Jennifer’s Lectures, Panels and Resource Lists

1996 Folk Alliance Panel - "Rocking the Folks: Marketing Anglo-Celtic Folk-Rock in North America"
"From Fol de Rol to Sha Na Na: The Electrification of British Folk Music"

The 1996 FOLK ALLIANCE PANEL

Ken Roseman and I distributed the following pages in the form of a packet to attendees of a panel that we co-hosted at the 8th Annual Conference of the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance here in Washington, DC in February of 1996. Our aim was to establish a formal support network and discussion forum for those of us who are Electric within the mostly-acoustic U.S. folk scene; to meet our colleagues in the Folk-Rock community; and to nurture the genre of Electric Folk in North America.

Our panel was well attended (standing room only!), with great representation from the journalists, labels, festival producers, and bands that make it all happen. It was wonderful to look out and see such an audience of heavyweights and Movers-and-Shakers in Folk-Rock. In fact, there was so much knowledge and experience gathered in that room that a single grenade planted by the enemy could have removed the threat of electrified folk from our world forever.

I opened the proceedings by playing live squeezebox to a recorded cut from High Tea, with impromptu assistance on the inflatable air guitar by Andy Hillhouse of Vancouver folk-rock band Mad Pudding.

The proceedings ranged from lofty discussions about the future of Electric Folk in North America to a nitty-gritty How-To section for which I provided copies of some of NSG’s standard working documents: a gig info sheet, tech sheet/stage diagram, and a copy of my own onerous job description as bandleader (designed to frighten away the faint of heart). Although we cannot offer a written transcription of the presentation, we hope that the discography and lists of labels, magazines, and mail-order companies will be useful. But bear in mind that these lists have not been updated since the panel meeting.

I am happy to report that the Folk-Rock Caucus that Ken and I founded at that Folk Alliance conference survives today as a forum for the continuing discussion of Electric Folk in North America.

Contents

Moderators and Panelists
Lecture Outline
Panelist Bios
Essential Anglo-Celtic Folk-Rock: A Discography
Periodicals Featuring Regular Coverage of Anglo-Celtic Folk-Rock
North American Record Labels and Distributors Carrying Anglo-Celtic Folk-Rock
North American Mail-Order Companies Carrying Anglo-Celtic Folk-Rock
How-to Packet
Jennifer’s Job Description: Chief Cook and Bottle Washer, New St. George

ROCKING THE FOLKS!

MARKETING ANGLO-CELTIC FOLK-ROCK IN NORTH AMERICA 3:00 - 4:20 p.m., Thursday, February 15, 1996 8th Annual Folk Alliance Conference, Washington, D.C.

MODERATORS:

Return to top

ROCKING THE FOLKS!

MARKETING ANGLO-CELTIC FOLK-ROCK IN NORTH AMERICA

For nearly three decades, Anglo-Celtic (and other European) Folk-Rock, or Electric Folk, has occupied an important position in the contemporary folk music scene of the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the rest of Europe. In this forum, we will discuss Electric Folk’s emerging role in the North American folk and roots music scene, touching on such issues as the special logistical needs of touring and performing electric folk bands, and the development of specific support structures for the genre. During this panel, we will consider some of the following questions and strategies:

I. OVERVIEW/INTRO

II. ELECTRIC FOLK IN LIVE PERFORMANCE

III. MARKETING RECORDINGS OF ELECTRIC FOLK

IV. ALTERNATIVE CAREERS

V. LICENSED THERAPISTS SPECIALIZING IN ELECTRIC FOLK

VI. CONCLUSION

Return to top

ROCKING THE FOLKS!

panelist bios

JENNIFER CUTTING is the bandleader and driving force behind British folk-rock band The New St. George, which she took from the basement practice room to the Main Stage of the Philadelphia Folk Festival and back again over the course of a mere ten years. Under her leadership the band was signed to Folk Era Records, and has won fifteen Washington Area Music Awards. She was producer, arranger, keyboard and squeezebox player for New St. George’s award-winning CD High Tea. Jennifer comes by her Electric Folk Pedigree naturally, as she was the last and youngest protege of British folk revival leader A.L. Lloyd, who also mentored members of Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention; and, as a member of the Fyfe Brothers, she opened for acts such as Dave Swarbrick and Simon Nicol in the thriving London club scene of the early Eighties. In 1994, she was named American Songwriter magazine’s “Songwriter of the Year,” and her striking originals are being increasingly covered by artists on leading folk labels. Jennifer is a freelance producer, writer, and arranger, and in her copious spare time, she is employed as a folk music specialist for the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress. Jennifer’s favourite movie is "Spinal Tap," and it is universally acknowledged that she "puts the Butt back in Button Accordion."

