I think mostly because Jimmie's logo last year was so cool, 1,000 people added The Woodzie page to theirs in just a couple of weeks. I guess a half naked hippie chick icon along with the word "festival" is good bait. This year the interest from there hasn't heated up, maybe because we just now added the new guitar playing hippie girl as the profile picture. Of course it doesn't matter much because 90% of those thousand are from other states and countries around the world and can't come anyway. But, I've had five or six emails from musician's with MySpace pages who would like to play and Glenn and I are contacting others in this area so I want to explain the basics of the playing thing.
We have two generators, mostly symbolic because part of a generators job is to fail right when you need it most, but we do have a little stream of electricity from a long line through the woods from a 30 amp breaker back at civilization. We've used it successfully for several years but we can't push it too hard. We'll have some minimal backline but we could use a few extra things. Percussion for sure. Comment or email if you can help with that or have any special needs. If you plan on bringing an amp, make it small or transistor and not your Fender Twin. When we flip a couple of big tube amps on everything starts to brown out. Go direct, DIs will be sitting right there to plug into. We can't go crazy volume wise anyway.
So... all that priceless juice in the line off the grid goes to master Chris MacKenzie and he knows what to do with it to power his very nice P.A. It's setup up on a long stage made out of two flatbed farm trailers. That is where people who have been playing the woodzie for years and where any special performances go. We have very limited slots there. We will try to get as many new people up as possible but we need you to be cool about it. If you want to play, let us know now - if by the big day we haven't given you a time then you'll still be playing a lot but in other areas. If you have a slot on the main stage, play short sets - we'll give you a limit - and get up and start playing quickly and then get down quickly when you're done. We will be video taping and it needs to not have a ton of dead time. Announce your last song so the next guy knows to get ready. Somebody will be running the stage as far as who's going up and down but once you're up there, Chris is the one talking to you and making things happen. Chris is the nicest guy in the world and he'll make you sound great but please make his life easy. He's doing this because he loves it, everyone always has and I know you will also return lots of nothing but good attitude to him.
This year Glenn is in charge a very cool songwriter's workshop with Jason Wilber from 3 pm to 5 pm. I'm sure he'll be putting info up about that. There are a couple of chairs still available for that songwriting lesson. That has to be in a separate area out on the ridge because about a dozen lucky people are paying to go. Glenn has agreed to keep that smaller stage running for those interim five hours until Jason Wilber goes up for his 10:00 show. You can play there on his P.A. in addition to the main one so please plan on finding that outer ridge stage and playing it. Just check in with Glenn and he'll get you going.
BUT, and this is the main thing I'm telling ya.... most playing ought to be done in song circles under the trees. Every single person who comes can play for hours with other musicians at the Woodzie - don't just be fixated on 20 minutes on the main stage. That's one thing wrong with musician's definition of success; loosen way up! This is loose. Loose is good. Loose is fun. We expect that The Lavens will have a song circle/jam session going in their camp that will be open to everybody. Then there will be the big several hour long song circle finale around the central bonfire at the end of the night. Everyone still standing by then is expected to give the performance of their lifetime. But from the time you get there until then, this is a walk around with your guitar and play anywhere 5 or 6 people are sitting around. That's what you need to count on doing and everyone will hear you many times during the night. If you come with that as your expectation... you'll be thrilled. What we need to encourage this year is even more than we've ever had of the Kerrville Folk Festival sing around in the campground thing. That's always people's best memory of the Woodzie. Meeting people without a stage between them. To do that, you set a folding chair out in the meadow near people and start singing. We will definitely have the same official "stage with audience" thing we always have but don't be so caught up in hearing your voice in the monitors that you don't help make the song circle stuff happen. I'm saying all this because it will only happen if everybody shares the concept so we're primed when we get there to loosely flow into cool musical things in small groups. That's the hippie style. Know what I mean?
I have a great feeling about it, I think this 5th year is going to be the best by far.
5 comments:
Please go back to the top and reread this post twice. Then read the last two paragraphs twice more. Then read the last paragraph twice again. Got it?
Like John said, "Don't get fixated on playing the main stage and hearing your angelic voice in the monitors."
You ain't gonna be a star, you ain't gonna get rich, you ain't gonna get "discovered", and frankly you can't compete with a keg of beer so you'll be lucky if anyone pays attention at all!
Be loose. Be cool. Flow with it.
Performance opportunities are all around. Jump in! Have fun!
As stated, the main stage has limited time. If you perform on that one your time will be limited to 10-20 minutes depending on how the schedule is moving along. Some people may be given more time so don't freak out. They've earned it. There are plenty of opportunities to play at The Woodzie. Find them and take advantage of them.
