Occasional Musical News

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 09:29 AM

Dan Schatz, Kendall, Jacqui, Utah, and Grammy

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 01:00 PM

Although his "Anthology of American Folk Music," released by Folkways in 1952, became essential to America's folk music movement of the 1960s, Harry Smith remained on the fringes of culture. Or, rather, on the avant-garde, as Rani Singh and Andrew Perchuk explain in their new collection of essays about the idiosyncratic filmmaker-artist-bohemian, "Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular."

Born in 1923, Smith created his folk music anthology from his own collection of 78s. He was raised in Oregon, where his interest in music began. He moved to San Francisco, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and other Beat writers, and he began working in experimental film. Eventually, Smith moved to New York City; he lived -- and died, in 1991 -- at the Chelsea Hotel.

In art circles, Smith got attention for his film work, such as "Heaven and Earth Magic," made from 1957-1962; the opening sequence is above. All the images were cut from 19th century catalogs.

Tonight, Singh will be at Book Soup at 7 p.m. to talk about the new book on Smith; it includes essays by Greil Marcus, William Moritz, Paul Arthur and Robert Cantwell. Jim Kweskin, of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, will join Singh.

If you can't get to Book Soup, another event for Smith is coming up on Jan. 28. Patti Smith -- a friend who also lived in the Chelsea -- will be at the Hammer Museum, celebrating the book's publication.

-- Carolyn Kellogg, in the LA Times blog

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jan 10 - 01:35 PM

From Wyoming:

'Folk Music' class starts Jan. 12 at Casper College


Saturday, January 9, 2010 7:48 AM MST

A new class at Casper College will look at the literature and history and provide a musical analysis of folk music.

"Folk Music" will be held on Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 to 10:45 a.m. The first class will begin on Tuesday, Jan. 12.

Cross-listed as ENGL 2490-01 and MUSC 2490-01, Folk Music will be team-taught by Casper College instructors Jay Graham and Pat Patton.

According to Graham and Patton, students "will study folk music in English n its poetry, its form, its music, and its place in historical periods from the Middle Ages to the 21st century."

"Folk lyrics and tunes in the tradition, singer-songwriters, important soloists and groups, types and topics of songs, including highlights of the folk movement of the 1950s and 1960s will be studied. Analyses of poetry and music and their interrelation in the communication of meaning will be included as well," said Patton.

"In addition to lecturing, we will use recordings of folk musicians past and present, and will also perform "live" in class," noted Graham.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 10:49 PM

Battle Creek, MI:

"It was the pluck of a banjo and the strum of an acoustic guitar that carried American settlers over the Appalachians and created our culture of good-time rusticism.

About 12 years ago, a group of musicians banded together to preserve and promote that history and its modern evolutions. One of the Great Lakes Acoustic Music Association's greatest tools in that effort is its annual Cooper's Glen Music Festival.

The two-day event is now in its ninth year, said Tom Nehil, a GLAMA board member. This year's event kicks off Jan. 22 at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in downtown Kalamazoo.

"(GLAMA) was conceived perhaps more as a bluegrass music organization but that continues to expand," Nehil said. "The breadth of musical interest continues to increase. The purpose of the festival is to celebrate folk music; acoustic music of many different types."

Some big names will take the stage this year.

Friday's headliners are Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum, hailing from Berkely, Calif. The pair of versatile musicians is nationally known for its folk styles and ability to play multiple instruments.

Dual-headliners Saturday are Joel Mabus of Kalamazoo, an Illinois-born musician who's made a name for himself nationally as a "maverick" in bluegrass music, and The Dillards, a staple in the folk scene for 40 years.

With 19 albums under his belt, Mabus plays a wide swath of Americana from jazz to blues to bluegrass and enjoys throwing those genres together for a unique take on old standards.

International Bluegrass Music Hall-of-Famers The Dillards first rose to fame with multiple appearances on "The Andy Griffith Show" as the troublesome The Darling Boys. They also were featured on movie soundtracks throughout the 1960s and 70s.

While Nehil said it's an opportunity to present local and national-level performers to West Michigan audiences, Cooper's Glen also hopes to train new players in further efforts to preserve the folk heritage. Workshops throughout the festival will teach musicians how to play bluegrass instruments and the Great Lakes Luthier Guild will display its handmade instruments and demonstrate its craft. A handmade guitar will be raffled off and kids' programs will be offered. At the end of every day all musicians are invited to bring their instruments and play with fellow folksmen in a jam session."

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 02:55 AM

Voice of America transcript on how the Lomax Family ""saved American Folk Music from extinction."

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 03:41 PM

ohn Gorka entertains packed crowd with folk music
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by Kristine Cannon on January 21, 2010

John Gorka plays to a packed crowd at the Coconino Center for the Arts on Sunday. Gorka was in town for a one-night performance as he continues his tour through the US. Chad Sexton / The Lumberjack
Rolling Stone magazine dubbed him "the pre-eminent male singer-songwriter of the new folk movement" back in 1991. With more than 160 tickets sold for a 200-seat auditorium, John Gorka performed at the Coconino Center for the Arts (CCA) Jan. 17.

With his country, acoustic, folksy sound, Gorka booked his show at the CCA, where many loyal fans were expected to attend.

Matt Ziegler, owner of Greenhouse Productions and coordinator of the event, said Gorka was scheduled to meet the needs of folk music fans in Flagstaff as well as to promote and showcase events in diverse genres.

"[Gorka is] a big name in the East Coast folk scene, [where there's] great singer-songwriter stuff," Ziegler said. "Shows like that always tend to do pretty well out here; there's a lot of folk music fans. I mostly was familiar with his stature. He wouldn't be at that level if he wasn't a quality musician."

Originally from Pennsylvania, Gorka began his singer-songwriter career in the late '70s, before touring throughout the '80s all the way to the present day — nationally and all over Europe. Despite the longevity of Gorka's career, he continues to emphasize the importance of weaving simplistic guitar- and piano-based music with lyrics critics described as poignant, heartfelt and witty.

"I think the strength of what I do comes from what I have in common with others, not what is different," Gorka said. "There are songs about love and loss, about chasing your dreams, soldiers, war and peace, crime and punishment, love, nutrition, barnyard animals, and big behinds … so there are some universal themes."

John Gooby, a Flagstaff resident, has been a fan of Gorka for 18 years. He arrived nearly an hour early for the show and said he compares Gorka's musical styling to those of modern-day singer-songwriters.

"I like [Gorka] mainly for his stories, which have absolutely beautiful words," Gooby said. "If you like the singer-songwriter tradition — like Jack Johnson and Ben Harper — he's more on the folk side than that, but it's the same type of stories he creates."

According to Ziegler, Gorka's music is authentic and always has a story to tell.

"He's carrying on a really old tradition of being a troubadour, traveling around the country and sharing his music with people — something people were doing 100 years ago," Ziegler said.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 11:11 AM

Gerald McCabe, a furniture designer whose passion for woodworking and love of music led to the creation of the Santa Monica folk music institution McCabe's Guitar Shop, died Sunday in Eugene, Ore., two days after suffering a heart attack. He was 82.

McCabe left his namesake operation before it became celebrated for the intimate concerts that have been held there for decades, but in its earliest days the store, on Pico Boulevard a block west of its current location, played a crucial role in the evolution of the Southern California folk music community.

The narrow storefront became a magnet for folk fans and musicians who had few other places to gather. It was a place to find song books and Folkways albums, get a guitar repaired or sample an instrument.

