San Diego Folk Song Society

Founded in 1957 by Sam Hinton
San Diego's Premier Folklorist

We've been getting together to sing and play since SDFSS was first founded by Sam Hinton in the 1950s. We meet on the second Sunday of each month at Old Time Music in North Park, at 2:00 PM, unless otherwise stated on the Meetings page. We welcome all instruments and people at all levels of musicianship, from beginners up, so, please, don't be shy. We invite you to come, bring your songs, your instruments, and, your friends, to join us anytime.

Hi, fellow folkies!

If your address label says “1/08” then please consider renewing your membership now so you won't miss out on all the latest in acoustic music news. Where else can you get this information without having to scour the internet yourself? Let us do that for you and save you the hassle. We look forward to another great year of wonderful and varied music and to serving your needs. The contact page of this newsletter has our address and the yearly dues rate.

Thanks for your continued support!

--Larry & Tanya

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Next meeting: Sunday, October 12th, 2008 ~~ 2:00 - 6:00 PM

The San Diego Folk Song Society meets every second Sunday of the month, from 2:00 to 6:00 PM, at Old Time Music in North Park. A special leader picks a theme and leads the song circle. The leader starts the circle off, plays some songs related to the theme, then the rest of us follow, playing theme related songs, first time around the circle. After that, it's open choice. So please join us, for an exciting musical time, sing some songs, just listen, play your instruments and enjoy being a part of the great folk tradition.

The store's owner, Bob Page, wants us to feel at home and help make Old Time Music the premier traditional music store in San Diego. He has requested no food in the meeting room, so no refreshments will be had at our meeting. Just music and fun.

Old Time Music
2852 University Avenue
San Diego, CA. 92104-2930
Telephone: (619) 280-9035
www.SDOldTimeMusic.com

MAP

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September 2008
SDFSS Ramblings

By Allen Singer

I experienced some tears recently. Death has a way of reminding you that life is not infinite. Wow! Don’t worry; it’s just a much needed reality check to start writing my September ramblings. Sad news came my way that Artie Traum and Erik Darling had died. Most people will probably ask, Artie and Erik who? My reaction was one of real loss, since these two great folk singers were there at the start of the folk revival (the great folk scare). This was the music revival that got our country singing American Roots and folk music again in the 1950s and 1960s.

Artie Traum was a journeyman musician, a regular guy, and the brother of Happy Traum, owner of Home Spun Tapes and DVDs, a wonderful website to find a vast cross section of musical instruction and professional recorded lessons by all the greats. Artie was a Taylor guitar performing clinician and did workshops all over the country and at NAMM. Back in 1961, I saw Artie and Happy perform at Carnegie Recital Hall, a smaller hall just across from the famous Carnegie Hall (the real big deal place). That concert was an ear opener that made me realize urban kids could play traditional music and still be authentic. Artie recorded with many outstanding folk musicians--Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and John Sebastian. In his later years he also played jazz guitar.

Erik Darling was a regular part of the 1950s Washington Square Sunday group. He played banjo and guitar and was the founder of The Tarriers (famous for the Banana Boat Song). He replaced Pete Seeger in the Weavers, giving them a new perspective on swing and beat, and later founded the Roof Top Singers (remember Walk Right In?). That song got everyone interested in the 12 string guitar. In the mid 1950s, he also recorded Tom Dooley with Rodger Sprung on banjo. Their rendition became the template for the Kingston Trio’s version.

Artie and Erik both really just loved the music, but never acted like “stars” and never burned out.

We’ve lost many other Washington Square musicians in the last decade including Dave Von Ronk and John Herald. The silence I hear with each musician’s death is becoming deafening and continues to take my breath away.

Looking back over the years, I’ve come to realize how lucky I was to be able to participate in our weekly Sunday Washington Square open jam. It was a great learning place, a once-in-a-lifetime experience and treasure in our lives. Everyone learned something there about each other and we all gained friendships and enough exposure to folk music to build on for the rest of our lives. We were a generation of young city kids and adults growing up in post-World World War II families. We were reacting to being raised by Depression-era parents, some of whom were refugees from Eastern Europe. The 1950s had an undercurrent of real repression which resulted in tragic outcomes for some people that arose from the fears created by Joe McCarthy. The “Square” was our refuge and musical workshop. The experience was life changing and my memories and the music are forever intertwined. Thank you, Artie and Erik, for being there and taking us down the road on this wonderful musical trip.

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We are the Coal Holders

Ever since the cave dwelling beginning, there's always been the guy who's job it was to carry the last hot coal. (Remember?) See, when the tribe moved on, someone had to carry the last hot coal to start up the next fire at the next campsite. They needed this fire to cook with, sleep near, talk and sing around. Now, many of these coal-holders, over time, became folk singers.

Later on, some went electric. Some even became rock and roll singers, punkers and rappers. Hey, different tribes, different instruments. But the job itself has never changed. My dad was one of these guys. And a lot of his songs were pretty damned hot!

We are Woody's coal-holders. We do this to keep our present day tribe warm, fed, and informed.

Sometimes it gets real cold out there (Have you noticed?) and it seems like a chilly wind is just going to blow us all off the map.

A lot of people are feeling the effects of the chill; no food, no shelter, no singing, no rights. And other people are chilling inside; no warmth, no joy, no song, no tribe.

Coal-holders are real important right now!

They will be the ones who will make it possible to build the next fire. They will be the ones to serve up our next hot meal or our next warm talk. And though it seems that there are no bonfires burning just yet, I do feel that things are warming up!

--Nora Guthrie

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Why Do We Care?

"When someone asks, why all this fuss and bother, this endless trouble and expenditure of time on an old song, the answer is: because this old song, in its mere, sheer commonness, strikes to our very roots. There is no obligation on these old things to survive. They have lived on in the minds and hearts of countless men and women, untainted by compulsion, for the purest and most disinterested reason possible to be conceived: because they have continued to give joy and solace, on the basic levels of artistic experience, to generation after generation of our humankind.

'The proper study of mankind is man, and so long as this precept remains valid, folk song will continue to be an important subject for human inquiry."

--Bertrand Bronson

"The piano may do for lovesick girls who lace themselves to skeletons and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils. But give me the banjo, when you want genuine music, music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whiskey, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose--when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!"

-- Mark Twain

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built. I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.

And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow."

-- Woody Guthrie

A Bluegrass Haiku

practicing banjo
my wife slams bedroom door shut
shh! Idol is on