Before beginning our respective summer teaching gigs in messy art, remedial music theory, and stilting, Stef, David and I went to Kerrville Texas to swim in the river, camp and attend the Kerrville Folk Festival’s Songwriter’s School.
Due to a flush of torrential balmy Texas rain the only swimming we got in was while we were walking to class on Monday morning (although, later we would get the chance to wade through a field of mud-sewage in order to access David’s cute mud-sewage covered VW).
For these reason we spent most of our nights camping in hotels. To keep ourselves guessing (and to practice “life on the road”) we slept in a different hotel every night. Write to us and request our forthcoming pamphlet: “Middle-Cheap Hotels on Sidney Baker Street in Kerrville Texas: A Case Study comparing the Relative Merits of America’s Best Value Inn, Motel 6 and Super 8. With notes on the Origins of ‘Hey Cute Girl.’”
So the one thing we really did get to do in Texas was learn about songwriting and ‘the music Biz.’ To demonstrate our improved proficiency in both we’re going to have to refer you to our future songs and any evidence we can scrounge up that indicates we’re getting more famous. For Instance: Just now we were approached by a self-proclaimed Michael Cera look-alike asking to take a picture of David because he “looks just like Mick Jagger”—Yeah! Watch out world, here we come!
David at the Kerrville Folk Festival
Another demonstrable effect of our time at the Kerrville Songwriter’s school should be evident at our live performances.
We opted to undergo a terrifying (because of his tendancy to tell the truth) and enlightening tutoring session with amazing songwriter and performer Vance Gilbert, who misheard Stef’s lyric “saw an eagle” as “solid negro” (this served as an object lesson on the importance of clear diction) and who taught us some simple stage techniques that felt cheesy down to the very marrow of our bones WHILE making us appear to be an accomplished tight group of professional performers. Who knew!?
Our hearts and souls were massaged and tickled by the other teaching faculty. Luckily, yours can be too: we highly recommend you see Terri Hendrix on August 13th at the Cooperage and Mary Gauthier on August 15th at The Outpost performance space.
After a week of rain, music, crying, laughing, songs and one instance of choking on a fry (ask Stef) we began the 11-hour trek back to Burque. (To Be Continued.)