Serendipity?

[badseed1980]

So I've been thinking a lot lately about the music I grew up with. The folk music, specifically. My favourite singer as a kid was Bill Staines, a local folk singer who's got some really great songs, and whose concerts and appearances at fall festival type things dotted my childhood. Yeah, he was probably the first person who got me into folk music.

He's playing tomorrow night at Club Passim. Unfortunately, it would probably only be for a few songs since it's a "whole buncha people doing a tribute to the former owners of the club" kind of gig.

I am definitely going to try to see him again, though. He's around my parents' age, and who knows how long he's going to want to keep traveling around and performing? And I do mean traveling. He's local to this area, got his start in the Boston/Cambridge folk scene, but looking at his tour schedule, it seems like most of his performances are nowhere nearby. It was cool to see that he still plays the Stone Soup Coffeehouse in Pawtucket, since that's where I saw him as a kid.

Once when I was in Ireland at the Swan, my favourite pub, a guy got up to sing a song and asked the musicians there to quiet everyone down. This was common practice. When he started singing, it was in French, and it sent prickles down my spine because the sound was an instant connection to my past. I couldn't place the song at first. I could only think, "Did my father used to sing this to me?" It was a while before I remembered that it was a part of one of Bill Staines's songs. Hearing it there in Galway caused such a strange displacement.

I need to hear more live folk music. Definitely.

Comments

more live folk music...

[sirndipiti.livejournal.com]

..that is a definite
when I was in the East, folk music was often the staple at art shows --
since moving to MI, I find that the staple is more often rock or even hip-hop (gag) and very loud -- we were at a street fair in Mt Clemens, MI this past weekend and decided to spring for a nice sit down Italian restaurant dinner -- music from one of the stages was SO LOUD we could still hear it from half block away, inside the restaurant, with a double door entry!! yeesh, who needs that volume? not me. and as evening falls, they seem to crank up the volume even more...after eating, I couldn't wait to leave that scene

[unferth.livejournal.com]

Huh, I've got one of his songs on a mix tape from an old ex-girlfriend - "Gambler's Game". I liked it well enough to see if I could find his stuff on eMusic, anyway, although not yet well enough to buy the albums new.

It looks like he's playing the Boston Folk Festival (http://www.bostonfolkfestival.org/performers.html) this year, along with a couple of other people I like. I was already planning to go, so I'll have to remember to check him out again while I'm there.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he's pretty darn good. I might want to check out the folk festival. I've only ever been to the Newport one. Is this one as huge as that?

[unferth.livejournal.com]

I don't know with any certainty - I've never been to the Newport one. Wikipedia claims the Newport festival gets about 10,000 people these days, and I don't think the Boston one was anything close to that. It was good-sized, but not huge.