KEN “ALBION” ROSEMAN is a music journalist who specializes in progressive Anglo-European folk and roots music. He has contributed to CMJ New Music Report, Tower Records Pulse, the Boston Phoenix, and has written liner notes and bios for the likes of Figgy Duff and Runrig. Right now, he’s writing for JAZZIZ, Sing Out!, and the Washington City Paper, and he pens the News and Views column for Dirty Linen. He has hobnobbed with the great and nearly great of the Electric Folk scene for over 20 years. Ken is a raving Anglophile who nevertheless detests the Tories, and he is engaged in an eternal quest for attractive, intelligent women who think hippie and look preppy. He has never paid for a CD in his life.

NINA DRYER is director of Sales and Marketing for Green Linnet Records, where she is responsible for domestic and international distribution, new release promotion, retail marketing, consumer advertising, and direct mail sales. She has also been a festival presenter and a booking agent and tour coordinator, and she has a Master’s degree in Arts Administration, which helps her achieve a working balance between the business and the music. Nina spends her spare time giving driving lessons to her dog Jessie, and she has never charged Ken Roseman for a CD in her life.

PIERRE GUERIN is Executive Director for the Winnipeg Folk Festival in Manitoba, Canada. Beyond booking and running one of North America’s biggest and best festivals, Pierre knows the business from the musician’s perspective, because for 10 years he was a member of cutting-edge Celtic band BARDE. He has also been a producer and host for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Pierre has presented many electric folk bands at Winnipeg over the years, and says he plans to present many more.

MICHAEL JAWOREK is Vice-President of Chesapeake Concerts, for which he has developed a number of new business ventures, including Washington D.C.’s foremost listening room, the Birchmere. He has booked electric folk bands such as Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, The Oyster Band, and more recently, Wolfstone and The New St. George. Beyond the nightclub level, Mike has been involved in promoting concerts by artists at the arena and theatre level, from Reba McEntire to Luther Vandross, King Sunny Ade and both Elvises. Just last week, he made Billboard magazine’s Top Ten Grosses of the Week with Alan Jackson. He was the originator of the Washington Area Music Awards, and is currently on the Washington Area Music Association Board of Directors. Mike has a Master’s degree in Arts Administration, and if he could be a tree, he would probably be the Sequoia in his back yard, which is the only such tree in Fairfax County, Virginia.

AL RIESS is Host and Producer for Rooting About: The Folk & Roots Music Show on WBNY Radio in Buffalo, New York. He reviews many recordings for Dirty Linen, but says that his favourite folk-rock album has yet to be made: a collection of folk standards like Blowin’ in the Wind, If I Had a Hammer, Tom Dooley, & This Land is Your Land, done in full-throttle style by the Ramones. Al has been a Fairport fanatic since “way back” and is frequently seen in and around his home accompanying his favourite folk-rock bands on either air-guitar or air-accordion.

Return to top

ESSENTIAL ANGLO-CELTIC FOLK-ROCK: A DISCOGRAPHY

Compiled by Ken Roseman

Return to top

Periodicals Featuring Regular Coverage of Anglo-Celtic Folk-Rock

Compiled by Ken Roseman

Dirty Linen, P.O. Box 66600, Baltimore, MD 21239-6600, U.S.A.
Tel. (410)- 583- 7973; FAX: (410)- 337- 6735
E-mail: office@dirtylinen.com
Compuserve: 74020, 47
World Wide web: http://www.dirtynelson.com/linen/

First Hearing, 71 Little Moss, Scholar Green, Cheshire ST7 3PP, England
Tel. (01782)-786-619

