I’m back from the 25th NERFA which means back to blogging. NERFA is one of the major holidays in my calendar. Every year I make the pilgrimage to the gathering of my tribe. That’s what it’s about, everything else is details.
Part of the ritual is the journey. Since it moved to Stamford my default plan is taking the train. The problem with that is that I have to walk a mile to get to the Fordham station and then tag a cab once I get to Stamford, so I prefer getting a ride. The added benefit is the road trip, albeit a short one, with a friend. This year I was fortunate to get a ride with first-time NERFArian Matthew. Ten years ago, I was the newbie; now I’m the old hand giving advice.
Once we arrive comes an immediate highlight, greeting people in the lobby. Some are people I see often, others I only see at NERFA. If you ever wanted to start a plague in the folk music world just infect one person going to NERFA. We all hug everyone. I suspect nobody was more than two degrees of separation from me. I feel bad. I usually remember the first person I met at the lobby, this year I don’t. Even worse after talking to a friend another friend came over and said, “You’re going to find yourself in his blog.” I said, “He’s right, I’m definitely writing about this.” I have no idea who I was talking to or what made it important. This is ironic as several people commented on how great my memory was as I remembered the details of meeting them years earlier. I have a trick memory. It is unreliable but sometimes I can dredge obscure things up if I have the right key. I was talking to Emily Drinker and said I’m trying to remember exactly where I met you. She said, “It was last night at the jam.” I said, no, it was years ago at a small café in South Slope, I was there with Katherine Etzel. She said, Well I did this one gig seven years ago at _____ with _____.” That was the one. Notice I still can’t remember the name of the place. Emily’s last name was the trigger; it was unusual enough to act as a key. On the other hand, it’s a miracle that I remember anything from NERFA as I get no sleep.
My first NERFA workshop was On the Griddle. That is always fun, musicians bring in a CD, one minute of one track is played, and a panel of DJs, and promoters evaluate it. It’s a great way to scout out the land. While by definition most of what we hear is mediocre, there are always a few that catch my interest enough for me to follow up and check out in live performance. Joe Pszonek is on the panel and it’s amazing how many of the songs he already knows, always far more than anyone else. He listens to everything! There have been times I’ve hears a song, thought it was great, and didn’t realize I knew the artist. That happened this year with Orly Ben-David. I felt the song sounded like it could have been in Hadestown. I was delighted when John Platt said the same thing in his evaluation. John and I clicked on another song when we both though that the songwriting of Paul Nelson reminded us of Sam Baker. That’s high praise. I recognized Fred Arcoleo’s voice on one song but decided it wasn’t him as the style was so different. It was Fred. He tried something new. It was good. One song I loved was by the woman I was sitting with Kalyna Rakel. That’s fortunate as it’s awkward if you don’t like the music of the person you’ve been talking to.
I was extra good this year about sitting with strangers at dinner. I’m not that comfortable in that situation but I do it anyway. It’s part of why I know so many people. It also helps me discover new music, if I find someone’s conversation interesting, there’s a better chance of finding their music interesting. It’s not always true. There are plenty of people that are more interesting than their songs. I suspect it’s because they try to write the songs that they think others want to hear, rather than following their own passions. If you have a passion for sewer system of Des Moines, write about the sewer system of Des Moines. You’re an artist, what you do is let people into your inner world. You find it fascinating so others will too. At least they’ll find your fascination fascinating.
The first day I utterly failed at sitting with a stranger and the guy next to me, asked, “Are you a friend of Noah and Dan Rauchwerk?” I said he was. It was Andrew Weiss, and Noah played drum in his band for three years. I kept running into him and on Saturday I did when I was with Katherine. That was the key to remembering where we met, it was at a Lord’s of Liechtenstein CD release and Andrew played drums at that gig. Memories are all about relationships, Katherine added context. He was sitting with Phil Anthony and Melissa Frabotta. Phil plays bass with both Melissa, in Mosa, and with Andrew. I can keep the mental links forming as Melissa reminds me of Dan and Noah’s sister Autumn. In personality, but not looks, Phil is exactly like Bri’s friend Matt who looks like my friend Neal, so I call him Fake Neal. That makes Phil Fake Matt or Fake Fake Neal. We have shortened this to double-fake Neal. The fact that Phil thinks this is funny and isn’t annoyed with me, is exactly the way he reminds me of Matt. I’m always amazed whenever anyone is not annoyed with me.
