Folksingers, the real deal

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Howard Jones
Date: 15 Jan 07 - 03:26 PM

Mike, I think I understand what you want, but I don't think Mudcat is the right forum. Mudcat is literally global, and involves people at all levels of involvement in the music. What you seem to want is somewhere that full-time professional musicians, who aren't necessarily well-known but who earn their living by performing the music, can support one another.

In the UK we have Britfolk, which describes itself as "a self-help organisation for UK-based professional folk performers". I'm not a member myself, as I don't earn a significant proportion of my income from music and so am not eligible. But perhaps if you were to contact them they may be able to give some advice on how to establish something similar. Their website is at http://www.britfolk.co.uk/

In your original post, you seem to be complaining that Mudcat is all about the stars, and that the "real deal", bread-and-butter musicians are somehow ignored. But if you are performing mainly for private or semi-private functions, rather than public concerts, then you are not going to become well-known outide that circuit, even in your local area. Mudcatters are from all around the world, and the musicians they discuss on here are inevitably those with the highest profiles. The work you are doing may be very good and very worthwhile, but it's not going to interest me, here in the UK, compared with discussions of performers whose work I'm familiar with will interest me. This is nothing personal, it's not about your music, it's simply geography.

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: GUEST,Mike Miller
Date: 15 Jan 07 - 05:38 PM

Howard, my helpful friend. Allow me to, once again, say that I do not object to any of the various threads on Mudcat. Mudcat is, as you say, an international forum but, if there can be threads relating to a particular club or tour, if there can be threads about songs or topics that appeal to just a few, if there can be postings replying to just one Mudcatter, why, the hell, shouldn't there be topics that affect more folksingers than you might think? I am glad that the UK has an orginization and a website for these folks. I shall, indeed, contact them. However, as has been written on this very thread, the situations are not exactly the same on this side of the Atlantic.
My purpose, in creating this thread was to reach other professionals and those who who like to sing professionally. I thought that Mudcat would be a good avenue for finding them. All I seem to have done is incur the wrath of those who are not the target of my search. I shall look elsewhere.

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 Jan 07 - 05:59 PM

Well to be honest, I think Mike HAS hit upon a malaise, which is holing the folk song movement below the waterline. Whichever country you live in.

Its a terrific contradiction if you are playing the music of the people, and yet the only music that gets critical attention or airplay is produced by 'stars'. Mike (as I read his original post) is a committed musician - he turns up at this forum expecting debate about the creative process, and he thinks we're all a it 'starstruck'.

I think you're probably right, Mike.

Shimrod's point - what am I proposing. I'm not sure myself, just voicing a vague discontent with the way things are going, or rather the way they're not going.

All I can say is. You know that song Common People by Pulp. Its the best song about being a reasonably intelligent nobody in England today, what sociologists called 'anomie' - society's a machine and its turning us all into nuts. the English folksong movement should be producing songs like that.....instead we've got the same old, same old ....songs about blacksmiths, fishermen fighting the bitter swell, poachers........its all about as exciting and relevant as a corner of the Edinburgh Wool Shop. You could contain the present English folk movement onto half a shelf and call it rural crafts.

To paraphrase Waylon Jennings, Are you sure Ewan done it this way?

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Effsee
Date: 15 Jan 07 - 09:22 PM

WLD, surely you're not writing off all the modern day song writers ( yourself included) as irrelevant? Harvey Andrews, Eric Bogle et al?

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 07:28 AM

Of course not, particularly not Harvey and Eric Bogle. And I've spent hours singing both their songs and in Eric's case, his Green Fields of France has helped pay the bills when I was doing the Irish theme pub circuit.

Everybody's creative effort is to be cherished. I don't much care for threads where they say I think we could learn a thing or two from Adolph(sic) Hitler. but otherwise......

I just feel somehow the folksong movement has never truly connected with anybody except those on the fringes of society. In the way that earlier folksong writers did seemingly effortlessly - somehow they wrote about the joys and sorrows of their lives.

You know how Ian Campbell wrote the old man's song about the old boy waiting to die. Maybe its time for the middle aged man's song, or the young man's song, or the young woman's song. Those of us living in the midst of life - the teachers, checkout people at supermarkets, call centres, clerks, nurses, car park attendants, security guards.......anybody except jolly blacksmiths and the like, who have been well catered for over the last three or four centuries.

