Cover Lay Down

Two years ago, my annual visit to the folkfields produced a manifesto of sorts, anticipating and acknowledging the blur between old time, bluegrass, folk, and other american roots forms being performed by a rising crop of very young artists. Much of this came from the dual nature of my summer revelry: moving from Grey Fox Bluegrass to Falcon Ridge Folk allowed for a surprisingly consistent journey, and that which I saw in one site, I confirmed in the other.

This year, though work and other obligations left me unable to attend Grey Fox, I was able to catch more music than usual at Falcon Ridge, thanks to the fine and increasingly mature staff working under me as coordinator of the Teen Volunteer Crew. And though much of what I anticipated in my Falcon Ridge Folk Festival preview post back in June came to pass in my ears (Lucy Kaplansky’s take on Eliza Gilkyson’s Sanctuary, especially, was a highlight, as was the Sunday morning Gospel Wakeup, which had me running to the merch tent for a copy of Susan Werner’s 2007 agnostic gospel folk album), during my time at the various stages and songcircles, a couple of themes emerged, though none so clear as that long-past revelation.

One theme was Time, as – through performance pairings, tribute sets, stage sequence, and the lamented passing of several folk artists – the genuine intergenerationality of the folksinger community was laid bare time and time again. There’s something quite reassuring in the way in which older musicians mentor younger ones, and play alongside them; something wonderful in the way a cover of, say, Susan Werner’s May I Suggest, which has been performed as an a capella tune by Red Molly for several years, is joined on stage by Werner herself for a fourth harmony part; something satisfyingly eternal and vibrant for the music itself in the persistence with which long-time members of the folk underground and mainstage crowds alike continue to work at and take risks with their craft. It’s hardly revelatory, I suppose, to note this, especially at a festival in its 23rd year which is known both for its attention to new and rising artists and for having favorite musicians return by popular demand, but there it is, and I’ll have more to say about this below.

The other theme, or at least a motif, touches on the everfluid and everchanging nature of folk as a genre. With several once-solo singer-songwriters now on mainstage as members of trios (Brother Sun, Red Molly, Red Horse), and with the winners of last year’s Emerging Artist showcases comprising 15 people for four acts, the folk band seems to be making a comeback, spurred, perhaps, by that same genre-blur – after all, though folk is renown for containing singer-songwriter multitudes, most types of music are collaborative by design.

Couple these with the passing of the decidedly one-man-show folk artists Bill Morrissey and Jack Hardy – one during the festival itself, the other since last year – and note that both of these performers continued to struggle for audiences in their final years, in part through duo collaboration with other artists – and it starts to look like the lot of the solo singer-songwriter is shifting, as artistry and craft in the folkscene becomes more about collaboration and play, and less about identity and the solitary voice. It’s related to what we saw last year, in the way some nominally “folk” festivals have broadened their musical base, inviting rock, indie, pop, blues, and other band-based forms in merely to survive in the market. And though even the most cursory look back at the 80′s Fast Folk scene shows the singer-songwriter revivalists which sparked Falcon Ridge singing harmony and playing along with each other on those albums, too, the move towards band affiliation marks a notable shift in how rising artists identify themselves.

These trends emerged early, to be sure. I was more interested than usual in this year’s emerging artist competition, in no small part because of my time spent the night before at the Lounge Stage, a fan-and-musician-run pop-up venue which appeared high on the hill atop the the 10 Acre campground Thursday before fading into the official festival the following morning, and which featured several of last year’s Emerging Artist winners – including the deservedly well-loved crowd favorites, the old-timey rootsfolk band Spuyten Duyvil, who we featured in our prefest post – long-standing folk icons Buskin and Batteau, and a number of the artists who would grace the mainstage the following day for their two-song showcase.

And though several solo acts on the Friday afternoon mainstage run caught my ear – most notably Grace Pettis, who has recently won emerging artist and songwriting contests at both Mountain Stage and Kerrville, and Brittany Ann, who won my heart the afternoon before – it was hard to ignore the fact that there were more groups than ever among the two-song entrants this year, spurred – perhaps – by the prevalence of duos and folk groups among contest winners in the past several years. And many were startlingly good – from ilyAIMY’s punkish, drum-and-guitar driven powerhouse folk to the warm, acoustic folk harmonies of foursome Pesky J. Nixon, hosts of the Lounge Stage, whose two lead voices I am proud to consider friends after our weekend on the hill, and whose next release is scheduled to be a covers EP which is bound to make them a whole new round of fans.

Far be it from me to predict next year’s winners – I tend to consider taste a purely subjective mechanism, and am generous in my allowances for good melody and stagecraft even as others prioritize lyric and the trappings of legitimacy. And I would be hard pressed to handicap, regardless, given that volunteer duties called me from a good half of this year’s fine crop of competitors. But I heard plenty of buzz about these four acts from musicians and fans alike, both before and after their performances. More significantly, I loved ‘em all, and managed to find covers from each, to boot. As a bonus, two of the covers come from Lounge Stage performances from the past two years; listen closely, and I bet you can hear me cheering at the end of the first one.

