Gerde's Folk City Doc Shall Be Released on Bob Porco's Substack June 1

🎂🎼Will You Still LOVE Folk City when it’s Sixty Four?🎼🎼🎹

The four (4) hour ‘director’s cut’ of the FOLK CITY documentary POSITIVELY PORCO AKA the GerdesFolkCityDoc will be on Substack. Free enrollment gets you free content. Subscribe for occasional exclusive content. The GerdesFolkCityDoc will be pay-what-you-wish and will be found here on June first.

You’ve already found me here at BOB PORCO’S SUBSTACK so please have a look at the following email/post and share Substack with those Folkies who are familiar with Gerde’s Folk City.

It’s only been eleven years!! 

Actually, I entered the Greenwich Village scene 15 years ago right before the Folk City 50th anniversary concert!!

The first of June 2024 will be FOLK CITY’s 64th Anniversary. From January 1960 to late May, Izzy Young ran the stage. After being closed to music for a few days, my Grandpa Mike Porco took over in June 1960.

🤌🏼 👀 I want you to read this email so that you get the main idea about what the GerdesFolkCityDoc is all about.

🤌🏼Do ya love Rock and Roll?

🤌🏼How about Folk Rock?

🤌🏼How about The Blues?

🤌🏼Americana?

🤌🏼Singer songwriter???

🎼🎼 Ever wonder where all that came from?

Try imagining a place where it was always safe and warm for the stray musician during the Folk Revival of the 1960s.

Gerde's Restaurant was an Italian eatery situated East of Washington Square and MacDougal Street yet it became the unlikely epicenter of a musical movement.

In his autobiography, Bob Dylan called Gerde's "the preeminent Folk club in America." Mike Porco, an opportunist who was never one to turn away a crowd, was instrumental in, literally, setting the stage for the music revolution of the 1960s.

What began as a book project about my grandfather became a film project. I started it 3 presidential admins ago! That’s why some consider the project unfinished; THEY’VE NEVER SEEN IT. Truth is, “it” existed on my lap top for many years. I only wanted TOP SHELF production and fanfare. I held the film closely until the ink was dry on BIG contracts. 🥂 

⏳The contract hasn’t come, but I never stopped working on making the GerdesFolkCityDoc. I called it POSITIVELY PORCO for many years and I think the story still answers to that name.

Instead of the Opera House Folkie Overthrow, ‘it’ be released digitally on Substack AS IS.

🛎🎁🎉📅JUNE FIRST. 

Between you reading this NOW and June 1st, the GerdesFolkCityDoc will be undergoing one hot and heavy LAST edit and get uploaded ‘completed’ or not. 

🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼

🌎Substack is popular with writers and content creators who have daily essays and videos to distribute to their readers and subscribers. I never gave it a thought to upload the GerdesFolkCityDoc to a writers’ subscriber page…WTF

It was always the ‘plan’ to get my final product the GerdesFolkCityDoc out to everyone through the Internet of things.

In my dreams I had visions of selling individual digital views of the GerdesFolkCityDoc.

BUT HOW???

Eleven years later, I discovered a way. 🤞🏼

I need to share it for a very affordable price since everything is digital these days. The COSTS, really, are only for Substack to incur. My 15 years of sweat equity was from a labor of love❤️

NOW

All I need for the documentary to FINALLY get out is for everyone to have-a 

✅ Clean signal 

✅ Electricity and 

✅ Substack subscription to The GerdesFolkCityDoc

It will be found here the FIRST of JUNE 2024!!!

It’s only been eleven years!! What’s the rush??? I’ve been planning this release for several weeks now and I’d love to see-a wha-comes out of it, as Mike would say.

This is folk music. The GerdesFolkCityDoc needs to be accessible to all People.

Acoustic music is supposed to be automatic for the People. EVERY musician hustles for their own benefit, but no one really over-charges, as a rule. The Show must be accessible to entire families.

I’m relying on Substack to work smoothly so people all around the world can watch 24/7/365 worldwide.💫

Countless hours have been spent on the material and I finally want to share it.