Folk Roots, Southern Rag Ltd., P.O. Box 337, London N4 1TW, England
Tel. (0181)- 340- 9651; FAX: (0181)- 348- 5626
E-mail: froots@cityscape.co.uk
World Wide Web: http://www.cityscape.co.uk/froots/

Hokey Pokey, c/o Andrew Quarrie, Hens Teeth Records, "Field Corner,"
Millham Lane, Dulverton, Somerset TA22 9HQ, England

The Living Tradition, P.0.Box 1026, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire KA2 0LG, Scotland
Tel. (01292)- 678277; FAX/Ansaphone: (01563)- 544855

Porthole- A Fairport Convention Quarterly
212 Farmington Rd., Pittsburgh, PA 15215, U.S.A.
Tel. (412)- 782- 5283

Rock ’n’Reel, 8 Dent Place, Cleator Moor, Cumbria CA25 5EE, England
Tel.(01946)- 812- 946; FAX: (01946)- 813- 415

The Rogue Folk Review, Rogue Folk Club, 2982 West 3rd Ave., Vancouver, B.C. V6K 1N1,
Canada

Sing Out!, P.0.Box 5253, Bethlehem, PA 18015- 0253
Tel. (610)- 865- 5366; FAX: (610)- 856- 5129
E-mail: singout@pipeline.com
Compuserve: 71127, 40

Victory Review, Victory Music, P.O. Box 7515, Bonney Lake, WA 98390
Tel. (206)- 863-6617

Other magazines that include either brief regular coverage or occasional long features on Electric Folk include: MOJO (UK), JAZZIZ (USA), Q (UK), Rhythm Music (USA), Escape (USA), Record Collector (UK), Goldmine (USA), and Option (USA). You should also follow trade publications like Billboard and CMJ New Music Report, which do review recordings and contain useful information about the music industry in general.

Return to top

NORTH AMERICAN RECORD LABELS AND DISTRIBUTORS CARRYING ANGLO-CELTIC FOLK-ROCK

COMPILED BY KEN ROSEMAN

Return to top

NORTH AMERICAN MAIL-ORDER COMPANIES CARRYING ANGLO-CELTIC FOLK-ROCK:

Compiled by Jennifer Cutting

Return to top

How-To Packet

NEW ST. GEORGE GIG INFO SHEET

(to be filled out before the contract is sent out by the band member who books the gig)

DATE AND NAME OF GIG:

FULL ADDRESS AND PHONE OF VENUE:

CONTACT NAME AND PHONE:

PAY:

START TIME:

NUMBER/LENGTH OF SETS:

TIME DOORS OPEN:

LOAD-IN TIME:

SOUND CHECK TIME:

SEATING CAPACITY OF ROOM:

WHERE TO UNLOAD:

WHERE TO PARK:

SOUND SYSTEM PROVIDED? (LIST DETAILS) SOUND PERSON PROVIDED?

NAME, PHONE, AND FAX OF SOUND PERSON:

FOOD OR DRINK PROVIDED? FOOD OR DRINK AVAILABLE FOR SALE?

HOW MANY COMP ADMISSIONS FOR BAND?

ADMISSION PRICE:

T-SHIRT & RECORDING SALES PERMITTED? SALES ATTENDANT PROVIDED?

DIRECTIONS TO GIG:

LODGING ARRANGEMENTS:

NOTES:

Return to top

Jennifer’s Job Description: Chief Cook and
Bottle Washer, New St. George

FROM FOL DE ROL TO SHA NA NA: THE ELECTRIFICATION OF BRITISH FOLK MUSIC

I presented the following lecture-demonstration with The New St. George on April 20, 1993, at the Roundhouse Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, as part of the Mostly Music series, funded by the Montgomery County Humanities Council. I kept it simple (or tried to), as most of the attendees were members of the general public who were not familiar with the genre of folk-rock. There were, of course, a few New St. George fans in attendance who were enjoying their roles as official Hecklers...

