Nothing left but Smiles

Windy turns in last local performance before leaving for Las Vegas

A Beatles lyric is always a great place for a band to find their name. For Somerville’s Windy Smiles, the fact that the source is a classic song is quite fitting.

The quintet of Ben Macri, Alise Upitis, Joe Mahoney, Saul Jacobowitz and Martin Pavlinic have a penchant for pulling out other people’s tunes. It’s actually playing covers that marked the band’s true inception.

Macri explains, “Our starting point was [defined by] Alex McGregor [of the band Ponies in the Surf] and his fiancée in Maine singing the Silver Jews.”

Upitis, who is married to Macri, looks up. “Really?”

“Absolutely,” Macri continues. “In the sense that we had a song that we could play. ... I didn’t necessarily think that [Alise] would want to sing anything that I had written.”

The couple forms the core of the band, and with their friends have been known to break into Fleetwood Mac, Fiery Furnaces, or even Ponies in the Surf songs. 

“It’s a really important practice to learn other people’s songs. I think that speaks to a tradition in rock ’n’ roll that is somewhat lost. It’s too bad that a band’s first record now isn’t 10 covers and two originals,” Macri says. “The Beatles wouldn’t be The Beatles if they hadn’t done ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’ or ‘Please Mr. Postman.’ By recording those songs and being so good at performing works by other people … they were also honing their own songwriting.”

This Saturday Windy Smiles play a farewell show since Macri and Upitis are moving to Las Vegas. The show also serves as a CD release for Ponies in the Surf’s new CD on Darla Records.

“Boston is a band town,” says Macri. He hopes to find a similar community in Vegas to help them bring their songs to life. Otherwise, there’s always karaoke bars, where they can sing songs of the friends they left here.

Windy Smiles
Saturday, 8:30 p.m.
PA’s Lounge
345 Somerville Ave., Somerville
$8-$11, 617-776-1557
www.paslounge.com