🤞🏼🕰POSITIVELY PORCO will become known as the definitive document of the rich history of Gerde’s Folk City. Using first-person testimony, archival footage and authentic recordings, the movie will demonstrate the profound affect the music emanating from the Village had on the collective consciousness of a generation.

The interviews that I conducted in 2013 and 2014 include

BRUCE LANGHORNE

JOHN P. HAMMOND

ARLO GUTHRIE

TERRE ROCHE

BARRY KORNFELD

DOMINIC CHIANESE

VINCE MARTIN

IZZY YOUNG

BOB PORCO SR.

ANGELO PORCO

GEORGE GERDES

SONNY OCHS

PEGGY DUNCAN-GARNER

LARRY ‘RATSO’ SLOMAN

ROB STONER

ROD MACDONALD

HAPPY and JANE TRAUM

ERIK FRANDSEN

ERIC ANDERSEN

JOSÉ FELICIANO

DELORES DIXON

DAVID MASSENGILL

📡I’m giving you the GerdesFolkCityDoc for a pay as you want price.

If you happen to recognize the great contributions that Gerde’s and the musicians gave to American music itself,

Pay a few bucks more. It’s up to you and 

I’m grateful for what you give..

⚖️Substack will send you all the information you need to pay and PLAY THE GERDESFOLKCITYDOC.

It will be a SUBSCRIPTION ONLY VIDEO.

I need to get the word out now!!!

🎪🎖I’ll be sharing other clips and shorts to Facebook and where ever hoping you’ll find the DOC from one direction or another. PLEASE SHARE ‘Bob Porco’s Substack’ to find the GerdesFolkCityDoc.

If you gave a shit about Folk City then, then you’ll probably take some interest in Gerde’s Folk City today.

🏆My very noble grandfather gave a lot to the scene.🏆

Please spread the word! This always has potential to blossom into more tributes.

Come on over and subscribe for other content in the future.

Pass it along to your folkie buddies. Substack will keep you in the loop through emails.

For years I kept telling people this film is coming, It’s coming, IT’S COMING‼️Now we have a date.

On June 1st you’ll have your chance!

Get Folked,

Bob

https://bobporco86.substack.com/p/gerdes-folk-city-doc-to-be-released

NEW YORK'S CENTER OF FOLK MUSIC- 60TH YEAR CELEBRATION CONCERT DETAILS

Folk City's 1st Village Voice ad featuring Carolyn Hester

Bob Dylan called Gerde’s “the preeminent Folk club in America.”

West 4th and Mercer was where America’s timeless songs were born and bred. 

Folk. Rock. Blues. Roots. 

Come celebrate ‘New York’s Center of Folk Music’

FOLK CITY's 60th year celebration of being the launch pad for thousands of Songwriters.

Link for ticket sales:

https://www.ticketweb.com/event/gerdes-folk-city-at-60-iridium-tickets/10185365?pl=iridium&REFID=iridium

The seminal club hosted the first professional gig for a constellation of American Folk and Blues acts during the Washington Square Revival of the 1960s.

At the center of the action was Mike Porco, the enigmatic restauranteur and champion of struggling talent.

Gerde's Restaurant was an Italian eatery situated ‘off the beaten path’ East of Washington Square and MacDougal Street yet it became the unlikely epicenter of a musical movement.

Suze Rotolo, said that Gerde's was where "the cross-fertilization of different styles and musical eras forged important links in the chain of American musical history."

PERFORMING at The Iridium
January 24, 2020

Carolyn Hester
Rob Stoner
Willie Nile
James Maddock
Terre Roche
Richard Barone
Paul Metsa

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CAROLYN HESTER

Carolyn Hester's first album was produced by Norman Petty in 1957. She made her second album for Tradition Records, run by the Clancy Brothers, in 1960. 

Hester was one of many young Greenwich Village singers who rode the crest of the 1960s folk music wave, helping launch Gerde's Folk City in 1960. 

