One-woman band Honest2Betsy is bringing her ‘artsy-fartsy’ side to Eagles game day
With her musical background, Kira Coviello has found a new way to get involved on game days with an accordion, a foot drum and a kazoo — and she’s sharing it with about 440,000 followers.
Kira Coviello grabbed her accordion, strapped on her 18-pound backpack foot drum that was slightly leaning off the edge of the kitchen counter, slowly — and carefully — grabbed the straps hanging from the drum and placed them under the heel of her clogs. Then, the 42-year-old grabbed her kazoo and placed it around her neck.
“Look at me, an independent woman,” Coviello said as her husband, Noah Sullum, and her dog, Winnie, watched.
In a sparkly green Eagles jacket, a striped green dress, and a pair of green polka dot socks, the Doylestown native began to play the Eagles fight song with all of the instruments: her left foot controlling the tambourine, her right foot controlling the foot drum, her right hand controlling the snare drum with a baton twirling at the same time, and her left hand controlling the accordion.
This has become part of Coviello’s gameday tradition as she includes herself in one of her husband’s favorite pastimes: football Sundays.
“I’m a supporter of sports teams,” Coviello said. “I like all the hype around it. I really like the Eagles’ fight song. I like how happy it makes everyone around here. I don’t pretend to understand sports that well. I’m what you might call artsy-fartsy. My husband and I are very different people in every way. He likes the Eagles, and I have found a new way to involve myself with his enjoyment of watching the games. It seems like a new way to connect.”
Coviello, the one-woman band, has been posting consistently on her Instagram page, honest2betsy, for the last three years, growing her platform to about 440,000 followers.
When asked how she would describe her account to someone new, she responded: “nostalgic humor.”
“So, Betsy, the character I created, is kind of a repressed housewife who keeps discovering music, and, unfortunately for her, a lot of that music winds up being very raunchy, or it’s satire, and she doesn’t realize that it’s satire,” Coviello said. “It’s kind of like a silent movie with music. So I do a lot of acting with my face and creating little scenes. So that’s how the page started and blew up. And now it’s turned into a bunch of other silly, whimsical things that happen.”
The character was created after Coviello was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer in 2009. After her diagnosis, she left her job teaching theater in Doylestown. And what started as a few video clips getting sent into the group chat with her friends turned into an online persona.
“I actually thought I was going to use it to maybe sell some of the things I was crocheting,” Coviello said. “Like, I was crocheting at one point a giant uterus to support Planned Parenthood. So I thought maybe I’ll do this housewife thing, and I’ll sell some of my crochet products. I haven’t crocheted since I started doing these videos now because the ADHD took me in a different direction.”
Coviello has acted at the Walnut Street Theater. She also plays multiple instruments, including the violin, cello, accordion, a Swedish instrument called the nyckelharpa — and, most recently, the backpack foot drum — which she purchased from Farmer Foot Drum in August.
With her musical and theater background, she has created a new series titled “Helping my husband watch the Eagles games.”
“[The foot drum] is a new toy,” Coviello said. “I just got it very recently and haven’t perfected playing yet, but I think that adds to the comedy of it.”
But Sullum and their three kids, Eloise, 15, Esme, 13, and Tallulah, 11, have gotten used to Coviello’s antics.
“She doesn’t do much to shock me anymore,” Sullum said. “I think I’ve seen it all. Our dog is used to the noise, used to the instruments, used to the singing. There’s got to be 15-20 instruments in the house at least it would seem. So, yeah. It’s noisy.”
Inside the house, there’s a room for all the instruments. Stringed instruments hang on the wall, including guitars and banjos, a piano sits toward the center of the room, and instruments like a washboard and a nyckelharpa stand out.
Coviello has been teaching herself how to play the foot drum through instructional videos. And as an Eagles fan, it was only fitting for her to learn how to play the Eagles fight song.
“I think that just comes with living in the Philadelphia area for over 20 years,” Coviello said. “It’s just in all of us. And I play instruments by ear, so that just comes out in my blood now.”
Since posting the “Helping my husband watch the Eagles games” series, both videos have accumulated over 14,000 likes, and Eagles receiver/return specialist Britain Covey commented, “I think we need you at the next team meeting [to be honest].”
“As long as they keep winning, I have to do that, because I’ve fallen into the trap of superstitions,” Coviello said. “So now if they win, it’s thanks to me playing my foot drums and helping my husband. And if they lose, perhaps then I’ll have to stop or take a break, or find a new way to help him watch the game. Just add another instrument.”
And with the Eagles suffering their first loss of the season to the Chicago Bears, Coviello is thinking of new ways to add more whimsy — perhaps tap dancing?
“I never know what I’m going to get,” Sullum said. “But, I think she has an upward trajectory for sure.”
When asked where she should perform next, he said “[Eagles] halftime show, where else?”
But in the meantime, Coviello will continue to play at her upcoming honest2betsy live shows at The Birdhouse in Lambertville (Dec. 11), Soul Joel’s in Pottstown (Dec. 18), and Cary’s Music Room in New Hope (Jan. 9).
