Welcome Home
Day One
Arrived in Kerrville Saturday afternoon. A “Welcome Home” sign greets me at the gate. I found my way to Camp Sing-Kerr-Nicity. Such friendly folk, as Chuck Brodsky told me they would be. I set up my tent about 3 tents down from their main canopy/tarp. I’m on the edge of their camp. Across from me is Camp Dayo.
Camp SingKerrNicity
It’s brutally hot and I am almost sick from the heat after setting up my tent and awning in the blazing Texas sun. It’s in the 90′s and I need to recover from all the activity in the sun. I just don’t have the energy to catch the first set of New Folk, but I’ll hear tomorrow’s set of 16 “up and coming” songwriters.
Now, I’ve got too much food, beer and ice to all fit in my cooler, so I just cooled off under the Camp SingKerrNicity tent drinking beers to make room for the perishable foods in the cooler. It’s a hard life. After meeting more people than I can ever remember their names, and talking Celtics and Red Sox, I took a shower and changed then made myself a veggie wrap. I’m not sure I’ll cook much here — it’s just so hot. But there will be coffee in the morning.
It’s Saturday night at the main stage and Betty Soo opened the evening. She is also from Singkerrnicity and won the New Folk contest a few years ago. Now she’s playing the main stage here. After her, Porter Davis, a roots band from Austin, played a great set. They included a great bluesy rendition of “White Freightliner Blues” (by Townes Van Zandt). Then the Burns Sisters took the stage. Their harmonies are so tight! Andrew Hardin sat in with them. Certainly no slouch on the six-string. I also met up with Rich Eilbert from Boston and got to know a couple friends of his from where he’s camping (Steve and Scott from Austin). I skipped out on the last two acts.
Of course it’s after midnight that things really get going in the campgrounds, and my first song circle at Kerrville is, quite simply, absolutely amazing. And just a bit intimidating. As it turns out, Chuck Brodsky did me the most amazing favor by recommending me to Camp SingKerrNicity. Joyce Woodson from the camp took me under her wing and took me over to Camp Coho where we take our place in the first round of songs. Now, in this circle are Jack Williams and Steve Gillette, not to mention Joyce who turns out to be a stunning songwriter (and singer and guitarist). Also joining us are a couple of New Folk finalists. For my first song I play “Closer to Love”. Keeping the guitar part simple. Just a bit nervous — but no mistakes and I pull it off pretty well. About this time all the chairs are filled in and others are beginning to congregate behind us. I’m sitting in the motherlode of singer/songwriters and I realize I’ve got to put only my very best out there. “Babymoon” is my second selection when it gets back around to me. Now I’m about halfway through the song (and people are responding to it) when I hear a mandolin join in with some accompaniment and fills. I look up during the third verse and see Karen Mal picking away. Oh my God. Another of my favorite performers. After a while I head back to Singkerrnicity and play a few more tunes. By 3:30 a.m. I am just exhausted (after the driving, setup and acclimating to everything) and head to bed.
Day Two
Wow does it get hot early. By 9:00am I’m burning up in my tent. Boiled some water for coffee, had some fruit and cereal the hung out at Singkerrnicity. The days definitely have a different rhythm here. Everything is so slow during the day in the heat. During the main stage concerts it starts cooling off and everything starts moving.
The New Folk finalist performances are all great, and Michael Troy from Fall River is one of the winners. After the performances I have some lunch and just hang at Singkerrnicity. It’s amazing how quickly they have all adopted me into their group. I truly feel at home with them already.
After dinner, the main stage performances are all great. Jack Harris from Wales. Eric Taylor. Terri Hendrix. Caroline Aiken. And…the Indigo Girls close out the evening with an amazing set.
This night I stay at Singkerrnicity and there is a great song circle. Annie Wenz kicks us off, then Stefanie Fix plays some great slide guitar. I start in on “Big Blue River” but space out on the second verse so I switch songs quickly. Next time around, I do “Big Blue River” and Stefanie does some nice slide work with it and a harmonica joins in from across the circle. Annie Wenz is also rocking out tonight, and later, Tom Prasada Rao and his wife stop by and do a couple songs. Everything is just simply amazing.
