May 6th, 2012.

This last week has been spectacularly intense.  The run up to the Falcon Ridge Most-Wanted show would’ve been enough – and was plagued with technical issues and communications problems and last-minute angsts.  Then there was family drama, and rather than my usual use of the word “drama” this isn’t melodrama, but legitimate pain.  And then the NERFA mini-conference and now the drive to Philly for World Café Live and THEN the whole issue of Diablo III and it’s system requirements…

A rough week indeed.

The Falcon Ridge Most-Wanted Preview show is a wordy thing.  It’s hard to describe to people who don’t know what it is and it’s sometimes a little tricky to get the words in the right order.  First, you’ve got to tell people what the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival is: Oh, it’s only one of the biggest folk festivals on the East Coast (no, I’m not sure why you’ve never heard of it) averaging about 9 – 10,000 people.  It’s actually becoming one of the slightly more progressive folk festivals with regular repeat appearances from acts like [funnily enough I couldn’t remember the name of the band, just “Gandalf something something orchestra of dreams”? so I searched “Gandalf” in the Journal knowing full well that there would probably be two instances – one for this band and the other for the iguana at the Aquarium in Baltimore] Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams and a “Emerging Artists” segment that included Gypsy jazz, rock, ilyAIMY and Russian rave music.  It takes place late in July in upstate New York.

Then you have to explain about the Emerging Artist thing: it’s a juried contest of artists – hundreds apply and only 24 get to perform.  And THEN you have to talk about the “Most-Wanted” aspect: about how then the entire festival audience votes about which artists out of the 24 emerging artists they’d like to see come back – they get to pick 3 or 4 and previous artists have included Martin Sexton, The Nields, Peter Mulvey, Ellis Paul, Erin McKeown, Lori McKenna and Red Molly…

And THEN you explain that those Most-Wanted artists have a tradition of booking a tour together up and down the East Coast leading UP to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, performing a bunch of different really great venues and generally getting to know one another, which results in them cross-pollinating and becoming really good friends, performing on one another’s songs and generally bonding.

Deep breath.  And then you tell them about when and where the show is… and if you’re REALLY inspired you even tell them about the individual artists… it’s a PR nightmare. 

And so I was worried about the kick-off show in Takoma Park, MD.  Especially as it became clear that there were multiple versions and interpretations of what it was floating around.  I fought for the venue I wanted – but they usually only do shows on Mondays so I fought for the date – but they usually only do two-hour shows with 20-minute intermissions (leaving less than 20 minutes per act with changeover’s included) so I fought for more time – but they usually only have one or two acts at the most – so I fought for that… and then because these formats were a-typical I had to correct every person in the chain who just figured the information was the same as it always is… and then wrangling all the acts, doing the press, pushing for radio airplay, and all the while being told that “audiences will never sit through 4 performers” “no-one’s heard of any of these acts, no-one will come out” – and then on top of everything else there was SO much music going on the same night: TPOM-regulars Common Ground were performing in Silver Spring, Jack Williams was actually performing at a neighbouring venue in Takoma Park, Joy Ike was in town playing at Ebenezer’s, the Avengers had just come out – I was SURE the show would flop.  Hell, it was Star Wars day.  It was a no-brainer that we were fucked.

We were NOT fucked.  It did NOT flop.  It was amazing.  Being in a (nominally) controlled environment finally made me realize what kind of heady, marvelous, crazy-talented company I was in and I was SO proud that I could make this happen for them on the first night out.  Blair Bodine kicked the night off and has this beautiful alto-voice that’s kind of reminds me of Heather’s.  Louise Mosrie is a heart-rending writer and combined with her mulit-instrumentalist partner Anna was an excellent build.  We kicked it up another notch with Pesky J. Nixon who opened with my favourite tune by them (John Brown) and was prefaced by perhaps David Eisner’s finest introduction ever… and then we simply tore things apart at the end of the night.  Not a full house, but close.  And so good for the venue and the organizers to shift from “no-one’s going to come out, no-one’s ever heard of them” to “when are we doing this again?”

Yeah – that felt REALY good.

We even got home before midnight!  And had to be out the door by 8.45am for the NEXT item on the ilyDocket: the NERFA (North Eastern Regional Folk Alliance) One Day Mini-Conference in Bethesda, MD.  8 or 9 hours of informational panels, discussions, performances and hard-core music-industry networking.

Kristen and Heather and I split the day up and were able to hit just about everything.  We attended panels.  Allll the panels:

Traditional Folk Music – Roots and Branches:  What does “traditional music” look and sound like now? What is its relationship with contemporary folk music? How is the current folk scene influenced by the history of folk music?  Panelists: Cathy Fink (an amazing performer and business-woman, I know her well from her teaching associations with HMT, her performance associations with IMT and she and her partner Marcy Marxer will be my featured artists the first Sunday in June), Andrea Hoag (an amazing fiddler), Andrew McKnight (great singer/songwriter from VA with an amazing voice and a featured artist from my open mic), Art Menius, Lisa Null (a performer and historian who has performed on Prairie Home Companion… and at my open mic), and Cheryl Prashker (president of NERFA and a great percussionist who we first met playing with Pat Wictor and who has since gone on to be a big ilyAIMY proponent).

