News Capsules for and about the Acoustic Community in the Northeastern U.S.
Cheryl Wheeler, the witty singer-songwriter from Massachusetts, whose songs also have been covered by a bevy of notable artists, headlines the seventh annual Connecticut Folk Festival and Green Expo, a free, day-long event that’s set for Saturday, Sept. 8, in New Haven’s Edgerton Park. [To continue reading the article, click on the headline.]
Mary Chapin Carpenter, Steve Earle and the Dukes, Mary Gauthier, Tracy Grammer, John Hiatt, Brother Sun, The Holmes Brothers, Little Feat, Mark Erelli, Lori McKenna, Atwater-Donnelly, Paul Thorn, Lucinda Williams, rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson, The HillBenders, Red Clay Ramblers, Roosevelt Dime and Spuyten Duyvil are among the dozens of artists and acts slated to perform during the 51st annual Philadelphia Folk Festival, August 17-19, at the Old Pool Farm in Upper Salford Township, near Schwenksville, Pennsylvania. The festival is produced and presented by the nonprofit Philadelphia Folksong Society. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Hundreds of folk & bluegrass music lovers are expected to gather at the New City Volunteer Ambulance Corps (200 Congers Road, New City, New York) on Sunday afternoon, August 26, 2012 for the third annual picnic, singing party, and jam hosted by the Borderline Folk Music Club of Rockland County and co-sponsored by AcousticMusicScene.com. The free event, for which people are expected to bring a cold potluck dish for six, is set for 12-6 p.m. in the outdoor grassy area adjacent to the parking lot. [To read the article in its entirety, click on the headline.]
AcousticMusicScene.com will host a series of late-night song swaps and mini-showcases during the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, July 26-29, in partnership with Pirate Camp, which was informally launched by Stuart Kabak and the late Jack Hardy a decade ago to provide a warm and welcoming haven for sharing music, food and camaraderie.. Now in its 24th year, Falcon Ridge takes place at Dodds Farm on Route 7D in Hillsdale, NY -- located in the foothills of the Berkshires, near the tri-state corner of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. [ To read about the festival and see the late-night schedules, click on the headline.]
The seventh annual Huntington Folk Festival is slated for Sunday, July 22, 2012. The free event will extend from 12 noon into the late evening at Heckscher Park, Main Street (Route 25A) and Prime Avenue, in Huntington, New York. AcousticMusicScene.com and Acoustic Live! in New York City and Beyond will host unplugged showcases during the afternoon, while the artists who are part of this year's Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Most Wanted Tour will perform on the Chapin Rainbow Stage in the evening. [To read the article and view the showcase schedules, click on the headline.]
A couple of music festivals of note take place in Massachusetts in July: the Greater New Bedford Summerfest, July 6-8, along the cobblestoned streets of the old whaling city, and the Green River Festival featuring music, hot air balloons and more at the community college campus in Greenfield, July 14-15. [To read the full article previewing these festivals, click on the headline.]
Twenty-four artists/bands have been selected from among hundreds of applicants to perform in the Emerging Artists Showcase during the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in Hillsdale, New York on Friday afternoon, July 27, 2012, from noon to 4:30 p.m. [To read the full article, see the list of showcasing artists, and learn more about the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival and the FRFF Most Wanted Tour, click on the headline.]
The Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) invites the public to attend a 75-minute, hootenanny-style Musical Tribute to Woody Guthrie and a series of 15-minute artist showcases that will take place on Saturday, June 2, from 3-7 p.m., at the Lipke Auditorium on the University of Massachusetts Boston campus. These special events, for which $10 tickets will be available at the door, are part of a day-long mini-conference featuring workshops and panel discussions that the nonprofit organization is hosting to give artists, presenters, DJs, agents and others engaged in the folk music scene a small taste of what takes place during its annual conference in The Catskills each fall. Proceeds from the events will be shared with WUMB, Boston’s NPR Music Station, with which NERFA is collaborating to open them to the public. [To read the article in its entirety, click on the headline.]
Richard Meyer, a singer-songwriter who also was an integral part of the folk music scene in New York’s Greenwich Village during the 1980s and 1990s as a booker for the Speakeasy and longtime editor of Fast Folk Musical Magazine (1986-1997), died May 14, 2012 at age 59. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
The folk, folk-rock and singer-songwriter communities lost one of their most ardent champions and promoters last week with the passing of Pete Fornatale, a pioneering New York radio DJ, who introduced me and many others to some wonderful artists whose music has become the soundtrack of our lives. [To read the full article -- including reflections from artists who knew Pete and excerpts from an interview I did with him in 1989 -- click on the headline.]
The maddening crowds of summer won’t be there, but several hundred performing artists and others engaged in the music business are expected to converge on the historic Victorian-lined New Jersey seaside resort community of Cape May, March 30-31, for the fifth annual Singer-Songwriter Cape May conference. AcousticMusicScene.com co-creator Glen Roethel will be among the more than 150 showcasing artists, while editor & publisher Michael Kornfeld will be among the panelists discussing "Publicity, Marketing and Social Media for Independent Artists." {To read a short preview of the conference, click on the headline.]
Based on the success of its first one-day mini-conference in Massachusetts last April, which drew more than 175 people, the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) has scheduled two such events for this spring in different parts of the region. One is slated for Saturday, May 5, at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center in Bethesda, Maryland, while the other is set for Saturday, June 2, at the University of Massachusetts-Boston campus. Early-bird registration and showcase application deadlines are quickly approaching for both events. [To read the full article, click on the headline].
