By Chris Samson
"What a wonderful gift to still touch people long after you're gone," said Australian singer Eric Bogle after singing Kate Wolf's 'Cornflower Blue' on the final day of the music festival named for the late California singer- songwriter.
Wolf, who died of leukemia in 1986 at age 44, continues to touch and inspire musicians and music lovers in a big way. And her spirit radiated throughout the three-day Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival. Virtually all of the musicians either sang a Kate Wolf song, sang a song they wrote about her, talked of sharing experiences with her or told of how they were affected by her. Nina Gerber, Wolf's longtime guitarist, was onstage most of the time accompanying musicians.
“If Kate had never written a song in her life, she would have been worth knowing,” said Utah Phillips. “The music was a bonus. We were comrades of the road.” Phillips, a close friend of Wolf's and a fixture at the annual festival, is a garrulous storyteller, songwriter, singer, Korean War veteran, IWW (Wobbly) member, former hobo and railroad bum and self-styled Golden Voice of the Great Southwest. He served as emcee Saturday and performed on Sunday.
Originated in 1996 as a one-day retrospective of Wolf's music by musicians who knew and played with her, the event expanded to two days the last three years and to three days this year. The setting – a modest stage in front of a gentle slope with a backdrop of redwood trees on a private vineyard outside Sebastopol – is gorgeous. The festival producer, Cloud Moss of Cumulus Productions, keeps the crowd to about 1,500 per day, which makes the event very friendly and comfortable.
Starting on Friday for the first time, the abbreviated opening day had a smaller crowd than the weekend concerts. Emcee Mary McCaslin hosted an open mike during which people came up and sang their favorite Kate Wolf song. After a song swap and workshops, the rest of the day included the Modern Hicks, Cyrus Clark and Nina Gerber, Patty Larkin and, finally, Greg Brown and Garnet Rogers.
Brown, a deep-voiced singer-songwriter from Iowa, is also a regular at the Kate Wolf festival. He is as casual and down-home as the rumpled overalls or scuffed boots he wears, and his songs flow out of him easily and naturally. Rogers, a tall, quiet Canadian, is the brother of the late Stan Rogers, and a fine singer, songwriter, guitarist and fiddler in his own right.
“Folk music is not owned,” he said. “There are different versions of songs passed around and used over and over.” But, he warned, it's a tradition that's endangered and woefully neglected. “Young singer-songwriters are ignoring those time-tested models and singing signature songs that no one else can do. This festival preserves the continuity and deep well of traditional music.”
Mustard's Retreat, a duo from Michigan, was the first act of the day. Stocky, bespectacled guitarist David Tamulevich and wiry, balding, bearded bassist Michael Hough spun spirited harmonies of original tunes (“Mallon's Bridge” and “Mindy's Song”) and a few songs by the likes of Dick Pinney (“Mother Lode”). “Rock music gets the weirdos, folk music gets the eccentrics,” quipped Tamulevich as he surveyed the crowd. Before singing “All My Incarnations,” Hough said, “You can't take it with you, but if you believe in reincarnation you can come back and get it.” The duo was joined by Kate Price on hammer dulcimer and Garnet Rogers on fiddle during their set.
Next up was Kathy Kallick, veteran of the Bay Area bluegrass scene and former singer for the Good Ol' Persons. Accompanied by Nina Gerber, her repertoire included Wolf's “Trumpet Vine” and Bill Monroe's “Close By.”
Paxton's Saturday performance was one of the highlights of the festival. A seminal figure in the Greenwich Village folk music scene of the early '60s, Paxton is the author of such classics as “Last Thing on My Mind” and “Ramblin' Boy.” At 62, he remains an astute observer of the contemporary social scene and a clever tunesmith. He is a likeable, well-spoken man who exudes sincerity.
Paxton showed he is not resting on his laurels; he continues to write songs about current events, both trashy (about Jerry Falwell, Tonya Harding and Lorena Bobbitt) and moving (“The Road to Serbrenica” and “Whose Garden Was This?”). Throughout his one-hour performance, he demonstrated his knack for penning both funny and poignant songs while sharing stories from his long career.