The text from the flyer advertising the event read “Jennifer Cutting and her British folk-rock group The New St. George explore how an electric guitar can sound like a bagpipe, a 17th-century melody sound like The Who, and an accordion can be incredibly hip, culminating in a concert of authentic, high-energy Electric Folk.”

Good evening, everyone! Tonight is a rare opportunity for me, because, you see, I usually just stay behind my keyboards and squeezeboxes and keep my mouth shut, but tonight I’m excited because I get to talk about something that impassions me. I’m a player, a musician, but I’m also a FAN, a tremendous fan of that kind of music called Electric Folk. And tonight, focusing on the branch that is based upon the music of the British tradition, what I and my band would like to do is to give you a wildly careening, crash course through the genre. It will be more a general musicological overview than a cultural and historical one; the subject is vast, and each one of those perspectives could take up more than one evening. But what we can do this evening is to attempt to define it, play it, show you its building blocks by taking it apart and putting it back together again, and answer any questions you might have about the music. If you’re a musician, by the end of this evening you’ll be able to go home and build your own Electric Folk in your very own basement. Before we begin, though, if any of you have any bright ideas about falling asleep during this lecture, I have here the Electric Folk Appreciation Gun [JC brandishes water gun], and I will not hesitate to use it.

Now, I would like to introduce these good people who will be playing for you tonight [introduces Bob Hitchcock, Juan Dudley, Rico Petruccelli, and Lisa Moscatiello]. And there are a few folk-rock dignitaries here tonight: Ken Roseman, who is a music journalist specializing in this genre: he has written for Tower Records Pulse, the Boston Phoenix, Reflex, and Dirty Linen; locally he contributes regularly to the Takoma Voice and Pathways. Whether they’re here or not, I’d like to thank Dirty Linen, a national magazine that gives folk-rockers a great deal of coverage: the radio hosts who support the genre by playing it on their shows: Mary Cliff, Lee Michael Demsey, Damien, and Dick Cerri; and, the Washington Post critics who keep the music before our eyes by writing the reviews and previews: Eve Zibart, Geoffrey Himes, Mike Joyce, Joe Brown, and Eric Brace.

To start out, I’d like to do a brief audience survey to find out more about who you are. First, how many people here have heard the New St. George before? [half of hands in audience go up] O.K. --- here’s a question for those of you who haven’t.... Who are the artists you think of when you hear the term “folk rock?” [JC calls on people, repeating their answers, and makes list of names they offer.] We’ll get back to these later.

First, a brief bit of history -- A seminal moment that defined Electric Folk in Britain occurred when Dave Swarbrick, a talented fiddler associated with purely traditional music, was invited in 1968 by London psychedelic rock band Fairport Convention to guest as a session musician on a traditional song called A Sailor’s Life on their third album Unhalfbricking. By their next album, Liege and Lief, Swarbrick was a full-time member of the band, and that album is considered to be the seminal English folk-rock album because it was the first full-length album of tradition-based material played on electric instruments. Fairport’s bass player Ashley Hutchings went on to form Steeleye Span and the various incarnations of the Albion Band, where he continued to create interesting electric-acoustic interpretations of British traditional music. Many illustrious musicians have passed through Fairport’s ranks: Among them were Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson. The late singer/songwriter Sandy Denny is best remembered in this country for penning the song Who Knows Where the Time Goes, recorded by Judy Collins on her album of the same name. Richard Thompson, Fairport’s original guitarist, has developed a successful solo career writing and playing original rock material that solidly reflects his English folk roots. After this initial wave in the early 1970s, the genre continued to flower, and has developed along several different paths, including dance-oriented bands, punk- folk, and multicultural bands.

In the wide world, the terms “electric folk” and “folk- rock” are often used interchangeably, but tonight I want to tell you about some of the emic distinctions that we make -- we being the “insiders,” the makers of the music and the discriminating consumers of the music. What do we perceive the difference to be? Well, to us, the big difference is that Folk-Rock and Electric Folk are based upon two different sources.

