issue 2 february 2017huntsvillefolk.com/newsletters/2017 february htma... · 2020. 11. 7. · off...
TRANSCRIPT
HTMA Monthly Meeting & Jam Sunday – February 19h – 1:30
Auditorium at the Huntsville Library Main Branch
2015 Gazebo Concert (photo by Bill Cassells)
HTMA President’s Notes
February 2017
Dear Friends,
This past week we had a terrific kickoff to the 2017 HTMA coffeehouse
season. Karen Newson is doing an awesome job resuscitating the
coffeehouse after a year-long hiatus in 2016. I am really looking forward
to seeing the rest of the artists that Karen will be booking for us this year.
Karen could use some help with the Performance Chair job, though. We
need HTMA members to contact Karen to schedule themselves as
openers for the coffeehouse. This is a new problem to me. In years past,
it always seemed that we had more members interested in doing opening
gigs than we had gigs available. So far this year, response from members
interested in playing on the HTMA stage has been underwhelming.
We also need some help on staffing the coffeehouse productions. The
biggest opening happens to be about the easiest – we need a volunteer
at each coffeehouse to sit at the door table and collect the $5 admission
charge. Easy sit-down job, and critically important. In previous years we
have relied on donations for the coffeehouses. Sadly, audience donations
routinely came to around half of what we pay the coffeehouse artists. For
2017, we have turned over a new fiscally responsibility leaf, and are now
charging a five dollar admission to guests who are over the age of 12. Five
bucks is a pretty nominal admission – about like a grande latte at
Starbucks, but allows us to more properly compensate the musicians who
come out to do or gigs, without breaking our bank account.
(continued on page 2)
................................................
Coffeehouse
February 28, 7:00 pmat the Old Church at Burritt Museum
Inside this Issue:
1: President’s Notes 2: Area Events/ & HTMA Board 4. On Becoming a Luddite5. February Coffeehouse Artists6: Member/Friend Classified Ads
1 Karen Newsum opening the January 2017 HTMA coffeehouse at Burritt Museum (Photo courtesy Jerry LeCroy)
Volume 51 – Issue 2 www.huntsvillefolk.org February 20172017
Page | 2
Calendar of Upcoming Events
*SATURDAY February 4th
ELMCROFT ASSISTED LIVING -Starting 3:00 PM - 8020 Benaroya Lane, Huntsville AL
*SATURDAY February 11th
HARBORCHASE RETIREMENT HOMEStarting 10:30 AM - 4801 Whitesport Circle, Huntsville AL
SUNDAY February 19th
Regular members meeting and jam session
at Huntsville Library Main Branch
auditorium, starting at 1:30
*SATURDAY February 25th
REGENCY RETIREMENT VILLAGEStarting 3:15 PM 2004 Max Luther Drive, Huntsville, AL
TUESDAY February 28rd
HTMA Coffeehouse! At the Burritt Museum Old Church, 7:00
This coffeehouse will feature Abby Parks and
Opening with Susan Hood
* Retirement home dates are subject to change. Please check with Jim England for firm dates and times
HTMA Executive Board
President -
JERRY LECROY
256-880-6234 [email protected]
Vice President & Public Service
Chairman
JIM ENGLAND
256-852-5740 [email protected]
Secretary/Treasurer
PAT LONG
256-539-7211 [email protected]
Publicity Chairman
BOB HICKS
256-683-9807 [email protected]
Performance Chairwoman
KAREN NEWSUM [email protected]
Operations Chairman
GEORGE WILLIAMS
Webmaster/
JERI ANN PAYNE [email protected]
Acting Newsletter Editor
Jerry LeCroy (Position open!)
The leadership of HTMA invites YOU to be an active part of our great organization, whether you play an instrument, or want to share in any other way, we welcome you and thank you for your support!
Danny Charles pointed out that here are a number of musical
opportunities coming up in the next few months. Here are some a
few:
The Alabama Folk School is holding their “From Scratch” workshop
weekend February 17-19. More info at
http://www.alfolkschool.com
The Pine Mountain Bluegrass Jamboree in Remlap is February 25th
and the Alabama bluegrass Music Association is hosting its 20th
annual Showcase March 4th at Spain Park HS in Hoover. More info on
both these events is available at
http://alabamabluegrassmusic.org/ABMA/Home.html
Page | 3
President’s Notes (continued from Page 1)
We need a member/volunteer at each gig to collect the
money to keep the shows running, and I am hoping that
several members offer to share that vital role.