So, while Tom and his wife are standing on the edge of our camp, a young man wanders in. He is absolutely stoned out of his mind. He stares at Tom’s guitar and says something like, “I like spanish guitars”. Tom smiles and nods. The kid says he plays bass and does anyone have a guitar he could use to play bass? Joyce, who apparently doesn’t realize the state he is in, hands him her beautiful guitar. [The rest of us are cringing a bit.] He sits down and proceeds to spend 5 minutes trying to tune it — with no luck. Someone finally tunes it for him. Over the next couple songs he tries to play a few lines but just looks lost. Finally he says, “Does anyone here know any Meat Puppets? Cuz I can play some of their bass lines…”. Eventually he says he heard there was stuff “happening” somewhere and did we know where that was? We sent him up to the middle area of the camping meadow.
The circle finally breaks up around 4:30 a.m. I’m just too tired to keep going, even though I hear Ellis Paul is up at the “Crow’s Nest” circle. [They go until the sun comes up.]
Day Three
Again I’m up when the sun just gets too hot to bear. I eat my cereal, some fruit and make coffee. Then I just hang at Singkerrnicity for a while. Today I will go to the Medina River with the camp. It sounds so refreshing.
Around noon Joyce and Kevin Faherty (yet another amazing songwriter) and I head down the road. We have a great time talking about potential reality shows (Celebrity Pet Autopsy) and listening to Texas hill country music. When we get to the river, I am just blown away. It’s a private spot with “limited” access. The spot on the river is just beautiful, the water is quite cool and calm, and there is a light breeze blowing through the shade trees. We are picnicking on grass planted by the river. It is quite simply magical.
Caroline Aiken, Eric Schwartz, Annie Wenz, and a plethora of other great musicians and writers are all relaxing by the river, swapping songs and stories. What an amazing spot to relax! I mean, where else can you lie in the cool grass under a shade tree by a calm river and listen to beautiful songs sung by people like Caroline? And meet such wonderful songwriters as Janet McLaughlin.
We return to the festival revitalized and ready for another evening of great music performances and sharing songs in Camp.
Main stage performers are Jon Vezner and Don Henry (I miss most of their show), Ellis Paul, Brooks Williams (just another amazing blues guitarist), The Waymores, and wrapping up the evening is Brave Combo. Yes, we have Polkas!
Again, I spend most of the late night/early mornings playing and listening at Singkerrnicity. When we finally break up I head up the hill to the Crow’s Nest. They are going strong and I just hang and listen for about a half hour or so. Around 4:30 I head back to my tent. I do need to get some sleep tonight since I’m taking the songwriting class starting at 9:00 a.m. the next morning.
Day Four
Songwriting classes at Kerrville really add something to the experience. Besides the fact that we get to pick the brains of six great songwriters, we get six different perspectives on songwriting. Our teachers are Rick Beresford, Dick Goodwin, Terri Hendrix, Lloyd Maines, Ronny Cox and Jack Williams. Worth every penny. We meet together in the morning and in the afternoon have breakout sessions.
In the morning we have a lecture from Rick Beresford who teaches songwriting at Belmont. He gives us some great writing exercises (which we practice), and lots of good songwriting tips. By the time he’s done, I have about four pages of notes and writings. After Rick, Jack Williams does his thing. Not so much a lecture as a stream of consciousness exposition on songs and songwriting. After sitting spellbound for an hour and a half I look down at my empty page and just smile.
In the afternoon, my first breakout session is with Lloyd Maines and we go in the Kerrville studio and record a demo of my most recent song. So cool and I hope to pick his brain a bit on aspects of production. My second session is with Dick Goodwin and he gives us a boatload of new tools we can apply to our songwriting craft (from the musical perspective, as opposed to lyrics).
Evenings, between the busy weekends, are a little more low-key. The performances move to the smaller Threadgill stage. This evening is Woody Guthrie night and the Burns Sisters, Ronny Cox, Jimmy LaFave, along with Jack Williams and Karen Mal give us all a great set of Woody’s songs and writings. Afterwards they show the movie “Bound for Glory” (which Ronny Cox was in).
