Zoe Mulford: News

Well, the dreaded winter holidays are over. It's now staying light as late as 4 in the afternoon and Manchester is blanketed in 8 inches of increasingly shabby snow.

"Bonfires" has put in a gratifying appearance on the Folk-DJ Chart (#3 in November 2009) and stayed on through the holiday season, due in part to the programmers who played "Welcome in Another Year". (If, like me, you are observing the new year in a protracted and disorganized fashion, you can find it right here on my music page through February 14.) Thank you to everyone who gave it a spin - on the airwaves, on your iPod, in your home or in your car - including my little cousin Madeleine, who has dubbed it "the vampire song".

So what's ahead? I'm looking forward to releasing "Bonfires" in the UK as well as returning to the US in the spring and autumn.

I hope the new year brings you reasons to be hopeful and things you've worked hard for - plus a few miracles for good measure. Oh, and lots of great music.

Today is just a normal Thursday in the UK. In the US, it’s the year’s greatest single concentration of family visiting, sharing of food, interstate travel, and expressions of gratitude.

I won’t miss trying to do all those things in one day because I’ve just been doing them for six weeks. A little more expression of gratitute, however, is never out of place.

This year’s US Autumn Tour was a success and a delight.

Some things that made this trip special: opening for Cheryl Wheeler at the WOMR Women's Week concert in Provincetown - sighting a seal in the ocean off Cape Cod - criss-crossing Massachussetts and New York state in prime fall leaf season - visiting many branches of my family - band shows featuring fiddler Elizabeth Crisfield, percussionist Cheryl Prashker, multi-instrumentalist Mark Sylvester, and bass player Joe Hammer in various configurations, plus cameos by Bob Beach and Carey Creed - new-crop local apples in Pennsylvania - a late fall walk in Ithaca and a magnificent brunch with my college room-mate and her husband - a Saturday-afternoon jam near Roxboro, NC where people from many points on the political, economic, and cultural spectrum sat together in a garage all afternoon making music - and all along the way, the sound of audiences singing!

The glorious finale was four days at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) - a truly mind-boggling combo of professional development, tribal gathering, and the kind of magical musical anarchy that ensues when hundreds of musical enthusiasts are given the run of one hotel.

I am grateful to the volunteers who run the venues that presented me, the house concert hosts who opened their homes, the DJ’s who have been playing the new album, and everyone who came to a concert, bought a CD, or put their name on my mailing list.

Massive thanks are due to my mother, who came on the whole trip as my road manager and was an excellent traveling companion. The whole thing would not have happened without the kindness of the friends and relatives who hosted us, fed us, and dragged their friends to the shows - especially my aunt and uncle, who I stayed with while I was not on the road.

Happy Thanksgiving. May you eat good food with people who are glad to see you, and may all your journeys lead you home.

Looking at my news section, I see that I’m much more likely to post about things going on in the US than in the UK. I’ve just had a couple of nice evenings out, so I thought I’d tell you about them.

Monday, I called in at the Midway Folk Club in Stockport. As the compere had recently injured his thumb, he chose “parts of the body” as the theme for the evening’s singaround. The offerings got increasingly rude as the evening progressed. I re-encountered club resident Grant Baynham, with whom I am sharing a bill at Anne’s charity fundraiser and holiday craft fair in November. His off-the-cuff rendition of “The Masochism Tango” was one of the evening’s many high points.

Tuesday, I visited the Sale Folk Club.(So did several other folks who’d been at the Midway the night before - what, don’t these people have anything better to do than wander around with their guitars?) Sale has become my “local”. The residents are a good bunch of folks and I’ve enjoyed getting to know them and the regular crowd that attends. Club residents John Condy, Carl Corbett, and Cockney Eric were among the kind people who came out to Yorkshire to record a sing-along chorus for the closing track on "Bonfires".

I can also get there and back without fuss on the 263 bus, or occasionally hitch a lift home.

It’s only been going for about a year, but it’s got a lot of momentum. Recent nights have been packed to the rafters, with many excellent musicians turning out and a sizable contingent of folks who just come to listen. Many of the regulars are songwriters, and there’s a certain amount of friendly competition and in-joking.

