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Subject: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Peter T. Date: 02 Dec 07 - 07:40 PM Someone may have posted this, but there is a nice article at http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/turn_it_up/2007/12/roger-mcguinn-a.html about a celebration at the Old Town in Chicago, involving Frank Hamilton (the god!!) and Roger McGuinn (the Byrd). yours, Peter T. |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: john f weldon Date: 02 Dec 07 - 07:46 PM http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/turn_it_up/2007/12/roger-mcguinn-a.html |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Alice Date: 02 Dec 07 - 08:05 PM Thanks for letting us know. |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Amos Date: 02 Dec 07 - 11:06 PM That's a beautiful piece. And my hat is off to Frank for what he's done, both back then, and now. A |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Art Thieme Date: 03 Dec 07 - 12:19 AM I got to take one lesson from Frank at the O.T.S.O.F.M. before he left Chicago to join the Weavers. Frank taught Pete's "Singing In The Country" that night. That's a fascinating way to make a D chord up the neck and then transition into the following melody notes... Fond memories. -- I do admit to being a bit put out at not having been contacted about this gathering after all my years of involvement at the venerable old place. Well, no matter. I'd not be able to be there anyhow. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Stilly River Sage Date: 03 Dec 07 - 12:30 AM Nice article! Thanks! I understand, Art. It would have been nice to be asked. Just don't forget that we love you here at Mudcat! SRS |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Charley Noble Date: 03 Dec 07 - 04:07 PM It might have been nice to have a Steve Goodman song or two as well. I wish that I could have been there! Of course I would have had to fly out to Chicago December 1st, and there's no way that a flight would reach Chicago on schedule. Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: katlaughing Date: 03 Dec 07 - 04:27 PM Thanks, Peter. Great article. Wish Art had been asked, too! |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Amos Date: 03 Dec 07 - 05:09 PM HEy, guys...have you forgotten what Chicago does in December? It was Art himself who said it was so cold in Chicago that a pervert walked up to him on the street and described himself...among other extreme examples. A |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Dan Keding Date: 03 Dec 07 - 06:46 PM As far as I'm concerned it should just be automatic that any folk celebration of any kind in the Chicago area should have Art Thieme in attendance. When I think of folk music in the old windy city I think first of Art. Dan |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: katlaughing Date: 03 Dec 07 - 10:28 PM Even so, Amos, it would be nice for him to have the pleasure of being asked. |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Chris in Portland Date: 03 Dec 07 - 11:06 PM Congrats to Art, Frank, Roger and all the others that have supported the School all these years. Hoping that the School will release a recording of the 50th Concert. The School started at the right time - and I am sure, as the article says, all the "cabaret folk" types would not have believed that interest in the School and traditional music would be as strong now as then. But one of the great things about the School and Chicago (especially with the help of the Midnight Special) is that the uptown, cabaret and the traditonal folk worlds always got along - and helped support the other from the start. Would you agree, Art?? Chris (once a student at the School) |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Art Thieme Date: 04 Dec 07 - 12:58 AM Dan, you know you were a huge part of all the good times in Chicago for so many of those years. What a grand friend you've been. Chris, To the extent that we were all able to make ends meet, and pay the rent, that statement is more true than not. It really was an incandescent time to be there. I was a host, with Larry Rand, of a live, with audience, NPR radio show from "The School" every Sunday--in the early 80s for a few years. Before that, in the 1960s, Johnny Carbo managed the Old Town Folklore Center and he hired me to be his assistant Manager --- 1965, '66, and '67. Freddy Holstein worked part time there---so did his bro Ed. I was alone working and trying to learn to frail a banjo one hot Saturday afternoon in '66 when Grandpa Jones walked in. (He and Ramona were doing a concert that night at the school.) He figured out real quick that I didn't know diddly-squat about frailing---and he said, "Maybe I can show you how I try to do it!" Folks, I was blown away. I sure was glad we had no customers that day. He gave me hints for over an hour and got me off the plateau I was stuck on. --------- And stuff like that was always happening there then. I remember Jim McGuinn when he went to Latin School on the near north side of Chicago. He was a regular in John Carbo's folk trio then---called The Frets---and they were the house act for the Sunday afternoon hoots at the Gate Of Horn in 1959 when a girlfriend of mine from high school hauled me to the Gate of Horn to hear something called "an Odetta!!" --- Wow, it's late and time to crash I guess. I ain't 18 years old like we were in '59---and late nights are out for me.