According to Don Heckman of the Los Angeles Times, Hester was "one of the originals—one of the small but determined gang of ragtag, early-'60s folk singers who cruised the coffee shops and campuses, from Harvard Yard to Bleecker Street, convinced that their music could help change the world." Hester, dubbed "The Texas Songbird," was politically active, spearheading the controversial boycott of the television program Hootenanny when Pete Seeger was blacklisted from it.

John H. Hammond signed Hester to Columbia Records in 1960. In 1961, Hester met Bob Dylan and invited him to play on her third album, her first on the Columbia label. Hammond, her producer, quickly signed Dylan to the label. Hester turned down the opportunity to join a folk trio with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey. With Mary Travers, the trio found stardom as Peter, Paul, & Mary. Hester collaborated with Bill Lee and Bruce Langhorne, but she concentrated exclusively on traditional material.

In the 1980s she returned to recording and touring. She and Nanci Griffith performed Bob Dylan's "Boots of Spanish Leather" at Dylan's Thirtieth Anniversary Tribute Concert at Madison Square Garden in 1992.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ROB STONER

Rob Stoner started his career backing up various artists in New York City. His work can be heard on Don McLean's classic "American Pie".

In 1973 he began a solo career that would eventually land him a contract with Epic Records in Nashville and later with MCA Records who released a critically acclaimed solo album, Patriotic Duty, in 1980. Stoner also recorded an album of his original songs for Sun Records in the early 1980s.

In the summer of 1975 he was hired as bandleader, opening act and bass player in Bob Dylan's band. He played with Dylan during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour and on the Far East leg of Dylan's 1978 World Tour. His singing and playing is featured on many Bob Dylan recordings.

After quitting touring life with Dylan, he resumed his solo career. He is still active and giving guitar lessons in Rockland County, New York. He has played with such diverse artists as Chris Spedding, Link Wray, Robert Gordon, Chuck Berry, and Joni Mitchell.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TERRE ROCHE

The Roches (Maggie, Terre, and Suzzy Roche) were a vocal group of three songwriting Irish-American sisters from Park Ridge, New Jersey, United States, known for their "unusual" and "rich" harmonies, quirky lyrics, and casually comedic stage performances.

The Roches were active as performers and recording artists from the mid-1970s through 2017, at various times performing as a trio and in pairs.

In the late 1960s, eldest sister Maggie (October 26, 1951 – January 21, 2017) and middle sister Terre (pronounced "Terry", born April 10, 1953) dropped out of school to tour as a duo. Maggie wrote most of the songs, with Terre contributing to a few. The sisters got a break when Paul Simon brought them in as backup singers on his 1973 album There Goes Rhymin' Simon.They got his assistance (along with an appearance by The Oak Ridge Boys) on their only album as a duo, Seductive Reasoning (1975).

Reviewing Seductive Reasoning in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau said, "Female singing duos must function as mutual support groups; last time a women's sensibility this assured, relaxed, and reflective made it to vinyl was Joy of Cooking. These folkies manque are a little flat here, a little arch there, but in general the shoe fits; no ideological feminism, but plenty of consciousness."

Later in the 1970s youngest sister Suzzy (rhymes with "fuzzy", born September 29, 1956) joined the group to form The Roches trio.

Around this time, they parlayed bartending jobs at famous Greenwich Village folk venue Gerde's Folk City into stage appearances, an experience they commemorated in their song, "Face Down at Folk City" (from Another World, 1985). It was here that they met many of their future singing and songwriting collaborators. Terre was now writing songs as well, and by the time of their first album as a trio, The Roches (1979), Suzzy had also begun writing. Robert Fripp produced the album. Maggie's "The Married Men" from this album was eventually to become the biggest hit of the songwriting trio — not for them, but for Phoebe Snow. After Snow and Linda Ronstadt performed the song in a duet on Saturday Night Live, the Roches were invited themselves to perform on the show a few months later in 1979 at the behest of Paul Simon. They did two songs, both unreleased at the time, "Bobby's Song" and "The Hallelujah Chorus".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WILLIE NILE

Nile established residency at Kenny's Castaways, a Greenwich Village club, where he was discovered by New York Times music critic Robert Palmer who described Nile as "the most gifted songwriter to emerge from the New York folk scene in some while". This led to a meeting with Clive Davis and a record deal with Arista Records. He went into the studio with a band that included Jay Dee Daugherty from the Patti Smith Group.