What I love about it is that it’s a place where people bring the songs they love. One night may include items from the repertoires of Jacques Brel, Jez Lowe, Niel Young, Tom Paxton, The Carter Family, Tchaikofsky, and the Arctic Monkeys - as well as humorous recitations in Lancashire dialect, updates on Rob’s internet dating adventures, sea chanteys, and fine ragtime guitar.

Over time, I’ve played most of my more polished material there, but it’s also a place where I feel comfortable trying out new songs (sometimes before the ink is dry) or just singing whatever the hell I feel like.

If you want to see what goes on there, check out the club newsletter; it’s the only folk club I’ve ever been to that keeps minutes.

After much discussion with friends and cohorts, including a Greek chorus of Facebookers, the new album has a new name.

It will be called "Bonfires" and will become available - appropriately - in October. It will be my third release on Azalea City Recordings.

Born out of three years playing in British folk clubs, it features strong storytelling, a lot of singable choruses, traditional songs from both sides of the Atlantic, and the banjo in a starring role.

It was recorded in Yorkshire by Brian Bedford. The session musicians include Canadian bassist Al Parrish of Tanglefoot (recorded in West Yorkshire while on tour) and Canadian-American percussionist Cheryl Prashker (recorded in Philadelphia thanks to the magic of electronic file transfer). I was also delighted to work with some of the excellent young musicians I’ve met around Manchester: ceilidh fiddler Tom Fairbairn, and Andrew Butler, John McKay, and Dave Carden of Dr. Butler’s Hatstand Medicine Band.

I dreamed I went to a folk festival and set up my little two-man hiker’s tent on a pleasant, crowded hillside shaded with pine trees.

There was a spatter of rain, so I invited a woman I didn’t know to take shelter with her guitar. This made the tent kind of snug, but I noticed that there were extra poles that I hadn’t installed, so I put them up. This made the ceiling higher so there was room to stand up.

Some friends stopped by with food and joined us in the tent, commenting on the great location. Then some folk club organizers arrived with chairs and started setting up a song circle. By this time the tent had a high, arched ceiling and room for twenty people, and a trio of singer-songwriters was rehearsing in the corner.

I went outside to issue a safety warning to the people who had climbed on the roof to get a view of the main stage. They replied that the roof was perfectly sound, and I saw that it was made out of sturdy beams and native Pennsylvania stone.

This is the actual dream I had. It’s also an allegory.

Folk music is a big tent. The more people you invite in, the more room there is for everyone. Everyone brings something. This is what I beleived before I had the dream and what I still believe.

Though now I can report that however big the tent gets, you cannot count on the toilets working properly.

As much fun as the solo singer-songwriter thing is, I also love being a side-person and finding vocal harmonies to other people's songs.

That's why I'm thrilled to be singing backup for my friend Lorelei Loveridge at some of her upcoming shows.

Check out Lorelei's MySpace page for tracks from her stellar new album, Bakhoor, to be released in the UK in November.

If you are having trouble getting in touch with me - or if you think you might want to get in touch with me - please note that the monkeyfist.com address has been retired.

You can reach me at mulfordz@gmail.com

I had a beautiful US tour lined up in September including return visits to the Minstrel Coffeehouse and WVBR's Bound for Glory, plus my first-ever gigs in New England and a spot at the Me&Thee Coffeehouse opening for British folk hero Jez Lowe.

Sadly, I have had to cancel that tour for health reasons. Don't worry - I'm not seriously ill, but I do have a bad case of medical bureaucracy. The hard-working folks at the British National Health Service have scheduled me in September for a treatment I've been trying to obtain for over a year.

I'm glad to be getting the treatment, but I'm exceedingly bummed about the tour. Watch this space for further developments.

I played two new songs to a wonderful audience, made new friends, reconnected with old ones, survived 10 days in a tent in 80-90 degree weather, attended a midnight wedding, and finished some new stuff.

I did not go swimming at the river, make the top six in the New Folk competition, or watch the sun rise from the top of the hill. Two of these are pretty easy to remedy: I'll just have to go again.

It was like a combined family reunion, non-stop music jam, professional conference, and sporting event. It was exhilarating, frustrating, high-pressure, laid-back, hard work, great fun, very, very hot, interminable, and over far too soon.

