From: owner-good-noise-digest@smoe.org (good-noise-digest) To: good-noise-digest@smoe.org Subject: good-noise-digest V8 #4 Reply-To: good-noise@smoe.org Sender: owner-good-noise-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-good-noise-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk good-noise-digest Thursday, February 24 2005 Volume 08 : Number 004 Today's Subjects: ----------------- From The John Gorka Web Site, article worth reading [ThePsyche@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 20:57:54 EST From: ThePsyche@aol.com Subject: From The John Gorka Web Site, article worth reading ST PAUL PIONEER PRESS ARTICLE Posted on Sat, Feb. 19, 2005 John Gorka, who calls Marine on St. Croix home when he isn't touring, is the patriarch of contemporary folk music. A folksinger's life: lots of travel, contact with fans BY SAM McMANIS Tacoma News Tribune They travel from town to town in nondescript rental cars, acoustic guitar riding shotgun and boxes of CDs weighing down the trunk. They work two hours alone onstage, then sell some CDs from a table in the back, leave their so-called entourage behind and search for the next Best Western to rest their heads for the night. Then, they do it again the next day in the next town. And the next. Life as a contemporary folksinger, says singer-songwriter John Gorka, means long periods of nomadic travel along the unofficial but fiercely loyal singer-songwriter circuit, which thrives at various venues in New England and stretches across the country in "liberal folk cells" such as Ann Arbor, Mich.; Boulder, Colo.; Chicago; Berkeley, Calif.; and parts of western Washington state. It means, essentially, singing for your supper, because mainstream radio all but ignores modern folk, major record companies stay away in droves, and print media is more concerned with Britney's 51-hour marriage or Ashlee's lip synching. "Touring is a necessity," says Gorka, 46, who lives in Marine on St. Croix and until recently did 150 tour dates a year and is considered the patriarch of the contemporary folk movement. "Since becoming a dad, I've cut down, but your life felt like you were either gone, getting ready to go or trying to recover from going out. I remember some (folksinger) once said that the mob was after him and he had a choice of either going into the witness protection program or becoming a folksinger. He thought a folksinger would be the safer route." ------------------------------ End of good-noise-digest V8 #4 ******************************