Falcon Ridge Folk Festival 2001: A Journal

At last year's festival, Erin McKeown jumped up onto a packing trunk to gain some height and turned on the juice for 30 minutes to a crowd that, toward the end, all but cut off traffic flow. She sold about 30 CDs. To a certain extent, this was a command performance, as McKeown had wowed the audience the day before during her two-song New Songwriter showcase and created quite a buzz.

Performing on the midway requires a certain kind of approach. Like streetsinging or singing at rallies, playing on the Midway of a folk festival is totally social and interactive - you can't sing the kinds of quiet, introspective songs that have become the hallmark of folksingers in a thousand listening rooms and concert halls around the country. Here in the open air with people milling around and most of the audience standing, ready to depart at the slightest whim, you have to engage the audience at the level of the will, not just the heart or intellect.

There are a number of ways to do this, but all of them consist of grabbing the audience and not letting go. Ordinary beauty, for instance, doesn't work. I saw several acts along the row, mostly duos, who made pretty music with their harmonies and guitar picking, but made no impression. Trying too hard, accosting the audience, works little better, at least once the initial assault has worn off, as I have learned from experience. One group that managed to avoid both extremes was NY-based Open Book. Michelle Reuben and Rick Gedney played a 15 minute set in front of the Acoustic Live! booth in the middle of the afternoon. As usual, every time I turned around there was someone else to say hi to, but their song "Downstream" caught my ear and held it: "we're so much like the water in so many ways / and we move like the river to the sea." You don't hear such careful attention to the sounds of words very often in folk music, and they were fine musicians to boot. Still, they didn't sell 30 CDs. And neither did anyone else this year.

Jack Hardy's beauty is in his unadorned melodies and something about his hoarse whisper commands the kind of respect that shouting could not. While many people pass him by, those who are hooked in stay and listen with rapt attention. He chooses social commentary - "I Oughta Know" and "The 20th Century Is A Train" - as well as a whimsical lovesong (but not without some druidic symbolism) about "the girl who baked me a blackberry pie." He plays with his daughter Morgan, 15, in what seems to be her public debut accompanying him on fiddle.

Jack Hardy with daughter Morgan on fiddle.

Chris Chandler's approach is 180 degrees different. He rants, declaims, and dances his hillarious and incisive poetry of dissent. Bald and ribald, pierced and piercing, with painted nails and silk, flowered pants, Chandler seems about as home at a family folk festival as Freddy Kruger. In fact, he and Feeney are the only genuinely political folk act for miles and miles. Every one of his pieces has an epic sweep - one of them tracing the history of human evolution from our departure from the oceans (against the advice of doomsaying conservative prophets who forsee the holocaust of Red Lobster restaurants) to our most glorious, crowning achievement, as judged by the slice it takes up in the American pie: junk food. Meanwhile, Anne Feeney, a well-known labor activist and performer, no stranger to picket lines and rallies, provides musical counterpoint - in this case, interspersing verses from "The Times They Are A'Changing" through the narrative. The juxtaposition is powerful, suddenly making the old song new and revealing a current of optimism whenever the winded satirist relents. In the background, at the workshop stage, a host of folkies in the "Nod to Bob" workshop have been singing their way through a mostly tired stretch of the Dylan repertoire, ending with a crowd-pleasing "well-they'll-stone-you-while-you're-camping-in-your-tent" Falcon Ridge version of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35."

I'm convinced that these guerrilla minstrels are one of the highpoints of the festival. But then, along the Midway, there's little competition.

Anne Feeney and Chris Chandler with Mark Dann on bass.

Next page > OK, There's just one mainstage act we had to see.... > Page 1, 2, 3, 4

Hugh Blumenfeld, Editor
hugh@balladtree.com