To us, the term “folk-rock” means the music of Bob Dylan, The Byrds and, in a more contemporary vein, 10,000 Maniacs, Indigo Girls, and R.E.M... That music has as its basis, as its source material, newly composed songs, usually but not always dealing with contemporary topics, whose form is loosely based on the ballads and songs of the tradition. A case in point: Bob Dylan’s Boots of Spanish Leather, which has recently been re-recorded by Nancy Griffith; it has the shape, the sound, and the resonance, all the earmarks, of the archetypal narrative ballad. But it was newly composed.

What we shall call “electric folk” has as its basis and core repertoire songs and instrumental tunes taken directly from the tradition - more specifically, from the British and Irish traditions. What do I mean when I say “the tradition” or “the folk tradition”? Let’s turn to the formal definition drawn up by the International Council for Traditional Music:

Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are: (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.

In plain language, the music of the folk tradition is music that has been handed down through the generations orally; people learn it by listening and imitating other people in a kind of informal apprenticeship within a community. The authorship of songs and tunes from the folk tradition is generally unknown -- they have evolved in a process by which, over the years, they change slightly in the voice of each singer or the hands of each instrumentalist. The music is attributable to everyone and no one.

Now that we have defined what we mean when we say folk or the folk tradition, let’s look at the term “Electric Folk.” The logical deduction might be that Electric Folk is the music of the tradition, played unchanged in any other way on electronically amplified instruments, or on electric instead of acoustic instruments. Then a Scottish bagpipe tune played on the electric guitar is Electric Folk, right? Well, not quite.

In its strictest sense, in its essence, Electric Folk is a syncretic music formed by the combination of melodic and harmonic elements from songs and tunes of the tradition, with the harmonic and rhythmic conventions of rock and other popular music forms, and played with a combination of acoustic and electric instruments. [JC whips out water gun and squirts to wake audience.] But, popularly, Electric Folk has come to mean an entire spectrum of music that encompasses original arrangements of traditional tunes and songs, as well as recently composed songs, often songs of social comment or protest. By that broader definition, Electric Folk can encompass Folk Rock. Bands known for playing mega-wattage versions of jigs and reels also write and perform songs about unemployment and the worsening economy, the disappearing forests, or anything else in their personal experience.

But back to that bagpipe tune played on the electric guitar. In the stricter sense of the term, it is still just traditional music. Why? Because no fusing of melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic musical elements has occurred. Remember the word syncretic in my definition: syncretism means “the fusion of two or more originally different inflectional forms.” We could also make a rhyme and call Electric Folk synthetic, in the older sense of the word, meaning “the combination of separate things or concepts to form a complex whole.” (Penguin English Dictionary)

Let’s have a look at those two different forms, or concepts, traditional music and rock, to see how the fusion process takes place. First,

WHAT DOES ELECTRIC FOLK BORROW FROM THE TRADITION?

First and foremost, it borrows whole songs and tunes, lock, stock, and barrel. Often, it’s wholesale importation of the song or tune, complete with its ornamentation and original lyrics. Here’s an example: This is an English ritual dance tune called the Upton-On-Severn Stick Dance. It’s a Morris dance tune that I used to play for a local team called the Rock Creek Morris Women. Usually, there was no other accompaniment save the squeezebox. When I played it for the dancers, it sounded like this: [JC invites Louise Neu, a Rock Creek Morris Woman, up for demo, playing Upton-on-Severn at Morris tempo while Louise dances up aisle.] Thank you, Louise. Now, when I play it with The New St. George, I play the melody and the chords exactly the same way. I do boost the tempo a bit, and I don’t play the first and second strains of the melody in the same sequence that dancers would require, but the melody is completely intact. Like so: [NSG plays Upton on Severn at their quicker tempo]

Now we’ve heard the intact traditional tune, let’s hear an intact traditional melody. Here is an English folk song called Our Captain Cried All Hands, this version from Hampshire. The song is part of a large family of songs about a woman left behind by a sailor who chooses to go to war rather than stay behind with his sweetheart. Back in the 17th century, song lyrics were sold on printed sheets, or broadsides, without any melody notated, and people felt free to mix and match words and melodies more than they do today. It’s believed that the strange halting rhythm of this version was caused by people singing this text to a melody of a different rhythm than the one intended for it. This tune was later appropriated for the Church of England via Vaughan Williams, who set Bunyan’s He Who Would Valiant Be to the tune he got from a Sussex singer. [NSG plays Our Captain Cried All Hands]

