Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Woody @ 100: Free Festival + Skid Row Fundraiser /Echo Park, This Saturday July 14

Hi. Woody Guthrie's centennial is being commemorated throughout the country, including here in Los Angeles.

Today's LA Times has a top-notch, headlined article on Page 1 of the Calendar section, which includes lots on

Woody's life, prodigious writings and transformation here in LA's and Hollywood's skid rows (Yes, even then.)

Please check it out and consider making the pretty easy trip to a couple of places on Sunset Blvd. I'll be at both

and will be adding a bit to the 10am discussion. I never met Woody, but do know several of his greatest students,

was born here and actually worked in the pawn shop on 5th and Main and was a bike messenger on San Julian -

both in my teens. Hope to see you there. -Ed

- - -

From: Lydia Breen [mailto:labreen222@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 11:41 PM
To: undisclosed recipients:
Subject: please help get the word out: Woody @ 100: Free Festival + Skid Row Fundraiser /Echo Park

We need a BIG turnout : Saturday July 14: Skid Row Fundraiser (6 pm -9 pm)

Earlier: Free Picnic, Concert, Art (10 am + 6 pm)

Skid Row Fundraiser: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie

with Olmeca and special guests

A concert to raise funds for our brothers and sisters fighting the good fight on Skid Row, hosted by The Trailer Trash Project with Occupy Fights Foreclosures

6 pm - 9pm - Suggested donation $10

@ The Echo

1822 W. Sunset Blvd., Downtown Echo Park, L.A. 90026 map

FACEBOOK

Press release: Woody@100: Skid Row Then and Now

Before the fundraiser, check out the free community picnic in honor of Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday:

A Better World’s A-Comin’: Happy Birthday Woody!

Free Picnic, Concert and Art Activities for Kids

- Bring Food to Share and Lawn Chairs for Afternoon Concert -

Guest Appearances by Michelle Shocked, Olmeca and Leroy Moore of Krip Hop Nation

10 a.m. - 6 pm.

El Centro del Pueblo

1157 Lemoyne Street, downtown Echo Park, L.A. 90026 map

Our theme revolves around the "No Trespassing" Woody wrote about in “This Land Is Your Land.” Join up with artists and musicians of all genres to imagine a better world.

FACEBOOK

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In a Benefit Concert for FolkWorks

July 17th at 2 PM

at the

Tropico de Nopal Gallery, in Los Angeles,
1665 Beverly Boulevard, East of Alvarado.

Swing Riots is an LA Jazz Gypsy Balkan Klezmer Folk ensemble with six versatile fully digitized members who recreate the brilliant music of two-finger Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt— quite a feat, in that it takes them only sixty fingers to accomplish what Django did with two. Perhaps that’s why the word genius is so often found within two syllables of Reinhardt’s legendary name.

But if you close your eyes, it hardly matters; you can drift back in time to the sweltering erotic nights of Paris’s Left Bank in the 1930s, when Reinhardt was remaking the landscape of modern Jazz, and having to relearn the guitar after suffering major burns in a 1928 fire that changed his life and modern music forever. Without the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand he played everything with just the two he had—and that proved to be enough.

The Swing Riots perform an irreverent gumbo of Gypsy & Creole Jazz, Klezmer & Romanian Horas, Parisian Musette & the occasional wild card thrown in for good measure. The SwingRiots are comprised of 6 core members who have played for decades in everything from Balkan dance bands to traditionalSwing groups including: Bill Marks: Guitar & Voice; Pat Mac Swyney: Mando-Guitar, Tenor Banjo, Mandolin, Cornet, Ney, Harmonica & Voice; Linda Kodaira: Violin; Nick Casillas: Clarinet & Soprano Sax;Ben Getting: Upright Bass.

Ed Pearl has done a bit of his own reshaping of the musical landscape of Los Angeles, as the creator of the legendary folk music club The Ash Grove in 1958, and had Django Reinhardt not passed away in 1953, he would surely have graced the Ash Grove stage as well, along with Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbriar Boys, Phil Ochs, Mance Libscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Flatt and Scruggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder.

Now Ed has embarked on a new venture, catching up with lost time as it were, and will present Swing Riots in his new summer concert series sponsored by Ash Grove Music (www.ashgrovemusic.com).

It will be a doubly special event, since it is a benefit concert for FolkWorks, LA’s free and only folk music magazine, now in its tenth year of continuous publication, covering the waterfront of LA’s sometimes bewildering variety of folk related solo performers, dance and instrumental groups and festivals, as well as national touring artists that come through town.

FolkWorks (www.folkworks.org) was just honored this past May with the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest Music Legend Award for 2011, and needs the influx of funds from this extraordinary concert to keep the presses rolling, as it tries valiantly to beat the odds that have made magazine publishing a quixotic and oft-times heroic endeavor.

So support the Ash Grove, support FolkWorks, and enjoy an unparalleled afternoon of world music from the Lost Generation that these wonderful Los Angeles musicians have rediscovered, mastered and made their own. For this musical experience of a lifetime Swing Riots will be joined by vocal duet Jess Basta & Christine Tavares, formerly of VOCO in a variety of Yiddish and early jazz standards. Don’t you dare miss it!
--Ross Altman

Ed Pearl

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Woody @ 100: Free Festival + Skid Row Fundraiser /Echo Park, This Saturday July 14

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