Porco podcast with Rico and Petrus

12.23.19 at the Washington Square Hotel Stephen Petrus- Author/Curator of art exhibit Folk City Richard Barone- Musician, Event guru Bob Porco- One-track mind There's very little intention to over edit this conversation. I'm thankful for the time Richard and Stephen shared. We plan to take a few seconds out of this clip to make a promo. Turns out I'm leaving it as is, for the most part....for now. It's experimental but we discussed the vital importance that the Gerde's Folk City 60th Anniversary party must be an absolutely, positively sold out show. BUY TICKETS A link from venue: https://www.theiridium.com/Events/Gerde%E2%80%99s-Folk-City-at-60/January-24th-2020 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/ Blog post: https://folkcityatfifty.blogspot.com/2019/12/gerdes-folk-city-at-sixty-concert.html Come celebrate  The 60th Anniversary  For world renown cabaret  Gerde’s Folk City Folk City was the epicenter of the Washington Square Folk and Blues Revival It was known for being the first paying gig for a constellation of Folk and Rock legends. Gerde’s became the premiere showcase for America's most critically acclaimed singer-songwriters, Bluesmen and traditional Folk artists from around the Country. Folk City ultimately hosted acts as far and wide as Gospel matinees on Sunday in 1960 to Sonic Youth in the ‘80s.  Hear songs from the vast music catalog of Greenwich Village come to life. Our All Star house band will pay tribute to the anthems of American music history. Solo performances by Texas Songbird Carolyn Hester- Folk City’s first ever Act! Multi dimensional song craftsman James Maddock Terre Roche of the Folk Rock pioneers, The Roches Worldwide Mod Rocker Willie Nile Bandleader extraordinaire, Rolling And Rockin’ Rob Stoner The drummer is class act Konrad Meissner  Your show’s Hosts:  Richard Barone of The Bongos Original proprietor, Mike Porco’s grandson, Bob Porco

GERDE'S FOLK CITY BOOKINGS 1974 - FULL YEAR

1974

1.3.74

Fred and his 6 piece jazz rock band

1.10

Revival

Ron Turner

1.17

Revival

Arthur Miller

Vince Martin first hired by Mike Porco May 1960

1.25

Vince Martin

Elizabeth

1.31

Victoria Fleet

Toshiko

Jessie Parks

2.7

Michelangelo

Bob Cohen and Allan Corby

2.14

Life Force

The Wicked Messengers

Elephant's Memory

2.21

Elephant's memory

Arthur Miller

2.28

Elephant's Memory

The Portable Radio Circus

3.7

Neil Harbus

Mark Johnson

Bojac

Dave Peel

Mark Johnson, Folk City staple

3.14

Bojac

David Peel and the Lower East Side

3.21

The Dogs

Nick Mollé

3.28

The Wretched Refuse string band

Anne Scott

4.4

Casterbridge Union

Susan Bader and Trouble

4.11

The Braid

Sandy Kane

4.18

Jack Hardy and the Indiana Band

Morgan and Jenie

Dave Clark and the Steel Men

Jack Hardy's first headline at a place he'd MC for years after

4.25

Five Dollar Shoes

Spittune

5.2

Elizabeth

Erik Frandsen

The Dogs

5.9

Hange Range

Trouble with Susan Bader

5.16

Randy Burns

John and Carrie Carney

RRRRRrrrrandy Burns
also Art Carney's kids

5.23

Free Beer

Jack Hardy and the Indiana Band

5.30

The Deadly Nightshade

6.6

Small Planet

Susan Bader

6.13

Casterbridge Union

Irwin Finger

6.20

The Fast

Bob Horan and Ginny

6.27

Rob Rothstein and the Rebels

Galdston and Thom

AKA Rob Stoner

7.4

Raun McKinnon

Erik Frandsen

7.11

Doris Abrahams

Dai Thomas

7.18

Charlie Quasar

Pendleton Brown

7.25

Free Beer

Decatuer Jones

Who has the balls to advertise Free Beer? Mike Porco

8.1

Up for Grabs/Toshiko

A-fair Affair

8.8

Trouble

Susan Martin

Blues guitarist Susan Martin once co-owned the Gaslight

8.15

The Deadly Nightshade

8.22

The Deadly Nightshade

Shawna Harington

8.29

Revival

Mustang

9.5

Elephant's Memory

James Carney and Company

9.12

Elephant's Memory

Marion Zero Cowings

Alfonia Twins

9.19

Charlie Quasar

Will Street

9.26

Charlie Quasar

The Human Condition

10.3

Stuffy Shmitt

Leslie Fradkin

10.10

The New Fantasy Band

Jeff Gordon

10.17

Mission Mountain Wood band

Doctor Jazz

10.31

The Lotti Golden Group

Dancing Machine

11.7

The Body

Mary La Haj

11.14

Lucky

Maggie and Terre Roche

Maggie and Terre return to NYC, their first of many bookings

11.21

Banish Misfortune

Jack Hardy

11.28 and 12/2

Jake and the Family Jewels

Abe Malka (second week)