Guitars, banjos, mandolins and exotic hybrids hung on the walls, each bearing a printed flier with the warning, "Refrain from clutching to bosom." It was a rule that was rarely enforced, enabling patrons such as a 13-year-old Ry Cooder to access a new world.

"Musicians were in there all the time," the guitarist and record producer said this week. "I'd take the bus home from school and drop in in the afternoon and sit there and basically wait to see who'd come through the door. A lot of bluegrass players came through. That's where I first encountered the White brothers, Roland and Clarence.

"It was fascinating for me to see people sit down and play something really good that you wanted to learn. The idea that you can sit a couple of feet away from somebody who's good and watch them do it, that's a way to be imprinted in that kind of work.

"If it hadn't been for McCabe's, I don't know what I would have done. I might not have been able to learn enough soon enough, and I might have gone over to sacking groceries or delivering pizza. God only knows what."

But as McCabe's stature grew and its ambitions expanded into offering music lessons and then concerts under McCabe's partners Walter Camp and Bob Riskin, its founder kept much of his focus on a design career that became increasingly prominent.

A free spirit, he also restored and sailed a tugboat, built a home in Santa Monica Canyon, taught design at area universities and art schools, became a yoga instructor and repaired Citroen automobiles.

"Jerry was just a singular person," McCabe's current owner, Riskin, said this week. "He had great enthusiasms."

Gerald Lawrence McCabe was born in Long Beach on Jan. 30, 1927. After graduating from Long Beach Polytechnic High School, he served in the Navy during World War II. He earned a bachelor's degree at UCLA and a master's at Cal State Long Beach, both in fine arts.

McCabe opened a custom furniture business in Santa Monica in the mid-1950s. His first wife, Marcia Berman, was a successful folk singer, and soon her friends were bringing their instruments to McCabe and asking him to repair them.

That inspired him to open the guitar shop, at 3015 Pico Blvd. Camp became the first employee and introduced a table, chairs and coffee pot. An ethnomusicologist named Ed Kahn had the book and record concession.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jan 10 - 04:04 PM

In 1967, when Bob Dylan was 25 years old, the VIllage Voice ran an in-depth review of his work and his place in American poetry, if any.

It is reprinted here as published and it is of interest to Dylanophiles of both those days and these.



A

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jan 10 - 04:18 PM

Man, this is how the folk scene seemed to Gene Shepherd of The Village Voice in 1958, just as the boom was swelling:

June 11, 1958, Vol. III, No. 33

Dig the Folk

By Jean Shepherd

"Some night when the espresso tastes flat and you tire of hearing third-rate poets shout above fourth-rate jazz groups and you happen to be near a radio, I would suggest you dig a few sounds that are truly closer to the pulse beat of America than anything around today.

Most of the stuff that passes for Americana is as contrived and phony as a class-B English-movie version of Chicago mobsters. It has a dated self-consciousness that would be amusing if it weren't so embarrassing. The average urban "folk"-singer, for example, would be totally unintelligible to a genuine hill-country audience of today. The folksiness they sell to hip-type, guitar-playing, subway-riding, undergrad neo-folk has all the authenticity of an Amsterdam street band playing New Orleans jazz.

It is pretty hard being a genuine nineteenth-century folk midway through the twentieth century, especially if you live on MacDougal Street and majored in business law at Syracuse U. So what can you dig, man, if you want to really get at the roots of now and fell the way it is? The way it really is...It's tough being beat when you can only wail after office hours and on the two-week vacation. Like it doesn't make it. Ya' dig? Excuse the use of the vernacular; sometimes one gets swept away by the sheer emotion of the now and the loveliness of it all.

Getting back to the radio, you'll find some strange and exotic stuff away down at the far end of the dial. Move the pointer away from NYC and QXR some night late and start fishing around between the loud local stations at the high-frequency end of the band. Where the static level is high and the living is not easy. You'll hear more of what America really sounds like today than anything I know. Stuff will come in from tank towns in Tennessee, the Carolinas, Michigan, and Minnesota. Everywhere. I'm not referring to music particularly, but to the whole beat and sound of each station as it jabbers away to the local rednecks. I listened for three hours one night to a station in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and after a while I had the feeling that I was truly eavesdropping on something I shouldn't have heard.

TV will never have this flavor, since even local stations all over the country rely on net-produced shows and films with only an occasional local newscast, but radio is today more and more the voice of individuals in specific places as network radio dies and the locals come into their own. The old rules of formality have been knocked down and the 250-watters are getting less inhibited by the day. One night I monitored a guy doing a play-by-play broadcast of a softball game somewhere in West Virginia, in W. Va. Patois, sponsored by a furniture dealer who did his own spots and whose daughter played first base for the strong local nine. Only in America.

It is really a gasser to hear what a local news commentator on a Texas station has to say about the Supreme Court and desegregation. He drawls on and on and sounds exactly like twentieth century Texas. He is followed by two guys who play records of people called the Delmore Twins and Granpa Copas. Between discs they hawk plastic Christ statues that glow in the dark in "real-life" color, a pocket Bible with a metal cover guaranteed to protect the heart from bullet wounds and stabbings, a quilt-making kit, plastic ukuleles with instructions "that can be understood even by those who can't read," wallets autographed by Elton Britt, and books for "serious" students of sexology (must be over 21, we trust you). They go on all night in two languages and 150 percent modulation.

Man, dig the folk. They have many sounds and different beats and it isn't hard to pick up on some of this Vox Humana. The one thing it is, if nothing else, is authentic. Most local stations work on such narrow budget margins that they can't risk getting out of touch with the listeners. They rarely rely on jazzy (and largely phoney) polls to find out what is being dug by the citizenry; hence what they dish out is pretty close to the main stream. It is all pretty hairy stuff, rich and ripe, but as American as the "folk" can ever get."

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 10:44 PM

---
Its been nearly half a century since Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were fixtures in New York's burgeoning Greenwich Village folk music scene, and the two performed together during Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous March on Washington. According to Mojo, they will reunite Wednesday at the White House for a celebration of the music of the Civil Rights Movement hosted by President Obama.

---
ob Dylan and Joan Baez will both play Washington later this week almost 50 years after they first sang during the Martin Luther King-led Jobs and Freedom March in 1963.

In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement, is set to take place on Wednesday (February 10) and will see the pair join a bill that already includes Smokey Robinson and John Mellencamp.

Reports that Dylan and Baez will perform together currently remain unconfirmed. The concert will be streamed live via whitehouse.gov.

Of course, the former lovers/musical partners have performed together on several occasions over the years. Here are three of their finest moments:

Dylan plays the March on Washington, 1963 with Joanie

Newport Folk, 1964

Doing "Blowing in the Wind in 1975

---

Together again? Sounds like a gas...

Subject: Old Town School of Folk Music i News
From: Amos
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 08:28 PM

The Old Town School of Folk Music is planning an $18 million expansion across the street from the school at 4543 N. Lincoln Ave. The Old Town School purchased the vacant land to build an additional facility with classrooms, dance studios and a 133-seat performance venue. Groundbreaking is expected later this year after additional fund-raising.

