". . . then asked where the musicians went after their short performances to find them rather than at the festival with all of us spending the rest of the day at the hotel pool with each other. I can go on and on and on. . , ."

The first big folk festival I attended was the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1960. It began on a Wednesday at noon, and continued over the Memorial Day weekend. Two-hour workshops began at ten a.m., there was an hour lunch break, then workshops resumed at one p.m., followed by another at three. After each workshop, there was time to mingle with the singers and others on the panels and ask further questions, or simply chat a bit. From five to about seven-thirty, there was a dinner break, and the evening was given over to concerts by the featured performers. Professional singers of folk songs.

The roster consisted of Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl, John Lomax Jr., The New Lost City Ramblers, Sandy Paton (whom I had known in Seattle in the early 1950s), Merritt Herring, Sam Hinton, and Lightnin' Hopkins.

After one concert, I ran into Sandy Paton after his evening concert, and he invited me to a party. We were there for no more than fifteen minutes when Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl walked in. I had a great opportunity to swap a few songs with them and we talked a lot. As did others who were there. The following evening, I wound up at another after-concert party, and there was Lightnin' Hopkins jamming with several local blues musicians.

Subsequent Berkeley Folk Festival provided an opportunity to sit around in one of the lounges in a building on the U. C. campus and chat with Charles Seeger, patriarch of the Seeger family, Archie Green, a folklorist and ethnomusicologist, blues singer Mance Lipscomb, Jean Redpath, who was making her first appearances at the festival, and the internationally known duo, Marais and Miranda (a thoroughly charming couple!). These folks were interested in talking to people such as me and others like me, and they were quite accessible.

By the way, the entire cost to attend the festival was $15.00 for the whole thing, all the workshops and all the concerts, along with a big barbeque on the last day. No concessions at the festival. You could bring a sack lunch or go off-campus to any one of several nearby restaurants.

I conversed with Joan Baez a couple of times, once in Seattle and again in Berkeley. On two occasions I have chatted with Richard Dyer-Bennet. He was friendly and outgoing, and when he heard what I was interested in doing with my music, he was very helpful and encouraging.

One of the local record stores had arranged a record autographing party for Theodore Bikel the day following his concert in Seattle's brand-new opera house in 1962, during the World's Fair. Six singers, including me, came to the record store at the appointed time and found Bikel sitting in front of the counter by a large stack of his records. The proprietor of the store was apologizing profusely because the advertising he had tried to do didn't make it into the papers. Bikel seemed relieved. But he was more that happy to sit for a couple of hours and chat with us. And this was not only a professional singer of folk songs, but he was most recently famous for creating the role of Baron Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music" on Broadway, and who was active in acting in movies and television. He found sitting around and chatting casually with a group of folk music enthusiasts enjoyable and refreshing. He said, "After spending every evening of the week in the company of seven children and twenty nuns, it's a relief to talk to real people again!" Very informative. And very helpful and encouraging to all of us. One young woman folk singer who was there sang in several languages, as Bikel did. He asked her to send him a tape of her singing, and wrote his mailing address out for her.

My first encounter with a well-known folk singer was in 1954, when Pete Seeger gave a concert in Seattle. There was an after-concert party. Pete, who had been to Seattle a number of times before, wanted to meet some of the current batch of folk music enthusiasts, and I wound up sitting cross-legged on Carol Lee Waite's living room floor with Pete and three or four other Seattle singers until 4:00 in the morning, passing a guitar back and forth, with Pete showing us all kinds of good stuff! Pete's genuine enthusiasm for the music was very contagious!

In other categories of music, being a member of the Seattle Classic Guitar Society, I have met and talked with Andrés Segovia on two occasions, and with John Williams, Julian Bream, Pepe Romero, and flamenco guitarist Carlos Montoya (where I found he was using an Arcangel Fernandez flamenco guitar just like the one I got a couple of years before). Also, the guitar duo, Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya. Lagoya offered me a couple of pointers on my right hand position and finger action.

I detail these things not just to name-drop or brag about all the famous people I've met, but to illustrate just how open, available, and encouraging of new talent that most professional musicians are.

As for myself, whenever I've performed, either in concert, at folk festivals, or for that matter, in coffeehouses, I'm out there and available to talk with people, find out what they think, what they're interested in, and provide help and advise if I can. In coffeehouses, rather than disappearing into the back room, I stay out front, table-hop some, and chat with people. And Bob Nelson, with whom I've done hundreds of gigs, does the same thing. Most singers do!

One example out of many is the concert that Judy Flenniken and I did at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. After our concert, we adjourned to a nearby lounge, where a number of students, particularly interested in doing music themselves, joined us. We spent as long chatting and swapping songs in the lounge as we had out on stage. Standard operating procedure with us.

By the way, the Whitman College student organization that hired us to do the concert, paid for us to fly from Seattle to Walla Walla and back again, booked and paid for hotel accomodations for us, an paid us $150 apiece.

Now, here's a little hint, Conrad:    I occasionally run into someone who couldn't find his own butt with both hands and a copy of Gray's Anatomy, but is hell-bent on telling me that I'm doing it all wrong, and then he proceeds to lecture me on how I should be doing it.

Conrad, I think Will Fly has put his finger on your problem:

"Conrad, I get the distinct impression that, if you've experienced being shut out of a musical environment, then a lot of it may well be down to you and your attitudes. As others have said, you appear to have a bloody great chip on your shoulder. I've been making music for 45 years and I've never experienced such attitudes or treatment. I've no doubt they exist - it all boils down to how you cope and deal with them."

You've got a real attitude, Conrad. I think you'll find the source of your problem if you take a good look in a mirror.

Don Firth