2020 FSGW Getaway • Online via Zoom

Friday, October 2, 10:30 am, through Monday, October 5



If you love good music and good fellowship, you'll love the Getaway!

Getaway 2020 will be online this year via Zoom, from Friday morning, October 2 at 10:30 am through Monday afternoon, October 5.

The FSGW Getaway is a gathering of friends, old and new, to share music and enjoy fellowship in a secluded setting that’s been going on for decades, and it will go online this year. We invite you to come and participate; bring your songs and your presence to the table, or in this hopefully unique year, the screen.

A complete schedule of what we’ve got planned for the weekend is available at https://www.fsgw.org/Getaway-Schedule, and it will be updated with any last-minute changes. Throughout much of the extended weekend, we’ll be offering two simultaneous Zoomed rooms, and you’ll be able to go in and out and switch between them at will.

For security reasons (we don’t want Zoom-bombing interruptions!), you’ll need to register in advance at https://www.fsgw.org/getaway, and we will send the Zoom links to you and activate them on October 1. Registration is free.

Join in participatory Zoom sessions celebrating inland waterways, the many ways of dogs, and the great Scots folk revival. Enjoy some comic relief; explore the joys and woes of maturing and growing older, and sing of hope and better times, or social struggle and the songs of working people. Try your hand at a ballad or chantey, or rant against pestilence, plague and disease! Put on an Irish air, give us a music hall ditty, or share an Appalachian treasure. Sing that song that gets you weeping or laughing every time.

Learn about interesting aspects of folk music through Zoomed presentations: Ed Miller will talk about Scottish border songs. Explore the work of two West Virginian folklorists, Carrie and Michael Kline. Learn about two influential New England song collectors, Helen Hartness Flanders and Margaret MacArthur. And Thomas McCarthy, an Irish Traveller, will hold forth on the songs, history, stories, and tales of his family and his people, interviewed by WOWD’s Heather Livingston.

A Vocal Clinic with Ken Schatz and a Fingerpicking Guitar Workshop with Elly Wininger will be run as master classes. If you wish to be one of the selected people our experts will work with (in a very public manner), you can volunteer in advance, while everyone else will watch, listen, and learn.

Sign up for a good slot at one of the evening concerts or sing-arounds.

And listen to short sets from some of our invited guests: Steven Levine, George Ward, Elly Wininger, and Ed Miller.

It will all be happening, and a lot more, at this year’s Getaway.

Cost: Free this year, but we’re asking for a voluntary donation. We suggest $25, or more if you’re in good financial shape and feeling generous. FSGW will skim a small percentage off the top to offset general expenses and administrative costs: registration and donations processing on the FSGW website, not to mention access to a couple of platinum Zoom accounts with all the bells and whistles. The balance will be reserved for the Lieberman/Olive Scholarship Fund to help attendees afford in-person Getaways next year and in the future.

Registration (required for security): https://www.fsgw.org/getaway