Now we’ve heard the melodic contributions of the tradition; let’s turn now to its harmonic contributions. A quick review: melody is a succession of single pitches, in contrast to harmony, which consists of pitches sounded simultaneously. [JC demonstrates first melody, then harmony on piano with Yellow Submarine]

I believe that the traditional songs of the British Isles were built on non-harmonic principles, that is, they were created and sung by people who had no chordal accompaniment in mind. However, through the centuries, folk songs have appeared in various guises and harmonizations at church and in court, and in the first two decades of the 1900’s, in the first wave of the English Folk Revival, folksong collector Cecil Sharp and others added “pretty” piano accompaniments to folk songs for the parlor pianist. In our generation, the second wave of the revival saw guitarists like Martin Carthy, Nic Jones, and Martin Simpson take folk song accompaniment to high art. But there was little basis for this in the sung tradition itself.

However, in the instrumental music of the tradition, in the tunes played on various kinds of bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, lap dulcimer, jew’s harp, and to some extent, the fiddle (all descendants of very old instruments) we hear one distinctive, recognizable feature, and that is the Drone. It is a sustained droning sound of one or two pitches that sound throughout the duration of whatever is being played. If the drone is a single pitch, most commonly it will be the tonic, or first scale degree, or keynote of the melody. (In the world of art music, this is called the “pedal point”). If the drone is two pitches, as on some bagpipes, then it will most commonly be the first and fifth scale degrees sounded together. This interval creates a hollow, open sound, just the ticket for accompanying songs and tunes that do not adhere to the conventional major-minor scale system, but are what we call modal. Drones sound like this: [JC plays keyboard drones alone first, then as accompaniment for the tune Scotland the Brave.]

In Electric Folk, we take the drone and run with it. As in the original sense of the word drone, often the electric bass will maintain a constant tonic (or keynote) pitch, for whole verses at a time, while the rest of the band goes ahead with the chord changes over top of it. Or, in an extrapolation of the concept, when it would have been the electric guitar’s role to play chords, the chords are replaced with drone notes, giving a kind of moveable drone effect. On the guitar, the drones can be produced directly in standard tuning, or, in order to maximize the presence of drones, many guitarists use alternative “open” tunings, which provide an unfretted string that rings out continuously through all the chord changes. Bob and Lisa do both, but for this set of Irish polkas, Bob will play drones instead of chords in standard tuning. [NSG plays their Irish Polka Set, beginning with 4 tonic drones]

Well, we’ve heard a few things that electric folk borrows from the tradition: whole melodies, complete with their lyrics and ornamentation; and drones.

WHAT DOES ELECTRIC FOLK BORROW FROM ROCK?

It borrows this. [Juan plays typical rock rhythm with backbeat.] It borrows rock’s rhythms, mostly owed to African-American Rhythm & Blues of the of the early 50’s. More specifically, it borrows the backbeat. Which beat is the backbeat? One way to explain backbeat would be to say that in a measure with four beats, the backbeat is beats two and four. [Juan plays a few measures with exaggerated backbeat.] The importance and appeal of the backbeat cannot be underestimated. The listeners and the makers of electric folk are comprised of a generation of people who grew up, fell in love, perhaps procreated --- all to the sound of a backbeat. For a time, we even wanted our Mozart to have a backbeat (Remember Hooked on Classics?) The backbeat is our rhythmic lingua franca. Everything we have played you thus far has had one.

Long before today’s world beat craze, rhythms from other parts of the world infiltrated rock, pop, and jazz. Latin-American rhythms made successive invasions from the 1930’s on, and in the 1960’s we heard the prevailing influence of Brazilian Samba and Bossa Nova. Here’s how the Bossa Nova sounds when it’s at home: [NSG plays Girl from Ipanema]

Here’s how a Bossa-inspired rhythm sounds under an 18th century English ballad. This is a classic ballad called The Mermaid. It speaks of the old belief that the sight of a mermaid was an omen of shipwreck. [NSG plays The Mermaid]