He said that watching Mississippi John Hurt play at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival inspired him to write “Bottle of Wine,” he talked about the legendary Gaslight Café where the likes of Eric Andersen, Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan performed. He told of the time he played a newly-written song for Pete Seeger, 'Rambling Boy,' and soon Seeger and the Weavers were performing the tune.
He got a lot of laughs from the mostly middle-aged crowd with his song about turning 50, “Modern Maturity”: “Rolling Stone was quite a thrill, now Modern Maturity means I'm over the hill … everybody looks 25 with white hair.”
His renditions of “Last Thing on My Mind” and “Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound” resonated with truth. Paxton's performance was memorable.
Next up was the bluegrass duo of Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott, whose repertoire included Dylan's “When I Paint My Masterpiece” and the rousing chestnut “Will the Circle be Unbroken.” The red-headed O'Brien, whose musical incarnations have included Hot Rize and Red Knuckles & the TrailBlazers, and Scott recorded with each other on other projects before the two released an album together this year. Both demonstrated their musical and vocal talents, with O'Brien alternating between mandolin, fiddle and banjo and Scott playing guitar.
There was a mid-afternoon break for workshops and we chose to attend Greg Brown and Garnet Rogers' songwriting session. The workshops are one of the best things about the festival, giving people a chance to hear musicians talk about their craft and demonstrate techniques and ask them questions. Festival-goers crowded around the fringes of one of the canopies off to the side of the stage, waiting for the two lanky singer-songwriters to appear. Their workshop was casual and unrehearsed. Brown talked about a songwriter finding the “pulse” of a song. He said he doesn't bother to write a song down until “it starts to annoy me.” A song is never really ever done, he said, adding that he often changes or rearranges songs he's been singing for years. He said he liked the songs of the late Rainier Ptacek. Asked if his songs were based on true stories, he said, “I like what Tom Waits said. 'Just because a song is true doesn't mean it's good.'” Rogers said he is in the habit of picking up his guitar and playing it as soon as he awakens in the morning, while he is still in a half-dream, half-conscious state. Both Brown and Rogers sang a couple of their compositions before the workshop ended and the concert resumed.
Emcee Phillips regaled the crowd with tales of moonshine: “Old Factory Whistle – three blasts and you're done for the day. Autumn Leaves – take a shot and you change color and fall to the ground.”
Then he introduced Eric Bogle, a Scotsman who has made his home in Australia for the past quarter-century, as “the Wonder from Down Under.” Bogle, a diminutive 56-year-old with a quick wit, self-deprecating sense of humor and a poetic sensibility, carefully set the scene for each of his songs, “Keeper of the Flame” (an anti-gun, pro-gun control song inspired by a massacre in Australia), “Leaving the Land” (a song he recorded with Mary Black about the hardships of farming), “The Sign” (about the legacy of political martyr Bobby Sands) and “Journeys” (about scattering his father's ashes in a river). He got a lot of laughs with songs about Anglo-Saxon white males (“Endangered Species”) dead cats ("He's Nobody's Moggy Now") and Bob Dylan songs ("I Don't Sing Any Bob Dylan").
Then Bogle introduced “Green Fields of France,” also known as “No Man's Land.” He explained that he is a history buff who had written the song some 20 years ago after visiting the graves of fallen soldiers in the fields of France and thought about the young men who had died long before their time. The song was recorded by another group. A few years ago, Bogle read that a young girl from Northern Ireland had written to British Prime Minister Tony Blair saying that she had experienced war and violence her whole life. Blair invited her to 10 Downing Street and read his favorite anti-war poem, “No Man's Land,” which the prime minister said was “written by Eric Bogle, who died in World War I.”
Well how do you do, Private William McBride.
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
I'll rest for awhile in the warm summer sun.
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone, you were only nineteen
When you joined the dead heroes in 1915.
Well, I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean.