12/16

The Taurus

Carl Waxman

12.23

(coming 12/25 Danny Kalb)

Biff Rose

Trouble

Biff Rose IS trouble

12/30

Danny Kalb

Bermuda Triangle(Roger, Wendy and Sam)

Danny Kalb earned better spelling
Folk City still thriving with name acts heading into its 15th year

New Years Eve

Mt. Airy Band

(Featuring Eric Weissberg, Tom Chapin, Bob Hinkle, Russell George and Don MacDonald)

with Susan Taylor

POSITIVELY PORCO

It was 99 years ago today. My grandfather, Michéle Porco,

the eldest son of Robert and Aquelina was born in Calabria in the southern part of Italy. He ventured to America in 1933 and......(read the captions to learn more)

Worked 90 hours a week at a family club in the Bronx
where Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk played...

Bought Gerde's Restaurant in 1952 with his cousins...

Became friendly with the musicians....

He witnessed the Folk and Blues Revival as it was happening...

He even had business cards....
(Card courtesy Erik Frandsen)

He died in 1992...

In 2010, Gerde's Folk City had a
50th Anniversary concert...

In 2012, he had a bunch of shows at The Gaslight produced
in his honor....

The most recent show was a 50th also...

And then in 2013, shooting began on a documentary on his life and times
not because of his cooking but
 because...
he was "MIKE PORCO, NYC's REAL FOLK HERO"

And everybody lived happily ever after

~Porco

DAVID AMRAM- 57 years in Greenwich Village

During a lush life filled with good fortune, David has done it all. He identifies himself as "a full-time composer who is also an improviser, a conductor, a free-association scat singer," but that hardly covers the range of his work.

As a young man, jam sessions hosted in his basement apartment have included Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He's befriended and performed with nearly every Greenwich Village artist during the Folk and Blues Revival from Bob Dylan to The Roches. 

He was the first composer-in-residence for the New York Philharmonic chosen by Leonard Bernstein, himself.

He's conducted symphonies in major cities around the world and plays instruments from over 3 dozen different countries. 

David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works and two operas. He's also written many scores for Broadway theater productions.

David composed the score for such films as 'Splendor in The Grass,' 'The Manchurian Candidate' and collaborated with Jack Kerouac on the landmark 1959 documentary 'Pull My Daisy.'

  

And he's still just warming up! An endless supply of goodwill and thirst for experience has driven Amram to do what he does: Inspire audiences worldwide. 

"Listening to the AM radio in the 1930s, they had jazz and symphony music coming out of the same machine," David quips. Perhaps that explains why it was natural for him to integrate his classical training with Jazz, Folk, ethnic, Native and Latin music. This blend has led him to become a common thread between a venerable tapestry of post WWII American poets, musicians and artists. 

Some of the people David has called friends through the years are such luminaries as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Willie Nelson, Langston Hughes, Charles Mingus, Pepper Adams, Leonard Bernstein, Sir James Galway, Tito Puente, Mary Lou Williams, Joseph Papp, Arthur Miller, Miles Davis, Arturo Sandoval, Stan Getz, Pete Seeger, Elia Kazan, Odetta, Lord Buckley, Dustin Hoffman, Steve Allen, Machito, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Allen Ginsberg, Nina Simone, Gregory Corso, Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman, Hunter Thompson, Johnny Depp and Jack Kerouac.

Been there, done that. 

It's an old cliche but how can it not describe the career of David Amram?

Been there. Done that

No more room left to tell about David. Let a couple of friends sum it up:

"David Amram is a national treasure"

~Frank McCourt

"David Amram is full of terrific beatific tales!" ~Lawrence Ferlinghetti ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On December 15th, the world famous Gaslight Cafe welcomes David Amram back to MacDougal Street. He's brought music to the far corners of the globe over the past 6 decades. He's traveled a million miles only to come back home to the Village. Join us on this special event as David performs with his quartet and special guests in the historic space that is 116 MacDougal.

