The Hurdy Gurdy Folk Music Club closed the season in grand style last Saturday night. Tom Callinan and Don Sineti gave an outstanding performance.

Tom had suffered a painful injury the night before the concert when his hand went through a glass window at a home he is moving into. Don Sineti was in great form, and it was also his 64th birthday. The audience serenaded him with a nice round of “Happy Birthday”. They did

Many of our regulars were in attendance for this special evening. The picture to the right shows Hurdy Gurdy board members Judy Rogers, Sue Brody and Laura Munzer. As they say, “a good time was had by all”.

The evening concluded with the final run through of a Hurdy Gurdy tradition – the stacking of the chairs. Audiences will no longer be offered this exercise at the end of our concerts. Starting in September, the chairs stay put!

Saturday night was the final concert that we will be doing in Paramus, NJ, and it was tough to say “goodbye” to the Central Unitarian Church. The church was our home for over 20 years and we have many fond memories spirited away in the walls of that building.

So many talented artists graced our stage in Paramus! I can remember incredible evenings with Doc Watson, Tommy Makem, Tom Paxton, Mike Seeger, Cherish the Ladies and many other legendary names. Australia-based singer-songwriter Eric Bogle has made the Hurdy Gurdy a priority on his U.S. tours. Schooner Fare dropped anchor there many times over the years. To this day, people come up to me to remind me that they were at the Hurdy Gurdy when Christine Lavin introduced us to a young singer-songwriter named John Gorka. While in Paramus, the Hurdy Gurdy was honored to present a “who’s who” of the world of folk music, and for people in Bergen County, the Hurdy Gurdy represented an opportunity to see performers without the hassle of driving into the city or distant locations.

A church is not defined by a building; it is defined by the people that make up the congregation. A family will be a family regardless of where they hang their clothes. I can guarantee that the Hurdy Gurdy Folk Music Club will continue to present outstanding performances at affordable prices, and now we have an opportunity to do it in style! We hope that our family will follow us to Fair Lawn, and hopefully grow!!

As some of you might know, the Hurdy Gurdy Folk Music Club actually began in Fair Lawn – starting out at a local school and then moving to a temple in the Borough before moving to Paramus.

When the Hurdy Gurdy began in 1980, the world was a different place. The Internet was not a household necessity. Computers were not household appliances. The pinnacle of home entertainment was getting a subscription to cable TV – forget about Ipods, CD’s, DVD’s and high definition television. If you were lucky, you might have had an Atari to distract you from daily life.

Since the Hurdy Gurdy started presenting concerts, many other technological advances started competing as sources of entertainment. Other coffeehouses and music venues also came into existence. With all of this, the cost of putting on a show began to rise. The artists who travel the country sharing their music were faced with rising gas prices and other economic factors that required them to increase their guarantees. Rent increases became another factor. Following 9/11, more people started staying home.

One other factor needs to added – the aging of “folk” audiences. As the audience grew older, going out to a concert seemed more of a “hassle” instead of an enjoyable treat, and it became easier to stay home to enjoy one of the newer electronic toys. For younger audiences, “folk” was a four letter word – it was a music that your grandparents enjoyed!

People have changed. With rising costs, there is an expectation that the quality of the concert environment rises as well.. Audiences who are paying $20 to $25 to see a show require certain basics – they want to hear the music clearly, they want to see the performers, and they want a comfortable environment to do so.

To put it bluntly – a room in the back of a church with folding chairs and minimal lighting simply wasn’t “cutting edge”. People were no longer coming on a steady basis to places like the Hurdy Gurdy.

While we were discussing how to meet these challenges, an opportunity practically fell into our lap. The Borough of Fair Lawn built a new Community Center which opened in June 2006. Half of the building was devoted to a large gymnasium and activities were quickly booked. The other half of the building featured a 171 seat auditorium with state of the art lighting, digital sound, theater-style seating, and a large stage that was built close to the audience to maintain an intimate feel. This cozy, yet highly dignified performance space needed events to fill it.

