Day 30 – Me and my guitar…part 2
I went back to East Carolina University after my summer job with my new Yamaha guitar and man was it sweet. Up until that time, I had only played, or I should say copied, other artists, but now I started thinking about writing my own songs.
I am going to jump ahead here and skip some parts which I will get back to later, but fast forward about a year or so and I was involved with a Christian Ministry there in Greenville and we decided that we wanted to do a “Coffee House”.
Today, some might not even know what a “Coffee House” is or was, here is some background information I found online, and you know it’s true if you find it online 😊…
Historically, American folk and traditional music was produced in homes, churches, and traditional community-based venues, such as neighborhood taverns, juke joints, community halls, beer gardens, and ethnic clubs. After World War II, inspired in part by small, informal jazz clubs and beatnik poetry dives, folk music began to be performed in, and be identified with, coffeehouses. Today, in the world of folk music, the lines between house concerts, folk clubs, coffeehouses, and slightly more commercial food-and-music venues like the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, or the Town Crier Café in Pawling, New York, are sometimes blurry. However, they all share an atmosphere and performance culture that offers both performers and audiences a musical experience considerably different from what they would experience if they attended a performance in a concert hall or theater.
It’s hard to come up with a hard and fast definition of folk music coffeehouses, but in their own publicity materials, certain phrases come up over and over again. For one, most coffeehouses boast that their atmosphere is “intimate,” “friendly,” “informal” and “relaxing.” Many explicitly state that they are “child/family-friendly.” They are almost universally smoke-free, and frequently also alcohol-free. Almost all serve modestly priced “hot and cold beverages” (usually fair-trade) and “tempting, home-baked desserts” (usually organic).
Most prominently, note that they are non-profit and/or volunteer-run organizations that take pride in “presenting the best in contemporary and traditional folk music.” Musical styles may vary widely from week to week, but they are usually described by the overarching term “acoustic.”
This Christian organization I was with had a very nice home only a few blocks from the college campus and they had converted a 3-car plus garage into a meeting room with a stage. We made huge pillows to put on the floor, cut out circles of plywood or something and put them on the floor with candles to serve as a type of table, put a spotlight on the stage in the front, which was only about 10 inches or so higher than the floor, turned off the lights and that was our meeting room transformed into a “Coffee House”. Yes, we served free coffee and donuts in the back of the room, and we had a microphone with amps in the stage.
Now all we needed was music and since I was the only one who could play the guitar, I was volunteered. We also had a great artist in the area named Stevie Kay Louis, with an amazing voice and she played the guitar as well. So, Stevie Kay would do a 45-minute set of her songs, then I would do a 45-minute set of my songs and then we would do a 45-minute set of us together.
In the beginning, we both sang songs everyone knew, but very quickly we each would write 1 or 2 new songs a week, I kid you not, and by the end of it all, I could do all 3 sets by myself with about 80% original songs.
So, get this, I would play a football game that Saturday afternoon with ECU Pirates during the season and then come to the coffee house that night and be a musician for 3 hours…quite the contrast.
It was an amazing success! We would have 30 to 50 people or more each Saturday. When the weather was nice, and it’s almost always nice in Greenville, there could be up to 70+ people hanging around. Sonny Culbreth who lived in the home there was the MC each Saturday night. As a full disclaimer, sometimes, okay maybe a lot of times, those of us putting on the production would also have some Boone’s Farm Apple Wine along with the coffee and donuts. Absolutely horrible stuff don’t ever buy it. They say it has formaldehyde in it. But this was college, and we were young and stupid.
It was a lot of fun and we had tremendous success and this lead to several other things I did, but that’s a story for another time.
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