Author: Michael Sangiacomo

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The Folk Alliance International Conference: From Memphis to Montreal

Marcella Simien, singer from Memphis, Tennessee, and Anne Harris (right), songwriter/fiddle player/vocalist based in Chicago, Illinois, perform at the Folk Alliance’s 37th annual conference. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)

Anyone who believes folk music is a male-dominated profession has never attended the Folk Alliance International Conference, where women dominated the five-day festival that ended Sunday, as they have for years. 

When a singer like Marcella Simien of Memphis pulled out her antique squeeze box and started to sing, there was no question that she was in charge.

The 37th annual conference, which convened in Memphis for several years, was held at Le Centre Sheraton Montreal Hotel in a city still digging out from a blizzard that dumped more than two feet of snow five days earlier. The more than 2,400 music fans from around the world didn’t mind so much. It just meant that they stayed inside and heard intimate concerts held almost 13 hours a day by more than 1,000 performers in more than 100 spaces, as large as a theater or as small as a hotel room. How intimate? Some 2 a.m. shows were performed for only two or three people.

Memphian Savannah Brister performs on the Soul Stage. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)

On a larger stage, Simien performed a show that defied convention and labeling, though she called it “psychedelic swamp soul.” A well-known music and arts figure in Memphis and daughter of two-time Grammy Award-winning zydeco artist Terrance Simien, she sometimes performs with her dad in the Zydeco Experience. 

And she believes the spirit of her great-grandmother influences her life and decisions.

“She came to me in a dream,” she said. “I never met her but was told all the stories of how she married at age 15 and had 15 children. They lived off the land in rural Louisiana. We are a part of a generation of survivors.” 

She said Memphis has been very good to her. 

Her new CD, with the long title of To Bend to the Will of a Dream That’s Being Fulfilled, was just released.

Performing with Simien at Folk Alliance was the enigmatic singer-dancer-actress-violinist Anne Harris, originally from Yellow Springs, Ohio, a product of a Creole background. She spent nine years touring with Otis Taylor. Her exotic performances, which include dance, are captivating. Her new CD release, I Feel It Once Again, comes out on May 9th.

Memphians Savannah Brister and Rachel Maxann also played the conference’s Soul Stage. They were but a few of the hundreds of performers hoping to impress the many club promoters, festival organizers, disc jockeys, agents, and music critics that this event is designed for.

The pace is exhausting. There are practical classes in the morning, teaching artists how to find their own voice, hire lawyers, and track their taxes, as well as interviews with performers and newsmakers.

Attendees count on word of mouth to choose which shows to attend. Walking down a crowded hallway, they hear snippets of songs coming from the hotel rooms turned mini-studios, which draw them inside. Artists and promoters often offer snacks and drinks to lure people in for a song or two.

Hands down one of the superheroes of the week was Crys Matthews, a powerful singer-songwriter from Nashville, whose three songs at a late-night showcase stunned a standing room only crowd into silence — followed by massive applause.

She was on a late-night bill with Dar Williams and The Nields, who also killed. Matthews held her own with those two powerhouse acts, which is no simple feat.

Seek out her quiet protest song, “My Kind of Christianity.” That’s how it’s done. 

And lest people think there were no quality male performers, there were many. Festival veteran Steve Poltz of Nashville performed before a packed house in one of the larger theaters and was a huge hit. He read lyrics scrawled on paper that he wrote the night before about a conversation with Jesus. Many other artists like Dan Navarro, John Muirhead, and David Myles brought up the testosterone level.

The next Folk Alliance International Conference will be in a much warmer city, New Orleans, January 21 to 25, 2026. Many people in Montreal fondly remembered when it was held in Memphis. For information on how to attend, go to folk.org. 

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Memphis at the Folk Alliance International Conference

[l to r] Mark Edgar Stuart, Amy LaVere, and Will Sexton chat between performances at the Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)

The folk music old guard that dominated the Folk Alliance International conferences for the past 35 years has passed the guitar to a new generation that is younger, energized, and mostly female and non-white.

And the kids are all right.

In the BC years (before Covid), the annual five-day conference that draws more than 1,000 musicians from around the world was largely the province of aging performers and music lovers.

This year, the beat has changed. Most of the performers were young, female, and non-white, lending a whole new energy to the event that was held this past weekend in Kansas City, Missouri. The LGBTQIA+ community was also well-represented.