The Fair Lawn Recreation Department has a resident theater company, the Old Library Theater, which has begun to make good use of the space. However, a theater company can only present a finite number of productions, and Fair Lawn was looking for other ways to utilize the space and provide entertainment for the community.

Fair Lawn, through the hard work of a local resident named Michael Roni, put together a series of folk music concerts featuring artists like the Kennedys, Steve Forbert, Tracy Grammer, Girlyman, and Gandalf Murphy and his Circus of Slambovian Dreams. The shows were outstanding, and the audience has been growing in Fair Lawn, but the town was not in a position to continue on in the role of concert promoters.

Enter the Hurdy Gurdy. We visited the Community Center in January of 2007 and it was love at first site. Less than 10 minutes from our Paramus location! With the help and hard work of Robin Schamach, the Corporate and Cultural Planner for the Borough of Fair Lawn, we were able to make this move a reality. With her help, plus the help of Borough Manager Tom Metzler, Superintendt of Recreation James Graff as well as the Borough Council – the Hurdy Gurdy not only found a new home, but a stage that will enable to music to reach new audiences.

The past few months have been spent working out the details of our agreement, and we are very pleased to partner with the Borough of Fair Lawn and move the Hurdy Gurdy to the Community Center. This represents a tremendous opportunity for fans of the music!

The soul of “folk music” comes from the homemade appeal of the music. By definition, folk music is meant to be created, not simply watched. Yet folk music has changed with the times. Going back to the 1920’s, record producers would beat the bushes looking for styles of music that would appeal to owners of the new-fangled Victrolas. 78’s were created featuring various rural and ethnic performers, and by the time the Carter Family came around to widen the audience, folk music was a great source of entertainment.

Many of us are children of the folk revival of the ‘50s and ‘60s. In the early days of the folk revival, artists like the Weavers, Richard Dyer Bennet, Josh White, Marais & Miranda and others would “dress up” the music and present it in concert halls and music rooms around the country. However, the grassroots nature of the music took hold and soon clubs and coffeehouses were born in church basements, union halls, and wherever a room could be found to draw an audience. We have been there ever since.

The musicians who have perpetuated the style (and also adapted it to prevailing contemporary standards) deserve the recognition and the amenities offered by a setting such as the Fair Lawn Community Center. Think of it as a frame around a work of art. The painting can stand out with a proper frame, or its presence can be diminished by a frame that doesn’t allow the painting to stand out. The stage at the Fair Lawn Community Center will serve as a frame to highlight the quality of performers that we have planned for next season. There isn’t a bad seat in the house, and I can boast that our schedule for next season offers outstanding and diverse talent.

I have been hosting a radio program since 1980 – actually since 1975 if you count my first few years as a “progressive rock” DJ at WFDU. When I started presenting folk music on radio, it was largely traditional music and folk revival-based artists. When the club Speak Easy opened its doors in 1983, quickly followed by the musicians cooperative known as Fast Folk, the music began to change. Singer-songwriters evolved the music style to meet contemporary tastes. I will be the first person to admit that some of it did not seem to fit, but at the end of the day, the artists were on to something. Slowly but surely, the music began to reach into our conscious. Using a degree of ingenuity and stealth, it even found its way into some commercial success. Many popular artists have been touched by the lessons learned, and surely contemporary country music is a great example of just one way that folk music has reached beyond the trappings of a solo artist singing to a sparse crowd in a church basement.

Starting in September 2007, the Hurdy Gurdy will be working hard to continue its mission of presenting professional,

If you haven’t been to the Hurdy Gurdy in awhile, I would urge you to check out our new home starting in September. (Click here to reach a “preview” blog.) This is an opportunity for the music to flourish, right in our own backyard! Working with Fair Lawn has enabled us to keep the prices reasonable, and for a couple of concerts we’ve been able to lower the price and bring in some exciting new artists for you to enjoy. I give my my promise that everyone connected with the Hurdy Gurdy will be working hard this summer in order to make this upcoming season an enjoyable one for you. Make your plans now, you will not want to miss it!!