------- But it is fun to stick the memories in these threads. Thanks for precipitating those... Art |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Charley Noble Date: 04 Dec 07 - 09:38 AM Art- I may be visiting Chicago in the next year or so, in coordination with a legislative conference that my wife attends. I'd certainly welcome any leads for open sessions or open mics that I might be able to participate in. I'm not expecting to find a sea music session, even though the Great Lakes inspired a lot of traditional "great water" songs, including "Fresh-Water Whaling (aka "Superior Sperm"). My most recent visit to Chicago was restricted to the Hilton Hotel out at the airport. The bed was great but the musical options were limited. Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Art Thieme Date: 04 Dec 07 - 10:33 AM Chris, After sleeping a few hours, and looking at what you wrote again, I suppose there was less than automatic support of/from/for various aspects of the folk world back then. As is true today, we loved and championed that which we were most "into" -- if ya know what I mean. Specifically, I gave my hard support to some trad aspects of the scene more than others. I was a hard critic of the OTSOFM when I thought the management needed that---when I saw the place getting away from the founders "ethic" as illustrated by the early, looser, and I guess, less business like, machinations. In retrospect, I mistook a certain stumbling and slouching toward the future to be an actual intentional academic dynamic of some sort that was playing out. It looked that way to me because I was 19, and the founders, Win Stracke and Frank and Dawn Greening and Fleming Brown, were older, and somewhat authoritative. But on the whole, we WERE supportive of each other. The best testament to that is the healthy survival of the Old Town School Of Fake Music through the years. Is that survival the result of people learning the ins and outs of grant writing, or is it a because folks still want to learn to pick "Wildwood Flower" and "Crow Jane" and "Earl's Breakdown!?" I figure the answer lies more in a combonation of all those skills, also and some other aspects of the dynamic as yet left undefined. Chris, Is that what you asked? I'm not sure. But it is what I've answered. ;-) All the best, Art Thieme |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Art Thieme Date: 04 Dec 07 - 10:46 AM Charley, Unfortunately, I don't have my finger on the pulse of stuff in Chicago lately. Living a hundred miles away and being less than in perfect health now, makes me, maybe, the wrong one to ask. I would suggest LEE MURDOCK in Kane County as being the one to speak to for info on great lakes sing-arounds and sessions. Lee is de man. Contact him through his wife, Joann, at Artists Of Note agency. A Google search should do it for you.------- Also, Mark Dvorak would be a person who could aid you a lot I'm sure. Art |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Art Thieme Date: 04 Dec 07 - 10:58 AM ...and Charley, The Fox Valley Folklore Society could give you all kinds of information of things going on around the area. Google them for their website. They used to have, maybe still have, a FOLK-PHONE number with an on-going list of stuff in the whole area.---Art |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Chris in Portland Date: 04 Dec 07 - 11:04 AM Art - thanks for the comments - I got my friends to leave the high school graduation party ('61) early to see Bob Gibson at the Gate! Charley - besides the School, there is also lots of music and song circles in the 'burbs - see this site and the links - Folk in the Burbs Chris |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Charley Noble Date: 04 Dec 07 - 11:07 AM Art et al- Lee Murdock is a Great Lakes ballad singer that I remember meeting at the Mystic Sea Music Festival last spring. He was quite good and quite interesting. Thanks for the reminder. Cheerily, Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Art Thieme Date: 04 Dec 07 - 02:34 PM Wasn't Gibson just great back then??!! When I first heard him, in '59 at the Gate, he was doing mostly trad and just playing his 5-string Vega long-neck banjo. I think he played one song on guitar -- "Matty Groves" --- which he taught to Joan Baez (his arrangement)---and she subsequently recorded it. All of that was before drugs took over Bob's life. --- I'm glad I got to know him. Art |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Stringsinger Date: 04 Dec 07 - 02:40 PM Art, What a terrible oversight not to include you some way in the 50th Anniversary. You are such an important artist and contributor to the School and folk music in general. I don't blame you for being put out. Your CD is a classic. I listen to it often. This show was hastilly put together with the usual madness that accompanies such stuff. I have a feeling that a lot of people were left out as a result. Could you please get in touch with me through e-mail? I seem to have lost your address. I want to remain in contact with you. I don't know whether this will get through but I am at songlines2@hotmail.com and would love to hear from you. You are one of the truly knowledgeable people in the world of folk music and have really done your homework. I try to turn people on to your CD. Frank |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Art Thieme Date: 04 Dec 07 - 09:11 PM Frank, thanks for your kind words. I never should've mentioned it. Too much time on my hands these days--. I will be in touch; want to get the last CD we put together to you. I almost put a song on it that I heard you do in '60 at the U. of Illinois--Navy Pier. "THE DREARY BLACK HILLS" But the old tape of me doin' it was less than good enough. Art |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Stringsinger Date: 05 Dec 07 - 