I can’t believe where this entry is going. I thought I’d write a short summary of the conference and I’ve written a thousand words and I’m just up to dinner the first day. That’s fine. These types of minutia combine to form a big part of NERFA. Imagine this going on for three days. I won’t go into the same detail for the rest of the blog or I’d never finish, and I have a life to live. Tomorrow I’ll write about discoveries. Today I’ll write about more golden moments.
When I finished dinner on Saturday night, I decided I needed some time off from schmoozing. I went into the lobby to sit by myself and have some alone time. That’s not how it worked out. I passed Crys Matthews sitting by herself noodling on banjo. I didn’t remember Crys ever playing banjo. I liked what I heard and sat down near her to listen. Then she started singing. I had my own private concert by one of my favorite performers. The banjo looked brand new. It was brand new; she had just taken it up and was getting herself used to playing it in front of people. She was already good enough that I wanted to stay to hear her play. She played; we talked a bit between songs. Then others started to join us. There’s nothing like a great musician playing casually off mic, and even off stage. Eventually she put down the banjo and picked up her guitar and took a request. She was joined by her drummer, whose name I’m totally forgetting even though we met backstage at Falcon Ridge, and I talked to her. A gentleman neither of us new came by and started listening. He introduced himself, Kemp Harris. Turns out he’s a musician too and that night I checked him out at two guerilla showcases. He’s sensational. That’s how NERFA works. I’ll be writing more about him in my musical discoveries entry.
Saturday night there was a magical jam session. After the guerillas I went in search of one. I as hoping there’d be one in the lobby. I ran into Jackie Damsky, she was in search of a jam too. While we were walking on the second floor above the lobby, we heard someone singing loudly in the lobby. We didn’t see anyone, but we followed the voice. I was shocked to discover it was Jeremy Aaron, I love Jeremy but didn’t know he could belt like that. There was a jam circle with Abbie Gardner and Craig Akin at the center along with others I didn’t know. We joined them. Well at least Jackie joined them, she’s a fiddler, and I listened and sang along when I could. That turned out to be more often than usual. They were singing lots of music I know including three by Hank Williams, and Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue. That has a lot of words, but I listened to it so often when I was young and still had room in my brain for lyrics that I know them all. I texted Katherine about the jam, thinking it would be her jam. She and Gidge turned up later but that was by pure coincidence. They looked down from the same walkway on the second floor as I was on and saw Abbie and Craig. I’m not sure when Kirk arrived. Was he there before me?
All of a sudden, the lateness of the hour hit Abbie, it was around 4 AM, and she said, “I hit the wall.” I joked, OK, let’s sing Another Brick in the Wall. Next thing I know Sam Edelston starts picking it out on the mountain dulcimer. There is nothing more NERFA than a group of folk musicians jamming to Pink Floyd led by a mountain dulcimer. We of course ended with “You can’t have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat? How can you eat your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!”
After doing a Simon and Garfunkel song Nico Padden said, “We have to keep this groove going;” and started another S&G song. That started an entire medley of S&G songs. The first album I ever got was Simon and Garfunkel’s greatest hits. I memorized every song on the album, so I loved this. I could sing them all. Badly, but I knew the words and even amongst great singers I’m not shy about singing along. I used to be, but I’ve learned that if you aren’t so loud to throw everyone else off, it’s fine. Sometime near 5 AM Jack Skuller said that it was a NERFA tradition to end jams on the elevator. I’ve been to 10 NERFAs and never did that but it sounded like a fun thing to do. So, we all jammed into an elevator. It was a tight fit and I was afraid we might exceed the weight limit. We didn’t and if we all squeezed tight the doors could close. Good thing we liked each other. We then sang Sweet Home Alabama on the way to the top and Free Falling on the way down. I forgot what we sang on the way up again, but I know when we reached the fifth floor the elevator alarm went off. As I was standing near the buttons it might have been me. Katherine and I took that as a sign to call it a night as that was our floor.
This was totally disorganized but that’s much like NERFA; lots of delights coming at you from all directions. I’ll be writing more. Including my list of discoveries as the week goes on. Till then, why don’t you listen to this.
Wise Madness 