|
The Songwriters Tour Guide
by Erik Balkey
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of Erik Balkey's
"Songwriters Tour Guide" 2001. Back issues of this "road journal of a traveling songwriter" can be found at www.ErikBalkey.com/STG.html.
I then headed back for more
New Jersey Turnpike mileage to New York City where I stopped in at Jack Hardy's weekly songcircle.
This was an inspiring night. "Nothing adventuresome is created in a vacuum," Jack says, "You get people together and the creative sparks fly."
Jack founded the Fast Folk
Musical Magazine in 1982 as a vehicle to document songs from writers who didn't have the means to record on their own. Many of the six hundred writers to appear on Fast Folk compilations remain
relative unknowns, but some of today's top songwriters first recorded on Fast Folk including Suzanne Vega, Michelle Shocked, Lyle Lovett, John Gorka and Shawn Colvin.
Jack has hosted workshops
through the existence of Fast Folk and still hosts songwriters weekly in his apartment in the West Village.
The idea of Jack's workshop is that all the writers bring a new song every week. That's a tough assignment, but that's the deal. What I learned from the songcircle and discussions with Jack is that respect on this night is earned by making the attempt to get better.
I entered Jack's apartment building at seven o'clock from the cold snow-covered street, up three flights of stairs, and to the end of a narrow hallway that should have had one door but was
modified to have two doors at an angle into subdivided apartments.
I knocked and entered the apartment as Jack was putting the finishing touches on a large pot of pasta. Steam filled the apartment as I joined the early arrivals for dinner. (continued on page ##)
|