What else is new? I am soliciting member input on content
for this newsletter. If you are interested in writing anything
remotely music-related, please send it in. I’ll happily
accept most anything you care to submit, including:
Fact
Fiction
Fact disguised as fiction, or vice versa
Opinion (though I may choose not to publish
particularly inflammatory political rants)
Verse (rhyming or otherwise) Surely some HTMA
members must write poetry?
Music – Want to share a song you have written?
The fact part might include any of:
Editorial content/stories
Your reviews of recorded music, concerts, musicbooks, or instruments
What’s happening – scheduled events coming upin the next month or two
Classified ads
PhotosHTMA continues to face an existential crisis of
membership aging. Most of our members are baby-
boomers, with a few elder-statesman exceptions like vice
president Jim England. If we want to continue to enjoy the
fun music and camaraderie of the association, we need to
find ways to pull younger people into our community. I’d
welcome any suggestions you may have about ways to
make HTMA membership, meetings, and gigs more
attractive to Gen-x, millennials, and younger people in
general. I think we are pretty open to most kinds of
changes in our structure, though I don’t see us turning the
association into a front for a hook-up bar.
One last reminder about finances – if you have not joined
or renewed your membership in the past four months, it
expired on December 31. All memberships expire at year’s
end, except those for new members who joined in the last
quarter. If you haven’t renewed, or would like to join,
please check the membership form at
http://www.huntsvillefolk.org/landing_membership.html .
You can renew on-line (with PayPal) or mail in your
membership renewal to Treasurer Pat Long.
Many Thanks to everyone who has been working on the
coffeehouse restart, but particularly to Karen Newsum,
George Williams, Jim England, Bob Hicks, and Steve
McGehee.
Jerry LeCroy
Connie Musselwhite and Dennis Parker performing at the January 2017 HTMA Coffeehouse [photo courtesy J. LeCroy]
On Finding I Have Become a
Luddite
by Jerry LeCroy
Luddite – you know the word. It refers to a group of
English mill workers who destroyed machinery they feared
would cause them to become redundant. Now it just refers
to any person who resists the incorporation of new
technology into daily life. I did not expect that to happen
to me, I’ve always been an early adopter of technology.
Not bleeding edge technology – I’m too cheap for that, but
I did bring home a CD player as soon as prices dropped
below $700. Early adopter. But now I find myself behind
the curve.
What is it that I am reacting to? It’s the use of tablet
computers and the like as Teleprompters on stage. I am
not against technology use in general. I love to pick up new
songs to learn on the TABS app on my iPad. It’s great. But
for some reason I am not comfortable with putting that
stuff on stage. On reflection, I think it has to do with a
peculiar philosophy of respect for the audience.
Shortly after I started playing in front of other people, I
realized that there were two paths I could follow. I could
bring sheet music and read it while playing, or I could learn
the tunes well enough to play them from memory. It
seemed pretty obvious at the time which path was better,
Page | 4
President’s Notes (continued from Page 3) though I probably could not have articulated my rationale.
Today I’ve had more time to consider the question.
My thinking is that when people come out to a live music
performance they are hoping to be moved emotionally.
Whether the music is blues, bluegrass, jazz or classical, the
audience is looking for some emotional connection. In the
best performances you get a kind of transcendental
experience. The best opportunities for establishing an
emotional response to music are when there is feedback
going on between the performer and the artist. It seems to
me that if the performer is engaged with reading, whether
off sheet music or a video display, by definition that are
not paying enough attention to the audience to close that
feedback loop.
It’s more than that, though. I think that the best musicians
go to extravagant lengths to illuminate the arrangements
of the songs they are playing. I recall hearing Don Henley
describe how Dan Fogelburg, his upstairs neighbor, would
repeat a song twenty times, take a break for a cup of tea
(as evidenced by the squeal of Dan’s teapot) and then go
back to the piano and play the same song twenty times
again. Fogelburg was aiming for an exacting and precise
performance, where every breath and every nuance of the
music was just what he wanted. It’s likely that you and I,
gentle reader, will never be able to duplicate Fogelburg’s
quest for musical perfection, but that does not mean that
we shouldn’t try.
It seems likely that if we are reading music on stage, we
are mostly going to be limited to a fairly mechanical
transcription. Reading causes us to stick to a more regular
timing of the musical rhythm, and perhaps to pay less
attention to the artistic/emotional dynamics and phrasing
of the piece. There are probably some really exceptional
artists who are able to add the emotional content to a
piece of music, making it breathe as they sight-read, but
I’m afraid that kind of talent is out of reach for most of us.