Scott Hargadon, a past board chairman and current board member, told the Sun-Times that the new building would mark a dramatic turning point for the school. "The current main building used to be a library. To have music and dance classrooms built specifically to our needs with soundproofing and sizing would be a tremendous asset for the school," said Hargadon. Its primary home currently serves 7,000 students a week and still turns many students away. The theater seats 400 and held 160 concerts last year. Hargadon said the new performance venue will be a "very flexible performance space for concerts and dance" with removable seats.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 09:25 AM

Discovering Folk Music book release, appearances

Stephanie P. Ledgin

FOLK MUSIC ROCKS IN LATEST BOOK FROM AWARD-WINNING LOCAL AUTHOR

From indigenous music to Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen singing "This Land Is Your Land" side-by-side at the pre-inaugural concert for our first African American president—folk music has been at the center of America's history. International award-winning author Stephanie P. Ledgin, of Alexandria Township, delivers an exciting new overview of folk music--its history, personalities and more--in her latest book, Discovering Folk Music.

Several area book programs and signings have already been scheduled, with additional ones anticipated (noted below). There are a number of local connections in Ledgin's book, including a paragraph about and a photo of the Hunterdon Central Fiddle Club, taken at the main branch of the Hunterdon County Library, and a photo of the Greek youth dancers at the annual Opa! festival in Flemington. Furthermore, there are several Rutgers' notables involved in the book in a variety of roles: JibJab's Gregg Spiridellis ('93), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame president Terry Stewart ('69), former editor of Targum/blacklisted journalist Norm Ledgin ('50), the last person at Rutgers to interview Paul Robeseon ('19), and the author Stephanie P. Ledgin ('74).

Central Jersey.com (US)

Subject: RE: Musical News: Guthries in Alexandria
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 07:22 PM

THIS FRIDAY, EVERYTHING'S coming up Guthrie as the "Guthrie Family Rides Again" onto the Birchmere's stage. Paterfamilias Arlo Guthrie is not only building bridges between the generations; he's forging bonds between his father Woody's (reverent pause) unpublished lyrics and music written by the likes of Wilco, Billy Bragg and the Klezmatics. "Guthrie Family Rides Again" features three generations of Guthries including Arlo's son, Abe; his daughters Cathy, Annie and Sarah Lee; and their kin. Sarah Lee, who recently released a children's folk album called "Go Waggaloo," spoke with Express about the concert.

È EXPRESS: So how many Guthries are going to be onstage at one time?
È GUTHRIE: It's the whole family, 13 of us, plus an honorary family member who's been drumming for my dad since 1975. I mean, there's my brother, two sisters and a lot of kids. We've got an auto harp, a ukulele a 12-year-old on clarinet. It's just the whole bunch of us singing a lot of songs that have recently come out of the archives, thanks to my aunt.

È EXPRESS: There are far too many proficient musicians in your family. This hardly seems fair.
È GUTHRIE: You don't need lessons for folk music! You just play it. When I was a kid, my dad was on the road, and the music I was exposed to was my brother's rock band. And people would get together to play nightly in my house at all times. When I started having kids myself, the same thing happened. My 7-year-old, Olivia, goes on the road with us the whole time. Once, she showed up at a gig because the baby sitter couldn't make it. So we gave her a harmonica.

È EXPRESS: Each generation is carrying the torch lit by Woody, it seems. Is that daunting?
È GUTHRIE: It's an honor to be furthering his legacy. I'm encouraged by it. We've built a pretty good foundation here; we keep building up the house. We realize it's kind of a neat thing that Arlo had a career, made music and had a beautiful time on the road for 40-plus years. And we each developed in our own way. We'll be here when he goes.

È EXPRESS: So it really is something of a family reunion.
È GUTHRIE: This may not happen again. That contributes to the vibe. But the idea of joining the generations and using folk as a means of doing so, that contributed to this show, even my record.

È EXPRESS: How did "Go Waggaloo" come about?
È GUTHRIE: Smithsonian Folkways asked if there could be a kid's folk album that wouldn't make you want to jump out of your minivan. So that was something we wanted to avoid, you know. I mean, I didn't realize this world existed until I made this record.

È Birchmere, 3701 Mt. Vernon Ave., Alexandria; Fri., 7:30 p.m., $55; 703-549-7500.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 12:15 PM

The upcoming River City Ohio Blues Competition will feature acts both familiar and new, coming from near and far.

"We've luckily been able to develop a reputation around the country, really, as one of the best competitions," said Steve Wells, longtime producer and emcee of the event. "One of the things that makes our competition unique is we don't have any geographic restrictions."

While 10 of the bands do hail from Ohio - including Doc Dalton & The Healing, from Caldwell - five more states are represented among the seven other acts performing Friday and Saturday at the Lafayette Hotel on Front Street in Marietta.

Wells said the lack of geographical limitations has occasionally drawn in a band from another area thinking they can easily win the small-town competition and the local Blues, Jazz and Folk Music Society's sponsorship to the International Blues Challenge in Memphis.

"It doesn't exactly work that way," Wells laughed.

The bands will be vetted by a panel of judges that includes Sean Carney, from the Columbus-based Sean Carney Band that won the prestigious Memphis competition in 2008; as well as Dennis McClung, a two-time winner of the local competition; and local musician Jonathan Seymour.

For Travis Weisenborn, singer and guitarist for the three-member Weisenborn Project from Athens, winning would be icing on the cake.

"Really what my goal is is to share my interpretation of modern blues with people," he said. "I think that 'modern blues' encompasses all the different genres that have been included in the blues since the beginning."

Weisenborn said his band - which formed on the campus of Ohio University and includes bass player Tyler Lovell and drummer Jeff Mellott - incorporates aspects of jazz, funk and other blues offshoots and brings them back into the blues fold.

Some people might think of the blues as a downhearted style of music, but Weisenborn said that's only one aspect.

"You can convey all kinds of different messages - happy blues, sad blues, junk blues," he said.

The Weisenborn Project has played in the Pioneer City before at the Marietta Brewing Company and has also performed in Athens, Zanesville, Lancaster, Dover and New Philadelphia. This will be their first competition.

Meanwhile, Gallipolis-based Magic Mama Latte is making its second trip to the local competition.

"It was such a great experience," lead singer Jenny Walker said of the group's appearance in 2009. "We made it to the finals and didn't win, but just being in the competition raised our game."

http://www.mariettatimes.com/page/content.detail/id/519628.html?nav=5005

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 24 Feb 10 - 12:25 PM

MEMPHIS, TENN.-- The future of folk music is in good, young hands.

Many of the more than 1,000 muscians that gathered at the Folk Alliance International conference last week were young, fresh and female and amazingly talented.

The conference is held every year so new and old established performers can impress critics, concert promoters and agents in almost constant, round-the-clock concerts.

The experience leaves promoters with notebooks bulging with tips on acts to bring into their festivals and clubs and fans giddy and exhausted from a five-day folk feast. It's one place where performers not only allow, but encourages photos and videos.

The festival had old pros like John Gorka, Patty Larkin, Jonathan Edwards, James Talley and Archie Fisher jamming with kids half their age. The surprise was the performance by the reclusive Willis Alan Ramsey, who all but disappeared after one amazing, influential album in 1972. His big news was that he is recording his second album.

Acts from previous years have gone on to fame and fortune, which is why artists travel from all over and put on their best.

There are large shows and smaller venues that hold about 50 people. But the fun begins every night at 10:30 p.m. with more than 100 shows held simultaneously in hotel rooms, hallways and stairwells.

Performers get to know audience members by name, talk about intimate.

Jim Blum, disc jockey of the Folk Alley show at WKSU-FM in Kent, looked exhausted.

"We all have to remember to open our schedules to discover someone we've never seen before," he said. "These performers are so refreshing because they are young and optimistic. They have not yet been crushed by the music industry."

