Cornstalk Festival gig, demo CD; showman and shaman

Submitted by Tom Swiss on Fri, 09/07/2012 - 01:12

This past weekend was the Cornstalk Festival at Wisteria, a campground and nature center in eastern Ohio. As I previously mentioned, I managed to get a gig there; I played two sets at the Greenman Tavern. It was sort of a comeback show; it's been about three years since I played a show of my own, though I've done sets at open mics and art gallery events like Phil Laubner's "Instant Gratification" shows.

In the weeks before the festival, I went though some old recordings and put together a demo CD, which I've titled Lo Fi, No Talent. (All the tracks are available as free downloads at that link.) I gave away a few copies at the festival, and got a most unexpected compliment afterwards when someone sent me a note saying "I listened to your album, Kenny Klein and Kellianna to ease down the road back from Wisteria. It helped to ease the shock back into the outside world; and to bring the positive energies into the outside." I've worked with Kenny and Kellianna as stage manager at FSG, and feel honored to be mentioned in the same sentence.

My sets went well. There were only a few people there for the midnight one on Friday, but Sunday's happy hour set brought more people in, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. If nothing else, this was a reminder that that's what it's all about: not technical musicianship, not clever songwriting, but helping to bring people an experience. Music and poetry are ultimately about energy (in the psychological/magical sense), not about sound or language. I suppose the same is true for visual arts, but (with a handful of exceptions) those don't reach me very strongly.

I've been thinking of something Jim Steinman -- the composer and lyricist of the immortal Meat Loaf album Bat Out Of Hell as well as a lot of other hits -- said:

This goes back to Jim Morrison and The Doors, my favorite group from the '60s. They always used the word Shaman a lot, Shaman being the tribal leader who would conduct the rituals. The sorcerer or the tribal leader and the guy who would hand out the magic mushrooms.

Or the guy who would say the right prayers. Basically it's if the Pope was cool, he'd be a Shaman, the biggest Shaman. It was always interesting to me that Meat was kind of like a Shaman, which is so close to showman. I don't know if there's any connection linguistically but a great showman to me is also a Shaman, in that tears open doorways and lets you see things behind doors that you would never see.

And creates altars so you could worship things that you're not aware of. It shows you the underbelly and that's always interested me more than anything else. What, the secret underbelly of things.

The showman is a shaman: propelled by the audience's energy, they can fly off to scout ahead in extraordinary realms, and then guide the rest of the tribe there.

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