Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 06 - 04:41 PM

Patrick to work these places is a specialised job. the majority of folk musicians would just be another noise like the radio.

The demand for people who can do the job is simply enormous - your phone never stops ringing. If you send a friend who is a folk musician - usually they phone up to complain - don't send that idiot again. the work is hard physically - it involves forming some kind of a relationship with everybody in a long and often odd shaped room, and knowing how to set up a PA that allows you to literally dive around the room without it feeding back - the equipment you need runs in to well over a thousand pounds and wears our regularly.

Most people can't be arsed with them. And I from what you say - you seem to be another such who can't be bothered with them enough to find out the realities of the situation. there is no career path - it leads nowhere - except to the next residential home. the pay is small. You make a profit by working a lot.

Speak not of something which you know obviously nothing. Its bloody offensive. And if I may say so - so bloody typical of the arrogance which permeates the folk establishment.

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: Maryrrf
Date: 21 Sep 06 - 04:49 PM

That is a good point. You wouldn't be singing Child ballads and such at these places - it has to be crowd pleasers and singalongs tailored to the audience.

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: GUEST,Mike Miller
Date: 21 Sep 06 - 04:57 PM

Honest to Betsy, weelittle, it's not so bad as all that. While nursing homes are not the most lucrative of venues (typically in the $85- $150 range), the shows are not the trials you make them out to be. Some audiences are more responsive than others but, as I have learned, an inability to applaud does not mean an inability to enjoy and appreciate. Besides, senior doesn't have to mean senile. I play at many retirement communities where the audience is older, to be sure, but as alert and open as any folk audience I have seen.
It is true I do other kinds of venues but, when I am available, I am glad sing for the altes. Hell, I'm one of them.

               Mike

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 21 Sep 06 - 05:18 PM

Right on, Mike.
My wife and i did a seniors' home 2 weeks ago. We played a lot of jigs, reels and waltzes instrumentally (hammered dulcimer, mandolin, guitar, mouth harp and banjo), but also did songs like Tennessee Waltz, My Buddy, Let The Rest Of The World Go By as well as some more contemporary stuff and homemade songs. I even snuck in some Guy Clark, Todd Snider, Hayes Carll, Townes Van Zandt and Bob Snider songs. Sittin' In The Kitchen and even Too Late To Die Young Now went over very well. For anyone who knows it, I substituted "an awful lot of other stuff that I forgot" for "And bags of pot and other stuff that I forgot". We even managed to do almost all the requests. It helps that I'm 62 and she's 53, so we're not that far from the "home" ourselves.

We're doing a kids show at the public library next week. I like to think I'm not that far from childhood not to be able to identify with the kids. They'll even get some of the same tunes as the old folks.

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 06 - 05:41 PM

Guy Clark.....baby you just don't know when you're being ignored. Because god knows you're ignoring their tastes. The reaction to an artist who has actually bothered to find out what is required takes the top of your head off. they are BRILLIANT audiences - that and only that, keeps you content to do a quite poorly paid job.

people don't tend to be in these places if they know the words to LA Freeway. Either their body or their mind has gone walkabout. Its not about age - you can get Alzheimers sufferers in their 40's.

When the mind retreats it tends to take very well worn pathways - its your job as an entertainer to find what they do remember - actually the lacunae of memory is often surprisingly detailed. For this you need a vast, almost encyclopeadic knowlege of popular music   You find people who remember every song Jolson sang, all the words to sinatra's hits, every darn song their grandparents taught them - with verses YOU didn't know about. Like I say that's the job - if its done properly.

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 06 - 05:53 PM

that is the buzzz! with that kinid of work, not showing off that you know Guy Clark's latest album, or all 97 verses of The Siege of Delhi - its reminding THEM that they know stuff - that their vessel is not empty, that they did acquire stuff on their journey through life - buried treasure that the young nursing assistants know nothing about!

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: Bert
Date: 21 Sep 06 - 05:55 PM

Thanks for starting this thread Mike. I have read it all and with all that good advice, I might just give it a try myself.

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: GUEST,Mike Miller
Date: 21 Sep 06 - 07:52 PM

Go for it, Bert. You, too, Jim.
We should, really, start talking about other venues for folksingers. Museums are fertile ground, so are libraries. If you can handle it, day care centers use folksingers on a regular basis. A friend of mine started doing pre-school programs and found his week full with steady clients. I would have done some, myself, but I have a little trouble getting down on the floor for certain songs. Tempis fugit.
Touching on nursing homes again, another friend has established a regular route of monthly and bi-weekly dates and we're not talking RT, here.

                   Mike

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: GUEST,Patrick Costello
Date: 22 Sep 06 - 07:05 AM

> Patrick to work these places is a specialised job.

Uh . . . guys and gals, I didn't just fall off the turnip truck yesterday. I have made a lot of music in nursing homes, libraries, schools and things like that over the years.

I just didn't ask for anything for it.

It's not a job - and if you "get" folk music there isn't anything specialized about any of it because a honking big part of being a folksinger revolves around the ability to find a musical connection with people. A genuine 'folk singer' has to be able to do a hell of a lot more than wank out a few songs. You've got to be able to play everything from Child ballads to Tin Pan Alley, Peter Paul & Mary to the Sex Pistols - and on top of that you have to be able to improvise stuff that you never heard before.

