Festival Chaos

While I am still on tour for a few more weeks (currently I am at Bristol Renaissance Faire in Kenosha WI), my involvement with Pagan and magical festivals is done for the 2012 summer season. I left Brushwood Folklore Center, home of Sirius Rising and Summerfest, yesterday, after an amazing summer of festivals.

I captured some pretty amazing whirling chaos at fests this year: hooping, fire spinning and acrobatics. Here are a few highlights of the whirling motion I was able to photograph.

First, some amazing hooping on the fields of Brushwood:

(Note: the pic above might not be the actual colors of the lovely hooper or of the Brushwood forests).

This year there was an area where fire spinners could practice each night, and on the final Friday of the two festival weekends, they held a pretty amazing show. I had the honor of photographing the fire spinners over several nights, and was able to photograph their entire special performance. First a few shots of the girl hooping above, and her boyfriend, spinning in preparation for the main fire show.

Now my photos of the show itself, which featured a dozen performers...

Brushwood Folklore Center took a huge risk allowing these performers to take a stage and gather an audience (insurance issues and all), and the performers (and myself) all gushed with appreciation for allowing this show to go on. It was pretty amazing. Brushwood really boasts a rather awesome line-up of fire performers.

I will write a scathingly brilliant blog very soon about the ren faire. Til then, from the fiery landscape of Brushwood, this is Kenny Klein explaining it all.

Festival Views and Tour News

I will confide in you dear reader that sometimes when I'm not in New Orleans I feel that I have nothing much to write about. Maybe the city is the source of my power. Of course, I then tell myself, that's utterly ridiculous. "You're on tour, Kenny Klein, and there's a big ol' world out there." (That's how I talk to myself in my mind.... sometimes I even have a Cockney accent. "Oi, Kenny Klein, why not write 'bout the time you went up the frog and had a pint of pig's ear with yer airy tate, eh?")."There's plenty for you to write about," my mind rambles on. And I know my mind is right. At least most of the time (except about that green-haired stripper in Denver. My mind was SO wrong that time!). A-hem. Anyway, here's a little update, with some photos, of what I've been doing on tour.

I just spent a week at a very lovely festival site in southern Ohio called Wisteria. Wisteria was created about a decade ago as a site to house the long-established PSG festival. The site itself is an old strip mine in the Appalachians, and the caretakers have done an amazing job of restoring the once strip-mined land to a place of lush beauty. The site now hosts Starwood, one of the largest Pagan style festivals in America, as well as two of its own fests, Summer Solstice Festival and the Autumnal Cornstalk. I performed last week at Summer Solstice fest, and had a great audience. I had brought some of my jugband buddies from New Orleans (who are conveniently spending their summer in Ohio...something about finishing up a probation), and they were loved by those at the festival (to distraction: I had to force them to rehearse, as they were totally overstimulated by the adoration they were receiving). We had a great show, and I also had great attendance at my workshops on Faerie lore.

As many readers know, I am also a photographer (well, duh, Kenny...there's all these photos all over your blog). I always like to take advantage of the beauty of festival sites and the availability of models, and do some shoots while I'm at a fest. So here are two shoots that I did while at Wisteria.

First I shot Soolah Hoops, an amazing hula hooper/fire dancer who often travels with my fellow festival performer, singer Kellianna. Soolah and I went out to the Turtle Mound and got some great shots:

One of my latest goals as a photographer is to capture motion using the medium of still photography, and course shooting Soolah provided me with an opportunity to do just that. I found further opportunity when I was asked to fiddle for a ritual on Friday night, and was teamed up with a lovely dancer named Lisa. I asked Lisa if we could do a shoot, and she happily agreed. Here are some shots of Lisa doing veiled dancing in the meadow and at the border of the forest at the lower end of Wisteria:

Next week I go to Pittsburgh PA and then New York City. I'll be back at Wisteria in July for Starwood Festival, then on to Brushwood for Sirius Rising and Summerfest: I always take some great shots at Brushwood, and I hope that this year is no exception.

I'll remind you, dear reader, that my latest CD Black Cat Blues is available here, and my newest book of poetry, Verses On Saint Marks Place,  is here at Lulu.com, and here at Smashwords.com.

From the wilds of Ohio, this is Kenny Klein explaining it all.

Your Musician Questions Answered

I am a professional musician (as you may know), and there are some questions I get asked all the time. Here are a few, with the answers, which may or may not be fact:

Questions About Me Specifically:

I have played every kind of music, in every kind of venue. Here are some points of confusion:

My favorite places to play are small, intimate settings. House concerts and small ren faire stages are the best. Irish bars are sometimes my least favorite, though here in NOLA I play at an Irish bar called The Kerry Irish Pub which I like a lot; I'm playing in a few weeks at the Plaza Pub in Texas. I'll let you know.