The best we can do, for ourselves, our music, and our
audience, is to actually do the tough homework of practice
and rehearsal to get the tunes we are going to play
prepared for presentation. I thought about this a couple
weeks ago, as I struggled to learn a song I heard Bruce
“Utah” Phillips do. I probably played that tune twenty
times just picking the key, forty more times learning the
lyrics, and another forty times to get the timing and guitar
sound I wanted (switching guitars until I found the one
with the sound I wanted on that song). The learning
process wasn’t easy for me, but I have to say the time I
spent working on the tune was enjoyable. Each repetition
of the song brought me closer to the music I heard in my
head, so I felt a definite sense of progress, rewarding me
on every improvement.
Sadly, once I do all that work, I’m not done. That particular
song will stay with me in playable form for several months,
but if I want to play it again two years from now, I will have
to run through it three or four times to sand off the rough
edges. Some folks are able to maintain an active repertoire
of over 500 tunes that they can play at a moment’s notice
with no warm up. My brother John is an example of a
musician with that kind of memory depth. My personal
limit is likely closer to one hundred tunes, but once I’ve
taken the time to fie-tune a song it can be back in playing
order with just a few run-throughs. I bet you can, too.
The intent of this column is not to discourage readers from
using whatever technology helps them to reach their
music. My desire is rather to encourage readers who have
been relying on their large music books and tablet
computers to deliver chords and lyrics to do a self-test.
How about if you try learning just a couple songs so that
on those songs you are able to play through without a
lyrical collapse or other error, and then tune up the
delivery so your song’s message is getting through. At the
next jam session, open mike, or HTMA meeting you go to,
play that well-rehearsed song for your audience, with no
training wheels or safety net in the form of a music stand. I
think you will be pleasantly surprised at how liberating this
experience can be, and also by the difference you will see
in audience response. If you decide to run this experiment,
please let me know how you feel that it works out for you.
Along the way, please don’t worry if you run into the
occasional memory snags. It happens to EVERY
performer. One of my favorite albums back in the early
1970s was a recording of Melanie Kafka playing a birthday
concert at Carnegie Hall. This was a big show, to a sold out
Hall, and at the time Melanie was a pretty hot item –
having a couple songs on the top-40 rotation. Right in the
middle of a song, she pauses, and exclaims to the audience
“I forgot the words!” An audience member shouted
“Once”, the first word of the next line. That was all
Melanie needed to continue, and it was a grand concert.
Don’t live in fear of the occasional lyrical disconnect.
Those things happen to the best of us, and can happen in
any live performance. All you need to do, and all you can
do, is move on as gracefully as possible. But please do get
out there and exercise your brain and your memory.
Page | 5
President’s Notes (continued from Page 4)
Putting our memory to use is the only practice I know of
that appears to have a chance of reducing susceptibility to
Alzheimer’s.
Now that I consider the question more thoroughly, I
realize I am not against technology per se. I am totally
okay with using laptops or tablet computers (or sheet
music) to learn tunes. I am strongly in favor of using
microphones and related PA equipment to bring out the
music to audiences. I’m totally okay with using YouTube to
find arrangements and learn how to play clever riffs. The
only part of technology that makes my head hurt is when
the technology seems to be getting in the way of
communication between the musician and the listener.
When that happens it isn’t a good use of technology,
whether we are looking at a paper on a music stand, an
iPad-used-as-teleprompter, or a Karaoke machine.
Maybe I’m not actually such a Luddite after all?
Wishing you all the best music,
Jerry
The February HTMA Coffeehouse
will feature Abbie Parks
Abby Parks began performing solo with her guitar in church
and then majored in classical guitar at Colorado Christian
University in Denver, also studying piano, voice, and music
composition. There were many musical paths she could
have taken, but Parks had developed a great affection for
songs she’d heard in the folk and songwriting traditions,
particularly by artists like Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins.
Lyrics that told stories and delved deeper into the human
psyche than typical pop songs gave her a desire to take her
music in that direction.
By the time she had moved to the UK with her family in
1995, Parks had enough songs under her belt to perform
live shows, including a performance in 2000 at the Celtic
Connections Festival in Glasgow, Scotland. Finally settling
in Alabama, Parks released her debut album MOVING ON in
2005 and performed throughout the Southeast in venues
ranging from coffeehouses and churches to theaters, clubs,
and festivals.
