Impressions from the Folk Alliance--Very, Very Long
Steve Goldfield
North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance conference
held last week in Washington, DC. [You may read reports
from others who did not see or hear any of the things I
did and who saw and heard things I did not. That is the
kind of event it is.] This is a very, very long posting,
so please skip it if you don't want all the gory details
of my experience. I'm only sending it to newsgroups so
as not to inflict it on list readers.
My plane got in at about 7:30 pm on Wed. evening. My cousin
picked me up, and we rushed to the hotel because bluegrass
great James King was kicking off a Rounder Valentine's
Day showcase at 8 pm. I got there at about 20 after so
we did get to see about 20 minutes of the show and the
powerful performance. The front rows were occupied by
friends Wayne Erbsen, Ken Irwin, Hazel Dickens, Randy
Pitts, and an Internet friend I met for the first time,
John Rossbach.
I wandered downstairs where fiddlers Gerry Milnes and
Jon Singleton were jamming with banjo players Dwight
Diller and Ken Perlman and guitarist John Lilly (who
was replaced for a while by Bob Carlin). In that
company, I left my banjo in my room. When I got back
to my room, roommate Bill Evans had showed up.
Thursday morning I went to a session on Folk Archives
of Washington, DC with Joe Hickerson from the
American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress
(who was receiving acquisitions even during that
workshop), Tony Seeger from the Smithsonian, Jeff
Place from the Smithsonian, Andy Wallace from the
National Council for the Traditional Arts, and
Peggy Yocom from the Northern Virginia Folklife
Center Archive of George Mason University. They
talked about their collections, how to find things
in them and retrieve them, and about broader
archival issues, such as recording media. As I
reported elsewhere, one of the panelists told us
not to expect DAT tape to last for more than 3 or
4 years because it stretches and destroys the
necessary precise alignment of the digital
information. Recordable CDs are better and should
last 25 to 30 years, but high-quality blanks cost
about $5 currently and it would be prohibitively
expensive to transfer millions of recordings to
them.
At lunch, lifetime achievement awards were given
posthumously to Moe Asch of Folkways Records and
Woody Guthrie. Both awards were accompanied by
tremendously well-made videos, "Moe Asch: A Difficult
Man" and "Woody Guthrie: All or None." The first was
narrated by Dave Van Ronk; the second by Utah Phillips.
Rambling Jack Elliott sang some of Woody's songs. Moe
Asch's award was accepted by his son. Woody's daughter
Nora accepted the other.
After lunch I went to an oral history session with
Virginia guitarist and banjo player John Jackson.
Mary Cliff moderated and asked most of the questions,
but she allowed the audience to ask questions, too.
John interspersed tunes on his guitar with the talking.
I had heard of him but it was my first time seeing him.
People who know him well said he sounds better than ever.
I won't try to summarize what was said; the Folk Alliance
will sell cassettes.
I went out to dinner with a friend. Then I decided to
check out the welcoming reception. There was hardly
anybody there, but on the way, Art Menius told me that
John Jackson was going to perform. So I stayed and heard
another 15 minutes of his music. His manager told me that
John would be performing again upstairs in the showcase
run by the Prism Coffeehouse. (You get an idea of how
you can find out what's going on by chance or just by
being in the right place at the right time.) Mike Seeger
was to be in that showcase, too. I wanted to hear John
play the banjo; he'd said he would play if he had one.
On the way to the elevator to get mine, I found Mike
tuning his autoharp. Since he was bringing a guitar
and banjo to the showcase, I asked him if John could
play his banjo. He said sure, and I helped carry it
down. So I not only got to see Mike and John perform;
I got to see John play a couple of tunes on the banjo.
One in his own clawhammer style and one in a more
guitar-like style. Carol Elizabeth Jones and James
Leva later appeared in the same showcase.
By then it was about time to head up for the Old-Time
Traditional Music showcase. That opened with Hazel
Dickens (with Mike Seeger, Alice Gerrard, Ginny Hawker,
and Tracy Schwartz in various combinations). I may
remember the order wrong, but I think Duck Baker and
Molly Andrews came next with a more traditional set
than I had seen them do in the past. Then Dwight Diller,
Bruce Hutton (assisted by Chris Romaine because Bruce
had lost his voice), and Andy Cohen. By 2 am I decided
to retire, but on the way to the elevator, I found
Hazel Dickens, Ginny Hawker, and Carol Elizabeth Jones
singing bluegrass and old-time tunes, along with a bit
of Merle Haggard and George Jones, backed up by Tracy
Schwartz on fiddle. That kept me up to about 4 am.
