#philadelphia folk festival

[american-troubadour]

Phil Ochs performing at Philadelphia Folk Festival at Old Pool Farm in Upper Salford, Pennsylvania. August 24, 1968.

Photographed by Diana Davies

[paintingsandrecords]

a hobo clown; ink and watercolor

last eleven day’s listening:

love letter - everyone wants something beautiful

various - broadside ballads vol 1

various - philadelphia folk festival 1962 volume ii

r.e.m. - unplugged 1991

various - new folks

fugazi - steady diet of nothing

fugazi -red medicine

various - american history in ballad and song

[banjofilia]

John Hartford, Norman Blake

Philadelphia Folk Festival, 1972

[kickingdowndoors]

We're playing at the 2024 Philadelphia Folk Fest! We're taking a trip down memory lane to our set from 2018 on the Camp Stage!

[countrymusicandcher]

Blurry pictures of Anna McGarrigle with an unknown woman (possibly Jane McGarrigle or Roma Baran) and, presumably, not-yet-husband Dane Lanken at the 1974 Philadelphia Folk festival.

Photo by David Gahr.

[ajepyx]

Pics from "Sleep Until Noon" Screening at Philadelphia Independent Film Festival

Pics from "Sleep Until Noon" Screening at Philadelphia Independent Film Festival

Thank you Philadelphia Independent Film Festival for screening Milan Martin’s “Sleep Until Noon” music video and thanks to everyone who enjoyed it!

[shadowland]

Phil Ochs backstage at Philadelphia Folk Festival, photographed by © Jack Rosen (1966)

[1264doghouse]

John Prine & Bonnie Raitt, Philadelphia Folk Festival 1972

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The most wildly misunderstood yet commonly used word in American politics is “gaffe.” The dictionary defines it as “an unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder” — and that’s not wrong. But on the campaign trail, 95% of the time a much-talked-about “gaffe” is the blunder of a politician accidentally blurting out the truth. You’ve been hearing a lot about Donald Trump’s disastrous, Nazi-echoing rally at Madison Square Garden, and “comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe’s vote-killing “jokes” about Puerto Ricans and African Americans, and that’s been a game-changing development. But over the last week, it’s also been open-mic night for the Republicans who want to run Congress, and the embarrassing blunder of accidental truth-telling has been coming faster than Henny Youngman one-liners. Election Day will tell whether the joke is on the GOP, or on the American people for electing them.

[...] In fact, the current GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, with a 50-50 chance of clinging to that job next January, has been barnstorming America in a festival of truth-telling “gaffes,” including the revelation that his party dreams of not just gutting Obamacare — as McCormick suggested on that hot mic — but repealing the ACA altogether. This despite Trump’s September debate admission that after a decade of talking about this, he only has “concepts of a plan” (and in reality he doesn’t even have that) on how to replace a program that has saved thousands of American lives.

“No Obamacare,” Johnson responded to a voter’s comment during a news conference in Pennsylvania, before suggesting that Republicans, if it’s in their control, will make major but totally unspecified changes to a program that is broadly popular with the American public while currently insuring more than 21 million. He added: “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.” Yeah, sure, Mike. But like Bluto in Animal House, the House speaker was now rolling. Only a day or so later, campaigning for an embattled House ally in upstate New York, Johnson replied to a student journalist from Syracuse University asking if Congress would also repeal 2022′s bipartisan CHIP and Science Act, which is aiding an $100 billion new plant in that New York candidate’s district creating thousands of new jobs. “I expect that we probably will but we haven’t developed that part of the agenda yet — we gotta get over the election first,” Johnson said.

This time, Johnson soon realized that he’d gone too far even for today’s Republicans, and he rolled back the comment with the hard-to-believe claim that he’d misheard the clearly audible student journalist just a few feet away. But while the semiconductor-aid program, and its large-scale job creation, appear to be safe for now, we should take Johnson, McCormick and their colleagues seriously, if not always literally. To reach their true spiritual goal of taking America back to a time when white men like them ruled without challenge — not only on Capitol Hill but in every household — they are willing to willy-nilly repeal anything passed not just by President Joe Biden but LBJ and maybe even FDR. They want to bring back an uneven playing field for women, Black and brown folks, or the LGBTQ community, even if it also hurts the white middle class they claim to be representing.