The term "folk music" is a loose one. Performers played blues, rock, country, ethnic, bluegrass and world music. Canada was well-represented because that nation paid for dozens of performers to attend to spread the word.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 25 Feb 10 - 10:43 AM

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 25 Feb 10 - 12:19 PM

By CAPE COD TIMES
February 25, 2010

Pick of the Week: Folk music exhibit in Yarmouth

For every gal who refuses to get rid of her macrame handbag and every guy still drooling over Joan Baez, the Cultural Center of Cape Cod's newest exhibit is sure to be a hit. Running Wednesday through March 21, "Forever Young: A Celebration of Folk Music in New England" chronicles folk music in the region through photos and historical memorabilia provided by the New England Folk Music Archives, a group started in March 2009 to celebrate the rich musical history in Boston and surrounding areas.

Images from legendary venue Club 47 and several Newport Folk festivals, as well as those by photographers John Byrne Cooke, Dick Waterman, Melissa Bugg, Walter Petrule and Byron Lord Linardos, will be included. Throughout the monthlong show, Cape musicians including Tripping Lily, Mark Erelli, and Toast and Jam will perform. Through exhibits like this, the archives group hopes to preserve the legacy of the uniquely American sound of musicians such as Baez, Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan, who worked in the genre in the 1960s and brought folk music into the 21st century. On March 20, WCAI personality Naomi Arenberg will discuss music and education at 7 p.m. and will host the "Cape Celebrates Folk" concert at 8. Ticket prices for musical performances vary.

If you go:

What: "Forever Young: A Celebration of Folk Music in New England."

When: Wednesday through March 21

Where: Cultural Center of Cape Cod, 307 Old Main St., South Yarmouth

Admission: cost varies, depending on event

Information: 508-394-7100 or www.cultural-center.org

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 10 - 10:31 PM

From the online WSJ:''

"Airing on PBS stations this month (beginning Saturday) is "Rounder Records' 40th Anniversary Concert," a celebration of the storied and thriving Massachusetts-based independent music label. Artists performing range from bluegrass superstars Alison Krauss and Union Station to New Orleans soul queen Irma Thomas, singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter, rocking actress Minnie Driver, multigenre banjo virtuoso BŽla Fleck and Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas. They're all on the Rounder labelÑin some cases, for decades. (A companion CD with additional performances included is being released Wednesday, and an extended DVD on May 4.)

For the most part, independent record labels come and go, or get swept up into larger music-making conglomerates with new management, often with little institutional memory at all. Remarkably, RounderÑbegun in 1970 with a recording of old-time banjo player George Pegram, and the home last year of the Grammy-winning Album of the Year (Alison Krauss and Robert Plant's "Raising Sand")Ñis still helmed, if with a much larger executive staff, by the same three roots-music aficionados who started up the company with no industry experience whatsoever. The '60s folk-music revival was waning, and the whole range of music that Ken Irwin, Marian Leighton Levy and Bill Nowlin loved was becoming frustratingly hard to find.

In a recent phone interview, Mr. Irwin recalled: "Basically, this was my college roommate and my girlfriend of the time. We started out in the same three-alcove apartment, as a living and working collective, going to festivals to hear all the music together, traveling on that VW bus, seeing Muddy Waters and Bill Monroe and Doc Watson at Club 47 in Cambridge. We didn't even own a tape recorder. We were fans and hobbyists, thinking of the labels we'd known, 'Well, if they're not going to do it, maybe we could make available music that we like and think others would.'

"Early on, especially, we felt it was a mission; we were aware of how much music of the past was around that wasn't available, and how much was being made that needed to be preserved and shared. We would go to NAIRD [the National Association of Independent Record Distributors] with little notebooks and ask people 'Where do you go to get an LP made?' and 'What does it cost?' just trying to learn."

In "The Never-Ending Revival" (University of Illinois Press, 2008), author Michael F. Scully tracks how the firm came to realize that the performers themselves, whether "hippies" or "southern good ol' boys" on the face of it, wanted their music to be heard, to reach wider audiences, to be commercially successful. He described to me, in a separate interview, how the "Rounder Founders" proceeded from there:

"They went on to raise that roots-music flag high. The sheer quantityÑover 3,500 records by nowÑand the quality of their releases demanded attention for it. They made it plain that roots music was not just 'old stuff,' or even old-sounding stuff, but could be vibrant and beautifully recorded, and they put out records by working musicians who were ready to tour in professional shows, rather than just reviving older recordings. Unlike most post-folk-revival roots labels, they were never a one-genre label; they were more like a 50-genre label, and they showed that 'roots music' could be cool stuff. When you do all that, and reach as many people as they have, you start changing the concept of what roots or folk music is in the modern world."...

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 12:55 PM

Artificial Intelligence Brings Musicians Back From the Dead, Allowing All-Stars of All Time to Jam (Click for PopSci story).

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 10 Mar 10 - 11:52 AM

The Folk Music Society of New York, Inc. is proud to announce a day long Festival of Traditional Music at The Renaissance Charter School in Jackson Heights, Queens, NYC on Saturday March 13. The festival will honor Oscar Brand, whose WNYC radio show "Folksong Festival," now in its 65th year, is the world's longest-running radio show with the same host.

The festival features local performers who represent their living ethnic traditions and performers who have become steeped in those traditions. It's ideal for the whole family, and provides a very rare chance to hear such diverse, high quality performers all in a single venue. There will be blues, gospel, old-time string band, songs of love and war, sea shanties, songs by Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and others, as well as plenty of opportunities for singing and jamming throughout the day.

11 a.m. - 12 noon: Free family concert,. Bring the kids.
12:30 - 5:30 p.m: Workshops, mini-concerts, open mike, singarounds, jamming
7:30 p.m. - 10 p.m.: Evening Concert featuring: Joyful Noise, Norris Bennett, Bobby Kyle Band, and Rafael Gomez

Tickets are $15 for the whole day or $10 for either the afternoon or evening individually. Children (accompanied by an adult): 13-18 are $5 all day; 12 and under are free. (There are no tickets required for the free family concert.) More information is at www.folkmusicny.org or by calling 718-672-6399. Tickets are available at the door or online at www.brownpapertickets/event/98896. The festival is at The Renaissance Charter School, 35-59 81st Street (at the corner of 37th Avenue), in Jackson Heights, Queens, 2 blocks from the 82nd Street Station of the #7 Line.

Oscar Brand is a much loved and respected folksinger, writer, and interpreter. Over the course of his 65-plus-year career he has released 93 albums. He roamed the country with Woody Guthrie, concertized with Leadbelly, and promoted folksingers of all kinds, such as Pete Seeger. Oscar has hosted the Folk Song Festival on New York's WNYC ever since its first show on December 9, 1945.

This event is co-sponsored by The Renaissance Charter School and has been produced with a generous grant from State Assemblyman Jose Peralta.

Visit the website: www.folkmusicny.org/NYNY

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 02:40 PM

Chicago fixes to memorialize Steve Goodman, who wrote "City of New Orleans", "You Never Even Call Me By My Name", and "Go, Cubs, Go!":


According to the Tribune today, "Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., introduced the measure to have the Lakeview post office, 1343 W. Irving Park Road, renamed for Goodman. The lawmaker said the bill is supported by the entire Illinois congressional delegation, the Old Town School of Folk Music and musicians including John Prine, Bonnie Koloc and Corky Siegel."

Word is if everything moves along there would be renaming ceremony in a few months.

Quoting the Trib, a post office works because, "James Bau Graves, executive director of the Old Town School of Folk Music, judged it 'entirely fitting' since the business of everyday life inspired much of Goodman's work."