I decide not to stay for the movie and head back to camp for more “original” programming. It’s another wonderful night of songs. One of the most magical Kerr-moments occurs when Joyce and Kevin and I are swapping songs (a couple others may have been there). Joyce is singing one of her lovely songs, “You’re Making it True”, seeming to evoke an almost Hollywood movie past. Just before she gets to a break in the song, Bruce Baumer, a wonderful jazz guitarist, happens by, sits down, and without missing a beat takes a break. Then, as Joyce resumes her song, which to my recollection may have contained a sort of dialogue, Kevin launches into an Al Jolson imitation and joins into the song. Before we know it he’s on his knees, singing like Jolson to Joyce. A amazing moment I’ll never forget. And one that could never be recreated if we wanted to.
Day Five
…in which I am (literally) almost blown away.
Morning at the song school was great. We had lectures from Dick Goodwin, professor emeritus at South Carolina, and Ronny Cox, actor and folksinger/songwriter. In the afternoon sessions we had one on one sessions with Rick Beresford, a songwriting coach, and Jack Williams, guitarist/singer/songwriter extraordinaire.
I played my newest song, “Leaving Again”, for Rick and the rest of the small group. The song went over very well. Rick really liked it but had some good comments on sequencing the verses. I’ve kept all the lyrics but re-ordered them. I’ve also turned the last verse into a bridge. I think it’s made a good song almost a great song. [I'm getting there -- and I say almost great only because I can't call it a great song when I'm surrounded by such stellar songwriters and their works.] We have time for a second song and I play “Closer to Love”. This goes over well with the group, but Rick is a little more critical of it. It just doesn’t grab him the same way. It’s not really compelling. He did offer some brief suggestions on where I might want to go with it though and I’ll probably try a few new things with it.
After meeting with Rick, I played “Babymoon” for Jack Williams. He, and the group, really liked the song. He liked how it takes you on this rambling sort of adventure. But he thought the ending was sort of a let-down. This was mostly an arrangement/performance critique and he offered a couple of really good suggestions. First, I need to tone down the guitar accompaniment during the verses. It’s covering up the vocal too much. Then the ending needs to be more of a chorus, maybe almost a sing-along sort of thing. It needs to end on a high, not fade out. So some tweaking with the ending and the guitar arrangement should really improve this song as well.
After the class, I was sitting by the general store working on a couple web posts — when I looked up and saw a really horrible looking storm bearing right down on us, and a wall of dust. Almost immediately dust was blowing in hard. I snapped shut the laptop and ran all the way to the lower meadow to secure my tent and belongings. I barely got there in time. The stove had already blown over and the awning was threatening to take off. Keith, a neighbor, helped me detach the awning and I threw it and everything else into the tent and jumped in. This was a major storm. The rain started pounding and a ferocious wind was blowing. This was reminiscent of the time Anita and I were in Nova Scotia and just about got blown into the sea. Rain was leaking in the front door. Fortunately the tent sloped towards the front so it just puddled right there. But eventually a huge gust pulled up one of the stakes. I planted a foot in that corner of the tent and braced the front of the tent with my back. The whole time Guy Clark’s song “Tornado Time in Texas” is running through my mind. They said there were 70mph gusts. I would say at least that. A couple of them just about blew me over. I was thinking about how it was getting close to “abandon tent!” time. But things calmed down after about 30 minutes and everything survived.
Once it calmed down, and the temperature had dropped 15 or 20 degrees, we gathered to survey the damage. There were some lost awnings and damaged tents. A number of people ended up with wet gear and had to move for the night. But then there was a beautiful song circle at Singkerrnicity. Went to bed around 1 or 2 a.m — my earliest bedtime at Kerrville.
Day Six
Today is much cooler thanks to the storm that rolled in the previous night. After some breakfast, and re-attaching the awning, I survey the damage across the campground as I make the short hike to the last day of the songwriting class.
This morning’s lecture is done by both Terri Hendrix and Lloyd Maines. They provide some overview of their processes and then spend the remaining time taking questions. Many of the questions relate to how one can move along, or progress, in one’s career. It’s a good session.
