Greetings:

Whether we credit Bob Miller for his song, Terry Pettus for using the word to describe musical fundraising parties, or Pete Seeger for popularizing the word, I have been doing what I can to revive the hootenanny, mostly here in New York City. And by hootenanny I mean a multi-performer event which is more structured that a jam session or singaround, but less structured than a formal concert.

Each of my hootenannies has presented several folk musicians who take turns singing one or two songs at a time round robin style, with the other musicians remaining on-stage to provide vocal and/or instrumental accompaniment if asked to do so. I also encourage the audience to sing along on choruses and refrains -- not that there is anything I can do to stop them -- and I often call people out of the audience to come up and join the musicians on-stage for a song or two.

My attempts have included the annual Woody Guthrie Birthday Bash, which took place at CB's 313 Gallery from 2001 to 2006, and which was moved to the Bowery Poetry Club this year. They have also including the Midwinter Hoot held at CB's 313 Gallery in 2003 and 2004, the Hoot workshop that my band MacDougal Street Rent Party presented as a Philadelphia Folksong Society house concert in 2005, and the Halloween Hoot at the Baggot Inn in 2006. And now I'm honored to have been asked to produce the New York Hootenanny at the Yippie Museum Cafe this coming year.

The hootenanny to me is not some historical artifact. It is a living tradition of the urban folk scene that continues to this day. Come to the Yippie Museum Cafe on February 23 at 8:00 PM and see for yourself.

--- Steve