From
the folknik, November/December 2005
(Volume XLI, Number 6)
e-zine of
the San Francisco Folk Music Club
Musical Meetings
Date
November 11
November 25
December
9
December 23
January 6
Setup
Melissa Sarenac
Melissa Sarenac
Joel Rutledge
Melissa Sarenac
Joel Rutledge
Bulletin Board
Bob Dunn
Estelle Freedman
Carolyn Jayne
Debbie Klein
Yvette Tannenbaum
Host/ess
Yvette Tannenbaum
Melissa
Pazit Zohar
Melissa
Stephen Hopkins
Host/ess
Don Murdock
Ed Bronstein
Debbie Klein
Stephanie Chassin
Joy Salatino
Singing Room
Melissa
Tes Welborn
Phil Morgan
Marlene McCall
Estelle Freedman
Theme
Living and Dead
Songs by Gay Men & Lesbians
Hill & Forest
Fabric & Clothing
Freedom
Cleanup
Marilyn Read
Dave Sahn
Chuck Oakes
Tom Dibell
Joel Rutledge
Board Meetings
The SFFMC board meets on the second Tuesday of each month — potluck at
6:30 p.m., meeting at 8:00 p.m. All Club members are welcome to attend
the potluck dinner and the Board meeting.
November 8: Phil Morgan’s house
December 13: Marion Gade’s house
January 10: Ed Hilton’s house
NEXT FOLKNIK FOLD-IN/FOLK SING: Sunday, December 18, at Abe and Joan
Feinberg’s
Club News
The folknik is looking for a
new page 2-3 editor to edit articles and lay out pages, uh, 2 and 3 six
times a year and submit them to the Editor-in-Chief either on paper or
as PDFs. (Your current editor is taking a turn as on-line editor.) It’s
fun and gives you an excuse to go to all those cool folk events you
want to turn your fellow Club members on to. Contact the
Editor-in-Chief at
.
The Labor Day campout at
Boulder Creek was a great success. The weather was moderate, campers
enjoyed themselves, yellowjackets and mosquitoes were not a major
problem, and chore signups were filled with few problems. Attendance
was good, and we took in about $300 over the rent. Thanks to
reservations czar Phil Morgan, lifeguard recruiter Marian Gade and Club
treasurer Melissa Sarenac; road sign expert Thad Binkley and registrar
Phyllis Jardine; radio maven Jerry “Sparks” Michaels;
registration leaders Ed Hilton, Marv Sternberg and Kathryn LaMar; and
the many who signed up for chores. If your idea of a perfect holiday is
days of jamming, you were probably there; if you missed it, you can
still spend New Year’s at Camp Harmony.
Ron and Anna Green (“SUNRISE”) were inducted
into the Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame last September at the 30th
Old Time Country Music Festival in Missouri Valley, Iowa, “not
only for their fine work as recording artists and performers at
festivals throughout the Western states but also for their lifetime
contributions as teachers who help to preserve and perpetuate the
performing traditions of folk, old time country and western music.”
Sylvia Herold writes: Paul Kotapish will be joining us
again this week after taking some time off to welcome his new son
Emmet. Congratulations, Paul and Shivaun! Sylvia and friends play every
Tuesday night from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at Julie's Coffee & Tea
Garden, 1223 Park Street, Alameda.
Reta Lockert sends word that
one of the country’s scorchingest contra bands plays in the North Bay
on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Eve Eve. Hotpoint Stringband is
composed of five outrageous musicians from Athens, Ohio. They come to
Marin Masonic Hall in San Rafael on Friday, December 30, joining caller
Lynn Ackerson; on Saturday, they play at Monroe Hall in Santa Rosa with
Joyce Miller calling. Purchase tickets in advance for New Year’s Eve at
North Bay Contra Dance Society dances. Learn more at www.nbcds.org or (707) 996-0065.
Musicians are wanted for Saturday mornings at the Noe Valley Farmers Market on 24th
Street between Church and Sanchez. Contact coordinator Rachel Levin (415) 695-9299.
Guitars in the ClassRoom aims
to inspire and train teachers to integrate singing and playing guitar
into daily school experience. See www.guitarsintheclassroom.com
or email
.
Have you heard of the Raging Grannies?
They are popping up across Canada, the United Kingdom and
increasingly in the United States; there are gaggles in Santa Rosa, the
Peninsula, East Bay and San Francisco. Grannies dress in granny clothes
and write and sing politically significant and outrageous
songs, mostly parodies, at demonstrations, military recruitment
centers, street corners and other appropriate places. Join in
San Francisco through Granny Judy, (415) 648-6405,
Positively Hootenanny Night
The SFFMC’s monthly free folk festival, Hootenanny Night, has
been hosting folk music showcases at the Café International in
the Lower Haight District for four years, and we celebrate our fourth
anniversary Saturday, November 12th, with a performer showcase
featuring five of our favorite acts. As usual we will slide all over
the folk map, from the personal and political singer/songwriter folk of
Mokai and Caren Armstrong to the
tear-in-your-beer honky-tonk of Jeanie
and Chuck Poling. Gayle Schmidt
and the Hired Hands and the Shut
Ins will also be on hand serving up high energy, infectious
Americana with lots of charm and good humor. All this and free food
too!
