Anything can happen at spontaneous folk jam
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November 25, 2009
By DAN PEARSON Contributor

The Lake County (Illinois) Folk Club welcomes back national touring folk troubadour Mark Dvorak at 7 p.m. Sunday to host a Spontaneous Folk Ensemble at the El Barrio Restaurant & Lounge in Mundelein.

Dvorak, who lives in Riverside, invites all attendees to bring along their musical instruments and their voices and participate in this special fifth Sunday event which is open to all ages.

"I also call it a sing-a-long concert and jam session," said Dvorak who teaches classes in guitar, banjo and the blues at the Old Town School Of Folk Music in Chicago.

"When we get warmed up I start asking people who's got a good idea for a song. Most of the time, people will have one. And one leads to another."
No two the same

Dvorak has been a member of the Lake County Folk Club since it began. He last hosted this program at the Folk Club a year ago and said no two gatherings ever unfold identically.

"Last November it was very successful. The main floor of the El Barrio was filled with instruments and there was a very high level of musicianship. I hope we can build from there. If I see someone noodling around, I may call them up to play a solo."

Dvorak is currently gathering original and traditional material for his 12th CD, which will mark the recording debut of The Mark Dvorak Trio with fellow musicians Ellen Shepard of Sweet Fern and Christopher Walz, from the long-running stage show "Woody Guthrie's American Song."

Dvorak credits Frank Hamilton, one of the Old Town School Of Folk Music founders, with introducing him to the spontaneous folk ensemble concept in 1997.
Winging it

"Frank was giving a workshop for instructors. They didn't hand out anything and they didn't write anything down. For two and a half hours this group improvised and used our own ideas and it was always very simple music that people could handle as they would.

"I told Frank it would be nice to have a class like that at the school on an ongoing basis and he said, 'You're right, there should be a class like that and you should teach it.' At the time I said I didn't know enough about music and he said 'Well, what's that got to do with it? You just begin from where you are.'"

Encouraged by his students, Dvorak has been conducting improvised sessions like these for more than 10 years including a bi-monthly spontaneous folk ensemble at the Grafton Pub in Chicago for the last six years.

"The Grafton invited me to perform and I said I have a better idea. I have all these students who want a place to hang out and jam. What I learned from this process is what kind of songs work well with a group dynamic.

"It is very exciting to see people really come to life. Not as students but as musicians, even if they have been playing only a short while. I always felt my job as a teacher is not just to supply information and resources but help foster a meaningful experience for people."

Simple songs

Dvorak said the key is finding songs known to most of the group and ones that aren't complicated to play. Songs like "This Land Is Your Land," "You Are My Sunshine" and call-and-response songs like "When The Saints Go Marching In."

Some song circles use a songbook or hand out sheets of music to guide the program.

"We thought we would try it differently," Dvorak said. "I discovered the minute we put the pieces of papers and the songbooks away, people can watch each other and listen. If I see someone struggling I will call the chords out. That's why it is important that all the songs be simple."

He acknowledged that there are some audience members that just come to listen.

Comfort level

"Some people are comfortable staying in the background and others just chording along. This is not about putting people on the spot, it's about finding the place where they are comfortable participating."

Dvorak said that somewhere in the middle of the evening he enjoys teaching a song and maybe telling a story about that song that is new to him. A current favorite is "Woody Knows Nothing," a traditional tune suggested by the late Erik Darling of The Weavers which is about birds and has nothing to do with Woody Guthrie.

"Erik said this was the first song he learned that made him want to get into performing, so I probably will tell that story and sing that song," he said.