Moving on to melodic and harmonic matters, another device Electric Folk borrows from the conventions of the rock and pop world is [Bob plays Aqualung] -- the hook. The hook is what you just heard -- a memorable little musical phrase that captures your attention at the outset of a song and then keeps popping up as a kind of musical monogram. Hooks are designed to haunt you when you’re trying to sleep at night. They’re designed to propel you, sweaty-palmed and glassy-eyed into your nearest record store to lay your money down and buy the recording into which they’ve been implanted. (It’s happened to me...) Hooks can be melodic, that is, one pitch at a time... [BOB plays hook from the Beatles’ Day Tripper] or they can be harmonic, that is, based on chords. [JC plays hook from Van Halen’s Jump] Here’s an example of a hook I embedded in the traditional song When a Man’s in Love. In this case, the hook appears after a few verses have been stated with a softer, more acoustic feel, and it is played to launch the song’s transition to the electric version. It’s played in its exposed form only once; when it appears later, it is as a rhythmic underpinning to the vocal. [JC plays keyboard hook for NSG’s version of When A Man’s In Love] Now we’ll play it for you IN the song. And while you’re at it, listen for the backbeat and some drones; they’re all in there! [NSG plays When a Man’s in Love]

Let’s see -- what else can we steal from the rock arsenal? How about Ostinati? (That’s the plural form of ostinato, you know.) What is ostinato? Is it a flavour of Italian ice cream? No. It is a melodic and/or rhythmic figure that is persistently repeated throughout a piece or a section of a piece. And there are ostinati for all occasions. Here’s an ostinato for exorcism of evil spirits. [JC plays repeated figure from Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells] Or, for bringing malefactors to justice: [Rico plays Peter Gunn] Among rock bands, The Who happened to be very good at ostinati. In fact, their album Who’s Next is an ostinato-a-minute. Can anyone name this song from its ostinato? [JC plays figure from Won’t get Fooled Again] In the spirit of The Who, we have transformed a 17th-century English country dance tune called Mayden Lane. The tune, which is still in use, would sound like this if you danced to it at a country dance evening: [JC, Bob, and Rico play original version of Mayden Lane, sounding very square] Now, we’ll add a nice ostinato: [JC plays her Mayden Lane ostinato] slow the rhythm down to a slow burn, and throw in a modulation (that’s a key change), and voilà, we have some creative Electric Folk. [NSG plays Jennifer’s arrangement of Mayden Lane]

Thank you very much. Now that you’ve had the crash course, we’ll take a brief break, and return to a short concert and an opportunity for you to ask us any questions you might have. In the lobby, there are copies of an article on this kind of music written by my colleague, music journalist Ken Roseman; help yourself to a copy. Also, if you’d like to be notified of our upcoming performances, please feel welcome to sign our mailing list, which is also in the lobby. See you soon.

[New St George reappear after intermission to play a mini-set]

Set List:

Thanks very much. Before we play our last song, I’d like to give you an opportunity to ask any of us any questions you might have about the music you have heard tonight. [JC and NSG take questions for about 15 minutes]

We would like to thank Jan Ellicker, Sue Rolands, the Roundhouse Theatre, and the Montgomery County Department of Recreation for making this happen; Montgomery County Humanities Commission for funding, our soundman Don Bolger, and especially you, for coming out here on a Tuesday night.

In conclusion, I will say that Electric Folk has long since evolved from an experiment to a genre in its own right, complete with its own set of aesthetic criteria, musical conventions, and a discriminating community of consumers. And as the folk "rock" keeps rolling down the temporal hill, gathering as it goes whatever current trends and influences are in its path, be they punk, world beat, or grunge rock, the genre continues to thrive, mutate, and, I believe, gain a wider audience. I will end with a quote from the late, eccentric-but-loveable old English folk song collector Alfred Williams, from his book Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames, published in London in 1923:

I claim that the spirit of the old poetry, and even that which animated the ballads and folk-songs, is not, and cannot be dead, and that it might, in part, at least, be revived to advantage, not in the form, nor in the absolute spirit, but as a basis for future work.

[NSG performs final number, Jack of All Trades, and exits to talk with audience]

Return to top