Attending the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance Conference

Day 1 – November 10, 2006

 I arrived at the Northeastern Folk Alliance Conference around 11:00 am and checked into my room.  I was happy to find that the room was exactly the same as last year and wondered if this was coincidence or planned.  Either way, it was a nice room overlooking a pond nestled into Kutsher's resort in Monticello, NY.  Shortly after I arrived, my roommate and good friend, Dannielle Swart, popped in to say "hi". 

 It was time to go to the first workshop; I chose Vocal Coaching with Siobhan Quinn.  Siobhan is a warm, encouraging instructor (and gifted performer as I learned later) and made all present feel comfortable.  There were about 25 attendees making it possible for Siobhan to go around to each person and use a hands-on approach to any vocal concerns.  I requested an exercise to put more strength into my lower vocal register.  I actually admitted to myself that proper vocal technique is something that I was never taught and the good thing: there is hope for me!  How exciting! I bought "The Contemporary Singer" by Anne Peckham from Siobhan, which includes a CD of vocal warm-ups and training.  This CD will improve my recording and live performances and most importantly will teach me to save my vocal chords from damage.  I plan to seek formal training in the future and I am thankful to Siobhan for her time and expertise.

 After the workshop was the Welcome Reception in the lobby; I saw many familiar faces.  This is my second NERFA conference and I was happy to reconnect with some friends I had previously made the year before.  Debra Chesman, Dannielle and I went back to our room and jammed on a few songs which we were invited to present at the Veggie Voyager Room the next day.  As I am not up to speed on many traditional and folk songs, we decided on two that we knew: Cotton Mill Girls and You Ain't Going Nowhere.  We had some sweet harmonic vocals and a nice first time bonding (for Debra and me).  I was honored to meet Debra – a nice person with a beautiful voice (and she plays the very cool washtub bass!).

 At dinner we caught up with Joe Crookston a fantastic songwriter/performer and friend from Ithaca and Joe Jencks from Cincinnati.  Joe Crookston has an infectious interaction with his audience, and is genuinely kind and supportive.  I met him last year and he spent a great deal of time earnestly talking with me about the folk music business.  Wow. You can find Joe at www.joecrookston.com  Joe Jencks has a thunderous crystal clear baritone voice and writes amazing songs of social conscious.  Joe is a well respected figure at NERFA and is constantly sought out for advice and instruction.  At one point he sat down with us and was obviously distraught – NERFA overload: something that can frequently happen at NERFA.  Turned out that all he needed was a hug and Danni was right there– she is the warm mother type.  Joe is definitely worth checking out www.joejencks.com

 Now was time for the Formal Showcases.  We found that our usual spot to "hang" (way up high) was cluttered with tables and few chair, so we moved some stuff and made a cozy nook and were joined by friend and great songwriting talent Paul Kaplan. Each Formal Showcase performer was allowed about 15 minutes which is basically three songs.  Just a taste.  If you craved to hear more from these artists you had plenty of opportunity to catch them later at one of the ka-zillion Guerilla Showcases that I will explain later. Highlights of Friday Showcases were: Little Toby Walker, Johnsmith, and Cosy Sheridan, who is as nice as she is talented.

 Next was the Tricentric Showcases.  Let me explain.  Three conference rooms are set up with sound systems and each room showcases a performer for 3 songs.  So you get to choose to listen to one of three artists.  You are not allowed to enter or leave during a song, but you can get up and check out another performer in a different room between songs.  This is surely a crazy event – with people darting in and out.  Because of the close proximity of the rooms, the sound from one act would often leak into another and there were sound problems except for Room C (she obviously knew her sound system). An observation about having to choose between three acts: sometimes you get lucky and get blown away by an artist or sometimes you just hang and listen to something that is not quite your cup of tea because you don't feel like fighting the crowd to switch rooms or being rude.  But all that being said, the Tricentrics are the places where you usually first hear the better up and coming acts – because they are hand selected by a committee.  My Friday selections were: Bread & Bones, Siobhan Quinn and Michael Bowers, Zoe Mulford , Nick Annis, and Jaime Michaels.  I enjoyed them all.

 So on to the Guerilla Showcases, this will take some explaining.  Individuals can rent hotel rooms in the Towers section of Kutsher's, specifically to host a showcase with hand selected featured artists.  Now this is where it gets rough, because there is so much going on and so many people you may want to catch.  For performing songwriters, the intent of NERFA is to connect with people who will book you to perform in their venue, or consider playing your music on their station.  So everywhere are flyers, posters and handouts printed, advertising the location of various Guerilla showcases. Often each performer will have several showcases in different rooms, through the many connections they have or exchange of slots, etc…Here is the fun part…the numbers of the rooms of Kutsher's are extremely confusing and it is a challenge to get to where you want to go.  It is frustrating but really fun, I have to admit.  Sometimes, you give up and catch someone you have never heard of which is not necessarily a bad thing.  I was happy to catch Cosy Sheridan again, David Massengill, Zoe Mulford, John Flynn (who is extremely wonderful) Guy Mendilow, The McDades, Johnsmith, Judd Caswell and I joined Larry Hoyt's song circle at Local 1000 and heard some good music there.

