The third annual Brooklyn Folk Festival kicks off tonight (6/10) at the Jalopy Theatre and runs through Sunday (6/12). Tickets for all three days are available as well as three-day passes. Uncle Monk (Tommy Ramone and Claudia Tienan), Peter Stampfel & the Ether Frolic Mob, and others play the festival tonight. Saturday (6/11) and Sunday (6/12) will take place at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition and feature performances by Blind Boy Paxton, The Dust Busters, Radio Jarocho, Jalopy house band Whiskey Spitters, Boom Chick, and others.

The festival also includes workshops and film screenings on Saturday and Sunday including jam workshops, banjo and fiddle tunings, singing workshop, and films by Alan Lomax, John Cohen, and Mike Seeger.

Blind Boy Paxton

Blues singer/guitarist Blind Boy Paxton recorded an in-studio performance for KEXP last August you can listen to. He also contributed vocals to the track "But That's Alright" off Frank Fairfield's recently released album Out on the Open West...

"Frank Fairfield's backstory is the stuff of old American legend: A troubled vagabond who eventually made his way home to Los Angeles, Fairfield rooted through the city as a street musician, pulling bow across fiddle and hammering away at a banjo or acoustic guitar on corners or in flea markets. One afternoon, the right musician saw him play, became his manager, hitched him to a tour with champions Fleet Foxes, and landed him a record deal with one of the country's most trustworthy syndicates of old sounds, Tompkins Square. Now, he's the subject of a documentary and a touring musician with audiences in multiple continents.

The album (which just got an impressive 8.0 on Pitchfork) is streaming on Frank's myspace. Frank is currently on tour in Europe, but plays a record release show at McCabe's in LA on July 24th. No NYC dates, but Frank is on the lineup of September's Hopscotch Fest which takes place in North Carolina, so maybe one will pop up around then. Meanwhile go check out Blind Boy (who played a show with Frank at Jalopy last summer) at Brooklyn Folk Fest this weekend.

Check out the full Brooklyn Folk Festival lineup, some videos and the flyer below...

Continue reading "Brooklyn Folk Fest this weekend, Frank Fairfield isn't playing, but Blind Boy Paxton is (and Peter Stampfel and many more)"

by Andrew Frisicano

Download: Baby Gramps - Shake It 'n' Break It (MP3)
Download: Baby Gramps - St. James Infirmary (MP3)
Download: Baby Gramps - Teddy Bears' Picnic (MP3)

[Baby Gramps] plays his songbook of old-timey songs with the dexterity of an, erm, old-timer (he plays what he calls "stunt guitar" and what others have termed "extraordinary"). No longer "knee-high to a tootsie-wootsie" (as he would say), he's officially grown into his geezer status. Some date Gramps' beginnings on the Seattle music scene as far back as the early '60s. "Before that, I was in Texas by way of Arkansas by way of Alabama," he told Patrick Ferris in an interview reprinted on Gramps' website. And though you might be inclined to file Gramps under roots -- blues and folk in particular -- he's also found a niche among the rock crowd as a street performer and opening act. I recollect seeing him on every trip I've ever taken to Seattle that involved entering a nightclub. I asked my friend, Seattle-based author and journalist Charles R. Cross, for the hometown perspective on Baby Gramps: "He is a Seattle institution, along the lines of the Space Needle, Pioneer Square, and the Pike Place Market." [Crawdaddy]

Baby Gramps fingerpicks an old National steel guitar and shares at least a few similarities with Tom Waits: his outward appearance borders on hobo chic, his voice growls like a idling Buick, and his origins are purposefully mysterious in a way that transcends age. It's hard to place Baby Gramps in a specific context other than "America" and a time other than "somewhere in the past." He's never put out a studio record, despite playing consistently for the last 40-plus years. The samples above come from 2003's Same Ol' Timeously, one of Gramps's three live CDs released on his own Grampophone label.

Baby Gramps occasionally leaves his Pacific Northwest homebase for jaunts around the North East. That's what he'll do this June, as he plays Upstate New York before coming to NYC for a five-night run. Starting with a Friday, June 12th show at Terra Blues, Gramps will play Barbes on June 13th (Sat), Jalopy Theatre on June 14th (Sun), the Kitchen Club on June 15th (Mon) and finish with a show at Zebulon on June 16th (Tues).

His song "Cape Cod Girls" opened the Hal Willner-compiled Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys collection, which came out on Anti in 2007.

A video of Gramps performing "Cape Cod Girls" with Akron/Family on Letterman (a venue that doesn't do his full-on vaudeville act justice), with all tour dates, below...

Continue reading "Baby Gramps - 2009 tour dates w/ 5 NYC shows in June "

Down Home Radio is proud to announce the 1st annual Brooklyn Folk Festival, Friday, May 15th - Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at the Jalopy Theater. This festival will feature the best in old-time music, blues, pre-blues, jug band music, New Orleans jazz, folk style songwriting, African folk music and Mexican folk music and dance. Come down and check it out, its gonna be fun!

There are no advance tickets for the Red Hook festival. "$10 Per Day or $25 for 3 days - Afternoon Workshop Included!" In addition to shows and workshops at the Jalopy, there are also official festival jam sessions taking place at Moonshine. Full schedule and poster below...

Continue reading "1st annual Brooklyn Folk Festival - lineup & schedule"