The Swannanoa Gathering

Contemporary Folk Week
July 31st to August 4th, 2006

Contemporary Folk Week Video
Music and Video by Mark Easley (3:37)

You can stream music from the open mic shows:

    Mark Easley & Joanne Does - Wasn't Meant To Be (4:52)
      

    Steve Easley & Paddy Dougherty - The Song I Could Not Write / Fly Away (11:21)
      

   Bruce Johnson - Long Gray Ponytail (4:14)

    Kelle Olwyler - Miedo de Amor (5:32)

    Kelle Olwyler - Loneliness (Live) (4:15)

    Mark Easley - The Broken Record Song (3:46)

    Dianna Parks, Greg Trafidlo & Mickey Nelson - Keep Me From Blowin' Away (5:01)

    Jim Warden - Road Kill Stew (3:31)

    Jim Warden - Butter Lickin' Cat (1:26)

    Steve Simpson - Dusty Lawn Chairs (5:07)

   Phil Traynor & Larry Kadlub - God Is Here (Swannanoa) (3:28)

    Joanne Does & Barry Nunn - Follow Your Light (3:20)

    Joanne Does & Barry Nunn - Song For A Winter's Night (4:14)

    Mark Easley & Phil Traynor - Back Home Again (4:52)

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My Swannanoa Diary 2006

We always have some incredible days up at Swannanoa. Some people asked me to write down the description of a particular day I was talking about so they could review it again. Here it is.

 

Thursday August 3rd, 2006

My Day at Swannanoa

Started at 9:00am, finished at 4:00am Friday.

 

1) Ray Chesna taught me how to play the guitar in A#.

 

2) Brooks Williams and my friends created an environment in his class where I could sing a new song and find out just how deep that song really was for me.

 

3) I had lunch with a bunch of good friends I only see once a year, and I realized that Swannanoa is like a high school reunion where the a**holes don't show up.

 

4) Murial Anderson gave me a songwriting tip, and fifteen minutes later I had an outline for a new song called "I Don't Want to Know", and it is going to be a good one.

 

5) Murial Anderson became the first person to sign my guitar, followed shortly by Al Petteway and Eric Garrison. (Doug Orr signed it the next day)

 

6) I learned "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" banjo style on the guitar.

 

7) I had dinner with a person I had traded emails with but never met in person. John Tosco is a Beatle freak just like me, and I look forward to many jams with him.

 

8) At that same dinner, as so often happens here, I made a new friend. Tom is a Hoosier who teaches at Rose Hulman institute.

 

9) At the open mic, my brother Steve and his friend Paddy wrote and sang me a love song.

 

10) My brother said "I made you cry in front of all your friends." I said, "That's okay, you made all my friends cry in front of me."

 

11) Joanne and I sang my song "Wasn't Meant to Be" out in front of the beer tent. For the pure joy of it, we sang it again, each time joined by more of our friends, 5 times in a row. The last time, our new friend Brooks Williams joined us on the guitar. He ran to get his guitar so fast we decided he was a new breed, "guitar retriever".

 

12) My friend Jeff asked me to play one of my songs I did last year, called "The Broken Record Song", and he knew all the words.

 

13) I joined one of the wonderful song circles and listened to all of our talented songwriters, and I was especially pleased to see my old friend Eric Garrison break out his guitar.

 

14) The Baughman Factor kicked in, so Steve and I and a bunch of other people screamed Beatles tunes till we dropped at around 4:00am. We came up with an alternative to the circle of 5ths. We call it a fifth in the circle.

 

If any one of these things happened on a normal day, I would consider it a pretty good day, wouldn't you? Thanks to everybody who helped make it happen.

Best regards,
 
Mark Easley
www.goldhat.net