During the lunch break I head back to camp to fetch my guitar — it had been loaded into someone’s car during the storm and hadn’t been unloaded when I left in the morning. It also gave me a chance to say goodbye to Joyce who was heading out. Joyce really took me under her wing, showing me around and introducing me to people. She really made my initial experience of Kerrville something to remember. I told her she should make a trip out East and that I’d set up a house concert for her. I’m hoping she’ll take me up on it, and I look forward to seeing her before next year’s festival.
My first afternoon session was with Ronny Cox. He was there to coach us on performance techniques (being an actor and all). It was very helpful. I performed “Moving Free”, making deliberate efforts to make eye contact with my listeners. This is something that has been hard for me, but I’m working on it. He thought I was on the right track and felt like I was really pulling people into my song (though he could tell it did not yet come naturally to me).
My last session was with Terri Hendrix and we spent the entire time picking her brain about various songwriting and especially performance related issues. She is so genuinely friendly and offered lots of helpful tips. She talked about how in the beginning of her career she would play anywhere they would let her put a tip jar out — including a place called “Titties” (or something equally as disgusting). And she described how she moved up in her career and was able to become more and more selective about when and where she played. Dan, from Oklahoma, just wanted to know how he could get a gig there. He was a real crack-up. Talking with Terri I felt like she was really interested in how I progressed with my music. She said she would really like to see me perform some time and that I should keep in touch. I mentioned to her that should she be touring up in New England (perhaps Passim) that I would love to add a house concert to her tour.
In the evening, at the Threadgill stage, there was a set of New Folk winners in the round. These were previous New Folk contest winners and they share song after great song, sometimes accompanying each other. They finally called it an evening after several encores. And then there was yet another night of wonderful song sharing in the campground, starting with Irish Night at Camp Coho. All the Coho regulars are there, including Jack Hardy, and Megan McLaughlin from SingKerrNicity holds her own as well.
Day Seven
It’s Friday and that means I’m going to drive into San Antonio to pick up my brother Dan who will be joining me for the weekend. It’s about an hour drive, we have a quick lunch and pick up a few things there, then get some groceries and beer in Kerrville before heading to the camp. Once we arrive he gets settled while I head to Threadgill for a capo workshop.
It’s actually pretty interesting and I take advantage of the good discounts to pick up a couple Kaiser Capos. One is a 5-string bar with a 6th-string lever. The other is a standard cut capo — it only covers 3 strings (from either side). This is actually pretty cool because you can put it on the second fret and have instant DADGAD tuning (for those of you familiar with alternate tunings). There are actually many interesting places to put the capo to get various new voicings for chords. I’ve already found uses for it in some of my existing songs.
Friday evening is probably the best main stage lineup for the entire festival. We get Louise Mosrie, Jack Williams, Ronny Cox, Eric Schwartz (with Jagoda on percussion), Ray Benson (Asleep at the Wheel) and Amy Speace.
After the main stage shows, Dan and I check out Camp Coho. We arrive just in time to hear a 15 year old kid (who must have just set himself up in the circle before people arrived) launch into Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. I cringe. Now, I don’t care how good a performer you are — the Kerrville festival is for singer/SONGWRITERS. This is where you play your own songs. You don’t do covers. ESPECIALLY at Camp Coho. Jack Williams is there — not applauding. When the next in line pulls out a John Prine song, you could just see the frustration around the circle. And he should have known better. When he finishes, once again without any applauding, Jack asks, “Do you fellows write songs?”. Ouch. Well, yes they do. At least they try. Jack got a little sarcastic after that. We stayed long enough to hear him play a tune then around the circle one more time and hear his second tune, then we’re off to Singkerrnicity.
Things haven’t started yet, but as soon as a couple of us pull out guitars we get a really good song circle going. It lasts until the early morning hours and my brother Dan crashes in the tent. I head up to the crow’s nest to see what happening there. Chris Chandler is there and a fire is being re-lit. He regales us with a great spoken word piece and there are some good songs shared. Eventually I head back to camp around 5:30 a.m. and I see the glow of dawn’s first light in the Eastern sky. I quickly fall asleep.
