...and they lived happily ever after. Smith & Lady: poets, artists, photographers & adventurers.
Our relationship was forged to the soundtrack of Yoko Ono's magic,
frenetic, love-laden song, "Walking On Thin Ice." ( play song )
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Blue Sky Folk Festival in Kirtland on
Saturday, May 19
. . . where great musicians can connect with new musicians . . .
Blue Sky Folk Fest Great Guitar Raffle
Check out this awesome guitar that could be yours! The guitar will be signed by all of the featured performers at Blue Sky Folk Fest 2012.
It’s a full size Dreadnaught style cutaway guitar with a fantastic blue sunburst finish, professionally setup up by luthier Patrick Podpadec from Wood-n-Strings Guitar Repair Shop. Equipped with a piezo pickup system with active EQ controls, it includes a gig bag, guitar strap, guitar stand and extra set of strings. This guitar is ready to plug in and play with the tone and action like the pros have.
Raffle tickets on sale at Blue Sky May 19. $5 each or 5 tickets for $20.
Music, Music and More Music
What a line-up: Hal Walker, Matt Watroba, Dale Rodgers, Laura Lewis Kovac and Hickory, Rebecca Wohlever, Tina Bergmann, Bryan Thomas & Hu$hMoney, Marc Yanko and more . . .
Four “official” jam sites will be set up at the May 19 Blue Sky for musicians to practice and meet other musicians, but we know from last year that they’ll set up and play anywhere they please.
More Open Mic !
This year we’ve expanded to two stages – featured performers and open mic. The extra stage will give more open mic musicians a chance to shine – hosted by Spoon Too Soon, who will also perform their own brand of back porch roots, folk and country music.
Spend a day soaking up sun* and music – The Blue Sky is truly a family affair. Kids 12 and under come free. Crafty music and art-making, harmonica lessons, spoon lessons (what?!? you’ve never played a spoon?!?), clogging, storytelling, a playground and more . . . plus, mmmmmm, root beer floats, (n)ice cold lemonade, and fantastic fair food.
*tho this festival will be held rain or shine!
But I Just Want to Listen
Absolutely. Sing along, dream a little, listen a lot. No instrument required.
What? Klezmer Music?
What is the Workmen’s Circle Klezmer Orchestra doing at a folk festival? The genre originated in Eastern Europe and the particular form now known as klezmer developed in the United States in the milieu of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants who arrived between 1880 and 1924. Nope, not bluegrass, not roots music, not country – but it’s still Northeast Ohio folk music, and we thought you’d like this rousing start to the Blue Sky Folk Festival at 11 a.m.
Share and Share a-Like
Do share this newsletter with your friends – share our Facebook pages – “Like” us on Facebook. Help us bring the folk music community together in Kirtland on Saturday, May 19.
Blue Sky Folk Festival at East Shore: A Search for Harmony
Saturday, May 19, 2012 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
East Shore Unitarian Universalist Church
10848 Chillicothe Rd. (Route 306 just south of Route 6), Kirtland, Ohio 44094 Map
Grandma and have a picnic breakfast a couple times a week. This week we went to a lakeside park…
We walked up to the lake but they wouldn’t let us in.
“We are in jail,” I told Grandma. “We’re landlocked.”
-
Grandma and I have this love of dressing up like ragdolls, with striped shirts, the color pink, patterns. Quite often when I pick her up, we’re wearing something eerily similar.
Her father named her after Lenin. He had two families, our family, and a secret family. He gave all his money to the communists. Grandma had to go begging to him for money. All this responsibility for a little girl.
Sometimes I call her “my little baby Grandma.”
At various times, Grandma and her brothers were in an orphanage. Her mother had periods of insanity (brought on by syphilis given to her from Grandma’s father.) Sometimes Grandma ran away from the orphanage, back home to her mother.
At one point, Grandma was living with her mother, and her brothers were still in the orphanage. She went two streets down and found a brother playing in a school playground. She grabbed his hand and took him home.
“You see this skirt?” she said. “I wore this skirt for you. I thought you’d like it.”
Lady K in 48 years? Maybe. I’d be glad to look like Grandma.
“Do you remember how I used to dress?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. You wore black or blue polyester pants and you had a couple shirts you wore regularly. You dressed this way most of my life. Then, one day, Grandpa took you shopping, and told you to buy pink for a change. You started wearing all these colorful clothes.”
Smith’s telling me all kinds of stuff this morning…
I’m thinking of Sunday Morning Coming Down right now and it’s quiet, it feels like Sunday morning.
Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes Scholar, which means you have to be pretty fricking smart. After he graduated in England, he came back to the U.S. and with all this college education and everything, he chose to get a job at Johnny Cash’s recording studio as a janitor because he figured he’d get a chance to slip Johnny Cash a copy of his songs he’d written.
And one of the the songs he slipped to Johnny Cash was Sunday Morning Coming Down which is one of the saddest, most heart-evocative songs I know.
Johnny Cash was gonna sing the song on his show. His TV people came to him and said, “We don’t want you to say this line On the Sunday Morning sidewalk wishing Lord that I was stoned/ cuz there’s something in a Sunday makes a body feel alone.” We don’t want you to use the word stoned on TV.”
And Johnny Cash turned to Kris Kristofferson and said, “How do you feel about this? You wrote the song. What do you want me to do?”
Kristofferson said, “It’s your TV show. I would totally understand if you don’t want to use the word stoned.”
Everybody left it at that. And Johnny Cash went out there and sang it the way it was written.
I can’t believe Smith has all this shit in his brain, but I sure do enjoy it.
Sunday Morning Coming Down by Kris Kristofferson
Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An’ I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An’ stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.
I’d smoked my brain the night before,
On cigarettes and songs I’d been pickin’.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid,
Cussin’ at a can that he was kicking.
Then I crossed the empty street,
‘n caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken.
And it took me back to somethin’,
That I’d lost somehow, somewhere along the way.
On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.
In the park I saw a daddy,
With a laughin’ little girl who he was swingin’.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to the song they were singin’.
Then I headed back for home,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’.
And it echoed through the canyons,
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.
On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.
Do do do do do do do do,
Do do do do do do do,
Do do do do do do do do,
Do do do do do do do.
Check out this awesome guitar that could be yours! The guitar will be signed by all of the featured performers at 
Four “official” jam sites will be set up at the May 19 Blue Sky for musicians to practice and meet other musicians, but we know from last year that they’ll set up and play anywhere they please. 
But I Just Want to Listen
in the milieu of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants who arrived between 1880 and 1924. Nope, not bluegrass, not roots music, not country – but it’s still Northeast Ohio folk music, and we thought you’d like this rousing start to the Blue Sky Folk Festival at 11 a.m. 
