BS: back from Jonesborough 2000

Subject: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 11:45 AM

I didn't find those of you who said you were going to the National Storytelling Festival. We were probably all in the same tent by the RR, waiting to hear Pete Seeger.

What did you love? Pete jumping around like a cricket on Abiyoyo?

John McCutcheon, now clean-shaven, cutting the TV show "Survivors" to ribbons with a stroke? His new song about tabloids?

Dan Keding telling "Rudy and the Roller Skate?"

All of the above? What else, since it was impossible to catch everybody?

Being in a beautiful place with 10,000 kindred spirits.

Reentry to dull routine is hard.

Subject: RE: BS: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: Rich(bodhránai gan ciall)
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 06:42 PM

I'm jealous. Glad you had fun.

Rich

Subject: RE: BS: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: Art Thieme
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 07:05 PM

Ain't the storytellers amazing??? They sure are ! My buddy Dan's "Rudy" is a great tale. And the audiences are content to sit and listen attentively for hour after hour---and come back for more--day after day. It got quite hard to find audiences in many music circles who exhibited that level of concentration---all without booze for the most part.

Pete "jumping around like a cricket" at age 80 never ceases to amaze me. What a genuine and good man he is.

Wish I'd been there.

To all you tellers------WAY TO GO ! You all have built a solid edifice that has taught so many how to be a proper audience!!!!! Imagine, "Beatle mania" occuring over again for some group in the future where people will actually sit and listen. What a fantasy !!!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: Rich(bodhránai gan ciall)
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 10:46 PM

Was the John McCutcheon song in question the one about Princess Diana (I don't want to see....) ? If so he's been doing it for a couple years.

Rich

Subject: RE: BS: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: Rich(bodhránai gan ciall)
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 11:24 PM

Mag, Would you post one of your favorite stories you heard there? If it can translate to print, of course. So many of mine don't read well, but people enjoy hearing them.

By the way, check out the Favorite Ghost stories thread.

Rich

Subject: RE: BS: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: Hollowfox
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 12:19 PM

Ahh, MAG, re-entry's not any easier a day later. I'm sorry I missed you; I stopped to visit (a major activity at this festival, just so you non-attendees know), so I was in the overflow audience outside the Railroad Tent for Pete's performance.
For me, it was Bill Harley's afternoon set. I brought my kids for the first time (farewell, my checkered youth!!), and I sat about 15 rows behind my 15 year old, but where I could see him. He didn't seem to think the song about the contents of a kid's backpack (to the tune of "Under the Boardwalk") were as hilarious as all of us adults, but he cracked up over the story that followed. And then it happened. Bill sang a song for J J Reneaux, who died this past year. All the tears I couldn't shed all these months came on. The concert ended, my son came to say "hi", I said I needed a shoulder to cry on, and proceeded to do so, shoulders heaving and tears flowing copiously (no howling, though). Looking back, I don't know whether to cry some more, or laugh at my kid's discomfort; he couldn't get away, and there's not a thing he could do about it. J.J. was probably having a good chuckle.

Subject: RE: BS: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 03:53 PM

I guess all the tellers met at the Comfort Inn to toast JJ's memory -- and wer ethere until 2 or 3 in the morning. she is a real loss, folks; we have discussed this on the list before. Died way before her time of cancer.

None of the stories were short enough to post, Rich. I am sorry I missed Bill Harley; he is hysterical. some of you may have heard a piece or 3 of his on NPR; they buy some of his work.

The no-dry-eyes for me came when the tent I had parked in all Saturday afternoon to hear Ray Hicks discovered he was not there due to illness. (People in the tent he was to perform in in the morning knew this already.) Ed Stivener, a near stand-up comic from the Philly area filled in for him, as people had been doing for Johnny Moses, a Native American teller from my neck of the woods had to cancel due to illness (heart attack at 49, folks, if you want something to give you pause. Ack.)

Anyway, Ed did a set, and called up Ray's Wife Rosa to sing with him a bit, and as she was leaving the stage, he asked, And Ray will be all right, right? He'll be fine? I guess no one had clued him in to the fact that every year. it is the question, we have to go hear Ray because it may be the last time.

Anyway, Rosa seemed so startled by the question, she just blurted out the truth: Oh no, I think he's going downhill.

Stunned silence.

Ed said, Let us take a moment for Ray, and bowed his head. Then he quietly started in on "Hard times come again no more," with his banjo.

Think good thoughts in Ray Hicks' direction, folks.

Subject: RE: BS: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 03:57 PM

Oh, and Yes, It was the Princess Di song. I tried to find it on a recording in the "Festival Marketplace" and couldn't -- they could have been sold out; John's stuff was in the same corner as Waddie Mitchell, unquestioned champ of the Cowboy Poets, and you had to wait in line. Sunday, you had to wait in line to get IN to the building. People were passing stuff around just for you to look at.

Subject: RE: BS: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: celticblues5
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 04:31 PM

I'm so jealous too! Please feel free to post more! I only got to a local conference this year. Jonesborough SOME day......I could listen to Dan K all day.

BTW, there's going to be a folklore conference in Lincoln, NE in February - main topic is supposed to be BA Botkin (not the favorite folklorist in certain circles, I know), but I think I saw that Peggy Seeger is going to be there too. I'd be glad to post more particulars if anyone is interested.

Subject: RE: BS: back from Jonesborough 2000
From: Rich(bodhránai gan ciall)
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 07:57 PM

Well, now I'm looking forward to Tellabration next month!

Rich