 After a long night, I stumbled home to my room at about 3am and crashed with vision of many many songwriters singing in my head.

 
Day 2 – November 11, 2006

 I reluctantly awoke around 8:30am the next morning, showered and grabbed last year's purple plastic NERFA coffee mug for a much needed fill-up. Dannielle was already out and about and I was pleased to share breakfast space with John Flynn and talked about his wonderful song about New Orleans.  We shared views about FEMA markings on homes and the parallels to a flood of biblical proportions. I also told him about our flood devastated community in Upstate NY and how I was well aware of homes marked with red spray painted X's and the little FEMA trailers that families are being forced to live in. A light early morning conversation.

 The workshops started at noon so I made my way to Put Some Sunshine in Your Performance with Amy Carol Webb, Cosy Sheridan and the legendary Jonathan Edwards of "Sunshine" (go away to today…) fame.  They gave solid advice about interacting with an audience and how to deliver an upbeat performance.  I learned some good stuff here and realized that the most valuable teacher is experience, and these artists certainly had that.

 At noon the Exhibit Hall opened so I made my way over and kibitzed with the vendors.  At 3, I had signed up for an Open Mike at the Deep End Lounge, so I made my way over and jumped onstage to perform two songs.  I performed Cracker Jax and Another Baby.  I was nervous; it has something to do with performing in front of your peers.  Strange, give me an audience back home and no nerves what so ever, most of the time.  Put me at NERFA and hello instant nervous breakdown.  I was not as bad as last year though, at least my hands were not shaking.  I tried to incorporate some of the tips I learned earlier in both the vocal coaching and sunshine workshop and I ran into a guy who heard my open mike performance and who also attended the Sunshine workshop. I asked him what he thought and he said he liked my songs and mentioned that he noticed how I implementing the workshop info in my performance.  Cool - I have a year to work it out, NERFA has made me realize that I can raise the bar (if I am fully committed to a career as a performing songwriter) and has offered me with tools (and friends) to support me.  I do remember saying the same thing to myself last year and boy that year was a fast moving flash!

 After dinner, we made our way to our cozy nook and watched the Formal Showcases. Highlights were Danny Schmidt, the McDades and Jonathan Edwards.  Tricentic highlights were Amy Speace with her band, and she absolutely blew me away in a Lucinda Williams kind of way.  The strong baritone of Joe Jencks was fantastic but he only performed two songs and I wanted more more more!  Scott Ainslie, performing on a steel National guitar, was also great.

 That night at the Guerillas, I saw Fred Gillian, Jr. perform one of his ballads.  Fred is one of those very gifted artists; he was obviously not feeling well, but managed to sound good.  Then I caught Joe Crookston, the great talent that he is and chanted along to a warning about hanging a door on a crooked wooden frame.  I caught a few songs from Jonathan Edwards in the Marquis Lounge and Johnsmith again, who I adore.  Then we jammed in the Veggie Voyager (a reference to Jay's van that runs on Vegetable Oil) room hosted by Jay Mankita.  We all did a song but ran out of time to present the 2 songs that we (Dannielle, Debra and I) worked on as a trio earlier.  I think the room was a little fuller than we expected, so we were forced to take it downstairs to jam.

 Our two song debut was actually quite good, but not well attended, unfortunately.  We were joined by Ed on the mandolin, who we affectionately referred to as Jerry Garcia, for obvious visual reasons.  Jamming in the halls of NERFA requires knowledge of traditional music, which unfortunately I do not have.  I followed along softly…and made a note to self: learn traditional songs.  I felt a bit embarrassed to be honest, and sad that I could not join in.  But everyone is understanding and nice.

 We returned to our room well after 3am and I rolled out of bed around 9am on Sunday and made my way to coffee.  I was pretty tired, along with everyone else. I made my last visit to the Exhibition Hall and went to one last workshop about Fundraising and grants.  I grabbed a quick lunch, said my goodbyes and left Kutsher's with fond memories and a mental list of follow-up activities that will soon get transposed to my "To-Do" list. 

 If you are interested in learning more about NERFA, visit www.nerfa.org, where you can join their listserve.  Also, there are other regional and a national folk alliance conference you can learn more at www.folkalliance.org.