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Bromberg To Headline Music Fest Folk Artists To Gather For Ark Benefit

Bromberg To Headline Music Fest Folk Artists To Gather For Ark Benefit image
Parent Issue
Day
10
Month
January
Year
1980
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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Bromberg to headline music fest<br><br>Folk artists to<br><br>•THURSDAY JAN to. 1S80<br><br>gather for Ark benefit<br><br>By Norman Gibson<br><br>STAFF REPORTER<br><br>Folk singer David Bromberg again will be the cornerstone of the third annual Ann Arbor Folk Festival at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday in the Power Center for the Performing Arts.<br><br>Bromberg has appeared at the two previous folk festivals which, because the entertainers donate their fees to TheArk^become ben-fits for that long-time Ann Arbor coffeehouse. This year’s festival, incorporating the same arrang-ment, is sponsored by the University of Michigan Office of Major Events.<br><br>Bromberg will be joined by John Hammond, Jr., son of a Columbia Records producer who has discovered numerous talents; Owen McBride, a native of Ireland now living in Canada; an Mary McCas-lin and Jim Ringer, who sing folk, western and original songs.<br><br>OTHERS COMING to perform at the festival are Leon Redbone, an eccentric who combines crazy props and witty sayings with chilling renditions of age-old songs; Hedy West, who sings the songs of her native Georgia; and the Red Clay Ramblers.<br><br>All those who appear at the festival will contribute their fees to the non-profit club that has been a bastion of folk music in Ann Arbor for the last 14 years.________<br><br>DAVID BROMBERG<br><br>Bromberg, 34, can be heard on 75 records, sometimes as the featured singer and sometimes backing others. His musical heritage goes back to the days of the folk singing revival in the 1960’s.<br><br>HE HAD to eat some of his words last September when he got married. Bromberg had been used to telling people that he was successful because he was alone and all he had in life was his music.<br><br>“I figure,” he would say, “that I’ll get exactly as successful as I’m supposed to, no more, no less.<br><br>I’m not going to fight it and I’m not going to grovel for it. I’m not going to act surly in order to preserve my anonymity or folkie status and I won’t eat dirt so that somebody will bill me in some speltal concert - I don’t believe in that.<br><br>“The only time that I do get surly is when someone tells me how to do my music. That’s all I’ve got. It’s the sum total. I’m not married, I’ve not kids. I spend my life on the road and I’ve no hobbies beyond playing guitar, fiddle, and mandolin .There’s nothing else in my life, so don’t mess with it.”<br><br>NOW, THERE is something else in the singer’s life.<br><br>Hammond is a blues singer who has been on the road for 18 years, hitting all the nightclubs and concert halls he could in North America.<br><br>He began his career in Los Angeles in 1962, performing in small clubs and on street corners. He worked his way east and wound up in his hometown of New York. He worked in smaller clubs until he was hired to play at the Old Gerdes Folk City, then the mecca of folk music.<br><br>HAMMOND HAD been a fan of<br><br>blues music, but really became enamoured of it when he heard a record of Robert Johnson, the old blues singer from the 1930’s.<br><br>McBride started his singing of ballads and Irish songs in Dublin, where he spent his evenings at coffeehouses. A folk festival made him more serious about the idiom.<br><br>“There were all sorts of singers, dancers, fiddlers and pipers and it was there I really got interested in Irish music,” he has explained.<br><br>HE, RECALLS singing in a pub in Tipperary and winding up at a farm.<br><br>“I don’t remember being carried out of the pub,” he said, “But they must have thrown me into the farmer’s cart and his donkey took me to his farm.”<br><br>JIM RINGER is a western singer who has been a construction worker, prize-fighter, traveling performer. Mary McCaslin has “an unpretentious” folk singing style that is very melodic.<br><br>Redbone walks around in a three-piece suit of uncertain vintage, a white shirt, string tie, crushed hat, dark glasses and a big cigar.<br><br>He whips out his harmonica or<br><br>guitar and does unusual interpretations of “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” “Sheik of Araby.”<br><br>West, 41, is the daughter of a trade union organizer and Southern poet. She gets a lot of her material from her paternal grandmother, Lillie Muikey West, who learned the songs from her parents and grandparents.<br><br>All performers, except Bromberg, will appear in one show only. For details, call 761-1451 or 763-5110.<br><br>JOHN HAMMOND JR.<br><br>.