08:25 PM The OTSFM has been through many transitional stages. The new administrator is extremely knowledgeable in the folk field and has written a book on promoting folk arts both American and international, his name, "Bau" Graves. He is a great guy and in it for the right reasons. The School has to be on a business basis to survive. Bau has found the right balance between keeping the doors open and creating a genuine non-fake School of folk music. I predict you will see a new turning point for the School that reflects the values of our love of traditional folk music and bringing people into the music through teaching the singing, playing and dance. My focus in folk music has always been a social one. I see folk music as participatory and not exclusive. I also respect the myriad traditions reflected in the songs and their history and I always attempt to convey that information in my workshops. At the same time, it gives me pleasure to see new people learning to play and sing who are just discovering what it is that we all cherish. It's so important, though, that people get together on their own and share music. The future of folk music may lie in the living rooms of homes across the country. The Old Town School of Folk Music is here because of many people who came together to make it happen. The emphasis at the beginning was always on helping the all the students develop and not about creating "stars". The performing aspect on the concert stage is only one part of the whole picture. Folk music is welcoming and celebrates honest human values such as understanding, sharing, encouraging those who may never have thought of themselves as musical but surprise themselves, finding the common denominator of music to melt away the barriers that we often place between us. Spontaneity and jamming is also part of the improvisation that life offers us. It clarifies that we are all part of a human family. Frank |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: katlaughing Date: 05 Dec 07 - 11:15 PM Folk music is welcoming and celebrates honest human values such as understanding, sharing, encouraging those who may never have thought of themselves as musical but surprise themselves, finding the common denominator of music to melt away the barriers that we often place between us. THAT is one of the best definitions of folk music I have ever read, Frank! Thank you. kat (clipping Art's stories to put in that file that's gonna be a book of his someday. Remember that, Art?:-) |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Art Thieme Date: 06 Dec 07 - 02:05 AM Frank, you must know that I have tremendous admiration for you as a musical educator, as a performer, as a thinker on these topics, as a folksinger, and as an innovator of the O.T. School's truly accessible classroom way of communally teaching and transmitting our music. Also, you have been a mentor-from-afar for me over the last half century; your great example has kept me seriously focused on the treasure hunt for the musical and semantic gems I managed to find lurking in folkloristic pockets. ---- Please try to see that I meant no disrespect by calling it the Old Town School Of Fake Music. I was making a joke----sort of like when I told S. in the other thread that finding God on your deathbed is nothing more than someone cramming for finals. That was a joke that, by the way, said what I feel is actually the truth. Remember, some people show discretion. Others tell the truth! ;-) Please note the smiley face!!! With great admiration, Art |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Stringsinger Date: 06 Dec 07 - 11:22 AM Art, apologies not necessary. Your tenure at the OTS did so much to help the School and guide it in the direction it needs to go. You have been a leader in the perpetuation of the real folk music and have the right to comment in whatever way you see fit. I saw what you said as a humorous aside and I laughed. There is something oxymoronic about a school of folk music. It the OTS were a traditional music school, then this would hold true. I had an interesting discussion with one of the teachers and staff there, Ari Frede. He said that they didn't really want to teach with instruction books that could be sold by mail-order. He said, and I agree, that the one-on-one relationship between a teacher whereby they interact on a human level is far more important to the process of learning. I think this is true of classes as well. You gotta' be there. Things come up in a class or private lesson that an instruction book can't anticipate. There has to be a relationship which is kind of personal. And this echoes what folk music is all about, a sharing of traditions, not a marketing ploy to extract money from students. I consider myself a student as well as teacher and my preference would always be to learn from someone in the flesh rather than through books and tapes. Kat, thank you. My statement was from the heart. Late breaking unfortunate news. Roger McGuinn fell on the ice in Nebraska and broke his wrist. Let's keep healing thoughts for him, please. He says, "I just wanted to let you all know that I slipped on ice in Nebraska and broke my right wrist. Unfortunately I had to cancel some tour dates until it mends in mid January." We are so sorry Roger! Please heal soon! Frank |
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Subject: RE: Frank Hamilton and Roger McGuinn From: Art Thieme Date: 06 Dec 07 - 12:19 PM Just this week I saw a fellow fall on the ice while chipping his dog off a fire hydrant. Quite an ice storm we had here. ;-) Roger, heal well! (And fast.) Art |
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