Hi all – thanks to those of you who have rsvp’d about coming to the SERFA meeting (Southeast Regional Folk Alliance) on Wednesday from 1 – 5 pm. The meeting will be held in Heritage 3 and if you just want to come to Folk Alliance for the day, if you attend the SERFA meeting, all the regular activities of Folk Alliance will be free on Wednesday, including receptions and showcases that night. Just look for the registration table on the second floor mezzanine outside of the Heritage ballrooms to get your free one day badge.
Exec. Director Louis Meyers has given our region this special meeting time to help our region network, reconnect and infuse itself with new energy and ideas. That’s where you come in. Throughout our time together (there will be a 1/2 hour snack break for all FA attendees in the middle that we will join as well) we’ll get to know more about each other, hear about some opportunities in moving our region forward and share our thoughts and ideas and information with each other.
We’ll have a “town hall” caucus about various issue and brief presentations about the Southeast as well. Scheduled to speak about the Southeast’s rich unique and musical old-timey and roots genres are Ginny Hawker and Tracy Schwarz (the New Lost City Ramblers) and Hazel Dickens will honor us with a song and say a few words. Respected musician and Veteran club owner Ed Snodderly, of The Down Home Pickin’ Parlor for the last 32 years will talk about running a venue in the Southeast and what his experience has been doing that longstanding job, as well as being a touring musician. We’re just putting up a new web site, and our new web master, Allen Guthier will let us know what he’s working on and we can share our input on how our site can benefit all our members. We’ll find out who you are – artists, venues, organizations and discuss what are specific issues to the Southeast and what we can do to address them. And of course, we’ll discuss a SERFA convention and what you can do to help that happen.
We’ll also have a sign-in sheet and a way to let you know about you and your skills and how you might want to be involved in the Southeast. It will take a lot of us to pull together to make what we want to do happen, so this is our first opportunity at Folk Alliance.
Wednesday night we will have a SERFA showcase in the Heritage 1 from 9 – 10:30pm. Most artists will have a song or so to contribute. Not only are we honored to have both Ginny Hawker & Tracy Schwarz and Ed Snodderly from our afternoon meeting, but a couple of surprise artists too! And you won’t want to miss Gretchen Peters, Andy Cohen, David LaMotte, Chuck Brodsky, Jeff Talmadge, Muriel Anderson and more.
We’ll have time to discuss more throughout the week, so please plan on attending the SERFA Regional meeting on Friday at 9:30 am in Room Heritage 4. For artists and venues, attend the “speed dating” solution to booking for SERFA in Heritage 1 at 10:00 am (you can sign up when you come in at registration on the appropriate clip boards.)
See you in a couple of days!
Kari