The "trick" to being able to do that - to use music as a way to communicate with people, to reach people, through cultural and even language barriers - is that you have to avoid the whole performance angle and get into your community. As Woody Guthrie once wrote, "Inject yourself into the bloodstream of the people."

Playing background music at a convention or a restaurant is a waste of time. The job won't pay that well, the audience won't care about you and you end up slithering around on your belly like a reptile, kissing ass and marketing yourself to a point where you lose sight of what brought you to music in the first place.

Folk music is not about performing. It's about interacting. You can't interact from the stage because from the get-go you have this separation between the musician and the audience. The message is to sit quietly and watch. Sure, you can do the occasional sing-along - but the bulk of any performance is going to have the audience watching passively.

As I have said before, you can make a living (I do) - but you have to look at it from a different perspective than the modern, commercial music, pay-for-play business model.

You also have to be good. Not "I can play this many songs" good, but the kind of good you end up with twenty or thirty years after giving up everything in favor of pursuing your craft - and even then you still won't be all the way there.

Part of getting that good means playing in as many settings as possible. That's where schools and nursing homes come in. These are not "gigs" - and if you think of them as such, trust me, you are not ready to start charging people to hear you play. Nursing homes are places where you can a.)do something good for your community and b.)develop your craft.

You get something. They get something. There is no "free" here.

It's the same with teaching. As a "folk musician" you have an obligation to make sure the music is passed on to the next generation of players, but on top of that the act of teaching - if you do it right - makes you better at the task in question.

You get something. They get something. There is no "free" here.

Besides that, if you set off into a career in folk music unaware of the Blind Willie Johnson retirement plan you really should rethink your vocation because, like it or not, music, like any art, is a harsh mistress. In the end the only reward you get from this game is the music - but for a musician that should be enough.

If you want to be a babysitter, Muzak, or the wandering village idiot in exchange for a few bucks that is your right - but that isn't going to make you a pro, and it has nothing to do with folk music.

-Patrick

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: Maryrrf
Date: 22 Sep 06 - 09:37 AM

In the presence of the purity and righteosness of Patrick, I now see the error of my ways. I confess that I have sinned. My view of music is sick and twisted, and I have committed a sick and vile act in accepting the $50 offered to me by the library to entertain on St. Patrick's day. My only excuse for this craven deed is that my world view isn't any bigger than the 36 inch circle around my feet. I just don't "get" folk music, being only able to wank out a few songs, and I wouldn't be able to play anything by the Sex Pistols if my life depended on it. I guess that's because I was so busy wasting time, slithering around on my belly like a reptile, and kissing ass. I'd have been better off dealing drugs or be a prostitute on the side than to have done a little gigging in the folk music field, since I'm a total sell out. I ended up being a babysitter, muzak and the wandering village idiot in exchange for a few bucks.

I'm going to bow out of this thread now because it has gone way over the top. Patrick, I'm sure you're sincere, a fine musician and possibly a nice guy but you come across like some kind of hellfire and damnation preacher. Don't you think you're blowing things out of proportion?!

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: GUEST,Mike Miller
Date: 22 Sep 06 - 10:07 AM

I have been avoiding responding to comments that suggest we are, in some way, immoral in our career choices. Such comments are so out of place in a guild like forum that they are beyond reply. In a Panglossian best of all possible worlds, I suppose we might entertain such discussion, in the finite atmosphere of 21st century reality, it is gibberish.
I hope that Mary will stick with us and not be distracted by the yapping of every dogma in the manger. For those who wish to discuss professionalism without distraction, I am open to direct contact, even though I haven't figured out how to get back my regular Mudcat identity. (I've tried and tried but I've failed and failed. The next time Dick Greehaus drives down to Philly, I'll enlist his aid).
Anyway, my e-mail address is   [e-mail] and I'm not getting chased out of this thread by anyone.

                         Mike

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Sep 06 - 10:27 AM

Good post Patrick. I didn't detect any hellfire and damnation or even yapping dogma. What you stated are good points.

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: Fortunato
Date: 22 Sep 06 - 11:16 AM

In this thread as in all others, it is my approach to totally ignore the posts I do not want to encourage.

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: BlueSage
Date: 26 Sep 06 - 03:20 PM

For those of you not familiar with Patrick, you should know that he actually has a lot of helpful insights sandwiched in between the inflammatory remarks in his posts. Pat has devoted much of his life to helping the music community with free on-line instructional materials but he does tend to be an absolutist; everything is black and white for Pat.

Read his posts, take the good and leave the rest. You won't change his mind by trying to reason with him.

Pat and I disagree on subjects like teaching as a profession (my students would kill me if I quite teaching and took a different day job), but I do agree with many of his ideas.

You have to admit, he does get the dialog flowing in a passionate manner whenever he posts to a thread...

Mike Iverson

Subject: RE: Professional Folksinger, and Proud of It
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 26 Sep 06 - 05:24 PM

Hi weelittledrummer,
There were some quite bright ladies and gentlemen in the retirement home where we played. Alzheimer's was not a common ailment there. We didn't choose L.A. Freeway, but did do HOMEGROWN TOMATOES and it went over quite well with this crowd. Heavenly Houseboat had some of 'em singing along too.