(I should mention that all the music I listened to was
wonderful, so I won't make this any longer by discussing
it much in detail unless somebody asks about something
in particular.)
Friday morning I woke too late and missed most of the
Peer Group Session on traditional music moderated by
Jeff Davis. After lunch and the Folk Alliance
membership meeting, I went to a panel entitled
"How to Present Traditional Music." It seemed to
me that there were too many ideas about what the
topic was, though there were some interesting
information presented. After a quick dinner with
fiddler Laura Risk, I watched official showcases
by Ginny Hawker and Kay Justice (wonderful music,
though the lighting person made their faces turn
green and purple for some reason), Dan Crary,
La Musgana, Alter Ego, and the Lynn Morris Band.
(I described Lynn Morris' showcase earlier today
on rec.music.folk.) In between these showcases,
of course, I shmoozed a lot. In fact, I saw Bruce
Molsky walk in and met Audrey Molsky for the first
time, another Internet acquaintance who turned
from a virtual friend into a real one. During the
course of the conference that also happened with
Mary Katherine Aldin, Carol Mallett, Peter Siegel,
John Lupton, Henry Koretzky, and others whom I hope
won't be offended if I can't list them all. Of
course, there were also a lot of people I already
knew who are too many to list.
Anyway, we're up to the second old-time traditional
music showcase. BMI had announced a showcase
starting at the same time with Hazel Dickens,
Alice Gerrard, Mike Seeger, and Tracy Schwartz,
which is pretty much the Strange Creek Singers
with Bill Evans replacing Lamar Grier on banjo.
But they switched the order and started with
the Five Chinese Brothers, so I headed upstairs
to the traditional showcase since I wanted to see
Bruce Molsky. He was preceded by Ken Perlman and
followed by Dan Levenson and Kim Murley (Blue
Rose on fiddle/banjo and hammer dulcimer),
Cathy Fink and Marxy Marxer, and Jon (whose last
name I forget who plays with Marley's Ghost).
Again, I headed for bed only to find Hazel and
Alice and Ginny and Kay singing together. Kept
me up until 4 am again.
Saturday morning Margo Blevin and I previewed
a BBC documentary called Down Home--Appalachia
to Nashville. It was made in 1985, hosted by
Aly Bain--who plays with the other musicians
in it, and features Elizabeth Cotten, Mike
Seeger, Tommy Jarrell, Carol Mallett (who
gave me a copy), Bill Monroe and Kenny Baker,
J. P. and Anadeene Fraley, Mark O'Connor,
Peter Rowan, and probably others. Margo and
I want to get a cleaner copy and show it next
year in Toronto. I'm told that the film was
never shown in this country.
After lunch, Margo and I held our 4-hour
session of traditional folk music and dance
films. I've previously posted the entire
schedule so I will only add a bit here.
We had a very good turnout; much bigger than
last year in Portland. We started with 20
minutes from John Cohen's 1962 film The
High Lonesome Sound, about Roscoe Holcomb
and his coal mining community in Kentucky.
Then we showed about 5 minutes from a video
featuring Dwight Diller. Next was three cuts
from the Homespun video "A Tribute to Don
Stover. Then the first 7 minutes of a film
on contra dancing in North Carolina made by a
film graduate student. Henry Koretzky
introduced a 20-minute clip of a made for
TV film about his Old World Folk Band (klezmer).
Next came the last 30 minutes from "Dewey
Balfa: The Tribute Concert." (Remarks by his
eldest daughter, with her three sisters standing
alongside, brought tears to my eyes even though
I'd seen it before.) Les Blank's "Sworn to the
Drum: a Tribute to Francisco Aquabella" about
a Cuban-American drummer was the first film to
get an ovation. "Kevin Burke's Open House"
also received applause. We closed with 3 tunes
from "Jazz Women" by Ida Cox, Sister Rosetta
Tharp, and Billie Holiday. Then we showed
"The High Lonesome Sound" in its entirety
along with two other John Cohen films, "Sara
and Maybelle" and "The End of an Old Song."