This was a pretty interesting one and brought up a lot of questions of what is “folk” and what is “traditional” – with some people expressing that if you’d learned something note-for-note from written transcriptions that that was NOT a traditional learning technique and therefore thwarts the concept – and others who said that even when you were learning from a “great master” of your chosen genre you weren’t going to learn things by rote, note by note and “error” crept in.  Some spoke of evolution and others spoke of a tradition that was dying.  Some people hate the term “trad” because abbreviations aren’t traditional… where others considered “trad” to be a different genre for “traditions”.  It was kind of a little nuance and semantic-driven but very educational and I wrote down a lengthy “listen-to” list of people who I felt I should know.  The main thing that everyone seemed to agree on was the idea that we, as performers and writers, need to be AWARE of what came before us…. I wondered about the concept of being ACCEPTED in the folk genre but not being from the TRADITION of folk music and rather being out of other traditions (like myself) which are (in my opinion) just as legitimate and dramatically different: i.e. the traditions of heavy metal and funk!  I thought about how the music of “the people” and activism seem to be heavily populated by hip hop nowadays.  I think I might’ve made some people’s heads explode with that comment, but a lot of folk music from the 20s through the 60s was often tied up in the concept of “being there”, some level of street-cred and revolution or activism.  I liked the definition of folk music as “artistic communication in small groups” – but that almost implied that “real” folk music inherently couldn’t survive in an age of mass-communication.  There were reminders that “every time you change a note or a word something dies” which seemed diametrically opposed to the concept that part of the “death” of “real” folk music was the age of intellectual property so that a folk song was no longer a song of the people and now a song of the person.  Folk music is participatory whereas singer/songwriter tunes are self-serving and for being listened to… It was an interesting conversation that often highlighted how much I am NOT a folk musician – and how I’m not sure that I even embrace the traditions that they speak of.

On the Griddle: 60 second critiques of songs.  Panelists: Erik Balkey, Michael Jaworek, Scott Moore, Gene Shay, and Mary Sue Twohy.  Generally brutal.  It’s okay.  I listen to things the same way.
                             
How to Get Noticed: What gets presenters and venue operators to sit up, take notice, and respond.  A panel of people that I respect and admire including Brian Gundersdorf (of We’re About 9), Ruthie Logsdon (a local promoter and head of Ruthie and the Wranglers), Art Menius, Jen Smith, and Justin Trawick (another local musician with a HUGE buzz). 

The Technology of Sound:  Sound engineers and producers discuss folk music’s sound technology.  Panelists: Henry Cross, Cletus Kennelly, Randy LeRoy, Marcy Marxer, Pete Reiniger, and Scott Smith.  Interestingly enough, though I’m much more into the mobile collection of sound, I feel that I could’ve been ON the panel for this.  I came away with half a page of scribbled letters and numbers of mic names and the sinking feeling that I should put a couple of hundred dollars into some mic pre-amps.
  
Follow The Money: How can venues, presenters, and performers maximize their revenue and keep costs under control? What does it mean for a folk musician or presenter to think like an entrepreneur? What strategies and resources can be used to keep folk music financially viable? Topics will include grants, sponsorships, and other out-of-the-box revenue-producing ideas. Panelists: Erik Balkey, David Eisner, Cathy Fink, and Siobhan Quinn.  Some of this I Loved and some of it I thought was self-explanatory.  It gave me some ideas and sparked some inspiration but often got side-tracked by some awkward local politics: generally speaking in a room of 45 people, 11 of them should NOT be from the Takoma Park area.  There was some rivalry that was good-natured, and some that was NOT good-natured.  I wrote down some links and ideas and came away with a couple of truly important thoughts:  I think Siobhan mentioned “follow the yeses” – i.e. don’t bang your head against closed doors.  Certainly come back to them later, but go where you’re wanted.  I think Cathy Fink may just be far, far more inspiring than I ever realized.  And I think Erik needs to do another workshop or panel called “Living in balance with yourself” or something.  He’s come to a level of calm and Zen with himself as a musician that I think is very admirable.  The concepts of jigsawing your income structure, balancing what you need to keep yourself sane, and finding the money in unusual places were all important.

Sing What You Mean/Mean What You Sing: Singer-songwriter Amy Speace leads a comprehensive performance workshop.  I get the impression that Paddy Kilrain practically co-opted this from right out the gate.  I Love her.

Needless to say it was a full day.  After the panels were juried showcase performances (ilyAIMY was the last act of the night, and that was the right choice) and then after THAT (and after a run-in with a half-naked homeless guy in a stairwell who blocked our egress and looked panicky at us with watery, blank blue eyes) we all gathered for networking and playing and a little bit of whiskey around the corner at a bar called the Barking Dog.

A full day – but a good one.  Drive home, collapse in a pile and get ready to go to Philly the next day.

Which is what we’re doing now.  We listened to the new (? 10 years old but finally mixed and mastered) Lulu’s Fate album – a bluegrassish CD on which Kristen plays steel pans.  Now we’re listening to Michael Jackson.  Soon we’ll be loading in at the prestigious

World Café Live for a show before heading to the radio show and doing a Live broadcast with the legendary folk DJ Gene Shay.  Yeah – heady company indeed.

Oh – and about Diablo III – it comes out in a couple of weeks and I don’t have a computer that will play it. This is a problem. I just bought new toys (new monitor speakers and a headphone amp to help with recording Ash’s new album) and can’t buy a new computer right now. That’s a REAL problem.

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