Works for me. I didn't know much about Steve's music until that magical summer of '84 when I found out he was sick, then I learned what a legend he really was in the music business. Goodman died only a few days before his beloved Cubs clinched in Pittsburgh that year.

Later this summer, I'll post some fun about "Go Cubs Go" and how Steve roped Jimmy Buffett into being a Cub fan, but I'll keep it to one story today.

My personal favorite of Goodman's Cubs songs is "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request". There is a line in there where the dying fan is laying out his funeral wishes and says, "have Keith Moreland drop a routine fly in right". I asked Keith about it and he was proud to be part of the song.

"Steve Goodman was ill and I was in the clubhouse was day and the phone rang," said Moreland. "Usually there are no phone calls in the clubhouse. Yosh Kawano, our longtime clubhouse man, called me and said, "Keith, there's a call for you." I said we didn't take calls there, but he told me it was Steve Goodman. Yosh knew who Steve was. I did, too, because I'm a country music fan and I had listened to a lot of music he had written. Steve said, 'Hello Keith. I'm Steve Goodman and I'm a songwriter,' and I told him, 'Steve, I know who you are.' He said that was great and told me he had written a song that mentioned my name and wanted to know if he could play if for me. I said sure and he strummed it and there was the line about come to Wrigley Field and watch Keith Moreland drop a fly ball. He said, "Would that be all right?" I told him absolutely yes, that it wouldn't bother me, because I had dropped my share of fly balls, the same as any player who goes out there and I always tried my hardest to catch everything. It's a great song, Steve was a great guy, and it doesn't bother me in the least."

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 09:15 PM

Smithsonian Folkways: Carrying Their Corner

They do that and a lot more- consider their upcoming release, a three CD/DVD set that makes up Volumes 7, 8, and 9 of the unprecedented, comprehensive and GRAMMY-nominated ÒMusic of Central AsiaÓ series.

The series includes traditional music from former Soviet republics and Afghanistan. The Aga Khan Music Initiative, co-producers of the series, is funding music schools and recordings to keep the traditions alive.Ê Volume 7 features new recordings of classic poems set to music by master musicians from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Volume 8 features cross-cultural, cross-discipline, and cross-continent collaborations between chamber music pioneers Kronos Quartet. Afghani composter and rubab master Homayun Sakhi and Azerbaijani group Alim Qasimov Ensemble. Volume 9 highlights a brilliant collaboration between five instrumentalists demonstrating the musical legacy of the Mughal Empire founded five centuries ago by Emperor Babur.

Here's the cool thing- you can listen to the set in it's entirety at the Smithsonian website.Ê Please support this great institution- Folkways continues to "pick it up and carry it on"

Marti Jones & Don Dixon: Dueting

Subject: Banjo Renaissance?
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 01:42 PM

A banjo renaissance?

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 24 Mar 10 - 03:36 PM

"The spirit of an open-hearted, old-fashioned family reunion is being summoned to life for this year's 51st edition of George Wein's Newport Folk Festival®, which begins July 30 at the International Tennis Hall of Fame at Newport Casino and continues July 31 and August 1 at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island.

Tickets go on sale worldwide on Friday, March 26, at 10 a.m. at www.newportfolkfest.net.

George Wein's New Festival Productions continues to build on the festival's historic past by featuring emerging young artists alongside some of folk music's most venerable names. This year's festival features Levon Helm's Ramble on the Road, John Prine, Steve Martin & Steep Canyon Rangers, Yim Yames (of My Morning Jacket), The Swell Season, Andrew Bird, The Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile, Doc Watson & David Holt, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Calexico, Blitzen Trapper, Richie Havens, Sam Bush, The Low Anthem, Tim O'Brien, The Felice Brothers, Justin Townes Earle, Tao Seeger Band, AA Bondy, Chris Thile's Punch Brothers, Dawes, Nneka, Horse Feathers, Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three , Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore, Sarah Jarosz, Cory Chisel & the Wandering Sons, O'Death and Liz Longley. More artists will be announced at a later date.

Many of these musicians have performed and recorded together or crossed paths along the musical highway and they see this storied festival as being so steeped in cultural and historic importance that they liken it to "coming home" to the very roots of the folk-music tradition.

Wein has, since 1959, found Newport a scenic and hospitable venue for presenting the very best of this country's blues, roots, gospel, country, bluegrass, Cajun and traditional folk music. Last year's 50th anniversary edition paid tribute to the great performers who wrote the proud history of this festival, notably co-founder Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Arlo Guthrie and Mavis Staples.

"Newport is like a second home to me and I always look forward to the next visit," said Wein. "After celebrating the 50th anniversary with Pete and 17,000 fans, I can't wait to see the magic unfold over the three days."

"There is something so perfect about being in Newport near the water and that old stone fort – all gathered in to sing with family and friends – that keeps me wanting to come back year after year," said Yim Yames. "It's like the walls of the fort are arms, and I feel secure when I am near them, protected by the spirits there – past, present, and future. And, I like to hear our voices bouncing off those old stone walls as my eye drifts to the sailboats on the seashore and the people just smiling and taking it all in."

All tickets for George Wein's Newport Folk Festival go on sale Friday, March 26, at 10:00 a.m. online, by phone and by mail. General admission tickets (single-day passes only) also can be purchased in person at the Newport Visitor Information Center, located at 23 America's Cup Avenue."

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 02:22 PM

Richard THompson talks about folk music.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 02:13 PM

PEGGY SEEGER FAREWELL BOSTON CONCERT Tomorrow night at 7:30 at International Community Church, 557 Cambridge St., Allston. Katie McD opens. Tickets $20 at 617-265-9200.

Asked how she would describe her long, rich, and profoundly important career, Peggy Seeger is stumped. "Whoo,'' she says, and "Oh, my.'' Then the 74-year-old folk singer answers slowly, intimately.
        


"First of all,'' says Seeger, who is returning to Britain after living in Boston for four years, "I take utter and complete pleasure in singing the songs. One of the nicest things about folk songs is that I can sing them by myself, wherever I am. And the words and music are so completely physically satisfying to me that you just want to share that. Essentially what you're trying to do is wedge these songs into other people's heads, the way they're wedged into yours.''

Peggy Seeger, song-wedger. It is revealing that she presents herself this simply, and not as the musical revolutionary she is.

Seeger, who gives a farewell concert tomorrow night at International Community Church in Allston, began her career in the early 1950s, when female musicians were still expected to perform in chiffon gowns, singing daintily while the menfolk played the instruments. But she was a multi-instrumentalist, accompanying herself on guitar, banjo, dulcimer, autoharp, piano, and concertina. And her haunting, silk-and-steel voice was anything but dainty.

She played a pivotal role in launching folk revivals in the United States and Britain; helped popularize Appalachian folk music; wrote folk ballads so organic, like "The Ballad of Spring Hill,'' that many believe they're traditional, and political songs that are sung on picket lines and at protest rallies. In one of musical history's sweetest serendipities, she is both the author of the song that helped launch the feminist movement, "Gonna Be an Engineer,'' and the subject of Ewan MacColl's adoring love song, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.''

She was certainly to the folk manner born, raised in the Seeger family with musician brother Mike and famous stepbrother Pete. Her parents were ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford Seeger, an acclaimed modernist composer who wrote brilliantly simple transcriptions for seminal folk songbooks by John and Alan Lomax, B.A. Botkin, Carl Sandburg, and her own children's books.