Is it a gaffe that we’re learning in the campaign’s final hours that Team Trump plans to give enormous power over public health policy to former-candidate-turned-Trump-ally and anti-vaccine nutjob Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who tweeted Saturday night that he literally wants to take America back to the 1950s by removing fluoride — which has improved the dental health of U.S. children for decades — from public drinking water. Make all the jokes you want about the John Birch Society or Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, but — just like Hinchcliffe’s MSG put-downs of Latinos and Black people — their push to unravel modern American progress is no laughing matter. Voters understand RFK Jr.’s words are serious because we’ve already seen in one hugely important area — reproductive rights — what happens when the barking dog of GOP policy nonsense actually catches the car. The Trump-fried U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 reversal of Roe vs. Wade has taken women’s health care back more than 60 years, and now we are learning the stories of the women who are dying as a result. How many more Americans will die needlessly if Johnson, McCormick, Trump and their ilk keep driving their 1950s Rambler policies off the cliff?

[...] The GOP’s 11th-hour policy truth bombs aren’t getting the media attention they deserve. They are competing with the increasingly racist, violent and unhinged rhetoric from Trump’s allies but especially from the 78-year-old candidate himself, who seems to be descending into madness in what, either way, are (probably) his last days ever on the trail. We should be paying great attention to events like his nearly six-hour Manhattan hatefest. But understand that the cruelty is the point of the modern MAGA movement, and Trump’s despicable language and attitudes toward women and nonwhite men will be translated on Capitol Hill into cruel policies — political neutron bombs that will devastate everyone, even the folks lining up in Appalachia or the prairies of the Great Plains to vote for Trump.

Will Bunch delivers a truthbomb in his latest Philly Inquirer column that the GOP’s deranged quest to repeal CHIPS Act and Obamacare, along with pandering to anti-fluoride cranks, will doom them.

See Also:

HuffPost: Republicans Close Out Final Week Of 2024 Race By Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud

[zoekeating]

Dear Listeners,

It’s winter break here in Vermont so my son and I have been out on the slopes every day. For many years I have stayed away from fast slidey sports because I was afraid of injuring my hands. If my hands don’t work, how do I make music? But among the many bits of advice I’ve gotten in my parenting journey, “be into what your kid is into” has been one of the best. My lad needed someone to ride the lifts with and I needed to overcome my fear and learn how to fall properly, so here I am.

I found that skiing is not all that different from rollerblading, which I learned to do in Central Park the summer of my junior year. I brought the skates with me on my year abroad in Florence. On weekends there was this amazing city to explore but buses and museums and cafes cost money. And whenever I roamed the quiet streets and parks alone, I would be perpetually harassed, groped and even flashed by pathetic men. But rollerblading was free and, bonus, I am already quite tall, so with skates I was at least 6ft2in. No one ever messed with me on skates. I adapted to the cobblestones and explored all of Florence with exhilarating freedom.

One Sunday, as I was enjoying the expanses of asphalt in Parco delle Cascine, I came upon a group of folks on old-school rollerskates. They had a boombox and were dancing, just like the skaters of Central Park but without the sequined hot pants. They waved me over and exclaimed over my weird skates. They invited me to join them and for the rest of the school year, I spent every Sunday afternoon I could with the rollerskaters. We would gather, dancing and skating around obstacles, and once we had critical mass, tear off along the Arno and into the old city. We’d skate past the David, circle the Piazza della Signoria multiple times and whizz down the marble collanade along the Piazza Republica, ending in a bar, still on skates, for an espresso or aperativo. Those are some of my best memories of my year in Florence.