Memphis was everywhere, chosen as the first “City of Honor,” with Memphis-oriented workshops, speakers, and a slew of talented performers including Amy LaVere, Bailey Bigger, Talibah Safiya, Yella P of Memphissippi Sounds, violinist Alice Hasen, and the brilliant Aquarian Blood.

Valerie June (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht )

Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, poet, and actor Valerie June astounded with her keynote speech that said love and hope can defeat hate and fear. As she spoke about the global crisis, the “technological hacking of the human mind and body,” and nuclear war, she abruptly stopped and flashed her trademark smile. She walked to center stage, picked up a banjo, and played a delicate version of “What a Wonderful World” in defiance of the doomsayers.

Wherever she walked, she was treated like royalty. Women and children rushed up and hugged her.

She now lives in Brooklyn but said she would always consider Memphis her home. Like the rest of us, June went from concert to concert to hear the young artists.

The annual gathering is designed to allow music critics, agents, disc jockeys, and concert and festival bookers to get up close and personal with new artists and discover new talent.

It’s also a chance for singers and musicians to strut their stuff in the smaller, intimate venues of the Westin Hotel and gather new fans. There are organized workshops and concerts during the day and evening, though much of the action started at 10:30 p.m. and continued almost to daybreak in hundreds of hotel rooms converted into makeshift music spots. Sometimes a performer played for just one or two people, a memorable experience.

There were a few older performers here, like Tom Paxton and Janis Ian, who acted in more of a non-performing, advisory capacity. Ian received a well-deserved lifetime achievement award. Paxton said he was just there to be inspired by the young people.

Instead of the usual performances by folk icons like Livingston Taylor, John McCutcheon, and Eliza Gilkyson, visitors chose between blues singers from Memphis, storytellers from Ireland, brash bands from Australia, and new Americana voices from everywhere.

The toughest challenge is choosing who to see since every concert choice means missing hundreds of other mini concerts going on elsewhere.

In one, Josh White Jr. seemed a little baffled when his co-performer, 92-year-old jazz genius, composer, and orchestra conductor David Amram asked him to play “House of the Rising Sun” a second time. But he smiled and acquiesced.

Amram impulsively invited young musicians he just met hours earlier to join them. Violinist Rahel-Liis Aasrand of Estonia and percussionist Natalia Miranda from Guatemala nervously joined Amram and White in an impromptu jazz number, as if they had played together for years.

Amy LaVere has a voice much larger than her lithe frame which was dwarfed by the stand-up bass she played. Her voice is at once sweet and powerful, and her accompanying guitarist and violinist could not have been better.

Alice Hasen showed just how versatile the violin could be, switching gears from classical to folk to almost hip-hop.

There was music around every corner. In one room, Brit Shane Hennessy played an instrumental tribute to Chet Atkins. In another, the laid-back Aquarian Blood’s J.B. Horrell played the guitar upright between his knees while his wife, Laurel, sang along.

And the talent goes on and on, stretching out through the halls and into the early morning hours as it expands the definition of folk music far, far beyond the notion of a guy with a guitar.

For more information on the Folk Alliance and how to attend next year’s conference, go to folk.org.

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Memphis Musicians Shine at Folk Alliance

Rachel Maxann of Memphis, sings heartfelt original songs at her Music Export Memphis showcase late Thursday night. (Credit: Karen Pulfer Focht)

Covid has taken a brutal toll on this week’s Folk Alliance International conference, a five-day festival where musicians and performers from around the world connect with critics, record producers, club owners, and festival bookers to make deals, and most importantly, play music.

But this, the 34th year, the conference looked very different.

Memphis was well-represented by violinist-singer Alice Hasen; guitarist and “elder” Andy Cohen, who mentored younger performers; singer, blues blaster, larger-than-life Rachel Maxann, who is currently on tour with Valerie June; “semi-average Joe” Johnson, who far exceeded his self-imposed moniker; and the immortal Muddy Waters sideman and regional musician “Steady Rollin’ Bob Margolin” among others.

There were about 25 percent fewer performers and guests than in previous years. Instead of the usual 1,000 performers from around the world with more than another thousand music lovers and industry people, this year there were less than 1,500 combined. Normally, the Westin Hotel in downtown Kansas City is alive with dozens of musicians and bands playing in lobbies, hallways and any other open space at all times and crowds of music lovers. There has been little of that bustle this year.