Following the release of his debut album, Willie Nile, he joined The Who's 1980 summer tour.

Nile was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

In the fall of 2003, Nile was invited to share the stage at three concerts with the E Street Band, including the two final Giants Stadium shows as well as the two last shows of that particular tour at Shea Stadium.

In 2006, Nile released Streets of New York, which some may consider to be his best work to date, due to its production and songwriting. Former Time magazine music critic and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Jay Cocks writes of Streets of New York, "The tunes he writes and plays with such blowtorch vibrancy get the myth and magic and danger and sadness and love in this town--of this town--truer, and righter, than anything I've heard since Dion. This record is a head-twister and heart-wrencher. It's rock and roll at its best. It's New York at its best. And there's nothing better than that."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

JAMES MADDOCK

James Maddock, though British, is largely associated with the Americana music style and has performed with Bruce Springsteen. Maddock has since become a solo artist with several albums, including Sunrise on Avenue C (2009) which won the 2010/11 NY Music Award for 'Best Americana Album', and is currently a resident artist at Rockwood Music Hall in New York City.

A Rock and Roll lifer, James Maddock has been carving his unique path since the 1980s, when the British-born singer/songwriter kicked off his career with a raw, soulful voice, a storyteller's sense of narrative and the ability to blur the lines between folk, classic pop, and rock. 

Since those early days in London, he's ridden the wave of a music industry that's ebbed, flowed, peaked, and crashed. Maddock has stayed afloat throughout the entire ride, enjoying a brush with commercial success during the late 1990s before transforming himself into an independent solo artist during the decades that followed. Bruce Springsteen is a fan. So is David Letterman. Listening to Maddock's newest record, Insanity vs Humanity, it's easy to see the appeal.

Insanity vs Humanity returns Maddock to his politically-charged roots, bringing him full circle after a three-decade career. Recorded in the wake of the American election that sent Donald Trump to the White House, the new album finds Maddock — a New York City resident since the early 2000s — rallying against capitalism, dictators, and the suppression of equal rights. His songs have a soulful brand of rock & roll that nods to Neil Young, Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison, Bruce Hornsby, and Bill Withers. Maddock's lyrics have plenty of guitar firepower and piano punch. Gluing the mix together is his voice: a stunning instrument that's grown warm and weathered since his days in the U.K., without losing its poignancy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PAUL METSA

Paul Metsa is a legendary musician and songwriter from Minnesota. Born on the Iron Range, he has been based in Minneapolis since 1978.

He has received seven Minnesota Music Awards and has played more than five thousand gigs, including forays to Iceland and Siberia.

“Although often overshadowed by Soul Asylum and the Replacements, Metsa has long been at the forefront of the Twin Cities Music Scene.”

— SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

“Metsa is a Minneapolis songwriter who doesn’t shy away from rocking out, who has a sharp ear for language, and who crafts melodies that express jazzy freedom as well as folk purity.”

— BOSTON PHOENIX

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RICHARD BARONE

Richard Barone is an American rock musician who first gained attention as frontman for the Bongos. He works as a songwriter, arranger, author, director, and record producer, releases albums as a solo artist, tours, and has created concert events at Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl, SXSW, and New York's Central Park. He serves on the Board of Governors for The Recording Academy (Grammys), the Board of Advisors for Anthology Film Archives, and is affiliated with the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

In March 2018, he began a monthly Village Nights salon series at the historic Washington Square Hotel in New York City. In April it was announced that Barone would host and curate Music + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s at City Parks Foundation's SummerStage in Central Park on August 12, 2018. Performers included Jesse Colin Young, Melanie, José Feliciano, Maria Muldaur, John Sebastian, and a diverse roster of artists. 

Link for ticket sales:

https://www.ticketweb.com/event/gerdes-folk-city-at-60-iridium-tickets/10185365?pl=iridium&REFID=iridium

Facebook event page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/2411622555754753/