On the Air Pt. 1 - Radio Promotion with Art Menius

RFU39 - Art Menius
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[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to [00:00:30] ReFolkUs. Today our guest is Art Menius. Art operates Art Menius Radio and hosts The Revolution Starts Now on WHUP Hillsboro, North Carolina. Beginning in 1983 on the crew of fire on the mountain on the Nashville network. He has produced concerts, festivals, and conferences, and worked as a fundraiser, marketing director, MC stage manager, writer, and nonprofit executive, Art was the first executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association from 1985 to [00:01:00] 1990. He served as Folk Alliance International's initial president in 1990 and manager from 1991 to 1996 and Merlefest associate director from 1997 to 2007.

[00:01:13] Rosalyn: Menius then served as executive director of the Apple shop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and the art center in Carrboro, North Carolina before starting art Menius radio in January, 2015. He's published several hundred music reviews, features, and previews over 40 years. He has hosted radio [00:01:30] shows on four stations since 2007, and 2007, he received IBMA's Distinguished Achievement Award and was inducted into the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame, whose trustees he now chairs. Art is married to bluegrass DJ and photographer Becky Johnson, and the folk star Dara Williams has called him a true giant of American folk music.

[00:01:49] Rosalyn: Please welcome Art Menius. How are you doing, Art?

[00:01:58] Art: I'm doing well, [00:02:00] thanks, Roslyn. I hope you are.

[00:02:01] Rosalyn: I am. It's such a pleasure to talk to you. We have the pleasure of serving on the same board of directors over at Folk Alliance International right now. It's been a really great way to get to know you.

[00:02:11] Art: we've got a very good board.

[00:02:16] Rosalyn: you know, I'm not going to say I started this entire podcast, so I'd get to talk to you one on one for an hour, but it's certainly been something that I've been looking forward to, to get to do because, I feel like you have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of folk and, certainly the [00:02:30] folk scene in America.

[00:02:32] Rosalyn: But I see you wearing your Mariposa Folk Festival shirt right now. I'm wondering if we can start off. What's your relationship like with Canada? Have you, have you been up many times? Have you worked with Canadian artists often? Do you get up here?

[00:02:46] Art: I have not gotten up there. You know, when I was working for Folk Alliance, I got to go to Canada regularly and produce the Folk Alliance Conference in Calgary in 1992, which was the first Folk [00:03:00] Alliance Conference north of the border.

[00:03:02] Art: And in those days, we were very truly and very intentionally a joint U. S. was our whole, uh, things to the point where we accepted Canadian dollars as if they were U. S. dollars to show our cross border equity and had to have a banking account in Toronto,

[00:03:22] Art: Canadian lawyer and stuff. And back in those days, The original plan was that a parallel organization would [00:03:30] incorporated in Canada, and we'd have the two organizations each incorporated in their home countries, but then working together as a true alliance, a true partnership.

[00:03:40] Art: But, I loved getting up into the Canadian scene, seeing a couple of the Canadian festivals, making a lot of really good friends who are still friends, 30 years later. It's a beautiful scene. And if it were a slightly warmer country, it'd be very tempting to me.

[00:03:58] Rosalyn: know, we have our [00:04:00] moments, we have our spots.

[00:04:01] Art: Yeah, I remember standing on a balmy July day up on Prince Edward Island and Asked the person I was talking to what caused those mounds and he said the ice pushed them up last winter. Oh yes, reality.

[00:04:16] Rosalyn: yeah, yeah. A little chillier, I think, across the board than North Carolina. your radio CV is, extensive. What draws you to that medium? What got you interested in radio and what, and what keeps you working in that, [00:04:30] scene?

[00:04:30] Art: Yeah, we go all the way back to childhood where I loved the radio and in fact the DJ I listened to as a kid ended up on the same station that me and my wife Becky Johnson are on and actually he followed my wife. until he passed away a year and a half ago, but it was a real thrill to have the DJ from childhood be my colleague on a station well into the 21st century, so I come from that glorious time in Radio and [00:05:00] commercial radio is pretty close to free form, and the charts were all localized, and a song could be a hit in Raleigh, North Carolina that nobody in Washington, DC had ever heard. Things have gotten much more nationalized than that in commercial radio anymore, where that doesn't happen. And then, when I was in high school, FM radio, the owners of those signals decided they should try to monetize those FM radio licenses they bought back in [00:05:30] 1947 and had been sitting on for 25 years.

[00:05:33] Art: A station owner in Raleigh, North Carolina hired A kid, 19 years old, named Lee Abrams, to create a new radio format to essentially drive my mentor Charlie Brown and his station on AM radio, off the air, and they pretty well exceed Lee Rabems created album oriented rock and by December of my senior year in high school, December of 72, everybody was talking about, have you heard 94.7 FM? They play like whole Neil Young songs. Like I heard Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere all the way through on the radio last night, man. And they play like Hendrix and Cream and it's really cool. And so that's just more fascination with radio. And then when I was in college, I had a friend named Chris Stamey who had a band called the DBs that had hits in England and not in the States.

[00:06:22] Art: But I see Chris walking down the street one day with a whole stack of 45. Wow, man, you spent a lot of money on [00:06:30] 45s. Then I said, wow, man, all of these are by your own band. So you can just get records made up on your own and put them out there and send them to radio and sell them at shows. So that was a big eye opener.