As her songwriting matured, Parks turned her attention to
the rich Southern heritage she can lay claim to. Stories
told to her throughout her life about her family’s
background became the source for many of the songs off
her latest album THE HOMEPLACE, including “The
Homeplace,” “Lambert Road,” and “Wild
Dogs.” Recorded at Huntsville’s Sound Cell Studio, the
album was produced with the help of Doug Jansen Smith
(Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Phil Collins). The CD features
imaginative instrumentation accompanying her unique
finger-style guitar playing, creating an evocative
atmosphere for Parks to spin reflective narratives in song.
Abby is the creator of www.FolkRenaissance.com ,where
she presents articles, album reviews, and interviews with
professional folk artists and songwriters. She is also the
host of the Folk Renaissance radio show which airs Sunday
nights 5-7pm CST on WLJS 91.9 FM in Jacksonville,
Alabama [streaming on
http://jsustream.serverroom.net:5758/WLJS_Live ]
Tuesday February 28th is your chance to experience
these fine musicians up close and personal in the old
church at Burritt Museum. Doors open at 6:30, show
time 7:00. Tickets are $5 at the door.
Smart HTMA coffeehouse attendees know to bring a
cushion or two, because those church pews are
designed to provide a penance of sorts to the
backsides of any unprepared music fans.
Page | 6
Do you have an item for sale? Are you looking for an instrument? Are you wanting to acquire, trade or sell musical gear, recordings, books, get something repaired.... Do you need music lessons? Are you wanting to join or find a new group or band member? This section of our newsletter is for members to place ads for services or instruments or anything related to music. It will be updated for each newsletter. If you have an item or advertisement you would like to be published, please send an EMAIL (preferably before the fifteenth of the month) to [email protected] (Jerry) to have your listing included in the upcoming newsletter. In your email, fully describe what your offering or looking for, and how you want users to contact YOU, via email, phone or both, etc. Once your listing or item is no longer active, please also email [email protected] for removal of your listing.
Please note that HTMA makes this service available to aid our users in finding, trading or selling music items and services only - and we are not responsible for the completion or non-compliance of any transactions between members.
3 Keating Johns, Ben Davis, Dan Charles, and Ben Davis playinga 2009 HTMA Coffeehouse(photo courtesy J. LeCroy)
2 Cindy Musselwhite and Dennis Parker playing at the January 2017 HTMA Coffeehouse [photo courtesy J. LeCroy]
Page | 7
Looking for a band member, hosting a jam session, wanting to be part of a group? Place a listing here..
.
4 Diane Miller at HTMA's January 2017 coffeehouse [photo courtesy J. LeCroy]
Suwannee Banjo Camp is delighted to announce that
registrations are now open for 2017. Our staff is assembled,
the new website is there for you to check out and the on-line
registration form is up and running. This will be our 14th Camp
coming up, and our fourth year at Cerveny Conference Center
in Live Oak, Florida.
Note that beginning this year, SBC starts on Thursday
afternoon and runs till Sunday afternoon; that's nearly
seventy-two hours of great music, super instruction and a
friendly, encouraging atmosphere in the company of world-
class pickers.
Weekend-Only Option. For those who can't devote three days
to MBC, we still offer a Weekend-Only Option (Friday
afternoon to Sunday afternoon).
For more details on the Full Camp and Weekend-Only Options
see the website, http://www.suwanneebanjocamp.com
DATES AND TIMES:
Full Camp: Thurs-Sun. April 6-9, 2017
Weekend-Only Option: Fri-Sun. April 7-9, 2017
LOCATION: Cerveny Conference Center at Camp Weed
(Live Oak, Florida)
Check-in for Full Camp opens Thursday April 6 at 3:00;
Check-in for Weekend-Only opens Friday, April 7 at 11:00 AM.
End Time: Camp concludes after lunch Sunday; ~ 1:30 PM
2016 Faculty and Staff:
Old-Time Banjo: Riley Baugus, Paul Brown, Brad Leftwich, Terri
McMurray, Michael Miles, Chuck Levy, and Ken Perlman
Bluegrass Banjo: Scott Anderson, Greg Cahill, Wes Corbett,
Janet Davis, James McKinney, and Alan Munde
Other Instructors: Alan Jabbour (fiddle) & Tim May (guitar)
Artists' bios, registration form and other pertinent information
are available on the website. I look forward to seeing you all
this coming April.
Cheers,
Ken Perlman,
Director, Suwannee Banjo Camp