"I just osmosed folk music,'' Seeger says with a laugh. "It was sponged onto me as a child. There were no radios or televisions in our home, but you could always hear music. My mother taught piano, so there was always someone playing in the daytime. And in the evenings, there was lots of piano playing or singing, and people visiting, like Woody [Guthrie] and Lead Belly [Ledbetter].''

After two years at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Seeger rambled through Europe. Folklorist Alan Lomax was trying to create a British version of the Weavers, Pete Seeger's hugely successful folk group, and asked her to join. The band bombed, but introduced her to MacColl, the British folk lion...

(More at Boston.com news site)

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 23 Apr 10 - 09:18 AM

Chicago:

Anniversaries clocking in at 25 years traditionally require gifts of silver. The Plank Road Folk Music Society isn't asking for any silver tea sets, platters or fine, delicate necklaces for its 25th anniversary celebration. All the music enthusiasts ask is that you attend the 25th Anniversary Party. And who can resist a party, especially when there's music involved? The daylong event kicks off with a few hours of jamming and sing-arounds; then there's a break for dinner and the night concludes with a concert by Mark Dvorak, above. Fans of folk and bluegrass music shouldn't miss this soiree. 2 to 9 p.m. Saturday, First Church of Lombard, 220 S. Main St., Lombard; free for PRFMS members, $10 for nonmembers; 630-325-7764 or plankroad.org

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 04:45 PM

One of these is Johnnie Mac, a 40-year-old Australian singer-songwriter who, after some initial success playing with bands in Sydney in the late 1980s, decided to take his act to the streets of Europe. ("What are you doing that for?" he said his family asked him. "Are you mad?") For years, he roamed the Continent, exploring the newly opening east and making it as far as Siberia and Mongolia.

Today, after decades of busking, he's back in Australia, where he runs BuskerWorld.com, a Web site that offers advice to street performers of all types (and also sells his $47 eBook, "The Busker's Bible").

(Article in the NYT here)

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 01 May 10 - 03:42 PM

Susan Reed, a singer and harpist-zitherist who was a star of the post- World War II folk music scene, died Sunday. She was 84.

Reed died of natural causes at a nursing home in Greenport, N.Y., said publicist Dale Olson.

By age 19, Reed was such a regular on New York's small stages that Life magazine called her "the pet of Manhattan nightclubbers" in 1945.

Part of a new wave of folk-based performers, she often sang such traditional fare as "Danny Boy" and "He Moved Through the Fair."

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Her favorite instrument in the mid-1940s was a green and gold Irish harp, she told Life. Reed became known for her work on it and a battered zither she often favored.

With a repertoire that embraced Irish ballads, she appeared on radio and television and toured the country. One stop was the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, where her balladry "captivated," The Times reported in 1952.

One collaborator was poet-singer Carl Sandburg, a family friend who helped introduce Reed to folk music.

She released several albums, recording such folk classics as "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" and "Greensleeves."

Along with a number of other folk music performers, Reed was blacklisted in the late 1950s for having "the temerity ... to actually stand for something," according to the All Music online database, and she largely faded from the limelight.

Born Jan. 11, 1926, in Columbia, S.C., she was the daughter of Daniel Reed, an actor and playwright, and Isadora Bennett, a press representative for dance pioneer Martha Graham.

Growing up, Reed was introduced to Irish folk music by members of Dublin's Abbey Theatre Company, who stayed with her family when they came to the United States.

When she was 22, she appeared in her only feature film, 1948's "Glamour Girl," as a backwoods folk singer who comes to the big city to perform.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 14 May 10 - 11:24 AM

Danbury, CT:

Peter Yarrow has made his voice a vehicle -- to spread the sounds of folk music, to protest the war in Vietnam, and to encourage kids to be kind. And the words of the most familiar songs he's written, and of those he's performed with Peter, Paul and Mary, are etched in hearts around the world.

Yarrow brings his songs and guitar to Newtown May 22 as a guest at the season finale of the Flagpole Radio Cafe at Edmond Town Hall Theatre.

"Singing is an experience in openness and vulnerability -- vulnerability in a positive sense,'' Yarrow said in a phone interview recently. "If we're not closed down, if there are no walls, it's very meaningful."

Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey, and the late Mary Travers began their collaboration in New York City's Greenwich Village in the 1960s. Much of their repertoire addressed the country's most pressing social issues. They performed at some of the crucial moments in the country's history, like Dr. Martin Luther King's March on Washington and national war protests.

"It was an extraordinary time of dedication and community and tenacity," said Yarrow, of the anti-war and social rallies in which the trio joined. "We were fueled by a level of energy that was pretty astonishing. For some of us, it's really never abated.''


(Local web news)

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 25 May 10 - 06:48 PM

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. (AP) Ñ On a Friday night 50 years ago this week, folk singer Jackie Washington stepped up to the tiny stage of Bill and Lena Spencer's new coffeehouse.
He was Caffe Lena's first performer, and thousands of singers and countless songs later, the coffeehouse started by the artsy couple from Boston is a folk music icon. On May 22, a half century plus a couple days since it opened, the 85-seat venue Ñ considered the oldest continuously operating coffeehouse in the United States Ñ will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a concert by Arlo Guthrie, who has described Caffe Lena as "a national treasure."

Guthrie, whose hits include "Alice's Restaurant" and "City of New Orleans," played at Lena's early in his career and at a few fundraisers held for the coffeehouse over the years. He's headlining the anniversary concert being staged at a 550-seat theater at Skidmore College, located in this horse racing and resort town 30 miles north of Albany.
Mark Moss, editor of Sing Out!, the 60-year-old folk music magazine, called Caffe Lena "almost indescribably significant" to the folk music scene, then and now.
"The core of this music really is about community," he said. "Caffe Lena has created and sustained a community around it."

The venerable coffeehouse is located on the second floor of an old building set amid a bustling downtown entertainment district lined with bistros, bars and boutiques. The entrance, tucked between a restaurant and a comic book store, leads to a narrow, well-worn wooden staircase. At the top, the L-shaped room is jammed with small tables, with a kitchen in the back where coffee, tea and desserts are prepared.

...(AP)

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 30 May 10 - 09:54 AM

Best Bet: Hinton is gone, but festival to go on in Poway
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POWAY ---- Although San Diego folk music pioneer Sam Hinton passed away last fall, his legacy lives on next weekend with the return of the annual Sam Hinton Folk Heritage Festival to Old Poway Park.

Hinton spent 56 of his 92 years in La Jolla (where he was a biology professor at UC San Diego), and during his long, productive career he recorded a dozen solo albums (some 200 songs) of American folk songs and instrumental pieces. Following the death of his wife in 2005, Hinton moved to Northern California (where he died last September), but his influence on the local music scene was so important that the San Diego Folk Heritage organization renamed its annual folk festival in Hinton's honor in the mid-2000s.
"It's difficult to overestimate the impact that Sam had on music in San Diego," Dick Jay, chairman of San Diego Folk Heritage, said following Hinton's death last fall. "He founded the San Diego Folk Song Society more than 50 years ago, and it's still going strong. The musical programs that he presented at area schools for dozens of years gave kids an appreciation for traditional music. And he was a mainstay of the San Diego Folk Heritage festivals, so much so that we named our annual event for him."

As a special feature of this year's festival, event host Ken Graydon will perform a tribute to Hinton at 12:30 p.m.

