I wanted to go to Folk Alliance, but I have Bearfoot playing my venue this weekend. Their latest CD has had all of us wanting to see this show for weeks.

Bearfoot played the Folk Fest with the Sparrow Quartet - they were all very nice and great musicians. Tell them I say "hi" (I sold their CDs at the merch table).

Thinking Folkie thoughts here too... it's gotten real quiet already on my page (MySpace) as the great migration progresses... (see my bottom lip protruding in a most pitiful manner)
Next year in Memphis!

JoLynn--You show up in Memphis next year and I'm putting you to work! AEV

I'll hold you to that, Ann!

This is not a complaint, just a statement of fact. I used to go to folk clubs in Atlanta, Birmingham and, later, New York and Dallas. Maybe it just seemed simple, since I was always in the audience, but do the folkies today require a lot more in their tech riders than in previous years? Bluegrass and folk seem like such organic music forms, but the stage plots and tech requirements are just mind bogling sometimes. What happened to the lone singer who showed up with a guitar and played for two hours with one mike?

Those were coffee houses, Doug? Nicer, more sophisticated equipment now, I suppose. I guess that unless it's on someone's front porch or in their kitchen or living room, we might find a bunch of sound & light gear.
No matter how much newfangled equipment is used in any given venue, I suppose that the best tech crew will make it appear as if it's just the singer with a guitar on a stool.
I tend to really like the more 'organic' approach, and that's why I frequent our local House Concerts, where it truly is just a guy on a stool with a guitar and a couple of mics and amps and speakers maybe. Ah, but what if it were to be recorded - then I want the big guns technology to capture the artists and not the hacking cough, etc. in the crowd..

JoLynn, the best I have ever heard, anywhere, was on the back porch and lawn of my granny's house in the hills of Eastern Oklahoma in the fifties and early sixties. Unfortunately, we didn't know what "recording" was, then. They are all gone now(crying).