Local Folk (Ithaca and Central New York)

Folk Song Clubs and Venues

Finding Folk

lyrics, songs, and tunes | news | who's playing where

Playing Favorites

performers | festivals

If I Can't Dance, I Dont Want to Be Part of this Web Site

Contra | Cape Breton

FOLK SONG CLUBS and OTHER FOLK VENUES

• The Cornell Folk Song Society (formerly known as the Cornell Folk Song Club) has been holding sings and sponsoring concerts since the mid 1950s. Lineups in recent years have included Jay and Molly, Cosy Sheridan, John Gorka, April Verch, Martin Carthy, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Eric Bogle, John McCutcheon, Rod MacDonald, Capercaillie, Sparky & Rhonda Rucker, Tom Paxton, Gordon Bok, Lou & Peter Berryman, Bill Staines, U. Utah Phillips, and Herdman, Hills, & Mangsen.
• Folkstuff is the online version of Ted Crane and Pamela Goddard's monthly newsletter about the Ithaca folk music and dance scene.
• Michael Ludgate, of Ludgate Farms, is a great supporter and promoter of local music. Mike's Music List is a great source of information on Ithaca area folk music artists and events.
• WVBR's Bound For Glory, hosted by Phil Shapiro, is the longest-running folk-music radio show with a live audience in the United States (now beyond its 1000th live concert performance). It's live from Anabel Taylor Hall every Sunday night that Cornell is in session. Now anyone with Web access can hear the show.
• The Golden Link Folk Singing Society, out of Rochester, is a great group that gathers to sing every Tuesday of the month, puts on concerts, and holds the Turtle Hill Festival.
• The Folkus Project is a new community arts organization for folk music concerts and workshops in Syracuse. Joe Cleveland is its music director.
• Syracuse is also home to the Central New York Friends of Folk, a nonprofit community organization with a goal to encourage and support the presentation of folk and acoustic music in this region.
• Valley Folk is a community of people in the Elmira/Horseheads/Corning area who share an interest in the preservation of traditional music and host a good concert series. Concerts and other musical gatherings are held at the Rural Research Laboratories building on the corner of Baldwin and Grey Streets in downtown Elmira.
• The Night Eagle Emporium, now headquartered at 200 State St. in Binghamton, NY, brings some of the best contemporary and traditional singer/songwriters on weekends throughout the year.
• The Center for the Arts in Homer, NY (near Cortland), has a music series that isn't all folk, but includes many big name Celtic acts and reknowned singer-song writers.
• The Earlville Opera House, near Hamilton (and Colgate University), hosts a diverse concert series from May through October, including many folk and folk-tinged artists.
• The Cranberry Coffeehouse, at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Binghamton, has been around for almost 30 years, providing monthly concerts of traditional folk music from September to June. In July the church hosts the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering.
• Heartland Music in Webster, near Rochester, is an all volunteer folk and acoustic music series headed up by Ralph Hunt or Judy Gradford.
• Gary Gocek lists and describes the many coffeehouses in Rochester that feature folk and acoustic music. .

LYRICS, SONGS & TUNES

• DigiTrad Lyrics Search,which used to be called the Digital Tradition Folk Song Full Text Search, hosted by Mudcat Cafe, which is something of an online magazine, forum, and chatroom devoted to blues and folk music.
• Folk Music - An Index to Recorded Resources -- Jane Keefer's amazing resource to help you answer the question, "Who sang what song on what recording?" Updated to 2005.
• The Traditional Ballad Index is an online index to reference information about ballads (a brief description, bibliography,historical background, and alternate titles), but not the lyrics themselves. It was collaborative project organized by Robert Waltz and David G. Engle.
• And, I hardly need say, you can try google. It helps to put a line of the song in quotes and to add the word "lyrics."

NEWS

Ithaca's own Ken McKinney has put together Back Porch News, "a kind of online newspaper for the folk music community."

