Scott Alarik – Revival: A Folk Music Novel

Revival: A Folk Music Novel

By Scott Alarik

Peter E. Randall Publisher

315 pages

scottalarik.com

When I first met Scott Alarik in the late-1970s, he was one of the impressive Minnesota-based folksingers who’d soon find some measure of wider recognition through their appearances on the early shows of the A Prairie Home Companion radio show.

A few years later, Scott moved to the Boston area where he continued to perform and record but became primarily known as a freelance writer covering folk music for the Boston Globe, Sing Out! and other publications. Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground, a collection of Scott’s folk music articles was published in 2003. Now, with Revival: A Folk Music Novel, Scott turns his attention to fiction.

The story is set in a scene that Scott knows as well as anyone: the contemporary folk music scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts (as well as the broader North American folk music scene). The main characters are Nathan Warren and Kit Palmer.

Nathan is a veteran performer whose chance at the big time was blown by a combination of music biz politics and his own self-destructiveness. Now sober, he runs a weekly open mike night at a Cambridge bar where he mentors promising young performers and gives chances to any and all who want to get up and share their songs.

The young and painfully shy Kit Palmer is one of those promising young singer-songwriters – perhaps the most promising. Nathan recognizes her talent, helps her overcome her stage fright and – despite their age and experiential differences – they fall in love.

As the story develops, Nathan teaches Kit the art of stagecraft and becomes her backup musician and producer as she begins to climb her own ladder to folk music stardom. All the while Kit’s influence revitalizes Nathan and his own music.

Among the secondary characters is Ryan Ferguson, the veteran freelance folk music critic for the major local newspaper. The paper is going through the same kind of cutbacks and restructuring the Montreal Gazette – where I used to be the freelance folk music critic – went through a few years ago, so I related strongly to the character (whose professional struggles, I’m sure, were based, in large part, on Scott’s own adventures at the Globe). Another is Joyce Warren, Nathan’s ex-wife and a star in the folk music world now based in L.A.

Scott does two things quite brilliantly in Revival. He tells a May-December love story in a way that seems fresh and vital – and he gives a superb primer on the folk music scene as it has evolved almost a half-century after the major folk music revival of the 1960s. Readers get an understanding of the hierarchy of the scene from open mikes in neighborhood bars to community-based, volunteer-driven house concerts and coffee houses, to the major folk club, concert and festival circuit. The independent recording scene, folk music radio and publications are all are part of the primer that should make this book essential reading for any aspiring performer – and for anyone who cares about the scene.

One of the things that I loved about Revival is that Scott has created characters that seem like people I know. In a note that precedes the story, Scott stresses that any similarities to real people in the characters in coincidental, but there are aspects to these characters that I recognize – or at least read into – many people I know, or have known over my years on the folk scene (which pretty much parallel Scott’s), including more than a few good friends.

Revival: A Folk Music Novel is a terrific read for anyone who likes a good story and an essential read for anyone who cares about or wants to understand today’s folk music scene.

--Mike Regenstreif

Michael Wex -- The Frumkiss Family Business

My book review of The Frumkiss Family Business by Michael Wex from today's issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin is now online at michaelwex.com.

--Mike Regenstreif

Christine Lavin -- Cold Pizza for Breakfast: A Mem-wha??

Cold Pizza for Breakfast: A Mem-wha??
By Christine Lavin
Tell Me Press
416 pages
christinelavin.com

Back in the 1970s, I used to pass through Saratoga Springs a lot. It’s about half way between Montreal and New York City so sometimes I’d stop on my way to or from New York. As the locale of the Caffé Lena, then, as now, the longest continually-running folk music coffee house on the planet, it was a place I was drawn to as a destination in its own right. It was a great place for a young folkie to hang out and, as a college folk concert presenter and then coffee house director in Montreal, I occasionally did circuit deals with Lena Spencer – for whom the Caffé Lena was named – to present the same artists in Montreal just before or after they were in Saratoga.

Sometime in the mid-‘70s, Lena pointed out a young woman waitressing at the Caffé to me.

“Her name is Christine Lavin,” said Lena. “Remember her name. She’s a songwriter and she’s very good.”

Lena, of course, was right. Within a few years, Christine was living in New York City and establishing herself as a major league singer-songwriter and gifted performing and recording artist. Her albums were a staple of Folk Roots/Folk Branches for the entire run of almost 14 years that I did the radio show.

Anyone who’s been to a Christine Lavin concert over the years will also tell you that she’s an outstanding – and, often, brilliantly funny – storyteller. She puts those talents to fine use in her autobiography, Cold Pizza for Breakfast: A Mem-wha?? (Is it a sign that you’re getting old when people around your age are publishing autobiographies?)

With great skill, Christine tells the major story of her life – from growing up as one of many Lavin siblings, to her leaving home and finding her way to the career she loves (as do we), and to the ups and downs of her life in New York and on tour – while frequently inserting various anecdotes and occasionally floating off on interesting tangents. And she doesn’t whitewash anything for P.R. purposes. There are tales of bad relationships and bad business dealings – and even some bad gigs, like the time she opened for Joan Rivers before a hostile audience of old folks in Florida.

Some of my favourite stories in the book are about her encounters with influential artists including a great one about briefly hopping on to Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue caravan with Lena. Christine actually taught Dylan a new verse to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” that she’d heard Pete Seeger sing.

A story that brought back memories for me was about a January 1976 Utah Phillips and Rosalie Sorrels concert in Saratoga and about the landmark church fire in Saratoga that happened in the middle of the night after the concert. I was there that night having driven Utah and Rosalie around on that short tour which, by the way, culminated with a concert that I produced in Montreal. (This was the tour that Utah announced he was running for president of the United States on the Sloth & Indolence ticket.)

There are also some stories about our mutual friend, Dave Van Ronk.

Christine, like so many others, was mentored by Dave and tells of how she actually first moved to New York City because Dave offered to give her guitar lessons.

And there are great, often hilarious, sections about Christine’s severe addiction to Dame Edna, how she became the first (and only) folksinger to integrate baton twirling into her stage act, and about starting up knitting circles with audience members as a pre-concert ritual.

Virtually from the time she first had any success in the music business, Christine has been one of the most generous of artists in terms of other performers. There are legions of performers who’ve benefitted from Christine’s singing their praises over the years – from peers like various members of the Four Bitchin’ Babes to legendary songwriters like Ervin Drake – and many of them get further exposure in Christine’s mem-wha.

Christine’s natural gift as a storyteller kept me in my seat turning the pages until, too quickly it seems, I’d read the last page.

--Mike Regenstreif