Tracy and I love playing the Tucson Folk Festival. We’ve been coming here for at least the last decade, probably longer. This festival is run well, has backing from the city, great vendors and stages – all good.
We got here early because we all want to be part of the “Hands Off” protest that is going on everywhere on Saturday. We’re up early, have our signs and are on our way. The location is right next to a golf course/driving range and it’s an interesting collection of folks heading to the driving range and folks heading to the protest.
Everyone is in a festive but still like…annoyed mood. The feeling to me seemed to be one of “I can’t believe we’re still protesting this shit but here we are and we know it’s going to be a long haul.” Most everyone driving by honked in support. There was one truck doing laps flipping us off and for the first time ever I saw someone give us the “white power” hand sign after he flipped us off.
This time, this administration is definitely worse.
***
After the protest we head to the Folk Festival as I’m putting on a workshop teaching “Creating dynamics and rhythmic soloing for solo performers” and our friends The Odd Birds are playing right before my workshop.
Messaging with Jen before their show, she’s been fighting a cold all week and it must be the adrenaline pushing her forward because when they play you can’t tell she’s sick at all. Her and Ron sound great and get big cheers on their song Drowning rain. Then I have to skidaddle over to the workshop area and find my tent.
There’s about a dozen folks listening to me, well, one bad scheduling thing was they put the workshops right next to a gigantic portable generator so I was having to shout out my class and it was loud enough that everyone’s guitars couldn’t really be heard but we muddled through.
It’s been interesting teaching these classes. I don’t claim to be all-knowing but I’ve been doing this a while and recording folks for quite a while to the point where I do know what I’m talking about here. The challenge I’m facing while giving these workshops is the wide range of skill levels I’ve been teaching to and yesterday was no different. I had absolute beginners who just bought their first guitar last month to one dude that tried to take over teaching.
Anyway – it’s a challenging balance because I start from the idea that you will know the notes in your chords – just basic chords – G, D, C, Am and all but one person in the group was with me on that. I try dialing it back and get more class participation but the first two dudes, who both brought their guitars and are sitting next to me, refuse to play anything. I end up going around the group one and one and working with everyone about a specific element of their playing and all is good.
Weird takeaway – I keep getting the same sort of variation of the same question – “What is the shortcut I can do so I don’t have to take the time to learn this?” And there seems to always be one person who has some moral high-ground aversion to using a capo because <insert guitarist name here> never used one.
I enjoy teaching these workshops and I really enjoy the near improv-like experience of teaching them – it is all on the fly, but I still have a lot to learn. I have an outline of what I want to get across but taking in where they are and bringing them into the discussion always takes the conversation in different directions.
***
Sunday.
I’m feeling anxious. I don’t typically get antsy before shows but festival shows like this have some built in challenges. It’s a short set, so no dilly dallying. I’m not using any fancy pedals to keep it a fast set-up/break-down. And because of things going on politically, we’ve decided to perform “Good Trouble”, a song we wrote right before the 2020 election. It was written using some of John Lewis' words from speeches and his famous “get in good trouble, necessary trouble” quote.
I know it’s a folk audience. I know these are all the hippies of Tucson. I know it’s a crowd that is right there with us.
But still…
I don’t shirk away from my politics. I’ve been telling folks about the White Rose Society on stage but this is a bigger audience than I’ve done this for. In my head I am mentally preparing to get flipped off or worse.
Our set comes and as much as the out- front sound is fantastic, it’s a bit challenging on stage with our monitors. It is what it is, I try to get a little bit of relief but it doesn’t get any better so we just power through. First song Around Here goes well. Tracy sings beautifully on When We Ride. All is well. We get to the end of the set and I hold up the vase with the white rose and explain why we have it, who the White Rose Society was and people cheer. My nervousness comes through in my not fluid explanation. Tracy then introduces Good Trouble and I can feel I’m lacking breath and I nearly miss the first line. I botch the chords in the first chorus. I think they’re with us on this. When we hit the bridge of “Wake up America, Speak up America, Stand up America – IT’S NOT TOO LATE!” People start wooing and cheering along. And then we got them to sing along with us on the last chorus. We hadn’t planned on a sing along, it just sort of happened. And it happened.
Change is coming.
We get off stage and Eric Douglas comes up to me,
“That was pretty cool huh?”
Speaking up and standing up is not easy. When you’re on a stage with a microphone – you really feel it. It is heavy. It is real. It is good.
After the show some folks ask to take pictures with us. It’s good. It felt good. Talked to a woman who mentions that she just heard of the White Rose Society two days ago and wasn’t expecting to hear about it here today. Meet more folks that were at the protest yesterday who loved it.
Post gig I’m breathing better. These are hard times. But we have each other and that will pull us through. Good trouble will not be easy.
***
Fox and Bones are playing the main stage about 30 minutes after us and we make our way over. Sarah sees me and waves while I’m dancing. They sound incredible. She stomps the bass drum while singing, he has a tambourine on his right foot and together with a bass player they don’t even need a drummer. They are blowing up right now and deservedly so.
People keep coming up and telling us how much they enjoyed our set and I end up having another conversation about the White Rose Society. People get it.
Closing out the day seeing Kenny White and Cheryl Wheeler and they are just a master class of songwriting. Holy shit. I’d never heard Kenny before today. I’m a fan. The last time I saw Cheryl Wheeler was when she was the featured performer at the Acton Jazz Café in like ’98 and I played a short open mic set before her.