Well-known performers like Livingston Taylor, Tom Paxton, John McCutcheon, and others who are usually fixtures at the conference, attending to teach the young performers a thing or two, were missing in action.

Andy Cohen with Earwig Music Company plays guitar. (Credit: Karen Pulfer Focht)

Instead, the roster was awash with hundreds of unfamiliar names, young musicians trying to make a name for themselves in a competitive market. Many of the A-list performers, even the B-list acts, were no-shows because the conference was moved from its usual comfy time slot in February to May over Covid concerns. Aaron Fowler, an official with Local 1000 of the Traveling Musicians Union, said a reason for the lack of musicians was simple — they are out touring.

“After almost two years without being able to play because of Covid, everyone is taking advantage of [the covid slowdown] and going out to tour,” he said. “The conference was always held in February because that is a slow time of the year for touring. Hopefully, things will be back to normal next year when the conference returns in February.”

The conference consisted of daytime teaching events, covering subjects like the issue of race in folk music, recognizing performers with disabilities, and how to create songs for TikTok. There was a heavy emphasis on virtual concerts and how to take advantage of new technology which has changed the music industry.

There were four hours of live concerts every afternoon where dozens of artists perform in eight music halls in the hotel. The music continued at 10:30 p.m., when hundreds of performers put on intimate shows in dozens of hotel rooms, shorn of furniture, before audiences as small as one person. These shows went on into the wee hours of 3 or 4 a.m.

The word “folk” is also misleading. Consider it an umbrella term that covers country, blues, rock, traditional music from many nations and ethnic music. Sometimes, a combination of styles.

At a keynote performance on Friday afternoon, Madeleine Peyroux stunned the audience with excerpts from her internationally renowned stage show that combines jazz, folk, and blues music and the work of artists like Billie Holliday, Bessie Smith, and even Groucho Marx.

In a single sentence, she crystalized the importance of live concerts, “The living tradition of gathering — being together, produces a sound that can only be heard and felt when we gather in real-time and space,” she said, in one of the finest descriptions of the importance of live music.

Seeing performers play in a crowded room with bad lighting to a handful of people may sound less than ideal, but the music transcended the reality of the space and became a physical thing.

Bob Margolin, who sacrificed a large chunk of his performance time tuning his guitar and talking about his days with Muddy Waters, was a musical force that uplifted the small audience as he played some “straight and natural blues” with the help of bassist Freebo.

Memphis fiddler Alice Hasen performs her showcase at the Folk Alliance International conference being held in Kansas City, Missouri, the weekend of May 20, 2022. (Credit: Karen Pulfer Focht)

The Music Export Memphis room was busy all weekend as a handful of artists delivered one incredible set after another. Most surprising was violinist Alice Hasen, who sang some songs, including a striking plea to save the “Memphis Sands” from pollution in a song of the same name.

Her virtuoso violin performances were augmented by a looping device which allowed her to layer the melody over and over.

Memphis Singer Rachel Maxann delighted fans earlier with original songs and a powerful interpretation of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone,” right down to the requisite 26 repetitions of the phrase “I know.” She popped out of nowhere during Hasan’s show to sing along with “Dream of Rain,” Hasen’s song about the destruction of the environment.

Many Memphis residents will remember that Folk Alliance held its annual gathering in the city from 2007 to 2012 until it was lured away to Kansas City. The hardest part about picking a show is knowing that for every performance chosen you miss several hundred others. Veteran attendees are always asking each other for advice on which shows not to miss, trading names and info flyers. Acts give away hundreds of CDs to conference attendees in the hopes to secure bookings at future shows.

There were so many concerts going on it is difficult to choose the best, but some of the show-stopping performers to watch for include the husband and wife duo from Nashville by way of New Zealand and Peru, South For Winter; Buffalo Rose, the enthusiastic sextet of rocking folkies from Pittsburgh led by twin lead vocals from two talented women; James McCarthy, an American Irishman living in Hawaii where he delights playing Irish music; and Abby Posner, a gay woman who writes and performs incredible songs that defy genre. And hundreds of others.

The Folk Alliance defied the odds this year to stay open despite the ravages of Covid and the calendar and hosted more newcomer performers than ever. It will be interesting to see how the event will unfold in a mere 10 months from now when, hopefully, Covid will be just an unpleasant memory.