This year's festival, running from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. June 5 will feature live music on the main stage at the park's outdoor Tanya Rose stage. Local folk singer Ken Graydon will emcee the show and perform the opening and Hinton tribute set, with eight other performers presenting 30-minute sets all day.

Also throughout the day, Allen Singer and Dane Terry will lead workshops on "finding your inner guitar" and harmonica-playing. A contra dance will take place from 1 to 3 p.m. in Templar's Hall with live music by Ranting Banshee. And in the Porter House, the Storytellers of San Diego will perform tales for all ages throughout the day, including American Indian tales, train stories, historical tales and stories from south of the border.
For those who want to continue the celebration, there is a $10 evening program at 7 p.m. in Templars Hall where the Storytellers group will perform spooky tales for grown-ups.
Old Poway Park is at 14134 Midland Road in Poway. All festival events except the evening storyteller program are free. Call 858-566-4040 or visit sdfolkheritage.org.

Subject: On Music and the Mind
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jun 10 - 12:18 PM

A scientist explores the connections between minds and music, something every folksinger knows a great deal about.


A

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 07:03 PM

YEEEHAW!!! Telluride Bluegrass Festival makes you tap your feet and shake your booty!

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jun 10 - 09:10 AM

Croton-on-Hudson Ñ Even though they were hot and sweaty, festivalgoers rose in the near 90-degree heat to give folk singer/activist Pete Seeger a standing ovation Saturday at Clearwater's 41st annual Great Hudson River Revival.

People drove, took the train or were shuttled in by bus to attend the world's largest environmental festival, formed by Seeger, which featured an activist area, marketplace, workshops, demonstrations and, of course, music. People came to the fest to support its cause, but anyone in the crowd will tell you what they really came to hear was Seeger.

Seeger walked onto the Rainbow Stage at 11 a.m. with The Power of Song, a group of 10 young adults between the ages of 16 and 22, and opened with a song from the Broadway musical "Rent."

"He still has it," said Polly Whiterhorn, 58, of Great Neck. "I've been a fan of Pete's almost my entire life. Folk music is in my blood, and he's such a force in folk music."

A few songs later, Seeger performed a rousing rendition of Lorre Wyatt's and Jimmy Reed's "Sailing Up, Sailing Down," which got the crowd back up on its feet, with many taking pictures.

Later, he left the stage and headed over to the Circle of Song tent, near the working waterfront, where he enjoyed listening to other singers and songwriters perform and joined in with the crowd.

Many festivalgoers took brief sails on the sloops Clearwater and Mystic Whaler, while others kayaked.

People on all kinds of boats listened to the music from the river, while farther down the beach, some enjoyed a swim near their campsites.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 05:29 PM

ssociated Press - June 23, 2010 12:14 PM ET

STURGIS, S.D. (AP) - Folk music icon Bob Dylan will perform at this year's Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.

Buffalo Chip Campground owner Rod Woodruff says Dylan is scheduled to perform on Aug. 10.

It will be the first concert at Sturgis for the 69-year-old Dylan. Woodruff says Dylan has been a huge influence on modern music and that it's an honor to have him on stage at Sturgis.

Dylan is a Minnesota native who got his start in Twin Cities coffeehouses. He later moved to New York and became part of the burgeoning folk scene. After a New York Times music critic praised his act, Columbia Records signed him to a recording contract.

Other acts scheduled at the 70th annual Sturgis rally include Ozzy Osbourne, Kid Rock, Motley Crue, Buckcherry and ZZ Top.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 02:36 PM

Deseret News, Salt Lake:

"Folk-music legend Baez amazed at her own longevity
By Scott Iwasaki
Deseret News
Published: Sunday, July 4, 2010 3:00 p.m. MDT


The Grammy Award-winning Joan Baez emerged from the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, after playing coffee houses at Cambridge, to become a folk-music legend and a political activist icon.

Baez will make a stop in Salt Lake City and play at Red Butte Garden on July 7.

Baez is amazed at how long she's been working.

"When you start out you don't think about the future, unless you are a planner-aheader," Baez said during a phone call from her home in Woodside, Calif. "I never thought about it. And if I had, I'm sure I wouldn't have thought I'd be around this long singing."

Last year, PBS's "American Masters" aired "How Sweet the Sound," the first official Joan Baez documentary, which is available in a DVD/CD package from Razor & Tie.

Baez said she was surprised at all the early coffee-house footage of the documentary.

"It was astounding that somebody was around with a camera," Baez said. "I don't remember filming the stuff in the coffeehouse in Cambridge.

"Some woman had that footage in her freezer," Baez said. "When they were researching and found half of (the footage), someone said 'There was a woman who worked with us. She might have something.'

"And she did," Baez said. "And it was pristine."

Story continues below

The documentary explores Baez's interest in activism, which she says has become more focused in the past decades.

"I started attending to my family more," she said. "(This) is something I didn't do too much of in the '60s and '70s. Now I have a 97-year-old mom and 6-year-old grandchild."

Baez said connecting with her family is more important to her than any political cause at the moment.

"I think it's important to let people know that," she said. "These are the things that interests me. Various causes, yes, because they are foundation of my beliefs and they never changed. I'm sure I will support more causes in the future, but I'm not searching for one right now.

"Because I know what kind of sacrifice it will be, and if am I willing to make that sacrifice," she said. "Before I just did it."

When Baez decides to tour, she feels a responsibility to make her live shows enjoyable.

"We try to do an evening of (audience) expectations and my own expectations," she said. "The point of the evening is always keeping the choices fresh. Whether I've been doing the songs for 50 years, or whether the songs are brand new and people haven't heard them before, they have to be fresh sounding or people will not be interested.

"If we can make an evening when no one looks at their watch, then that's how we're going to judge it."

Also, Baez said she feels more relaxed on stage these days.

"Something I never felt when I was younger, is the pleasure of going out there and singing," she said. "For many years I didn't have that pleasure. I had too much stage fright, I had too much responsibility. I was trying to save the world and wasn't enjoying walking out on stage."

Stage fright?

"When I was younger it ruled my life," Baez said. "It was pretty extreme. And now it's not there at all."

If you go

What: Joan Baez and Guy Clark

Where: Red Butte Garden Amphitheater, 300 Wakara Way

When: July 7, 7 p.m.

How much: $32-$37

Phone: [phone]

Web: www.redbuttegarden.org
"

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jul 10 - 08:09 PM

Taking music seriously: How music training primes nervous system and boosts learning
July 20, 2010 (Phys.Org)

Those ubiquitous wires connecting listeners to you-name-the-sounds from invisible MP3 players -- whether of Bach, Miles Davis or, more likely today, Lady Gaga -- only hint at music's effect on the soul throughout the ages.

Now a data-driven review by Northwestern University researchers that will be published July 20 in Nature Reviews Neuroscience pulls together converging research from the scientific literature linking musical training to learning that spills over to skills including language, speech, memory, attention and even vocal emotion. The science covered comes from labs all over the world, from scientists of varying scientific philosophies, using a wide range of research methods.

The explosion of research in recent years focusing on the effects of music training on the nervous system, including the studies in the review, have strong implications for education, said Nina Kraus, lead author of the Nature perspective, the Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology and director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory.

Scientists use the term neuroplasticity to describe the brain's ability to adapt and change as a result of training and experience over the course of a person's life. The studies covered in the Northwestern review offer a model of neuroplasticity, Kraus said. The research strongly suggests that the neural connections made during musical training also prime the brain for other aspects of human communication.

An active engagement with musical sounds not only enhances neuroplasticity, she said, but also enables the nervous system to provide the stable scaffolding of meaningful patterns so important to learning.