• Pesky J. Nixon: John Brown (orig. Jimmy Ryan)
  (live from the Falcon Ridge Lounge Stage, 2011)

• Brittany Ann w/ Pesky J. Nixon: Miss Ohio (orig. Gillian Welch)
  (live from the Falcon Ridge Lounge Stage, 2010)

• ilyAIMY: We Can Work It Out (orig. The Beatles)
  (from A Gift For Saint Cecilia, 2009)

• Grace Pettis, Scott Mulvahill, and Allie Farris: Rolling In The Deep (orig. Adele)

This was also the year I discovered Jack Hardy, in a roundabout kind of way. As I told his daughter Eva on Sunday, as a second-generation folk fan who grew up in a home populated by Fast Folk recordings and magazines, I had always thought of Jack first and foremost as a mentor to and engine for other songwriters, a progenitor of sorts of the 80′s folk revival. But Saturday afternoon’s celebration of his life and music changed my perspective, introducing me posthumously to the careful craftsmanship of Jack Hardy the musician through a long set of tributes in song and sentiment.

Turns out that Jack – who led week-long songwriter retreats by forcing budding songwriters to write songs for other artists instead of themselves, had little patience for those who thought of folk as a vehicle for popularity, and cared less for performance than most, famously noting “It’s the song, stupid” – was a fine songwriter in his own right. And though I missed seeing him in the prime of his career, thanks to his family, who turned me on to his work through the gift of an early concert album, and the CD recorded by the songwriter collective he ran from his NYC apartment for three decades, I’ve been steeping in his songbook and his influence for a week, and loving every minute of it.

Next year will see one last Fast Folk Magazine, a formal two-disc tribute album for Jack released through the Smithsonian Folkways label: a labor of love from Fast Folk engineer Mark Dann and fellow Greenwich scene standby David Massengill, both of whom considered Jack a close friend, and featuring coverage from a slew of artists influenced by Jack, from Suzanne Vega to Anthony Da Costa, from Christine Lavin to Terry Roche, from Nanci Griffith to Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky, and John Gorka. For now, that 24-song tribute and its accompanying pdf tribute to the life of Jack Hardy are ready, waiting for a server which can handle a few months of free access.

As coverlovers, we’re looking to help, and though my camera gave up the ghost early on Friday, we’re also working on acquiring a video of the entire Falcon Ridge tribute as well; in the meanwhile, here’s a quartet of the many surprisingly tender tracks from the forthcoming album, a set which only underscores how versatile and how deliberate a songwriter Jack really was – plus a live track from the Falcon Ridge set borrowed from the ‘Tube, an as-yet unrecorded, unnamed song from Jack’s last years performed by Mary Gauthier, which most present agreed is a masterpiece of folksong bound to find voice in other hearts and hands before it has served its purpose.

• Suzanne Vega: St. Claire (orig. Jack Hardy)
• Red Molly: Prisoner (orig. Jack Hardy)
• Jonathan Byrd: Autumn (orig. Jack Hardy)
• Nanci Griffith: Fare Thee Well (orig. Jack Hardy)
  (from as-yet unnamed Jack Hardy Tribute, 2012)

• Mary Gauthier w/ Tanya Elizabeth: Ain’t I A Woman (orig. Jack Hardy)
  

Finally, a third, related motif: this was the year I had the iPad with me on site, and being plugged in felt pretty weird, even as the crowd texted along with me. Wired technology in the field is a relatively recent phenom – most of us remember when there were pay phones set up – and one of the things I miss about the pre-cellular age is the news blackout that we used to experience while on site. Amy Winehouse may not be on the average folk festival-goer’s playlist, but as a pop icon, her death was a big part of the background buzz during the fest.

But it was news of Bill Morrissey’s passage – delivered between sets, from the mainstage on Sunday morning – which caused a sudden silence in the crowd. Morrissey had his demons: he was known for his drinking, and the weariness of the solo road warrior which caused no amount of stress and desperation in his actions. But as Cliff Eberhardt, who served as pallbearer to this fallen giant of the early movement, noted on Facebook over the weekend, “The casket felt so light. That’s when I knew he was really gone, because if his soul was in there with him, that casket would have weighed a ton.”

Morrissey wasn’t just a well-known member of the Fast Folk-driven era, he was also a headliner at the very first Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, alongside Greg Brown, Shawn Colvin, John Gorka and others. As such, though he had shown neither body nor soul at Falcon Ridge for over a decade, he belongs here, in our festival review, part and parcel of our consideration of the passing of the first revivalists, even as they make way for the next generation of folk bands and singer-songwriters who benefitted from their leadership and guidance, their music and craft.

Here’s a cover or two from Bill, both solo and with his old friend Greg Brown…plus apt tributes from fellow Fast Folkie Lucy Kaplansky, who was all over Falcon Ridge 2011, and Mark Erelli, an inheritor of the dream who grew up at the fest, working his way from the volunteer open mic to his current stature as mainstay of the modern movement. Perhaps next year, we’ll hear more tributes for the man who could wring poignancy from the tiniest moments, making every moment seem like the world. In the meantime, here’s to the folkworld: its numbers may be dwindling, and its edges blurring, but it’s still the place we call home.

• Mark Erelli: Birches (orig. Bill Morrissey)
  (from Mark Erelli’s Mp3 of the Week series, 2007)

• Lucy Kaplansky: Love Song/New York (orig. Bill Morrissey)
  (from The Red Thread, 2004)

• Lucy Kaplansky: Texas Blues (orig. Bill Morrissey)
  (from Tide, 1994)

• Bill Morrissey w/ Greg Brown: Hang Me, Oh Hang Me (trad.)
  (from Inside, 1992)

• Bill Morrissey and Greg Brown: He Was A Friend Of Mine (trad.)
  (from Friend of Mine, 1993)

• Bill Morrissey: I’m Satisfied (orig. Mississippi John Hurt)
  (from Songs of Mississippi John Hurt, 1999)