(For more information on these films and where
to order them, send me Email.)
Next on the agenda for me was the meeting of
Old-Time Music on the Radio. We talked about
the upcoming conference in June in Mt. Airy,
about volume two of Old-Time Music on the Air,
which may be out as soon as May, about ways
old-time and bluegrass communities can work
together, and lots of other things. I missed
most of the showcases because I was listening
and singing along with and playing my banjo with
a jam that included Ginny Hawker, Dwight Diller,
Kay Justice, and others with Ken Perlman and
some others playing. I did see the Footworks
showcase. They were marvelous and got a big
ovation, but the soundman allowed the guitar
to drown out Bruce Molsky's fiddle. I was so
upset at that that I walked over and shouted
that we couldn't hear the fiddle. The dancers
also could not hear Bruce in the monitor (which
made it very hard to dance on the beat) and
Eileen Carson stopped briefly to shout for
more fiddle.
But I got to hear Bruce's fiddle a lot after that
since he and Audrey were hosting an official old-time
jam which also included Gerry Milnes, Phil Jamison,
Bob Carlin, and lots of others, including me. I kept
going after all those people left until a very loud
digerido joined us and gave me a headache at about
3:30 am. We exchanged names and found that we knew
each other from the Internet.
I stayed over Sunday with my cousin and saw a wonderful
show by the tremendously improved Seldom Scene at the
Birchmere (see review in bgrass-l).
Sorry for the length of this.
That's it.
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Steve Goldfield :-{ {-: s...@coe.berkeley.edu
University of California at Berkeley Richmond Field Station
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Steve Goldfield :-{ {-: s...@coe.berkeley.edu
University of California at Berkeley Richmond Field Station
Ian Anderson
>Here are my personal impressions from the 1996
>North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance conference
>held last week in Washington, DC. [You may read reports
>from others who did not see or hear any of the things I
>did and who saw and heard things I did not. That is the
My main impression was that Cordelia's Dad, playing by all accounts
a hard-core Appalachian set, were one of the main hits of the event.
I actually missed their Friday night showcase due to hitting the
jetlag brick wall head on half way through the evening, but on Saturday
morning at breakfast everybody within earshot was talking about them
and Drew Miller was inundated with requests for his re-issues of their
previous two albums. Hard-core folk a hit at Folk Alliance? Whatever
next?!
Ian Anderson, Folk Roots magazine
http://www.cityscape.co.uk/froots/
Dick Barbour
>
> Here are my personal impressions from the 1996
> North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance conference
> held last week in Washington, DC.
> Sorry for the length of this.
>
That's OK, Steve; bore us anytime. Sorry you had such a dull time. At
any point did you think you had died and gone to Old-Time heaven?
--
Dick Barbour
Fred Pribac
SNIP ...
>But I got to hear Bruce's fiddle a lot after that
>since he and Audrey were hosting an official old-time
>jam which also included Gerry Milnes, Phil Jamison,
>Bob Carlin, and lots of others, including me. I kept
>going after all those people left until a very loud
>digerido joined us and gave me a headache at about
>3:30 am. We exchanged names and found that we knew
>each other from the Internet.
Didjeridoo? at an oldtime session? ... here in Australia
they tend to inhabit indigenous music, new age, folk and
sometimes irish sessions/bands. So far I havn't seen one
at an old time session ... I'm not sure it'd work all
that well. Judging from your headache it probably didn't.
Sounds like an amazing thing this Folk Alliance. Your
report has made me more determined than ever to spend 6
months in the states chasing down the oldtime music.
USA 1997 here I come!
fred
Fred Pribac
SNIP ...
>But I got to hear Bruce's fiddle a lot after that
>since he and Audrey were hosting an official old-time
>jam which also included Gerry Milnes, Phil Jamison,
>Bob Carlin, and lots of others, including me. I kept
>going after all those people left until a very loud
>digerido joined us and gave me a headache at about
>3:30 am. We exchanged names and found that we knew
>each other from the Internet.
Didjeridoo? at an oldtime session? ... here in Australia