Folk Show Forum

Christmas Day Folk Music

2010-12-23T13:17:38-05:00

If you’re looking for Folk on Christmas, tune in to WPSU from 7-8 am, and also 9-10 pm. Almost every song is directly related to Christmas (I did sneak in one solstice song), and range from the well-known to the obscure, as well as the sweet to slightly skewed (more of the skewed on the late episode !) Artists include Odetta, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, Robin and Linda Williams, John Prine, Nowell Sing We Clear, Abby Gardner, Dave Carter and James McMurty. Merry Christmas!

Carthy sing On Christmas Day It Happened

2013-01-01T09:56:03-05:00

Tim van Eyken sang On Christmas Day It Happened So on Waterson:Carthy’s 2006 album Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man. Martin Carthy commented in the album’s sleeve notes,
Songs don’t come much darker or more forbidding than On Christmas Day It Happened So which Tim learned from Fred Hamer’s book Garners Gay. Fred Hamer recorded it from the Gipsy singer May Bradley whose mother, Ester Smith, had sung for Ella Mary Leather and Vaughan Williams fifty years before and whose version of the song Mrs Bradley had remembered almost exactly. Its steely, utterly opaque and unforgiving vision of Christianity will leave many bewildered but it’s one which still obtains in surprising places.la la la….

Queer as Folk (2000 TV series) Show history

2012-12-21T02:32:47-05:00

The show drew strong ratings for both Showtime and Canada’s Showcase. In fact, in Canada, the series had such high ratings that by the end of the fifth season Showcase chose to air the show in hour-and-ten-minute timeblocks to accommodate all the ads without cutting any scenes. This was not a problem for Showtime, since that service is commercial-free and no ads were ever broadcast during a Queer as Folk telecast.
The series ran for five seasons (2000 to 2005 on Showtime and 2001 to 2005 on Showcase).
Canada’s Showcase, which was making a great deal of money from the advertising demand, did briefly consider producing a sixth season, but as Showtime owned much of the rights to the series and funded much of the budget, Showcase decided against it.
Another U.S. cable channel owned by Viacom, Logo, began broadcasting edited, commercially sponsored episodes of Queer as Folk on September 21, 2006.
As of January 9, 2008, Showcase began offering the Canadian version of the Queer as Folk episodes on their website. These Canadian versions differ from the Showtime and DVD versions in that they have breaks within the episodes (where commercials would have been inserted) and make references to “Showcase” and “Temple Street Productions presents” instead of “Showtime presents”. Unlike the Season 1 DVDs, episodes 101 and 102 are presented separately and episode 102 is the rare extended version of the episode, created for broadcast during reruns of the first season and not seen since 2002. The first seven episodes were posted on January 9 and one additional episode was posted each week after.

Ticket Giveaway Sunday for THE STRAY BIRDS concert at Elk Creek Cafe in Millheim

2012-12-07T23:55:20-05:00

Listen during the Folk Show tomorrow from noon to 2 for a chance to win a pair of tickets to hear the Stray Birds in concert at Elk Creek Cafe tomorrow afternoon from 4 to 6. The Stray Birds is a young Pennsylvania trio that has been rapidly gaining critical acclaim for their songwriting and instrumental talents. The band features fiddle, bass, guitar, banjo, mandolin, distinctive vocals.

For more information, click here.

cant wait for playlist!

2012-11-17T22:03:27-05:00

Hi I love the show and was wondering if you could help me with a song I just heard on Sat evening right before the song “suits me”. I missed the host naming it and I’m too impatient to wait for the playlist.Thanks

Woody Guthrie exhibition on now at Penn State

2012-09-08T06:51:28-05:00

Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land, an exhibition created by the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles, is on display in Borland Gallery, Penn State University NOW - Saturday and Sunday, September 8 and Sunday September 9. It’s free and open 10.0am - 4.00pm each day. Borland Gallery is in the Borland Building, Curtain Road - it’s a couple of buildings from the Palmer Museum, heading towards Beaver Stadium.

The exhibition is a part of the Woody at 100: A Centennial Celebration conference being held at Penn State on Saturday, September 8, and is co-curated by the GRAMMY Museum, Woody Guthrie Archives in New York, and Nora Guthrie.

While ballads — songs that tell stories — were his forte, Guthrie also wrote novels, essays and poems, and drew hundreds of visual images. The Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land exhibition showcases examples of these and includes pictures of his childhood in Okemah, OKla.; sketches of his life fleeing the great Dust Devil; and manuscripts of letters and songs written as he traveled to California and experienced scorn, discrimination and hatred by native Californians who resented the massive migration of ‘Okie’ outsiders. The common theme to the items on display is that they chronicle the struggle of working people, the disenfranchised, downtrodden, and overworked, and the children who suffered because of this. The exhibition includes 32 framed works.

The exhibition in Borland Gallery is sponsored by Dean R. Phillips, Esq. and the Phillips’ family in memory of Penn State Professor Emeritus Gerald M. Phillips and coordinated by the School of Visual Arts.

Pronunciation Help. How is “____” pronounced ?

2011-10-06T16:21:03-05:00

Thought it might be worth starting a thread. I know I could use pointers on a few artist/band names (and not just the Portugese/Spanish/Italian/German/French names that Tom Beebee pronounces so well} . Wikipedia and other web sites often don’t have readily accessible info for folk artist names, so maybe we should start building a web resource, maybe just a google doc…..

We could start with Bert Jansch JANsch.

Joel Mabus is another that comes to mind (MAY-biss)

I often have to re-look up Celtic names like Aoife….

What folky names come to mind for you….

Song you just played on the folk show

2012-09-22T07:00:19-05:00

Hi! I just heard a great song on the Folk Show but couldn’t find it on itunes or the internet. It was a female singer and the song was upbeat with a catchy tune. The lyrics were to the effect of “You’re gonna die sometime so while you are trying to get to 101 try to have some fun….have tofu and ice cream but not together…...” etc. I know the lyrics sound morbid as I type this but the song was really quite funny for anyone who hasn’t heard it.
Anyway, as a 40 something person who has the typical struggle of balancing “take care of yourself” and “have fun” I loved the song.
What’s the title and who is the artist? Thanks!

song from Madagascar!?!

2010-10-28T11:28:56-05:00

Hi! I was in the Peace Corps in Madagascar but rarely found local music that I liked. Imagine my astonishment when I heard a great song in Malagasy, the language of Madagascar, play on The Folk Show’s online stream just now (10/28, 11:20 am)!! Could anyone please tell me the song title and (especially) the artist? Thanks so much.

a very personal request

2012-07-29T15:41:48-05:00

My boyfriend is incarcerated at Centre county jail and he wrote me a letter and asked me to come to this website and request some Garcia/Grisman from the not for kids only album. He also wants me to post that “”“I am extremely grateful for the show and it helps me get through the weekends. Thank you for helping me”