As John said there will be another (better)(haha) stage out on the ridge. No, it's not far out in the middle of nowhere. If you're crawling on your drunken hands and knees it will still only take less than a minute to get there. Stage Dos will have a nice, mellow sound system that you will just love. An added bonus will be more stage time. It will be up until 10pm. Then we'll circle around a very cool fire pit and continue thusly.
John and I are still arguing some timing elements, whether eelektrik geetars with amps will be allowed at all and who is buying the Old Crow. But all those things will come out here on the blog. Well most of them.
A few rules:
1) BE COOL. BE LOOSE.
2) Check in with the stage director (which will vary, but there will be someone.) and *BE READY* for your spot.
*What does be ready mean? Have your instrument tuned, working and set to go.
3) Get on quickly, plug and play.
When your time is up, get off.
(Sounds simple enough but you'd be amazed...)
Let's talk equipment, shall we?
99% of you will be playing acoustic guitars. That's what we want. How else will you be heard at the campfires?
However if you do wish to play on a stage you MUST have an operational pickup in your guitar. No exceptions! There will be no time to rearrange microphones and re-EQ the whole stage to accomodate. There's plenty of time between now and then so put in a fresh battery and check your pickup before you leave the house. If it doesn't work, fix it, buy another or just plain make it happen. (Sounds simple eneough but you'd be amazed...)
If you say, "Well it worked at home..." but it really doesn't, your prized POS guitar will become fuel for the main campfire!
Why am I being such a hardass, you ask? Because I've been running multi-act stages since before you broke your first string. I know what works and anything else does not! If you want to see how truly accomodating I am, stop by Riley's Tavern Sunday evening after The Woodzie (it's right down the road) for my weekly open mic. I'll bend over backwards for you. There's just not time for it at The Woodzie. There, I'm done apologizing.
Please come, please play, please sing, please be cool, please flow with The Woodzie.
I love it. Yeah, the idea is to have people be loose, happy and calm mentally but serious and organized enough with their gear to keep the stage rolling. Glenn's talking to the MySpace players who are coming and pointing them to this website so they'll know the ground rules.
On the whole "why" and the general idea of the Woodzie that people are curious about, Glenn and Mitch and Parke and Chris and just a whole bunch of us are on the same wavelength about how great music at a family and friends level is. It's a shame that most families and groups of friends just don't do it. Somehow the bar has been raised to where things have to be big and perfect. We do things like The Woodzie to promote music as small and imperfect. When did music become tangled up in stardom? In being better and bigger than the other guy?
Please come to the Woodzie and play imperfectly. :)
The Woodzie and our small family hootenannies during the year and the open mic at Riley's - it's about slipping into a simpler and more personal relationship with music.
At the Woodzie see if you don't feel that musicians playing for musicians and family playing for family vibe. Maybe you can take some home with you.
I got in trouble with MySpace for sending out too many invites to the Woodzie. After going around and around with customer support and getting my account back up, this was the last correspondence from them...
Hello,
Thank you for the invite to your party. Currently there are no blocks or bans on your account. The only reason you were flagged for spamming was due the users who you messaged marked your messages as spam---So we don't think they want to go to the party. Which is really lame because we are sure it is going to be an awesome time! If you need further assistance please let us know.
Thank you,
MySpace.com
Music Support
As few as two or three people, maybe even one, not knowing what the invite was and marking it as spam would trigger that response so that's not surprising.
It was nice of him to read it and personally reply like that.
For those few of you who don't know the deal on MySpace, just about every musician has a little single page website there and they're interconnected so you can send bulletins, emails and event invites to people who have agreed to be on your "friends" list.
Last year we found about 15 new people, almost all of them became good friends to the Woodzie and are coming back this year. This year it would be nice if it would help attract some more.
I was afraid of it when Mitch suggested it three years ago but instead of opening the flood gates, it's really hard to actually reach people with it. Like Glenn is finding out. :) The bulletins that are supposed to make exactly what he's trying to do easy, don't work because everybody has so many friends and get so many bulletins that nobody reads them. Like Glenn has 6,000 friends, he gets the max 250 bulletins a day and can't read them. Our Woodzie page gets 100 a day and we never read those. I go to the Woodize page about twice a year except in the weeks just before the event where I try to check it pretty often for emails.
Anyway, there it is... more than you want know. Here's the Woodzie MySpace page if you want to look at it.
yes that's right. They don't want you sending messages about an event, they want you to use the "event" thing. yet they probably know that it's so overused that it's useless. I;ve seen several of the "all access pass" (very funny btw) in comments out there so you've got people seeing that. but messages are best
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