I continued the skating when I moved to San Francisco, zooming most days through Golden Gate Park to the beach and back again. Sometimes I’d join a similar group of mad skaters on Friday nights to roll fearlessly down hills and through tunnels. Skating was always a great source of joy. But then I moved away from the paved environment of the city and I transitioned to music full time. After acquiring a broken finger from an Evil Door and being shocked at how much that tiny injury impacted my ability to play, I quit skating.

Fast forward to Vermont. Like many people did during the pandemic, I got back on skates except this time with padding, wrist guards and a helmet. And then, as my boy learned to snowboard, I learned to ski. We still ride the lifts together but now he zips down black diamond trails while I ski carefully down the easy ones. He is mystified as to how I can bear to do the same runs over and over but I like it that way. It’s like a meditation. I focus on perfecting my technique and try to make each turn better than the last. It feels similar to one of the things I enjoy about playing the cello, which is noticing tiny details and gradually polishing them. How can I improve this one phrase that I have played thousands of times? It never gets old or boring for me.

I hope it never gets boring for you either! Next week I’ll get back to work improving my old songs and figuring out to play some of my new ones in time for my concerts in March.

March 15 - ArtYard in Frenchtown,NJ

March 16 - Underground Arts in Philadelphia, PA opening up for my old friend The Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

March 17 - Le Poisson Rouge in NYC

March 21 - St John’s Cathedral at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN

And one more

April 6 - Unitarian Univeralist Church in Burlington VT, accompanied by mesmerizing visuals by Alex Reeves

also, outside my solo work on April 7 I’ll be a part of composer Randal Pierce’s ensemble, performing his live soundtrack to George Méliès’ silent cinematic masterpiece, A Trip to the Moon

6:30 and 8:30pm shows

More about all the events happening in Burlington around the eclipse

Thank you for listening and please wear a helmet when you are going fast.

celloly yours, Z

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

The Incredible String Band - Philadelphia Folk Festival, August 24, 1969

I've been digging into the appropriately big/huge Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending: An Incredible String Band Compendium lately. Like the ISB itself, the newly revised & expanded book is sprawling, messy and awesome, going into exquisite/excruciating detail about all aspects of the band's life and afterlife.

As a soundtrack, I'm checking out some rare-ish live tapes; this Philadelphia Folk Fest gig came hot on the heels of the Incredible String Band's infamous Woodstock set, during which they tried and failed to win over hundreds of thousands of muddy hippies. Oh well! But it's interesting that the ISB was such a big band at this point — they were headlining the Philly Folk Fest and had topped the bill at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens immediately following Woodstock. An only-in-the-1960s crossover? Maybe!

In his foreword to Be Glad, the freaking Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (2002-2012) writes: "For those of us who fell in love with the ISB, there was a feeling of breathing the air of a very expansive imagination indeed. It was all right to be enchanted — but not bewitched — by colossal and antique symbols; all right at the same time to be thinking about the experiences of 'ordinary' first loves and first betrayals; and all right to find the earnest nonsense of real hallucinogenic maunderings funny. There was no one quite like them; we liked to think it was a very grown-up taste, but that makes it sound too serious."

[american-troubadour]

Phil Ochs backstage at Philadelphia Folk Festival at Old Pool Farm in Upper Salford, Pennsylvania. August 24, 1968.

Photographed by Diana Davies

[hang-on-lil-tomato]

Rhys Darby at The Keswick Oct 17, 2023

What a GREAT time!

I realized today how much LOVE was in that room! Love for rhys, for his “essence” (har har) and love right back at us!

it was a delightful time, rhys doing his greatest hits,

he can’t promote OFMD, which is fine since half the audience was dressed as pirates. We know about his little pirate rom com.

but…he very subtlety did a riff on “come back to me” and not so subtlety did “I did a punch”. Pretty awesome ways he had of sneaking that stuff in!

he got the best cheers for that bit of fan service.

his opening act was great, and he was doing a bit about usa tv, and CSi. It was ok, but it was kind of flat for him until he said something about the kind of shows you guys watch are about gay pirates, and we all went wild.

I met a cool fan with the same name as me, she was just back from NYCC. That was great! So we hung out, had dinner, and chatted. It was so nice to rave on with someone about OFMD details, and of course Rhysie. Really made the experience so much better, because I always go alone to things.