We are also celebrating the release of our first compilation CD, Hootenanny Hit Parade! Fourteen
artists who have performed at the Hoots over the years have donated
some of their finest studio recordings, with all proceeds benefiting
Hootenanny Night. So far everyone who has heard it has been knocked
out. One fan said, “I’m shocked at how good it is. The songs, the
recordings. It’s as good as anything out there!” Check it out
yourself at www.sfhootenanny.com
— we should have samples up soon. Order from Hootenanny World HQ, 2731
Sutter St. A, SF CA 94115; $10 each, but send a few extra bucks
for shipping. With the holidays coming up, they’ll make perfect
stocking stuffers.
Speaking of Hootenanny Hit Parade, we’ll host a release party at
the December 10th Hootenanny Night, featuring many performers from the
CD, including Claudia Russell,
Lisa Redfern, and Faith Petric. And speaking of Faith,
we at the Hootenanny want to wish her a fond “Happy birthday!” Faith
has been a good friend to the Hoot, performing many times and being an
inspirational kick in the pants.
We had so much fun at our old-fashioned Hoot jam and sing-along in
October that we plan to feature jam format more often in 2006. For
regular Hoot updates, send your email address and name to:
.
—Richard Rice
“This Land” with Pete, Part 2
Here’s the second half of Peter
Ross’s story about singing with Pete Seeger at Foothill College in 1992:
In encouraging us chorale members to interrupt him with questions or
comments, Pete told of Winston Churchill’s response when he was asked
if he minded hecklers. Churchill said that he didn’t mind them as long
as he had the microphone.
Pete shared some of his musical knowledge, such as the philosophical
observation that all of the seeds in a pair of maracas make up the
sound even though only one is exactly on the beat. Another observation
was more bittersweet. Pete said that when he started having trouble
with his voice he sought help from a voice teacher. She told him, too
late, that all the years singing with his head thrown back probably
permanently hurt his voice due to the strain on his vocal chords and
neck muscles.
Pete’s egalitarian spirit showed up in several ways. For example, he
requested that our chorale wear street clothes instead of our more
formal attire, so as to narrow the gap between audience and performers.
In addition, he told us during the rehearsal that he had unsuccessfully
tried to get co-performer Bob Reid to have equal billing for the
concert with him and Pete’s sister Peggy Seeger.
Thirty-some years ago, after a concert in Berkeley, Pete autographed my
motorcycle helmet with a felt pen and really got into it, drawing a
picture of a banjo and signing his name in both English and Japanese.
This time around, at the end of our rehearsal I got Pete to autograph
my bicycle helmet.
My first Pete Seeger concert was around 1960 on the MIT campus, where
the audience expected to watch and listen to him perform. But Pete,
living up to the reputation bestowed on him by poet Carl Sandburg of
being “America’s tuning fork”, had us nerds singing along in four-part
harmony!
I’ll conclude with a pithy comment Pete didn’t share with us at
Foothill but did make at the end of a 1980 interview in Sing Out!:
“Life is short, but art is long.”
Rescue Train to New Orleans
Arlo Guthrie is organizing a
train trip from Chicago to New Orleans with concerts along the
way to benefit New Orleans musicians and music venues, replacing all
the little things a city’s musical life needs: instruments, mikes,
sound boards, cables. He writes, “When I think of New Orleans, I think
of music. The City of New Orleans is America's first music city.
New Orleans is the city that truly began America's contribution
to the history of music worldwide.” For information contact
Rising Son Records, 10741 US Highway 1, Sebastian,
FL 32958, or email
.
Obituaries
Hedy West died July 3 after a
long bout with cancer. Her father, Don West, one of the great
American folk poets, along with her mother, an artist, founded the
Appalachian Folklife Center. Hedy grew up steeped in the
Appalachian folk traditions and became one of the early great folk
performers of the 50s and 60s, continuing throughout her life to
distribute her wealth of traditional and contemporary folk music and
song in the US and Europe. She also was a song writer and had classical
music training; her primary instrument was the banjo, of which she was
a master, Her contribution to folk culture in the United States
is enormous.
Harold Leventhal,
internationally renowned folk music promoter, died October 5 at
86. The death was confirmed by Nora Guthrie, Woody Guthrie’s
daughter and the director of the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives,
of which Mr. Leventhal was a founder and trustee; he had been Woody
Guthrie’s business manager and later his executor.
If at any time during the last 50 years you wanted to hire a folksinger
— like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash or Jean Ritchie, to name a few —
Mr. Leventhal was the man to call. He began his career in the
1930s as a song plugger for Irving Berlin, and by the early 1950s was
the Sol Hurok of America’s folk-music revival. He remained in the role
until the close of the 20th century, weathering historical onslaughts
from the Cold War to rock ’n’ roll. In Arlo Guthrie’s words, “With all
of the history that he’d had with the Weavers, he really was a
connection between my dad’s era and the world of the late 60s.”