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: ejsant
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 08:09 AM

Hey Mike,

I hope my getting into the fray isn't too late. I too play the nursing home and adult care facility circuit, if indeed it is a circuit as these things are. I also play in pubs, libraries, museums, private parties, and the like. We are moving to the Easton area, truth be told we're not jumping the river. I would welcome your insight into the Bucks County venues as well as tips to gain more work.

I'm staying out of the rest of this debate as I learned a long time ago that opinions are like noses and asses, we all have one and for the most part they all work just fine for ourselves.

Peace,
Ed

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: GUEST,Fidjit
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 08:11 AM

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: GUEST,Fidgit
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 08:22 AM

Ahh that's what happens when you press the return button at the wrong time.

Richard Bridge wrote : Shhhh!

I got a gig in Norway to play at some old peoples homes for two weeks(Had 4 weeks, but gave 2 to a mate) Three OAP homes in a day every week day. Mostly to sing at lunch time. Yeah you try that. Clocked up about 200km each day. Got paid for the mileage as well as the gig. Nice little earner, that. Well Richard, it happens over here in Scandinavia. Trouble is that the residents of OAP homes in Norway were mostly demeted. and very sleepy at lunch time. Trying to get them to sing along to English Folk Songs. Hmmm. Tough audience. There was one that wanted to dance with me whilst I was playing a medly on the melodeon.
Interesting.
One resident brought out his saw and played along with me on that.

Chas

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: mandotim
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 08:23 AM

Hi WLD! Some good stuff here. A suggestion about 'connectedness'; I was blown away recently by a brilliant example of a modern man in middle age, singing passionately about the ordinary things of our time, not some idealised byegone age. I refer, of course to Mudcat's own George Papavgeris. There are others like him, but he comes closest to my idea of a 'folksinger' who is rooted in the real, the here and now.
Hope this good discussion keeps going.
Tim

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Grab
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 08:47 AM

The troubadors of days gone by probably didn't have to sell themselves quite so much, and a successful song was one that people liked and/or wanted to learn was not one they had to buy on a recording.

Re "selling themselves", how else did they get money? They had to stand on a street corner and get people to listen by any means necessary. If there was someone else down the block playing too, they had to be able to blow him away if they wanted to win the contest for people's money. If that isn't selling yourself, I don't know what is!

Re focussing on the stars, I'm sure a survey of Mudcat members who play gigs would find that the vast majority of them are supporting their music with full-time jobs doing something else. Of those who don't have full-time jobs, the majority of *them* will be retired.

Still, as regards discussion of songs, you've got three choices.

* Firstly, you can ask questions about old songs, as people often do on Mudcat. These are old, and the answers will almost always be out there. Since the songs are old, most of the permutations of ways of playing them have already been explored. There's masses of quality songs available, but there's rarely any new angle to be added. They're still open for playing, and a good player can still perform them well and touch their audience, but they're not adding to the base of folk music available.
* Or the other option is to look at new music - and the only new music that everyone is likely to have heard is the stuff that's widely available and played on the various folk radio shows. Chances are that you can reinterpret this and do it different ways and add to the variety of the folk experience.
* Or thirdly, you can write new music yourself which is relevant to you and your experiences.

This is where I differ from Shimrod. Shimrod says it's an "article of faith" for him that modern culture is "spiritually degenerate". Faith is not subject to persuasion, so I won't try. All I'll say is to quote a bloke off the radio, who should know because he was 100: "If there's a golden age, it's in the future, not the past." And that's my article of faith (which is based on substantial evidence).

Incidentally, modern life may seem banal because we're used to it. I can guarantee that a Victorian transported to today would think this was the epitome of wonder and adventure. Travel a thousand miles in two hours! Talk instantly to anyone anywhere in the world! Doctors who can cure 90+% of all diseases with incredible medicines and machines! And vice versa, if any of us was transported to the life of a Victorian labourer or soldier, I seriously doubt we'd still think the past was quite the bucolic paradise with buxom milkmaids, singing ploughboys and gallant captains. "Nasty, brutish and short" was the summary of pre-industrial life by someone who was there and knew what he was talking about.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: GUEST,Mike Miller
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 09:27 AM

Ed, I would be glad to tell you about the folk market in Bucks County and offer ideas for establishing yourself in that market. It is, precisely, that co-operation that I hoped to establish with this thread (before it became a battleground for the forces of trad vs modernists and just another "what is folk?" cry of the milormore bird). You can contact me at [e-mail]
So can anyone else who wants to discuss the business side of folk music.