Steve was also joking about “where the hell are we? Rhys asked me to a show in Philly with him, but this isn’t Philly, is it?”

GLENSIDE, we shouted. It’s actually a very cute, upscale, suburban bedroom community for Philly. And we call everything around here Philadelphia, so that’s hysterical.

philadelphia factory outlets is in Sanatogo,

Philadelphia folk festival is in Schwenksville.

today I told everyone at school I saw Rhys Darby, and they looked at me like “Is that a band?” 😂🤣😂

Rhys asked the audience if anyone was local to Glenside. YES! And you’ve heard of me?

😂🤣

the capacity was 1300 but I estimate it was only 3/4 on attendance max, so maybe 800, but many DEVOUT fans. The orchestra was filled with SUPERFANS.

Anyone who pays any attention to my silly blah blah blog know I adore Rhys, but these folks are NEXT LEVEL. I had an excellent seat, but I’m glad I wasn’t quite in the gravy basket with the priesthood up front. May Rhys Bless Them from on high.

no merch table, just two guys doing stand up. Just down and dirty, simple and great.

unfortunately he and Steve couldn’t meet and greet as they had to drive up to Connecticut. But Rhys and he drove by and honked at the crowd in front of the theater. Unfortunately for me, I was on the wrong side of the street.

see Rhys LIVE! It’s a special experience.

oh, and don’t use AXL ticketing with their stupid app. Luckily I was prepared with my proof of purchase, ID and CC. Never again!

but I’d definitely see Rhys again.

the audience is part of the show!

[kenster865]

Bonnie Raitt at The Philadelphia Folk Festival August 1971, Photo by David Gahr

[scotianostra]

ndrew McGregor Stewart was born on 8th September 1952 at Alyth, Perthshire.

Andy became known as Andy M Stewart to differentiate him from the other Andy Stewart

At school in Blairgowrie Andy fell in with Dougie Maclean, who sang and played guitar and fiddle, guitarist Ewen Sutherland, and the Hadden brothers, Kenny and Martin. They formed Puddock’s Well, with Stewart on vocals, banjo and mandolin, and became the house band, and organising committee, at Blairgowrie Folk Club before branching out to play at other folk clubs and festivals across Scotland, often returning home in time to get up for work.

When Silly Wizard came to play in Blairgowrie and Puddock’s Well were the opening act, the two bands got on famously. Stewart, Martin Hadden (bass guitar) and, more briefly, Maclean, all ended up joining founder Gordon Jones in Silly Wizard, who had built a reputation in the early 1970s for high tempo, exciting tunes, initially courtesy of their schoolboy fiddler, Johnny Cunningham. When a series of personnel changes left them without a singer, they got in touch with the one they had heard with Puddock’s Well.

Stewart brought to the band natural frontman skills as well as a magnificent tone and huge warmth of feeling for the songs he sang. As an interpreter of traditional songs and the words of Robert Burns, he had few equals then or since. He also wrote songs in the style of the tradition, celebrating locales near where he had grown up such as The Parish of Dunkeld and The Valley of Strathmore.

With Stewart aboard, Silly Wizard presented a complete package of music, fun, excitement and historical reference. It was an eminently exportable package, as they discovered when an American woman approached them after a gig at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and asked for their contact details. Stewart felt sure nothing would come of this but a few weeks later they were booked for Philadelphia Folk Festival, a 20-minute spot that opened the door to America.

By 1988 Stewart left Silly Wizard, feeling the band had exhausted all possibilities, although Celtic Connections would go on to stage a couple of reunions. Collaborations with Phil Cunningham, Manus Lunny of Capercaillie and Irish guitarist, Gerry O’Beirne followed, the latter lasted until Andy’s health began to decline in 2011.

Failed spinal surgery in 2013 left him paralysed from the chest down and he survived further emergency surgery in September 2014 only to suffer a stroke in early December 2015 followed by pneumonia, he passed away on the 27th of that month.

