Um ok wow.  I am still spinning.  The benefits of Folk Alliance are many and varied.  We got to make a lot of good contacts for The Boss…DJs, venues, all that.  I saw some amazing music that inspired me.  I got to be at a professional conference in my field and go to panels about useful topics.  I got to hang out with some REALLY COOL folks.  I’ll just kind of rehash the haps in photo form and insert slightly witty things between in hopes of  keeping your attention.

We got to Memphis after a fun gig in Little Rock — it’s always good to book shows to and from conferences because conferences are expensive, even for folk musicians.  We checked in and I was aghast that the Marriott in downtown Memphis would let 2000 music business peoples run around for 4 days.

We were told a sign is handy sometimes when you’re playing a showcase so that people know who you are, so Susan made a sign out of flaming duct tape that I had purchased in Arkansas.  It was awesome.

Then we had some time to clear our minds for the impending rush of crazy. I felt kind of glazed over with trepidation at the amount of hands I was going to shake and people’s names I was going to hear. Deep breath!

Susan had her first showcase at 10 PM that night and it went well. I was in hand-out-postcards-to-everyone mode. Everyone has their name tag on and you do this weird glance thing where it’s like “Hi there!” and then you look at their stomach and try and see where they are from and what they do and – I’ll say it – what they could potentially do for you – in one glance without making it too obvious. But it’s obvious, and we all did it, so it was fine.

Right next door to Susan’s showcase happened to be Beth Wood, another one of my favorites, which was a taste of the enormity of awesome at this conference. We lined it out driving back yesterday and Folk Alliance is this: Three floors of the Marriot, maybe 30 rooms to a floor. Every night from 10 PM – 3 AM there is music in each room in (mostly) half hour time slots. So every half hour in 90 rooms someone is playing. It boggles the mind. All you need to do is walk up and down the hall and you will hear goodness. And if you missed someone in one room, chances are they are upstairs playing later that night. This is all in conjunction with the main floor where we took over all the ballrooms and meeting rooms – the Official Showcases were held there. Pretty impressive.

So anyway, after Susan’s showcase we wandered the halls and found good stuff.  And now I’m kinda tired because I’m not recovered from all this so give me a minute to remember what happened on day 2, haha.  Hm.