Kate Pierson of the B-52s is a Cape Codder now - The Boston Globe (2024)

Pierson was open to change, but she wasn’t sure she could be a beach person. But when she came to stay around Provincetown, she changed her mind.

“When I saw the ocean here — and the nature, and the trees, and the flora and fauna — it just opened up a whole new vista, and my brain just popped,” Pierson said, shortly before a trip to Truro’s Head of the Meadow Beach, one of her favorite places. “I felt so renewed and rejuvenated. I love Woodstock and the mountains, but to have the mountains and the ocean, it’s just just too good.”

The couple now lives in Woodstock and Truro, going back and forth with their black German shepherd, Loki.

Pierson is enjoying her third summer here and speaks like a Cape person. That means she’s a regular at the local Box Lunch, understands the beauty of Truro in winter, and can give a visitor tips on when they can get away with parking by the water without a permit.

Summer days are full and peaceful.

“We walk Loki,” Pierson said, running through her local routine. “We’ll take him to the beach; he loves to swim. Usually the hottest part of the day I’ll work on music or I’m in the garden. Then I like to be at the beach later — and my favorite bay beach is Corn Hill.”

Next month, Pierson will perform a solo show as part of the 20th annual Cape Cod Jazz & Arts Festival. On Aug. 21 at the Wequassett Resort and Golf Club, she’ll debut her new material, soon to be released on a melodic, pop solo album called “Radios and Rainbows.”

It’s a full-circle journey for Pierson, known for her bright red beehive hairdo and retro stage getups. She’s from New Jersey, but her path to the B-52s started with a long stop in Massachusetts.

Pierson graduated from Boston University in 1970 with a journalism degree. Her education coincided with when “the hippies moved from San Francisco to Boston,” Pierson remembered. “Those were the days of my acid haze,” when she experimented with LSD.

It was a time of political unrest, she said. Students protested against the Vietnam War and for civil rights.

“I was in a lot of protests in Boston,” she said. “The police would come, some of them on horses, and tear-gassed. It was a very exciting, volatile time to be in college. I guess today is kind of similar in a way.”

Pierson worked in Boston during school and after she earned her degree. She had jobs at Massachusetts General Hospital, New England Deaconess Hospital, and at a nonpartisan research group where she made cold calls for political surveys.

“I remember one of the questions was, ‘Do you think Nixon is a good president?’ And a lot of people would say, ‘Well ... he’s the president.’”

Disillusioned with what was happening in the US, she traveled to Europe for about a year and a half. Back in Massachusetts, she visited a friend on a “hippie commune in Marshfield.”

“Some of the people were driving to Athens, [Georgia] to the Appalachian Trail,” Pierson said. “Those were the days like, ‘OK, let’s go!’ So I went down to Athens and I did a ‘back to the land’ thing — and then I met the rest of the band there.”

Pierson had long been musical. She had a folk protest band in high school called Sun Donuts. She learned guitar and piano and continued to write songs through college and beyond. She’d tried to start a cover band, but it wasn’t until she met her B-52 bandmates that she found her place in the music scene.

The group included Pierson, Fred Schneider, and Cindy Wilson on vocals; Cindy’s brother Ricky Wilson on guitar; and drummer Keith Strickland. They wrote songs together through experimental riff sessions, developing a new wave, surf-rock style that matched their quirky look. The band’s first single, the beach-bop hit “Rock Lobster,” debuted in 1978, eventually catching on with radio audiences. “This ‘tacky little dance band’ from Georgia has everybody moving to a brand-new beat,” Rolling Stone wrote in a 1980 interview.

Ricky Wilson died of complications of AIDS in 1985, and the grieving band took a hiatus, returning with Strickland as guitarist — and creating a public service announcement for AIDS research. The B-52s went on to record multiple albums featuring hits such as “Roam” and the ubiquitous party anthem “Love Shack,” both released on “Cosmic Thing” in 1989. Pierson also sang on the 1991 hit single “Shiny Happy People,” by R.E.M., another band that came out of the Athens, Ga. scene.

“Forty-plus years later” after meeting, Pierson says of the B-52s’ remaining members, “we are still friends and happy together.”

A few changes made a Cape Cod life — one with beach walks and time for flora and fauna — more possible for Pierson. One is that the band had its farewell tour in 2022. The group reunites for Las Vegas residencies and other important gigs, but their schedule has slowed. (Their next Vegas run is at the Venetian Theatre in November.)

Another change is that Pierson has mostly left the hospitality industry. She co-owned multiple properties with Nation, who managed the rentals. Some of the work was great fun, Pierson said, especially the design. But Pierson said it was impossible to avoid the stresses of a business.

“I love decorating, so I guess it really was an undiscovered part of myself,” she said. “But after a while, all I could think about was what had to be fixed. And every time I went there, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that spot there.’ And so we were really happy to pass it on to someone else.”

The couple owns one rental house on the Cape, managed by an outside company.

Pierson has been able to bring her passion design to their own Truro home. The property has a cozy main house surrounded by trees and plants with a two-story deck where guests can mingle. The treasure, though, is the redesigned barn and wood shop, which Pierson and Nation turned into a light-soaked space decorated in a style Pierson calls midcentury modern gothic. Most of Pierson’s favorite things here came from George Cole Auctions in Red Hook, N.Y.

Outside, a shady path passes by a pond with goldfish and bullfrogs. It’s where Pierson can spot the Massachusetts plants she’s grown to love.

Onstage, she said, she’s flashy, fun, in loud dresses, and making animal noises at the end of “Rock Lobster.” In Truro, she’s in comfortable clothes, finding beach plums and bearberries.

“The other side of me is like, you know, a birdwatching, nerdy gardener,” she said. “Earthy, crunchy.”

Pierson has also found Truro to be a good place for rehearsing music. Her home studio is in Woodstock, but she continues the work on the Cape. At the moment she’s rehearsing material from the new album, out next month. One single, already out, is “Every Day Is Halloween,” co-written by Sia and Sam Dixon. Some of the music video is filmed at local Cape beaches and at Provincetown’s Winthrop Street Cemetery.

Another single, “Evil Love,” will be released Friday, July 26.

Pierson said some songs are fun and upbeat, some are deeply personal.

“I have a song about the death of a dear friend, Jeremy Ayers, who was a big influence on all of us and on R.E.M., too,” she said. “He had epilepsy and he died in his garden, and he donated his body to science. I have a song called ‘Give Your Heart to Science.’ I think that’s the wonderful thing about writing songs but especially the solo songs ... [it’s music] I never intended to write.”

Living near Provincetown has also given Pierson a chance to be in the audience for some of her favorite entertainers. She attended a book signing for another famous local resident, John Waters, and saw Rufus Wainwright perform at Town Hall in Provincetown. She’s a regular at shows that feature her musician friend Zoë Lewis, who’s known Nation for years.

“[Pierson’s] like a huge celebrity but I know her from swimming in the ponds and going to the beach,” Lewis said. “And that is very Provincetown, too ... you don’t really know who you’re hanging out with until you google them later.”

Lewis and Nation both said Pierson is learning, in this spot specifically, how important her music and style has been to so many — specifically the gay community.

“Kate’s way more recognizable here,” Nation said. “If we’re walking down Commercial Street? It’s like, ‘Oh my god.’ It’s definitely a different sense of appreciation here.”

Pierson said she’s happy to be in “the heart of gaydom,” and that she’ll know she’s become an icon in Provincetown when she recognizes herself in one of the local drag performances.

“I’ll know I made it when a drag queen does me.”

Meredith Goldstein can be reached at Meredith.Goldstein@Globe.com.