The signs of impending summer are all around. Azaleas are out, the oaks are coming into leaf and Tom Major is readying himself for Entrain's Memorial Weekend gig.

It's been 14 summers now since Mr. Major decided to put together a band based on the simple idea of "tons of drums," and to put his New York-based career as a freelance musician on hold for one summer while he tried it out.

Earlier this year, singer and songwriter Taylor Brown returned to his childhood home in Pennsylvania. Since graduating from Vassar College last spring, Mr. Brown has, for the most part, been living out of a suitcase. He has spent time on the Vineyard, a place he describes as his rock, performing with Maynard Silva and at Offshore Ale. He has tried out Providence, taking the stage at open mike nights throughout the city.

He is the Vineyard's own piano man and his story has been told dozens of times, but even in the retelling it is remarkable and ordinary and gifted and funny - all words that describe David Crohan himself. Above all else he is funny, with a relaxed, deadpan humor that spills out unexpectedly and uproariously, some of it quite unprintable.

And suddenly you are laughing along with him and rocking back in your chair and laughing some more.

Up until two years ago, Willy Mason had never played a gig off-Island.

Just five years after a star-studded cast of investors revived the Hot Tin Roof, the legendary Edgartown nightclub partly owned by Carly Simon is closing down, the victim of a graying Island population and a hard-nosed town policy. The building is up for sale at a price of $1.1 million.