Click for full story.

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jul 10 - 05:57 PM

In a wonderfully strange episode of Theme Time Radio Hour , Bob Dylan recited Whitman's "I Hear America Singing":.

Sheer wow.



A

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 01 Aug 10 - 03:11 PM

Tao Seeger performs at Newport 2010. Click for story.

Good to see the next generation taking up the torch!


A

Subject: RE: Musical News: Old Town School Expands
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 09:27 AM

August 5, 2010 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music broke ground Thursday on a new $18 million facility.

Musicians joined local politicians and Old Town School officials at the new site Thursday morning. It's located right across the street from its current campus in the 4500-block of North Lincoln.

The new building will add 27,000 square feet to the school, creating its third facility in Chicago.

The expansion is expected to add 250 new jobs at the school and in the Lincoln Square neighborhood.


(Copyright ©2010 WLS-TV/DT)

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 17 Aug 10 - 01:03 PM

"For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of "the Savory Collection." Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an audio engineer named William Savory, it was known to include extended live performances by some of the most honored names in jazz — but only a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that music, adding to its mystique.

After 70 years that wait has now ended. This year the National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquired the entire set of nearly 1,000 discs, made at the height of the swing era, and has begun digitizing recordings of inspired performances by Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan, Harry James and others that had been thought to be lost forever. Some of these remarkable long-form performances simply could not fit on the standard discs of the time, forcing Mr. Savory to find alternatives. The Savory Collection also contains examples of underappreciated musicians playing at peak creative levels not heard anywhere else, putting them in a new light for music fans and scholars.

"Some of us were aware Savory had recorded all this stuff, and we were really waiting with bated breath to see what would be there," said Dan Morgenstern, the Grammy-winning jazz historian and critic who is also director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. "Even though I've heard only a small sampling, it's turning out to be the treasure trove we had hoped it would be, with some truly wonderful, remarkable sessions. None of what I've heard has been heard before. It's all new."

After making the recordings, Mr. Savory, who had an eccentric, secretive streak, zealously guarded access to his collection, allowing only a few select tracks by his friend Benny Goodman to be released commercially. When he died in 2004, Eugene Desavouret, a son who lives in Illinois, salvaged the discs, which were moldering in crates; this year he sold the collection to the museum, whose executive director, Loren Schoenberg, transported the boxes to New York City in a rental truck. ..."

New York Times

Subject: RE: Musical News:Marbelhead's Me&Thee
From: Amos
Date: 19 Aug 10 - 04:04 PM

"Every September there's a new blast of musical energy and excitement on Mugford Street in Marblehead. (Massachusetts, U.S.)

The Me & Thee Coffeehouse, which has offered the best in national and international acoustic music since 1970, begins yet another spectacular season on Sept. 17.

Opening night brings a performance by the much acclaimed Cambridge band, Session Americana (left). This band recently played the Marblehead Festival of the Arts and graced the Me & Thee stage last fall as well. This group of six talented musicians is often referred to as a "roots supergroup."


An additional show on September 24 will feature Grammy Award winner, Tim O'Brien. The uncanny intersection of traditional and contemporary elements in O'Brien's songwriting, his tireless dedication to a vast and still-expanding array of instruments, and his ongoing commitment to place himself in as many unique and challenging musical scenarios as possible has made him a key figure in today's thriving roots music scene. Tickets are $16 in advance or $18 at the door.

On October 1, the Me & Thee is proud to present Garnet Rogers. Rogers enthralls his audiences with his virtuoso guitar playing and entertains with witty stories in between songs.

October 8 brings Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion to the coffeehouse. Their folk-rock music has been described as authentic, timeless and harmonious. The musical richness and psychological depth of their initial collaboration, the fittingly titled Exploration, is irrefutable proof that the duo bring out the best in each other.

Jill Sobule makes her Me & Thee debut on October 15. Sobule rose to fame on the strength of her 1995 hit single, "I Kissed a Girl."


..."

Boston Globe

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 05:52 PM

Jac Holzman remembers the day Bob went electric and says some intelligent things about it.


A

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 10:24 AM

A review of a bio of Bob Dylan which is an amusing read in itelf.


A

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 09 Sep 10 - 09:19 AM

Interview with Rambling Jack Elliott.


A

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 09 Sep 10 - 02:29 PM

Excerpt from the book "Bob Dylan in America" in the NYT.


A

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 03:19 PM

Cape Cod:

HARWICH — A rarely used and little-known wooded hollow just steps away from the heart of Brooks Park will soon be filled for two days with folk music as part of the Harwich Cranberry Festival.

The music will feature up to 20 performers, including the locally popular Parkington Sisters, the Ticks, Randy and the Oak Trees, Squidda, the Flakes, Katie Flynn, and Cape Cod bluesman George Grizbach.

The first day of music, on Saturday, Sept. 18, is called Cranberry Jam.

Sponsored by radio station WOMR (Outer Most Radio, 92.1 FM), the event celebrates the construction of its new radio repeater antenna in Brewster, which will be known as WFMR (Further Most Radio, 91.3 FM).

On Sunday, Sept. 19, a second day of performances, organized by Cranberry festival staff, will feature established as well as up and coming local performers. (The music events are just one piece of the Harwich Cranberry Festival. Turn to Page 2 for details.)

The hollow, a dried ancient lakebed, is part of Brooks Park.

While it is town owned, it has been used very little for recent public events and is mostly filled with mature trees. A public works cleanup of the overgrown brush in the heart of the basin was performed to open up a performing space, roughly 175 yards long by 75 yards wide.

This natural amphitheatre is considered an excellent space for a musical event because of the way sound is cradled by the sloping basin.

"When I first went down, I thought this was really excellent place to have an event," said John Nelson, station manager at WOMR, which organizes similar events across the Outer Cape, including one called Boogie By the Bay in Wellfleet. "Acoustically, it will be quite unique."

Nelson said the Cranberry Jam on Saturday includes six performers, spanning from noon to about 8:30 p.m.

"We'll be adding about 80,000 possible listeners (with the new repeater) to our (radio) programming and this is very exciting," he said, explaining that the repeater cost almost $100,000 to install. "It has been about 10 years since the project began."

Cranberry Festival organizers Ed McManus and John Bangert noted that the creation of the folk festival signals a shift in emphasis to highlight musical abilities in the community and move away from the traditional emphasis on a fall carnival, which for years had been held each September at the high school fairgrounds.

McManus explained that his vision for the new folk concert is "to give a new start to the Cranberry Festival for the community, something that can be built on in the future and done in a way that involves Harwich and Cape Cod rather than importing people from around the country."

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 18 Sep 10 - 03:04 PM

This track had me in tears of joy; it captures the very best of the higher angels of Mudcat and of humanity.

The creator's have a website called Playing for Change--Connecting the World Through Music. New chapters in this amazing work are posted there.

A

Subject: RE: Occasional Musical News
From: Amos
Date: 24 Sep 10 - 01:19 PM

Folk Music, as Close to Nature as It Gets (Click for whole article)

By REYHAN HARMANCI
Published: September 23, 2010

When Britt Govea, a marketing manager at a TV station in Monterey and a record buff, started taking hikes around the California coast, he never imagined that he could get his musical heroes to play in tiny venues nestled in tall redwoods. But on an epic outing in Big Sur in 2004 while walking around the forest with his headphones on, he had a revelation.

."I thought, Wouldn't this be the best place ever to hear music?" Mr. Govea said.
...