WHO'S PLAYING WHERE

Musi-Cal and The Dirty Linen Gig Guide -- neither one is complete nor entirely accurate. If you are looking for folk and acoustic music concerts, you might need to check them both, and then check some other sources, as well.

Some Favorite Contradance Links

• Tompkins County Country Dances and Hands Four Dancers of Ithaca sponsor the contradances where you are most likely to see me.
• Dance Flurry is an especially wonderful dance festival scheduled for Presidents Day Weekend. All you have to do is brave a potential blizzard to get there.
• NEFFA in Natick High School, Natick, Massachusetts, is in mid to late April. My wife went to it regularly in our courtship days -- more than a decade ago.
• The Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, held at the Dodds Farm, just off Route 22 north of Hillsdale, New York, around the third weekend in July, is two different festivals in one -- there are the concert stages featuring contemporary singer-songwriters, and then there is the dance tent providing on of the best festival venues for wild dancing. Many of the festival goers never cross paths except in the food arena.
• The Thanksgiving Dance Weekend, sponsored every year by the Country Dancers of Rochester, doesn't start until the day after Thanksgiving, so you don't have to dance on a full stomach. [links not working, will update when problem is resolved]
• David Kaynor, caller and fiddle, ranks pretty high among my favorite musicians to dance to. He's at home with the Greenfield Dance Band at the Guiding Star Grange. On some rare occasions, he's also been known to team up with Lissa Schneckenburger.
• Among the other regular bands at the Guiding Star Grange are Moving Violations, Wild Asparagus, Big Bandemonium, and Swallowtail.
• The Contradictions is a mostly-Ithaca-based band, including fiddle whiz Laurie Hart. Guitar lauriate Tom Hodgson, however, comes from the other end of the lake.
• Great Bear Trio are two teens and their mother from New York State who have taken the contradance world by storm.
• Flapjack plays old-time Canadian bush swing music with as high energy as anyone.
• Why, I've known (enjoyed and danced to) Jay Ungar and Molly Mason since before they helped Ken Burns and the rest of America rediscover the Civil War.
• Nightingale is a Vermont-based trio who play traditional music with the rather untraditional combination of fiddle, accordion and guitar.
• The Groovemongers: "world beat meets contra" from Rochester.
• Whether they are called Small Tattoo, The Tractor Family, Rotary Pancake Day to many of us consider them merely variations on a theme of The Horseflies, the seminal Tompkins County contra dance band headed by Judy Hymen & Jeff Claus and Richie Stearns.
• Bob McQuillan, who often plays with Old New England, has been playing contradance music for more than 50 years.
• Clayfoot Strutters are "groove music for the contradance community."
• And if that's not enough links for you, NEFFA LinkFest has a wonderful collection of contra and other folk & international dance links arranged by type.

Cape Breton Square Sets and Step Dancing

If you only have seven days to spend in Inverness County, Cape Breton, next July or August, you won't miss a single night of music and dance (square-sets and step dancing). You will probably need directions to get to some of these places. Turn right at the Irving. Then drive until you think you are lost. Go three minutes further until you see enough cars to fill a Walmart parking lot, and you're there. Or check with the Ceilidh Trail School of Celtic Music.

In August of 1999 we were only in that part of Nova Scotia for Wednesday and Thursday nights (bad planning), but were able to enjoy the music of Brenda Stubbert and Ashley MacIsaac, Joe Rankin, Cape Breton's next young fiddle and step-dancing phenom Blair MacDonald, and venerable veterans Buddy MacMaster and Joey Beaton. Had we more time, we could have danced all week long:

According to the Inverness County web site and the Ceilidh Trail School of Celtic Music, that schedule seems to be pretty much unchanged nearly a decade later.

This page has been authored and is maintained by: John R. Henderson (jhenderson@ithaca.edu), Ithaca College.
Links last checked: April 9, 2007
Page last modified: April 9, 2007
URL: http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/folk.html