It’s mid February and thank God the day is cold, grey, icy, windy and not tempting me to get outside. This day woke up and said, “Boy, you’re not going to leave this chair until you write something”.

I have taken this month off from playing concerts. Not intentionally, but when the concerts don’t come together I’ve learned it’s better to take it with grace and just enjoy the down time. The Folk Alliance Conference was in Nashville this year. Since it was local, I have a new CD out, and it has been four years since I last attended, it was mandatory.

Folk Alliance is basically a big party where we all try to get a little work done. People in this music community work in relative isolation most of the time. There’s a lot of pent up need to socialize, and put faces to names that we only know from emails or phone calls. So this conference becomes a 96-hour spree of mini-concerts, workshops, riding up and down elevators, a noisy exhibit hall, and over-priced food.

Imagine if you will a fancy downtown Hotel overrun by 1,000 musicians plus another 1,500 concert promoters, disc jockeys, record company executives, and all nature of people who support this industry.  Imagine Arlo Guthrie and a dozen other singers informally sitting in a circle and trading songs in a wide hallway off the hotel lobby with a hundred people gathered around. Within earshot down the corridor, a swing band is grooving away. In the lobby itself there are jam sessions of various kinds in between people milling around and talking. Upstairs in the bar you’ll find an assemblage of Irish musicians with fiddles, pipes, guitars, drums and pints.

Record companies and booking agencies draw lotteries for conference rooms and schedule their rosters for showcases. It’s a festival worth of performers each night for three nights running. There’s often a good spread of food and drink on a table in the back of the room to further entice folks to sit down and listen. Go up the elevator and get off on any floor between the 5^th and the 22^nd to find hotel rooms, beds cleared away to make space for chairs for the smaller “guerilla” showcases. They are smaller in seating capacity, but in no way smaller for the talent they offer. It’s definitely a listener’s market: a veritable candy store of the finest songwriters in the country.

My favorite moments in the smaller rooms were showcases from Tracy Grammer, Darryl Scott, and Bruce Molsky. Those and Tim O’Brian’s formal showcase in the banquet hall made this Folk Alliance memorable.

Re-entering into the world is a strange experience after the intensity of the conference. Ears and mind still carried a buzz driving the whole way home. Filling up the gas tank off the interstate is a surreal yet comforting experience after spending the previous four days in an alternate reality. Inspiration runs high even if exhaustion demands one to sleep the next 48 hours straight. At least that’s how I felt.

Now, after two weeks hitting the office work and enjoying just being home Sue and I are preparing for a month of concerts in New England. I’ll be playing many of my annual concerts in Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, and Maine. Please take a look at my schedule page if you’d like to know where I’ll be.

Meanwhile, take good care, stay warm. Keep in touch!

- Dana