Grammy Nominee Highlights Borderline Folk Music Club Concert

On Sunday afternoon, the Borderline Folk Music Club held a concert at the New City Volunteer Ambulance Corps New City, featuring Maggie Seligman as the opening act and recent Grammy nominee Dan Schatz as the main event, with Mara Levine providing harmonizing vocals.

“It’s music first of all that’s not very loud,” said Borderline president Sol Zeller about folk music. “You don’t have the big bands with the ‘boom, boom’ sound that’s irritating to people. […] It’s music that connects with the past. It says something to you, the music. […] The lyrics are well-thought out.”

The Borderline is a non-profit organization that presents folk music in various concerts in both Rockland and Bergen Counties. The concerts cost $15 for Borderline members and $20 for non-members, and all the money earned goes to the performers themselves.  Even the money earned from the 50/50 raffle, which totaled $12.50, went toward paying for food for the performers.

The Rockland concerts are usually held at the ambulance corps, as one of the members of Borderline, Cliff Goodman, is also on the Board of Directors for the ambulance corps and is thus able to get the space reserved for free. Other Rockland concerts have been held at the New City house of Steve Shapiro, another Borderline member.

The concert featured a mix of traditional and original songs. Seligman, for instance, played the traditional folk songs “Lone Lands of Holland,” “East Virginia,” and “Fair Thee Well,” and she filled the rest of her set with some songs of her own writing. One of these was titled “Rhetorical Waltz,” which she described as being about those times when you are unclear if you are running towards something or actually running away from it.

After Seligman’s approximately 40-minute set, Schatz took the stage. His set included songs with the guitar, the banjo, and both chromatic and diatonic autoharps. The two autoharps are tuned differently, and diatonic autoharps have some doubled-up strings, creating a fuller sound.

Several of Schatz’s numbers, like an original song called “Hands Across the Waters,” he found particularly fitting in light of recent events. “Hands Across the Waters” is about global solidarity, which he pointed out has become especially applicable after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan earlier this month.

In between his songs, Schatz shared some stories from his own life, namely his experience at the 52nd Grammy Awards in early 2010. Schatz was one of the producers on an album called “Singing Through the Hard Times” that contained various artists singing songs by folk singer Utah Phillips. The album was meant to raise money for Phillips’ medical bills, but he ultimately passed away while they were working on the album. Thus the album instead became a tribute to Phillips and his impact on folk music. The album was nominated for “Best Traditional Folk Album” at the 2010 Grammy Awards but ultimately lost to “High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project” by Loudon Wainwright III.

“In many ways I like to think of it as a nomination for folk conservation, and for the love of Utah Phillips as much as it was for us,” Schatz said before the show of his Grammy nomination. “Although it was a real privilege to produce and play on that album.”

But Schatz told a story describing how losing the Grammy was almost a blessing for him, as it spared him from what would have been an embarrassing “YouTube moment,” as he put it. After hearing at the ceremony that his album had lost the award, he looked down and realized that his fly was unzipped. If he had won the award, him going up on stage with his pants open would have been a moment he might never have lived down. He then joked that he was not sure if Utah Phillips’ spirit was responsible for saving him from public embarrassment or for pulling his fly down in the first place.

Schatz also remembered meeting comedic singer “Weird” Al Yankovic at the Awards, and said he was “not as weird” as one might think. Then he discussed how all the nominees got bronze medallions at a reception the night before the awards were announced. One of his fellow producers on the album, Kendall Morse, wore his medallion to the Post Office one day, and a woman though it was an Olympic medal.

Many of the songs from both Seligman and Schatz called for audience participation on the chorus. This was particularly the case for the finale, Utah Phillips’ “Singing Through the Hard Times,” on which Schatz was joined by both Seligman and Levine. However, Schatz reminded the audience that they must be sure to sing the lyric “working for the good times to come”, rather than “waiting for the good times to come,” as people sometimes sing it. Schatz emphasized this because Phillips, according to him, was always someone who worked for the good times rather than waiting for them to come to him.

While many of the attendees were already Borderline members, Aviva Sakolsky from Airmont was attending one of the organization’s concerts. She said she had always wanted to come but never had the time until now, and she came away greatly impressed by the music she heard. In fact she enjoyed her experience so much that she now plans on joining Borderline.

“The concert was a unique blend of incredibly beautiful voices, wonderful musicianship, and a very uplifting sound overall, and I loved it,” she said.

Borderline’s next concert will be Sunday, May 22, also at the New City Volunteer Ambulance Corps. The concert will feature the string band Stout with Mara Levine as the opening act. For more information call Sol Zeller at 845-354-4586 or email him at solz1@optonline.net.