                         Mike

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Scoville
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 09:54 AM

"I just feel somehow the folksong movement has never truly connected with anybody except those on the fringes of society. In the way that earlier folksong writers did seemingly effortlessly - somehow they wrote about the joys and sorrows of their lives."

I thought that, with the possible exception of two sort of extreme periods in the 1930's and late 1950's-early 1960's, this had pretty much always been the case. How popular has folk music ever been, at least in the decades since there have been mass-produced alternatives?

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 10:01 AM

The radio prog. in a current thread discusses this.
Worth a listen.

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 10:52 AM

This is a community.   There is not need to box this group as to whether a person is a "fan" or a "participant".   

A community is made up of a diverse group. Look at your own neighborhood. You probably have a neighbor that is always involved in organizing something. You have the gossip who likes to talk about the other neighbors. You have the "crazy lady" who lives alone with her 29 cats and never speaks to anyone.   You have the young kids on the corner starting a family. You have the grumpy old man who yells at kids to stay off his lawn. There is the family that is always yelling at each other.   One family loves to have parties and keeps their lights on at all hours of the night.

That is what we are in the so-called "folk" community. I find it rather self-important to label anyone as a "real" folksinger. I think it is wrong to catagorize the people who visit Mudcat as either fans or participants. We are all part of the community and operate in different ways. You can either put out the welcome mat to invite everyone in or put up the sign saying "no solicitors".

Often you will hear people gripe about contemporary singer-songwriters as being navelgazers. However, threads like this seem to point out that they are not the only ones who like to drone on about the state of things.

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Howard Jones
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 12:49 PM

Mike, you wrote "My purpose, in creating this thread was to reach other professionals and those who who like to sing professionally."

I have read and re-read your original post, and I still cannot read it as anything other than a whinge that the work that you, and apparently many others, do is not recognised or discussed on Mudcat. Furthermore, by appearing to claim that only professional folksingers who work in this area are "the real deal" you have succeeded in alienating many who believe that their involvement in folk music, whether as performer or listener, is just as valid.

You are quite right, many of the posts on Mudcat are quite specific and of only limited or local interest to many. And you are also right that Mudcat could be used as a way for professionals to communicate and support one another. So why don't you start a thread with a title that clearly states what you want to achieve, rather than one with a title that appears disparaging, and a largely negative OP? Then you may get a more positive response than this thread has generated.

Good luck

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 01:22 PM

well the trad v modernist whinge - probably my fault. Its a songwriters things. you write something and then wonder if anybody else will be interested in singing it.

consider it done.

where exactly would you like the conversation to start?

Try and be specific, about the direction you would like it to take. Where and what and how you gig is for something for everybody to sort out individually. Most of us play, or have played at least semi professionally. And the amateur ones seem to knowe far more about guitars and the sources for songs that we the pros and ex-pros(like myself) do. If we can help, I am sure we will.

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: GUEST,Mike Miller
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 06:15 PM

I have appologised for the last time. If anyone is still hazy about my reason for starting this thread, there is nothing I can do to make them feel better without the aid of leeches. I have been contacted by one singer who is moving into my area and I will be sharing contacts and advice with him, as I will with any others who want whatever help I can offer. I am old enough to, no longer, enjoy conflict as recreation but I am, also, old enough to know that I should be passing along the information and methods that have sustained me and my career. So, outside of the occasional marital spat, I leave the field to the young stags whose antlers are, as yet, undulled.
Again, I am reachable, directly, for those who wish to discuss the nitty-gritty business of folk. I thank you for your attention and wish you well.

                         Mike

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 07:03 PM

Mike - I think you should start a discussion about the subject and not worry about all the comments. You apologized and we accept it, but this discussion will go on. I would hope that you will create a new discussion that will be just as interesting.

Don't take anything personally on Mudcat!

Subject: RE: Folksingers, the real deal
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Jan 07 - 08:01 PM

Is this the ten minute argument?