The US singer-songwriter community has a couple of big tribal gatherings every year. One of the biggest and oldest is the Kerrville Festival, held on a ranch somewhere between Austin and San Antonio, Texas.

The festival runs for three weeks, and some of the dyed-in-the-wool “Kerrverts” stay for the whole thing, setting up organized campsites and sitting in their lawn chairs under enormous tarps to greet their neighbors.

The Grassy Hill New Folk Competition takes place at the festival every year and presents 32 finalists from a field of 800 entries.

This year I made the list, which also includes Devon Sproule, Joe Jencks, and a host of other amazing people from all over the US and Canada. I’m extremely stoked about this.

I’ve attended the festival once before and I’m really looking forward to going back. If you tell anyone at Kerrville that it’s your first time there, they immediately say “Welcome home.” That about sums it up.

February is, as it turns out, not a great time to plan a tour. The days are short, the weather is iffy, colds and flu are rife, and people are still trying to dig out after the winter holidays. February is, however, an excellent time not to be in Manchester, so forth I went.

My mother and I loaded the car with instruments, luggage, and tour mascot Maurice the Moose and headed down Highway 81 through Virginia in the aftermath of an ice-storm – stunningly beautiful and fortunately not too slippery.

High points: visiting old friends (and making some new ones) in North Carolina – including the valiant souls at the Eno River UU Fellowship" who skipped the Superbowl to host a concert for Pat Wictor and me. Seeing old friends at the Institute of Musical Traditions and hearing Russ Arlotta and his band. Playing several shows with my brother Toby and one with percussionist extraordinaire Cheryl Prashker. Playing for kids and parents in a beautiful living room in New Jersey. Visiting friends and wrangling stray chickens at the Liberty Village cohousing community.

I am grateful to everyone who hosted me.

Low points: the return of the Flu From Hell.

Happy 2008. There are all sorts of things I wish I'd done in 2007, including updating the website more often. To start as I'd like to go on - here's something I felt like sharing.

New Year’s Day is when you’re supposed to eat Hoppin’ John, a black-eyed pea and rice dish. It’s traditionally cooked with ham-hock and served with collard greens and cornbread and is supposed to bring luck and prosperity in the coming year. I love Hoppin’ John, but I wanted something a bit zippier, so I added some crunchy vegetables and turned it into a sort of black-eyed-pea salsa.

NEW YEAR'S BLACK-EYED PEA SALAD

1 cup dried black-eyed peas, cooked with a clove of garlic until soft but not mushy
(drain off any extra liquid and set aside)

1 fistful fresh green beans, lightly steamed and cut into 1-inch chunks
(shock beans with cold water after cooking to keep them crunchy)

Mix in a bowl with:
1/2 cup finely chopped onion (red or sweet)
3/4 cup canned chopped tomato (or chopped fresh tomato)
Juice of 1 lemon (and/or a bit of red wine vinegar)
1 chopped green chile pepper (or to taste)
1 fistful fresh cilantro, minced
salt to taste

Add in extra tomato juice and/or bean juice if it looks dry and set it aside to let the flavors get to know each other. Serve room-temperature over rice, with joy.

"Our Lady of the Highways" is included on a list of road songs posted by Richard F. Weingroff on the website of the Federal Highway Administration. Thank you, Richard! Check out the whole list.

I'm in the US playing shows through October and into early November. One of the pleasures of this trip is having my mother on the road with me - or, sometimes, to be on the road with her.

This weekend was the annual conference of the Eastern PA La Leche League. My mother went to speak about breastfeeding advocacy - her vocation and avocation for many years - and I went to sing at the opening reception.

About half the audience was under four feet tall, so the show was short, fun, and featured the Mooses' Two-Step. There was some spirited dancing and singing along and one little guy who was fascinated by all the instruments and the mic stand.

I had a great time this summer at Falcon Ridge, where I had the pleasure of playing in the Emerging Artist showcase in excellent company (including Nick Annis, Joe Jencks, and Siobhan Quinn & Michael Bowers). A big thank you to those of you who voted for me in the audience ballot. I didn't make it to the top, but I saw old friends and made some new ones, and it was an honor to be there.