Yes, I have played music on cruise ships. No, they do not have Pagan music on cruise ships. I had to play Margueritaville and Sweet Home Alabama sixteen times a night like everyone else who plays on a cruise ship. You have not fully lived until you have seen hundreds of drunk obese redneck women in string bikinis.

I have played Country fiddle in bands all over the U.S. No, I will not play The Devil Went Down To Georgia for you. I learned to play Country music in, of all places, New York City, with a band called the New York Frets. I did play in a Missouri band called Eisel and the Heymakers (you can find them on youtube), who backed Clint Black's brothers Brian Black and Kevin Black. I have also played on CDs by some famous Country acts (www.kennyklein.net/studio.html). No, none of them played Pagan music.

Which in my odd logic leads us to:

Fiddle Questions:

There is no difference between a fiddle and a violin. They are different names for the same instrument. Fiddle comes from the German 'fythel,' violin from the Italian...well...'violin.' In the Renaissance, (somewhat arrogant) classical musicians distinguished themselves from folk musicians by using the Italian instead of the common Saxon/German name for the instrument. No, the Saxon/German fiddlers will not play The Devil Went Down To Georgia for you.

There are different playing styles used on the violin to get the sounds of a fiddle and the sounds of a violin. Generally, when playing Irish, Gypsy, Old Time Appalachian, Country or Bluegrass, one is playing 'Fiddle." When playing Classical, wedding music or Rock, one is playing 'Violin.' Opinions vary on Goth, Emo and Hungarian Oom-Pah.

No, that is not a machine gun in my fiddle case.

My favorite styles to play on fiddle are Western Swing, New Orleans Jazz/Jugband, and Old Time Appalachian. No, I will not play The Devil Went Down To Georgia for you. For that matter, no, The Devil Went Down To Georgia is, believe it or not, NOT the only song ever written with a fiddle part in it!! There are others! You just haven't heard them.

Renaissance Faire Questions (and you know who you are if you've ever asked me this):

No, Renaissance Faire acts do not all get in a train car together and ride to the next festival. We each have our own separate contracts with each individual renaissance festival; we sometimes turn up at several of the same faires in a given year because those are the faires that have hired us.

Just because I play music at a Renaissance Faire does NOT make me a "wandering minstrel." (For one thing, I play standing still). I'm more pre-minstrel.

Yes, thank you, Renaissance festival acts DO shower.

Yes, those elephants are real.

No, the Belly Dancers are not strippers. There is a strip club just down the road. It's none of your business how I know that.

No, I cannot tell you where the turkey legs are at, and no, I am not Moonie. Moonie is the guy standing right over there with a huge sign that says Moonie.

Yes, I'll be happy to sell you my CDs...which brings us to:

A Brief History of Musician Merchandising:

Do I get more money from the purchase of a physical CD or from a download? This is the question I really posted this to answer... I really get the same amount in the long run, depending on which site you download from. But I am happy with whatever I get. I just like people buying and listening to my music. It wasn't always this easy! Listen:

I began playing music professionally in the very late '70s (the dinosaur was extinct, but the mastodon was in its heyday). Then, if you wanted to have recordings or merchandise (merch) you had to be signed to a label. In the eighties I was signed to Kicking Mule Records, a small label run by the guy who had managed the band Country Joe and the Fish (they did the "Gimme An F" song in the Woodstock movie). But by the mid eighties there was a revolution in the music industry: cassette tapes!!! With this technology, any band or musician could record their music at a music studio (which then generally charged $25-$50/hr) and release it on cassette tape, which the act could sell at shows.

This meant that acts could manage their own finances. With the label system, you had to trust your label and your management. The Beatles and the Grateful Dead are both examples of bands whose label or management stole huge amounts of money from what individuals in the band were supposed to receive. (Kicking Mule never reported its European sales to its U.S. artists, and we lost a good deal of royalties). Now bands could handle their own sales, though without distribution of their product (cassettes), bands could not always reach a huge audience.

In the '90s this changed again. Enter the Compact Disc (CD). Now production became much simpler, and the sound quality better. They were also handier to cart around. And they were easier for radio stations to play than finding a song on a cassette tape! Most CD production services had a minimum order, usually 1,000, so the artist did have to shell out some bucks for both the recording and the initial order. It was not always a profitable situation, but it was a way to get your music out there.

The greatest advance in musicians controlling their own product came with the computer. By the early 2000s, you could record your own music using user-friendly recording software; you could create product on your own computer and printer; and you could market yourself on the Internet. This has become easier and easier, as services can now reproduce CDs with no minimum order, and websites offer download and sales packages.

The only problem is, getting people to listen to you in a sea of indie acts vying for attention on the Internet! This takes touring, promotion and mad marketing skills (which I sometimes don't feel I have).

So in a nutshell, I don't care where you download my music from, as long as you do! If you care about me getting the most $ from a download, get my stuff from www.kennyklein.net/download.html . But really, iTunes or Napster or CD Baby are fine as well.

From NOLA, this is Kenny Klein explaining it all.