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Garnet Rogers took the stage for one song before the finale by New Grange, but Rogers' performance was riveting. Alone with an electric 12-string guitar, he sang the hauntingly sentimental “Night Drive,” an ode to his late brother, reminiscing about their years traveling on the road together.
How bright the stars, how dark the night
How long have I been sleeping?
I had a dream; it seemed so real
Its passing left me shaking
I saw you here behind the wheel
On this very road I'm taking.
... I don't know why I write these lines
It's not like I could send you the letter
It's that I love you more after all this time
It's that I wish I'd shown you better
... Scares me how the years have flown
Like the leaves drift in September
They've lost sight of you as your legend's grown
But this road and I, we remember.
Saturday's show closed with New Grange -- pianist Phil Aalberg, fiddler Darol Anger, banjo player Alison Brown, mandolin/guitarist Mike Marshall, bassist Todd Phillips and Tim O'Brien on vocals, fiddle, mandolin and guitar -- playing some toe-tappin' contemporary bluegrass (“Sally Ann,” “Handsome Molly,” “Leaving Cottondale”) and Fred Neil's “Everybody's Talkin'”. The day ended with New Grange performing Wolf's “Across the Great Divide,” followed by Mustard's Retreat leading an audience sing-along of the same song.
Sunday morning started with emcee Paxton greeting the crowd and complimenting them for not trampling on the bed of flowers directly in front of the stage. He then coaxed several other musicians on the stage for a round-robin song swap to fill in for a scheduled performer (Don Lange) who was a late scratch from the lineup.
Paxton led them and the audience in his soothing anthem “Peace Will Come.” Garnet Rogers sang “Frankie and Johnny,” his beautiful ballad about two brothers: “If you love someone, let it show, hold them close to you, tell them so they know. Give them all the love you have every day.” Mary McCaslin sang “Big Blue Roan” and Eric Bogle concluded the set with a song he wrote for Wolf shortly after learning of her death in 1986, “Katie in the Dreamtime Land”: "Oh, you would have loved it, Kate, beneath the southern stars, as the night was filled with music, sweet songs and soft guitar, and I sang 'Cornflower Blue' and thought of you."
Chris Webster, a slinky young blonde woman with bare feet and no instrument except her big voice, took the stage. Accompanied by guitarist Gerber, she opened with Jimmy Cliff's “Sitting in Limbo.” Her set included Eric Taylor's “Deadwood, S.D.,” Wolf's “Love Still Remains” and Clive Gregson's “It's All Just Talk.”
Chris Smither, the man with a blue guitar, a New Orleans drawl and a constantly tapping foot, spun his stories-songs of wisdom and salvation with a gravelly, light voice and effortlessly rhythmic guitar twangs.
“No Love Today,” a melancholy song about a loveless man, was inspired by Smither's memory of a New Orleans produce man hawking his fruit and vegetables: “I could hear that farmer singing as I cried myself to sleep, 'I got banana, watermelon, peaches by the pound. I got sweet corn, merliton, mo' better than in town, I got okra enough to choke ya, beans of every kind …' ”
He won over the crowd with his “Hold On No. I,” “Hey, Hey, Hey” and “The Devil is Real” and Robert Johnson's “Dust My Broom” and Wolf's “Carolina Pines.”
A surprise, unscheduled appearance by the 1960s folk trio the Limelighters delighted the crowd. Having played at Berkeley's Freight & Salvage the night before, the aging threesome blended their vocal harmonies to two hysterical songs: “Folk Rap” and “Zen Gospel Singing.”
Emcee Paxton told a story about Bob Dylan before introducing the next act, Catie Curtis. Paxton said he encountered Dylan in a back room at the Gaslight Café one night right after he had finished writing a poem. Dylan showed the poem, titled “A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall,” to Paxton and asked him his opinion. Paxton urged Dylan to set the poem to music and sing it as a song. Then, after hearing Dylan sing the rambling, lengthy tune warning about nuclear war, Paxton joked, “I wonder if I did the right thing.”