While in New Jersey, I taped an episode of The Folk Project's music variety show, ...Horses Sing None of It!
Check the schedule for broadcasts in your area, or find the online streamed version from Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

The second weekend of the tour featured my first-ever trip to Chicago, where I’d been invited to play on Rich Warren’s Folkstage broadcast on WFMT. The roster of past “Folkstage” artists reads like a “Who’s Who” of modern folk music. Fortunately for the nervous performer, the show is recorded in front of a live audience of station supporters - a friendly bunch who sing along and laugh in the right places.

Sunday night I played for a small but enthusiastic audience at Bill’s Blues Bar in Evanston. Despite the image that the name conjures up, the venue is smoke-free and the audience was there to listen.

Monday, Nancy - the gracious host who let me stay in her home for four days - took me to visit the Old Town School of Folk Music, where Andrea and Erin of Congress of Starlings lead a women’s music ensemble.

Also staying at Nancy’s were two visitors from Kyrgistan, part of a delegation that came to Chicago to study the role of religion in a pluralistic society. Devout Muslims, they rose at 4 to pray and then came down to the kitchen and filled the house with the smells of wonderful cooking (which they could not eat until after second prayers.) My first morning at Nancy’s they sat me down and fed me stuffed peppers for breakfast. Here’s to cultural exchange.

Oh, and did I mention the 17-year cicadas? I notice that Andrea and Erin have a song up called "Brood XIII". (The ones we had in DC a few years ago were Brood X.)

The kick-off show was a fundraiser for Gallery 50, a small volunteer-run art gallery in downtown Bridgeton, New Jersey. My grandmother used to show her paintings here. My aunt is now involved there and did a fantastic job setting up the concert. It was the final weekend of a show by Anthony R. Turner, which included a lot of beach scenes plus - jackpot! - a beautiful little painting of spotted Holstein cows. Only about fifteen of the capacity crowd were related to me, but many of them were people who knew my grandparents, my aunt, or my parents. I debuted a song called “Pocket Fulla Quarters”, about Ocean City, New Jersey, which was written specially for this show and this audience.

Saturday, my mother and I drove to Takoma Park, Maryland for a house concert in the home of Rachel and Henry Cross, label-mates of mine on Azalea City Recordings. Rachel has been my tour-buddy and half of the “Traveling Moon” album was recorded by Henry in the studio in their basement. They recently built an addition on their house which includes built-in sound and lights for house concerts. I shared the show with local artist Franklin Taggart, who is loving being a dad.

Sunday, I played for a service at Paint Branch UU Church, my home congregation when I lived in Maryland. The co-ministers are themselves musicians and incorporate all sorts of music, dance, and artistry into church events. This was the annual “Cycle of Life” service, where congregation members announce the significant life events of the past year - so I got a chance to catch up on everybody’s news!

Next stop, Chicago.

This evening I visited Spencer Leigh at Radio Merseyside and played several songs on his "On the Beat" broadcast. Listening to Spencer's show is like sitting down with a good friend with eclectic tastes and a huge record collection. The broadcast included prerecorded interviews with British bluesman John Pearson and Andy Summers of the Police, with live songs from me interspersed.

My poor mother.

Over the years, in various songs and song drafts, a character called “my mother” has unearthed the heirloom crystal, drowned her sorrows in country music, and toured with a rock-and-roll band. None of these things is true of my actual mother, who is nonetheless an accomplished and inspiring person.

Among the things I learned from my mother:

1) Never travel without a fuzzy hat and an extra pair of socks.
2) A double bass really will fit in a compact car.
3) Do not trust people who want to sell you things you can make for yourself.
4) If it crunches, it can go in a salad.
5) If it’s not comfortable, why wear it?

Oddly enough, the one true story I have ever told about my mother in a song is one about a bathing suit, in which she appears camouflaged as “My Aunt Maxine”. Go figure. Emily Dickinson said “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” The singer-songwriter equivalent might be “Never let facts get in the way of a good rhyme scheme.”

I'm just back from a mini-tour to New York and New Jersey. Thanks to Jeff Rusch at WNTI (Hackettstown, NJ) and Bill Hahn at WFDU (Teaneck, NJ) for hosting me on the radio and to Fred Gillen Jr. and Pat Wictor for sharing gigs with me.