Fantastic.
Ok, that’s enough for today. Long drive tomorrow.
xo
We got here early because we all want to be part of the “Hands Off” protest that is going on everywhere on Saturday. We’re up early, have our signs and are on our way. The location is right next to a golf course/driving range and it’s an interesting collection of folks heading to the driving range and folks heading to the protest.
Everyone is in a festive but still like…annoyed mood. The feeling to me seemed to be one of “I can’t believe we’re still protesting this shit but here we are and we know it’s going to be a long haul.” Most everyone driving by honked in support. There was one truck doing laps flipping us off and for the first time ever I saw someone give us the “white power” hand sign after he flipped us off.
This time, this administration is definitely worse.
***
After the protest we head to the Folk Festival as I’m putting on a workshop teaching “Creating dynamics and rhythmic soloing for solo performers” and our friends The Odd Birds are playing right before my workshop.
Messaging with Jen before their show, she’s been fighting a cold all week and it must be the adrenaline pushing her forward because when they play you can’t tell she’s sick at all. Her and Ron sound great and get big cheers on their song Drowning rain. Then I have to skidaddle over to the workshop area and find my tent.
There’s about a dozen folks listening to me, well, one bad scheduling thing was they put the workshops right next to a gigantic portable generator so I was having to shout out my class and it was loud enough that everyone’s guitars couldn’t really be heard but we muddled through.
It’s been interesting teaching these classes. I don’t claim to be all-knowing but I’ve been doing this a while and recording folks for quite a while to the point where I do know what I’m talking about here. The challenge I’m facing while giving these workshops is the wide range of skill levels I’ve been teaching to and yesterday was no different. I had absolute beginners who just bought their first guitar last month to one dude that tried to take over teaching.
Anyway – it’s a challenging balance because I start from the idea that you will know the notes in your chords – just basic chords – G, D, C, Am and all but one person in the group was with me on that. I try dialing it back and get more class participation but the first two dudes, who both brought their guitars and are sitting next to me, refuse to play anything. I end up going around the group one and one and working with everyone about a specific element of their playing and all is good.
Weird takeaway – I keep getting the same sort of variation of the same question – “What is the shortcut I can do so I don’t have to take the time to learn this?” And there seems to always be one person who has some moral high-ground aversion to using a capo because <insert guitarist name here> never used one.
I enjoy teaching these workshops and I really enjoy the near improv-like experience of teaching them – it is all on the fly, but I still have a lot to learn. I have an outline of what I want to get across but taking in where they are and bringing them into the discussion always takes the conversation in different directions.
***
Sunday.
I’m feeling anxious. I don’t typically get antsy before shows but festival shows like this have some built in challenges. It’s a short set, so no dilly dallying. I’m not using any fancy pedals to keep it a fast set-up/break-down. And because of things going on politically, we’ve decided to perform “Good Trouble”, a song we wrote right before the 2020 election. It was written using some of John Lewis' words from speeches and his famous “get in good trouble, necessary trouble” quote.
I know it’s a folk audience. I know these are all the hippies of Tucson. I know it’s a crowd that is right there with us.
But still…
I don’t shirk away from my politics. I’ve been telling folks about the White Rose Society on stage but this is a bigger audience than I’ve done this for. In my head I am mentally preparing to get flipped off or worse.
Our set comes and as much as the out- front sound is fantastic, it’s a bit challenging on stage with our monitors. It is what it is, I try to get a little bit of relief but it doesn’t get any better so we just power through. First song Around Here goes well. Tracy sings beautifully on When We Ride. All is well. We get to the end of the set and I hold up the vase with the white rose and explain why we have it, who the White Rose Society was and people cheer. My nervousness comes through in my not fluid explanation. Tracy then introduces Good Trouble and I can feel I’m lacking breath and I nearly miss the first line. I botch the chords in the first chorus. I think they’re with us on this. When we hit the bridge of “Wake up America, Speak up America, Stand up America – IT’S NOT TOO LATE!” People start wooing and cheering along. And then we got them to sing along with us on the last chorus. We hadn’t planned on a sing along, it just sort of happened. And it happened.
Change is coming.
We get off stage and Eric Douglas comes up to me,
“That was pretty cool huh?”
Speaking up and standing up is not easy. When you’re on a stage with a microphone – you really feel it. It is heavy. It is real. It is good.
After the show some folks ask to take pictures with us. It’s good. It felt good. Talked to a woman who mentions that she just heard of the White Rose Society two days ago and wasn’t expecting to hear about it here today. Meet more folks that were at the protest yesterday who loved it.
Post gig I’m breathing better. These are hard times. But we have each other and that will pull us through. Good trouble will not be easy.
***
Fox and Bones are playing the main stage about 30 minutes after us and we make our way over. Sarah sees me and waves while I’m dancing. They sound incredible. She stomps the bass drum while singing, he has a tambourine on his right foot and together with a bass player they don’t even need a drummer. They are blowing up right now and deservedly so.
People keep coming up and telling us how much they enjoyed our set and I end up having another conversation about the White Rose Society. People get it.
Closing out the day seeing Kenny White and Cheryl Wheeler and they are just a master class of songwriting. Holy shit. I’d never heard Kenny before today. I’m a fan. The last time I saw Cheryl Wheeler was when she was the featured performer at the Acton Jazz Café in like ’98 and I played a short open mic set before her.
Fantastic.
Ok, that’s enough for today. Long drive tomorrow.
xo