JUNEBUG vs. HURRICANE

Jack and Sisters Roche

I was beyond pumped up for this past weekend to roll 'round. I had secured an interview and backstage access with Lucinda Williams while she toured through NYC. We made plans to meet on Thursday night to talk about her Folk City days and on Friday, I was going to the concert where she hooked me up with VIP passes, too.  I had also gotten tickets to see Willie Nile perform up near where I live on Sunday the 13th. Originally, I had plans to take Willie Nile along with me to see Lu since I knew they've been buds for a long time, but it didn't work out that way. In the mix of all this, I decided to set up a guitar lesson with Terre Roche Friday afternoon, as well.

Jack Hardy had told me that the Roches were the best harmonic singers he had ever seen.

Terre and I worked on the basics. And timing.   

Unbeknownst to me, the death of Jack Hardy was also part of the weekend plan. Not mine, of course. But it was in the cards, like it or not. 

It's amazing to me how the highs and lows in life can be experienced at the same time. 

I met Ms. Williams at the hotel bar where she was staying. She booked an interview with someone else before me and it sounded like I was bringing up the rear. I had visions of chatting with her and being invited to dine with her afterwards. If not, I'd just ask to join in anyway...but that's just me when I'm hungry. 

Well, the conversation was as fun and easygoing as could be expected. People always say, "I don't know if I can add an awful lot" yet it's really their own opinion that I'd like to hear. A perspective gained from experience is worth hearing and she had more than I had expected. Mike Porco introduced her to Dylan at Gerde's for the first time and she called her time at Folk City a very important part of her career. "It was home to me for a good while".....that's all I needed to hear. And, of course, Jack's name came up before I knew of Jack's demise.  

The vision I had held true. I joined in the fun with her gang downstairs in the restaurant as it was way too stormy to step foot outside. 

The next day, I got wind that Jack had died. Piecing the puzzle together, I came to find out that very few people knew he was ill at all. Jack wanted it that way. It was just under a month. Enough time for Jack to line up his cherished goodbyes, I hope. Not enough time for the rest of us in this "tribe" to fully grasp. I'm very thankful that I was included in the phone chain that linked to inform and console, but very few seemed to have a good understanding of how or why so soon.  

But the show must go on! I was to watch Lucinda in concert that night and do the VIP thing afterwards. But I was sincerely melloncholy about a curmudgeon I'd only met last year....the show must go on...

As Jack would say at his Songwriter's meetings every Monday, "Shut up and sing the song."

Jack loved Mike Porco. If anyone helped keep Folk City's doors open near the end of Mike's stewardship, it was Jack Studdebaker Hardy. He dedicated his 1976 album MIRROR OF MY MADNESS to him. He emceed the Folk City Hoots for years. Somewhere along those lines, I felt connected to it all through Jack. 

At one point on Friday, I thought, "should I be the one to tell Lucinda Williams that a mutual friend has died??!" Although she and I had been in contact for a year, I just met her in person yesterday. She's high on life with this new album and she's busy gigging...I shouldn't bring bad news to the table.      

I held my tongue later that night over dinner. (Backstage is a euphemism for a Hot Spot down the street) Lucinda was full of good energy from the warm crowd and the stellar show. As I expected, Jack's name came up again more than once as we talked informally about the old days. 

Tell me about the bar scene back then, I asked. 
"Well. There was an awful lot of Jack."
Jack Daniels??
"No. An awful lot of Jack Hardy!"
We shared a snicker and I left her smiling about Jack. I think that's best. 

She also said that Frank Christian's name flashed in her mind during the show. Another friend who knows Jack. 

Willie's performance was so uplifting. His timing couldn't be any better. Really. In every sense. He plays with such zest and his voice and lyrics are powerful. It was a nice finish to a wild weekend. After the show, I finally got a chance to speak with him face-to-face. He was kind enough to do a phone interview with me last year and we, too, had been in touch since then. I only had a moment to say hi and thanks at the reunion itself, so standing with him in conversation felt like seeing an old friend. 

"You heard about Jack?" he asked. 
Yeah. I'm sorry, I said.  
"Me too."  

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

To date, I've heard more about Jack's final days. He was as brave and witty as he had come to be known right up until his final hours. In an attempt at dark humor, I told Mr. Massengill that Jack should have died years ago...he would have sold more albums. 

David said, Thats what Jack said in the hospital.