Jam-band reviewer Brian Ferdman showed up at the show in New York, despite having been cruelly forced to sing my early songwriting efforts as a child in the Young People's Theater Workshop.

After playing at the 22 Below Coffeehouse in Manhattan, Pat and I loaded up the car with four instruments, a sound system, two musicians, one spouse, and one friend and proceeded to spend two hours driving back to Brooklyn - including 45 minutes in the merge lane onto the Brooklyn Bridge. More than an hour after THAT, I crawled into my mother-in-law’s apartment, after I took a wrong turn off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and wound up crossing the Williamsburg Bridge back into Manhattan.

When I told my mother-in-law about this in the morning, she said, “Really? Do you know how HARD it is to get onto the Williamsburg Bridge?”

The folks at WNTI gave me a handsome watermelon-red T-shirt. This came in handy, since no matter how much I pack, I always seem to wind up one shirt short. Now I just need to find a station that will give me socks...

The New Year holiday has always been one of my favorites.

This is partly because I hate going to bed and any celebration where you are required and encouraged to stay up late is OK by me.

It's also because I like the idea of a clean slate. The new year, like a brand new spiral notebook (also one of my favorite things) has not yet been marked up or dog-eared. It does not contain cross-outs, rants, unfinished poems or lists of unreturned phone-calls. Anything could happen in it.

The past year has been one of personal joys and public horrors. My thanks to all of you who have shared it with me. Let's turn the page now and hope for the best for our battered little world in the year to come.

The only thing better than people who sing along is people who learn your songs and write their own verses.
"Life Is Too Short to Fold Underwear" seems particularly prone to addendum. Here are some that have found their way back to me. Thank you to the authors for sharing them.

Life is too short for holding a grudge
Or wasting your time with some grump who won't budge
Or never indulging in rich gooey fudge
And life is too short to fold underwear

- Dannielle Swart

Life is too short to get stomped by a moose
Or have a grey wolf latch on to your caboose
Or argue with primates whose views are obtuse
Life is too short to wear underwear

Yes, moose are some dangerous critters, check the link here:

http://www.xyz.net/~khltkbr/projects/moose/coexist.html
- Eric Bannan

Life is too short to be unaware
of the good things around you or people who care
or to be too afraid to do things that you dare
and life is too short to fold underwear

- Audrey Godshall

Wonderful house concert in Bethesda, MD this weekend, hosted by some folks who heard me play at Meadowlark Gardens last winter. These are people who don't normally host house concerts, but who wanted to share an evening of music with their friends as a hurricane relief fund-raiser.

We chose to benefit the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank. The Food Bank has received high marks for doing much with little - running with low administrative overhead while getting the job done. The organization has been operating at 4 times its normal capacity since the hurricanes, serving displaced people and helping the Second Harvest Food Bank in New Orleans to resume operations.

"By the way," said the hostess, "I have a neighbor who's also a singer-songwriter. Do you know Tom Paxton?"

So - our neighbors the Paxtons were there. Tom played a cameo set and brought a stack of pre-release CD's to be sold for the fund-raiser.

This wonderful group of friends and neighbors listened and sang and contributed $1200 in all to the Food Bank.

Find out more about the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank at http://www.brfoodbank.org

This weekend I went to the Avalon Festival in Paw Paw, West Virginia to be a finalist in their Rising Star Songwriting Competition. I won. I played a festival set the next day, and then I got to stick around and sing back-up for slide guitarist Pat Wictor. It was a wonderful experience. Kinda like the Susquehanna Festival in May - except that Avalon is a clothing-optional resort.

Any shock wears off fast. You drive in the front and the guys directing traffic are wearing sunhats and sneakers and nothing else. Ok. Cool.

The festival line-up included Hot Soup, Modern Man, disappear fear, and Ellis Paul. The musicians were generally easy to spot in the crowd, being the ones with clothes on.

When thinking about what to say between songs, I thought of the old public speaking tip, "Imagine the audience naked." (Does anyone actually do this?) Then I thought, "I bet that one's been done to death."

By my count, three performers made "imagine the audience naked" jokes in one day. The audience, bless their hearts, laughed every time.