The song is from his album of Rabbie Burns songs, Is There For Honest Poverty (For A' That) should be a song you all know.

[randomvarious]

Today's mix:

Past Lessons / Future Theories by Slam 2000 Tech-House / Techno / House / Deep House

Oh, hell yes, folks. Today, we've got an exquisite turn-of-the-millennium double-disc mix, courtesy of Glasgow's greatest techno DJ pair to ever do it, Slam. Back in the early 90s, these guys were part of the group that was responsible for co-founding the terrific Soma Quality Recordings label—also based out of Glasgow—and these days they play sets all across the globe, have their very own festival, and host one of techno's most popular weekly podcasts too: Slam Radio. Needless to say, in a genre whose overall ephemerality tends to be so key, and with so many acts who debuted in the early 90s having naturally fallen by the wayside, the fact that these two have managed to become, and still remain, an institution in this space is such a commendably rare feat in and of itself 👏. And a mix like this serves as a stellar example as to why they've managed to stick around and stay in the top echelon of techno DJs for so long. Past Lessons / Future Theories certainly doesn't catch Slam in their earliest days, but it's still only the second mix of theirs to ever be released commercially, and the first since 1996's Psychotrance 4, on Moonshine Music. And while the first disc is the far chiller of the two and sees them tying to shy away from dropping the straight-up techno jams, it's the second disc where they decide to really channel their true, uninhibited inner selves, and get down to brass tacks 😤.

Now, while most mixes tend to have names that you really shouldn't read too much into, I think there's a meaning behind this one's in particular, and that it's really exemplified by a single track: Josh Wink and Lil' Louis' "How's Your Evening So Far?" Real house heads who know their history are already undoubtedly familiar with the name Lil' Louis, as he's the guy who made one of the biggest ever house tunes of the 1980s, with the warm and chuggingly sensual "French Kiss." But with this track from 2000 here, Philadelphia's Josh Wink manages to revive that classic while simultaneously cozily wrapping it in his own techno knowhow, yielding a total banger that, over 20 years later, still satisfies plentifully 😌. So, if Past Lessons / Future Theories means taking what you've already learned and then building something new and lasting directly on top of it, then Wink really knocked that whole concept out of the damn park with this song here.

And also, while this second disc largely seems to run a slightly dark, yet eclectic contemporary techno gamut of sorts, I still definitely gotta give it up especially for Mad Mike Banks' "String Mix" of The Aztec Mystic's "Jaguar." This is a tune that builds itself in anticipation to a boiling point with its very prominent, sharp, and dramatic orchestral string work, with those strings eventually transitioning into creakily seesawing Hitchcockian stabs when the drumbeat finally comes in at the end. Such a phenomenal track!

So, in all honesty, after listening to this album's first disc, I was starting to get ready to conclude that while Slam had been trusted veteran DJs for a good while by the year 2000, this release itself didn't actually have the transcendent 'wow' factor that you might expect. But evidently, these guys were just saving up all their magic for disc 2. Disc 1 isn't a total skipper by any means, but that second one really shows you what these Glasgow legends are capable of weaving together, and to that end, why they've managed to outlast almost all of their peers as well.

Listen to CD1 here. Listen to CD2 here.

Highlights:

CD1:

E-Dancer - "Heavenly (Juan Atkins Remix)" Flunky - "Love Song (Dub)" Sueño Latino - Sueno Latino (Bushwacka! Tek Mix)" Mark Flash - "Timbales Calientes" Silicone Soul - "Right On, Right On"

CD2:

Bushwacka! - "Healer (House Mix)" Hipp-E & Eric Davenport - "Jesus Loves 2000" Valentino Kanzyani - "Fever" Trevor Rockcliffe - "A Sound Called House" Samuel L. Session - "Tribe Cut" Death In Vegas - "Dirge (Slam Mix)" Josh Wink & Lil' Louis - "How's Your Evening So Far?" Black Odyssey - "The Stand" Gaetano Parisio - "1999" Slam - "Positive Education" The Aztec Mystic - "Jaguar (Mad Mike String Mix)"