martin Glover). It was released by Suriya Recordings in 2022.
Marcia invited me into her West End cottage in the fall of 2022, a generous gesture that allowed me to see a truly bohemian dwelling of the type I always fear has disappeared from town: snug, modest, eccentric, and just bursting with evidence of a creative life that has included the graphic arts as well as music. The walls are covered in artwork, including Marcia’s own paintings and those of revered Provincetown artists like Ada Rayner. The set-up is so special — and fragile — that Marcia asked me not to specify the address.
¶ Last updated on 26 December 2022.