Day Eight
Last full day for me at Kerrville, and it’s a hot one. Dan and I have a pretty lazy morning, then around 11 or 12 (who knows what time it is here) a bunch of us pile into Rob Shaw’s van and we head for the river. We spend all afternoon laying around, soaking up the good vibes. As we head back to camp in the early evening Rob mentions he wants to make pizzas. I offer the tomatoes and peppers I have in my cooler. Once back at camp, Rob spends the next hour or so making the most amazing grilled pizza I have ever had. [He made one of them vegan!] Truly outstanding.
Dan and I arrive a little late for the main stage performances. We catch the end of Seth Glier’s set, then Trout Fishing in America, Katy Moffatt & Andrew Hardin, and finally Guy Forsyth [who has one of the most entertaining websites I've seen in a while].
After the main stage performance its back to Singkerrnicity (not much happening at Coho right then). Jim Savarino and I start playing some tunes and before we know it, songwriters are appearing out of the dark and joining us. There is a group of guys from Georgia and one of them sings for the first time outside of their own camp. Towards the end, I’m getting really tired and I mis-hear the first line of a song the guy next to me sings. I just about laugh out loud before I realize he didn’t say what I thought he did. Needless to say, it’s a great line and I’ll use it in a song. [No, I'm not going to repeat it!]
It’s probably 2:00 am or so and the circle finds a stopping point. Dan and I take one last tour of the campgrounds. We head up to the Crow’s Nest, listen briefly, then head back down. In the meadow, not far from our campsite, a large contingent of partiers are going strong. They’ve brought in a trailer-stage and a band is tearing it up. We listen for a bit and then finally head back to the tent for a brief night’s sleep.
Heading Home
I wake up around 8:30 or so to find Dan already completely packed, his air mattress deflated, and waiting for me (how did he do all that without waking me up?). Within an hour or so, we have some breakfast and camp is torn down and stowed away in my car. I say goodbye to everyone at the camp — hugs all around — and an offer of a place to crash if any of them ever venture up to the Northeast. Dan and I hit the road back to Dallas (where I do laundry and get some good rest).
The next day is a long one for me and I’m out the door before 6:00 a.m. — it’s over 80 degrees! I make one stop in Oklahoma for gas and my next stop is Pittsburgh, Kansas where I stop for a quick snack. I continue on to Overland Park where I meet up with Kai and we have lunch together. Nice to see the kid again! After about an hour and a half or so I continue up I-35 to Iowa where I reconnect with dear old friends in Cedar Rapids. It is a wonderful reunion. Great dinner, soul-searching conversation, a few songs, and its off to bed.
Next morning I linger a bit long over breakfast and conversation, but there are still many miles to go and I head out in the rain. In fact, it rains pretty much all day as I drive across Illinois and Indiana and into Ohio. I spend the night in Cleveland at a hotel.
Now it’s the last morning and I get a delayed start. I drive up to Buffalo, New York and then across on the New York State Thruway. It’s about 12:30, south of Rochester, when everything goes bad. A deer suddenly appears in the road — casually trotting across. I try to swerve as much as I can, but there is a truck in the lane to my left and behind so that direction is cut off. It can’t be avoided and the car hits the deer in the front left corner. The deer certainly could not have survived long, but must have had enough adrenaline to get itself off the road and into the woods. My car is a wreck. Undriveable. I pull over, inspect the damage, call AAA and my insurance, and wait for the trooper and tow truck. What an unbelievable bummer. The car is towed to a collision center to await an insurance adjuster and I have to find a rental car to get home. Needless to say I am not in a very good mood when I get back to Cambridge well after midnight. Not the way I thought the trip would end.
But I am back in one piece — uninjured — so I am thankful for that. Just not too happy about the accident and my car. And as it turns out, the car is totaled, so now I’m looking once again for a car. [I only had that car for about six weeks.]
All in all though, the road trip to Kerrville far exceeded any of my expectations and I return tired but inspired.
Let the songwriting continue!