Then Paxton introduced Curtis as a personal favorite, saying he had enjoyed her first album and happened to run into her at a concert. She didn't know who he was and he asked her, “Would you give a hug to a stranger?” She hesitated, then he said, “I'm Tom Paxton,” and she gave him a warm embrace.
Curtis, with short hair, glasses, purple pedal pushers and a black blouse, was a perky and disarming stage presence. She told a story about going incognito to a karaoke bar in Nashville and meeting a young woman who said her favorite singer was Catie Curtis. Curtis kept her identity a secret and told the woman, “I've got to go … I have an appointment.”
Curtis calls herself a “story collector” and sings introspective songs with pure, affecting vocals. Her set included “Memphis,” “I Don't Cry Anymore,” “100 Miles,” Magnolia Street,” “What's the Matter,” “Don't Lay Down” and “Wise to the Ways of the World.” She sang the late Mark Sandman's “Patience” and brought out Gerber to accompany her on Wolf's “Here in California.”
Sunday's workshops offered a choice of Australian music by Eric Bogle and harmony singing by Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum. Bogle sang introduced, then sang several songs about Australia. “National Pride” is about the country spending millions on its Olympic team, but nothing for firefighting equipment, even after volunteer firefighters died. “Now I'm Easy” is about an aging Australian farmer remembering his wife who died in childbirth. He also sang “Dressed in Green and Gold,” “Golden City” and “Home Again.”
Paxton got the concerts going again, first singing his yuppie song, “Condos for Sale” (to the tune of “Ghost Riders in the Sky”) before introducing Utah Phillips, who told stories about characters like Hood River Blackie and Phil Melman, sang songs “Hallelujah I'm a Bum” and dispensed advice (“Wear pants with rubber pockets so you can steal soup” and “Never buy anything you have to paint or feed”).
Hart Rouge, two sisters and a brother from a French-English-speaking family in Saskatchewan, performed a pleasing set, opening with Neil Young's “Helpless” and including several originals. Paul, Michelle and Suzanne Campagne are siblings whose music reflects their upbringing as Francophones in a sea of English.
Eric Bogle returned to sing two songs, “Cornflower Blue” (his favorite Kate Wolf Song) and “Singing the Spirit Home.” Paxton said, “Woody (Guthrie) would have loved that song.”
Next was the frumpy but sweet-voiced Cheryl Wheeler. Wheeler is part comedian, part storyteller and a talented singer-songwriter-guitarist. One moment she was telling a story that had the crowd laughing and the next singing a song that had them listening wistfully. Wheeler was constantly putting her glasses on and off between songs to read her song list and decide what to do next.
“Potato,” “I'm Unworthy” and “Hurricane Floyd” were short, funny throwaway songs. “Slow Down,” “Wish I Could Fall in Live” and “Howl at the Moon” are achingly beautiful songs about human emotions. “If It Were Up to Me (I'd Take Away the Guns)” is a powerful song calling for gun control.
Greg Brown closed the festival with a typically laid-back, casual set of songs. Opening with “If I Had My Way,” he did a song called “Your Town Now” about the changing economics that leave young musicians and poets with no place to perform. “Two Little Feet,” his song about Alaska, was well received. But his most appropriate song for the occasion was “Kate's Guitar,” which he wrote while attending the festival a few years ago.
If I had a peaceful heart, it would look like this
Some hills and trees, a creek by which to kiss
The fog would be this cool, the hawk would sail that far
The song I would be hearing, it would come from Kate's guitar
I know why we live, I know why we die
I know why we laugh, I know why we cry
But I don't know how this color of sky invites the evening stars
I don't know how such peacefulness found a home in Kate's guitar.
The Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival is a special gathering of fine musicians and an appreciative audience in a gorgeous setting to celebrate the spirit of a beloved woman. Anyone who enjoys good music – especially folk and bluegrass – couldn't find a better way to spend a summer weekend.
Proceeds from the festival benefit the Leukemia Society of America, Bread and Roses, the Seva Foundation, KRCB-FM and Friends of Free Speech Radio.
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