Mark Clark, Thanks for saying that.

I was amazed I made it work back then 'cause I hated hustling the work. Never really did it---to the consternation of good friends like Cathy Fink who were top-notch go-getters of gigs etc. My "career"--if there is such a thing in the trad side of folkiedom, was accidental---I was in the right place at the right time. After walking out of that record store and tossing my keys in the boss's face in October of '72 Carol tells me, I walked home along Lake Michigan and announced to Carol that she was, from that moment on, not married to a folksinger who also had a day job. I told her that the music was all we were going to live on. After that, one thing just led to another. A week after that, the amazing Richard Harding called me to open for Sonny Terry and Brownie. Then For Robbie Basho. Then for Odetta, Tom Paxton, Martin Mull, Biff Rose, Martin-Bogan and Armstrong and many others over that year. I got use to paying the rent on time and when I couldn't put that together, I'd sell an instrument or two. Music was my day job---and my night job---and my wee-small-hours-of-the-morning job. It was my life--along with the family---who went along for the ride. Kicking Mule and Folk Legacy had me do two albums each for them long before we were expected to fund our own records. It made me feel like Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe---the companies came to us and asked us to record. Things are different now but I was a real lucky guy to have things work out the way they did. Then an agency asked to book all my school gigs for 22 years. Those jobs dovetailed beautifully with the 5 summer months each year for ten years I did music on steamboats---(and NOT on gambling boats 'cause I didn't want to hassle with that can of vipers.) Weekends I'd do clubs and festivals and concerts when not working other places. I could quote higher when I was already working a ton because I could. Often I didn't want to do one gig or another and then I could quote real high. Those jobs allowed me to keep on doing school shows for low prices in the center of big cities because it wasn't right to charge a ton of cash there I didn't think.

What I'm saying I guess is that when music became my day job 30 years ago, I just did anything I really wanted to do---. I waited for folks to call me and rarely hustled work. I always knew, that way, that they were interested in hearing and hiring MY music particularly. If folks offered too little money I figured they needed the cash more than I did-------so I'd offer to do a benefit show at no charge. That helped them--and it had a way of helping me too. It kept me showing folks the songs I had found on my trasure hunt---because making music, somehow, any-old-how, was the name o' the game. I was a sort of alchemist; I could sing into thin air------and come home with the rent. Pure magic. (Hope that don't offend religious folk ;-) **BIG SMILE**

Now, as Buck White and daughters once told me driving me back to Chicago after a gig at Charlotte's Web---"I ain't never had less or enjoyed it more." Then they drove back to Nashville and joined the Grand Ol' Opry.------------------ This old 50s beatnik never did need much. A few favorite books to re-read and records to play and we are all set.
Hey, Phil Cooper & Margaret Nelson & Katey Early--THANKS FOR YOUR NEW CD. It came today. Great bithday present. AN UNABASED PLUG !!!

Art Thieme