Jack Cooper - Guelph, ON Musician

Eaglewood Folk Festival is a little festival run in Pefferlaw, Ontario (on the south side of Lake Simcoe).  Eaglewood primarily features songwriters, although there are a few additional types of acts appearing each year.  This is the first time I’ve attended Eaglewood in about five years.  I had a couple of different reasons for going.  First, it is a relatively small festival and is one I’ve enjoyed on several occasions.  Because it is so small, you get to rub elbows with the performers much more often than at other festivals.  Second, the folks of Eaglewood allowed me to sell the James Gordon Songbook I produced earlier this year from the merchandise table.  This was more than a token gesture and speaks volumes about the sense of community created here.  Other festivals appropriate the term ‘community’, much in the same way that auto companies and soft drink manufacturers appropriate terms to sell an image to their customers.

One big drawback with Eaglewood (and with most of the non-free festivals) is that no dogs are allowed on the premises.  Deb and I have such an animal, a 5 year old mix who loves being around music and lots of people.  So we all drove up and rented a campsite at Sibald point.  Deb mostly wanted to go camping and I mostly wanted to listen to music, so Deb hiked and swam with Ladybear during the day and I sat on my bum and listened to a lot of music.

Another more personal drawback is that I couldn’t stop wondering if any books had been sold all weekend.  It is part of my nature to be obsessive, and anxiety is a family ritual but I was experience a bit more than just overcaffeination during the weekend.  I would stop and peek at the merchandise table every couple of hours and let my free-floating anxiety take  hold.  Who would notice these books at a merch table?  Who would possibly be interested in buying books?  Should I ask if any sold?  Is there a book sticking out of that woman’s bag?  Maybe Tom Wilson will be pissed off seeing books by a non-performer in the merch tent because it might cut into his CD sales!

As always at Eaglewood, I was introduced to some astonishing songwriters I had never heard before.  Top of the list was Corin Raymond, who I should have heard before but never actually had.  His songs were powerful, clean and played with tremendous support by his band, the Sundowners.  Another gem was Jonathon Byrd, who apparently is the first Eaglewood performer to be based in the U.S.  He was armed with just an acoustic guitar and no pickup.  I saw him at two workshops and an hour concert.  Absolutely compelling songs, storyteller and guitar picker.  He played mostly by himself and was able to sustain audience interest the whole time, no mean feat.

Another group that blew me away was Run With the Kittens.  I caught them at a workshop with Tom Wilson’s latest project, LeE HARVeY OsMond.  I had no idea what to expect when they set up.  The lead singer came dressed with a set of beads usually found on top of a car seat.  They were astonishingly good, and worked really well with Tom’s unit.

I’ve seen Jory Nash and Eve Goldberg several times before.  Jory, to my ears, has really grown as a performer over the years.  I saw Eve in Kitchener twice over the past two years so her material is no longer fresh to my ears, but there are a few songs that still affect me deeply- a song about her Dad, one written after 9/11/2001, and her song about Burma.

I wish I could have stuck around for The Good Lovelies concert.  I’ve heard them before and they are entertaining and sing really well.  Most of the workshops worked well, although one featuring Doug McArthur, Jory Nash and Eve Goldberg (called “What I wrote and why”) really bugged me.  Workshops are a strange animal.  They are called workshops but are usually just a differently-title performance featuring two or three performers.  Occasionally, peformers feel the need to treat the workshop like an academic exercise and edumecate the listeners.  Occassionally listeners will feel the need to respond as first year law students and ask probing questions to the performers.  This was one of those workshops.  Only four or five songs were played, and a lot of postulating about songwriting was presented.  The main problem with workshop as workshop is that performers are there to perform and providing insightful analysis while performance adrenalin is rushing is counterproductive.  Jory, Doug and Eve all write swell songs, but hearing them try to explain their process was painful that afternoon.  Some of their comments did get me to start thinking about songwriting.  Here are my observations:

1. Really good songs portray an identifiable emotion (Anger, Sadness, Joy, Fear or some complex combination).  A lot of amateur writers miss this amidst the an attempt to either explain everything in detail or get lost in verbiage and wordplay.  Even narrative ballad, supposedly objective in form, works best if the narrator’s emotion is evident.  None of James Gordon’s historical ballads, which I listened to a lot when producing his songbook, are neutral retelling of facts.  They are all told in such a way that the underlying emotion is obvious.
2. Really good songs often capture a moment of transition.  My friend Ken, on his blog site, has a picture at the top of a waterfall that he describes as a focal point for many artists he knows.  The point of the waterfall where stillness turns into cascading water is a point of transition.  Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road is a fabulous snapshot of a scene in transition.
3. Really good songs provide clarity: of music, thought, melody and lyric.  The music sounds like it already exists.  Some people might confuse this with simply confidence on behalf of the performer but clarity is how it all gets put together into a unified statement, regardless of genre.
4. Doug McArthur had a really cogent point on the songwriting process.  I can only paraphrase here, but he said something to the effect of a good song linking the songwriter’s unique voice and personal experience to a common experience.

There was a sad event that occurred during the weekend.  One of the performers unexpectedly failed to show up for their main concert performance.  Apparently, as explained by the performer in question during a workshop the next day, he had passed out in a location unknown to his bandmates (or apparently to anyone else) and was not found until afterwards.  There is generally a fair amount of partying that goes on during festival weekend by audience and performer alike, and aside from the issue of letting folks down (bandmates, audience, festival organizers) there is a far scarier issue of how something like this could have ended more tragically.  The performer is extremely talented and likely has a bright future ahead and may in fact treat this as a wake up call.