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Notes from the Road
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date: 5/16/00
locale: Milford Motel, CT
Heaven, Almost West Virginia....
The thunder has followed us since our first gig at Godfrey Daniels to Fredericksburg,
VA. I re-connected with the tour in Philadelphia after finishing an artist residency
in Delaware and then detour again to do a daylong workshop for the Baltimore
Songwriters Association. The rest of the crew - Rachel Bissex, Small Potatoes,
and Ruthie Foster & Cyd Cassone (see previous article)
have gotten to know each other a little better over the last few days and it
shows in the music. To hear some of their music see the recent additions to
Fenario.
Built in 1850, the Hartwood Presbyterian Church is a small brick building with beautiful acoustics. I think it's an axiom that the better the acoustics, the longer the sound check takes. Usually, pretty good will do, but once you hear the possibility of perfection, you have to go for it. So, Rim and Eric, our hosts and engineers, patiently go through our separate checks before leading us up the rural road for a grilled salmon and steak dinner at the home of Rim and Kathy. It's there that the wind suddenly picks up and turns a hot sunny day suddenly ominous. Then come the huge drops of rain. The evening is full of rain songs, punctuated by flashes and rumbling. Ruthie sings:
Looks like another day for a rain song
My pockets are empty, but it don't bother me none...
And it's impossible not to sing along. A kind of challenge to the sibling sky.
Later, we caravan to a beautiful log cabin house in the woods. Our hosts, the Goulds, are out of town, but bless their hearts, they have offered their home to a bunch of strangers. Eric and Beth chaperone us. Eric is a retired FBI agent, district attorney and Vietnam vet, and he regales us with stories of snafus and intrigues until 2am or so. Coincidently, he worked for a while in Fort Lee, NJ, the same town where Rich Prezioso and I went to high school together. In the morning I learn that he is also a songwriter. I wake up to the sound of guitar chords on the porch just outside my window, where Eric has taken up residence with a notebook full of songs. The one I remember is about a cafe in Normandy where a group of old German WWI veterans is having a reunion. Unfortunately, we can't stay late this morning and soon we're on the road to the home of Paula & Scott Moore in suburban Rockville MD a few mile north of DC's 495 ring.
Moore Music is what a house concert should be. Scott & Paula have created a concert hall in the basement playroom. They have also created a loyal audience of knowledgeable folk fans who like to participate. All this makes for a fun and rewarding evening.
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| Small Potatoes: anything but small. | Cyd Cassone beating and Ruthie Foster belting |
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| The crowd in the Moore's basement. That's Paul Iwancio of the Baltimore Songwriters Assoc. smiling, center. |
The Common Sense Cafe in Port Chester NY, on the other hand, makes almost no sense at all. It holds a maximum of 30 people, it's normally not open on Tuesdays and it's closing its doors at the end of the week. At one time, it made a decent room for solo acts to play for an intimate crowd - Lucy Kaplansky recently filled it at $20/ticket. But for six players on a lame duck weekday night, the prospects look grim. Owner and proprietor CJ Masters is brooding and preoccupied, but his dog Nana nearly knocks us down. The coffee's free, but we have to pay for everything else and the promised dinner never materializes, so we all bring in take out from down the street and spend most of the evening keeping it away from Nana.
We figure if no one comes, we'll call it an early night. Fortunately - or unfortunately - four people show up. It's good to see famed ASL signer Jodi Gill, who has brought her friend Doug; and Cyd's old friends, Marc and Chris Berardo, have come to support us too. So we scrap the stage and play a campfire-like circle and everyone chips in. CJ plays us a couple of quirky, clever tunes and the Berardo brothers play Marc's "Franklinville," which makes us glad we stayed. As it turns out, Marc is in the middle of recording a second album and he's got a studio CDR of the song in his car. So I pop it in my laptop, rip the rough mix of "Franklinville," encode it to MP3 and upload it later that night. Now this is fast folk! It's the final song for this month's Fenario - still coming soon.
There's still time for New Englanders to catch the end of the tour:
May 18 Th Club Passim, Cambridge MA. 617-492-7679
May 19 Fr Night Eagle Emporium, Oxford NY. 607-843-7378
May 20 Sa Fox Run Coffeehouse, Sudbury MA.
Reservations required. (978-443-3253 or lalcorn@ultranet.com).
May 21 Su Burlington Coffeehouse, Burlington VT. 802 864-5888
May 23 Tu Skiff Mountain Concerts, Kent CT. 860 927-1682
Maybe we'll see you or your friends somewhere down the road.
Hugh Blumenfeld, Editor
hugh@balladtree.com
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