Country Blues > Saturday Night Fish Fry

Obese Journeyman Bluesman as Superhero: Paul Geremia at Jalopy

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cheapfeet:
Stuart's point is dead-on about advertising your gigs as much as you can. Online AND print presences are really essential (older audience still reads the newspaper, younger and older both have Facebookvision) & even things like using the right picture & tone in the gig spiel/description yadda yadda. It's actually not that much work & the payoff is SOMETIMES there.

Strange the younger crowd aren't showing up for these gigs, I wonder why that is. Probably my generation has a tendency to worship the 78 era players too much, to the detriment of those from the revival period who kept & keep the music alive?

EDIT: or are they gigging/working?

Mr.OMuck:

--- Quote from: GhostRider on June 04, 2012, 12:41:03 PM ---There is something wrong here. Is this Jalopy in the middle of nowhere? A dump? Very expensive?

Here in Calgary (pop. 1,000,000) (hotbeds of sanity) we have an acoustic bluesman (Tim Williams) who plays every Tues. at a local small club. Every Tues. for now going on  four years. And he gets 20 to 40 people every week. Every week! That a talent like Paul can't get 20 folks for a one off is wrong. Something else is in play here. Has this Jalopy heard of promotion. Is all of NYC into hippity-hop?

Alex

--- End quote ---

Middle of nowhere is pretty much the problem I'm afraid. A very long hike from the nearest subway through some forbidding streets.

cheapfeet:
What's that old Real Estate mantra . . . location, location, location.

House concerts are a way to go. There's a touring route for folk musicians in Canada called Home Routes or something & it's basically a series of private homes across this great big country that host shows. It's quality controlled I think, you don't get booked if you can't play, but several of my friends have done it & they make money. You just go from home to home, host usually feeds & keeps the musicians. Paul should be able to not travel very far along the east coast have a good amount of work, damn I don't get this business!

GhostRider:

--- Quote from: cheapfeet on June 04, 2012, 01:22:09 PM ---Strange the younger crowd aren't showing up for these gigs, I wonder why that is. Probably my generation has a tendency to worship the 78 era players too much, to the detriment of those from the revival period who kept & keep the music alive?

--- End quote ---

I respectfully don't think that this is the case. The young people exposed to this music in my experiance  become instant fans IF The performing artist is an engaging personality. The one I'm thinking of goes out of his way to humorize between songs, often to point out the double entendre elements beforehand and to sketch out the artists. And no bowderization! He does a lot of  covers of 20'-30's blues folks, and I don't see that in and of itself turning off the younguns. I've actually seen 20-somethings get up to dance spontaniously (both times to Aberdeen Mississippi Blues). Too cool!

Alex

Eric Hubbard:
Maybe New Yorkers are jaded?  A couple of years ago, I drove to Fallon, Nevada, an hour east from my home in Reno, to see Rory Block.  Fallon's main industry is growing alfalfa, has a population of 7,300, and the nearest town in the other direction is 110 miles to the east with a population of 192.  There were 300 people there: cowboys, farmers, other locals, a few folks from Reno.  Rory killed 'em.  Told Son House stories. Brought a local kid up to sing a duet, had a q&a with the audience, and people were lined up to buy her CD.  Go figure.

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