[00:06:42] Art: And I fell in that whole Chapel Hill, Athens, Georgia. power pop scene of R. E. M. and the D. B. s and Pylon and the Brains and folks like that. And that was where I was 45 years ago, So the radio is just a big part of my life. A lot of my [00:07:00] friends were DJing on the campus station at that time, and I'd go as a guest on their shows.

[00:07:05] Art: Didn't become something professional until 1984. when we sold a live performance show called the Liberty Flyer to 113 mostly small commercial stations around the U. S. and had John Hartford and Gamble Rogers as the two voices of the show and have different artists on every week and did that for a few months.

[00:07:28] Art: This was back in the days where you had to [00:07:30] have vinyl albums of your radio show pressed up and then mailed out. It was a lot less convenient than nowadays, but, more fun in a certain way, too, but all through IBMA and Folk Alliance and Merlefest, I had to work very closely with radio.

[00:07:47] Art: A lot of the chassis of promoting Merlefest was direct mail and radio, giving away thousands of tickets on hundreds of radio stations back in the day. And then when My presenting [00:08:00] career came to an end in 2014. I had to figure out a new way to make a living. So I was suddenly 59 and no longer a non profit executive director.

[00:08:09] Art: Promoting records to radio was something I knew how to do. It was something where there was a need, because there were essentially just two folk radio promoters in North America. At that point, so I jumped in. the last five or six years, it's really taken off for me. And now I'm doing all the work I possibly could do.

[00:08:29] Rosalyn: I'm wondering if you [00:08:30] can describe that work to folks. I think that for like, especially up and coming, emerging artists certainly folks are aware. I've like digital distribution through to the streaming platforms but I might not be aware of what goes into distribution to radio and what a radio promoter radio tracker those types of folks do.

[00:08:51] Rosalyn: So can you explain a bit about what that job is and what it entails?

[00:08:55] Art: Sure. And it is a bit old timey and folk radio. We're an area where [00:09:00] still 40 percent of the radio programmers insist on receiving CDs. So, you know, Celtic. Blues, classical, jazz, and folk. we're the formats that still hang on to those compact discs where the rest of the world has moved on to doing almost entirely digital.

[00:09:18] Art: And then folk radio, I'm dealing with individual programmers. I'm not dealing a whole lot with music directors or music committees, like the people who promote to AAA or Americana, the closest related formats play by commercial radio rules and you deal with infrastructure, whereas I'm dealing with individual people.

[00:09:39] Art: And if those individuals like a song, they can put it on the radio without getting any committee to sign off on it, which I absolutely love. It's like doing radio 50, 60 years ago, but the process is for a standard cd, I'll mail out about 150 CDs. I have around 1,250 [00:10:00] email contacts that I send the digital distribution and the hype to both having folks download from my system and make it available.

[00:10:08] Art: And, Platforms like Airplay Direct and Music Meeting Directory. And then for my Canadian clients, I have them use, Earshot's distribution system to Canadian programmers in pretty much all formats. So that's a very handy tool that only Canadians can use. So it is trying to cover almost every aspect of [00:10:30] how you can get the music to these DJs, because all folk DJs expect the music to be served up to them the way they want it, not the way the record label or the artist or the promoter wants to serve it up to them.

[00:10:43] Rosalyn: yeah, so it seems like it's a lot about building personal relationships with, each person.

[00:10:48] Art: That's what makes folks beautiful. It's still very much a personal relationship, small town, old timey way of approaching the world. I think it's a beautiful value, an actual something [00:11:00] that has value beyond just their music community is getting back to more human, one on one ways of doing things.

[00:11:07] Art: I remember at a time when we tolerated people's personal quirks and maintained friendships with folks far across the political from us because they were our friends and neighbors.

[00:11:19] Rosalyn: Yeah, it's beautiful that the ethos of folk is music for the people and that is reflected in and reflected in, in radio and in that corner of the industry. I'm [00:11:30] wondering so once you've sent out your 150 CDs and you've gone through some digital distribution to the radio as well. How do you figure out if people like it? Or how do you figure out if people want to play the music on, on their station?

[00:11:44] Art: About how they reported to the Folk International Alliance charts, to the NAC Folk charts, some directly email me. I go to service called Spinatron that lets me search playlists for hundreds of mostly non [00:12:00] commercial stations, mostly smaller stations. AirplayDirectReport2 downloads it, so I go site to site for about two dozen really important things.

[00:12:09] Art: radio stations in the U. S. and Canada. So there are about a half dozen different ways I pull that data down and see who's playing it and where and how much. And then send those reports off to the artist.

[00:12:22] Rosalyn: Is that the same as radio tracking?

[00:12:24] Art: That is tracking, yes.

[00:12:26] Art: Done at a very granular level, which fits [00:12:30] folk at the more commercial level, like Americana and AAA. And they have services you can buy the data off of. But I have to scrape it up for myself.

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[00:12:40] Rosalyn: With the state of folk radio these days, as you mentioned, you're not so much dealing with like a station that plays folk, you're finding individuals and finding, folks that are programming folk.

[00:12:49] Rosalyn: how do you start building those relationships? Do you have relationships with like the campus radio folks? how do you find the folk shows and the folk

[00:12:58] Art: Yeah, I've been [00:13:00] maintaining my list of folk radio shows since August of 1984 when we started that Liberty Flyer radio show and needed a database stations to try and sell it to and it's grown from there and it's, it's been IVMA's radio list, it's been Folk Alliance International's radio list, from there.

[00:13:19] Art: It's grown from there. 40 years coming up in a couple of months of building, maintaining that list every day. And I mean, every week I find new folk shows and fortunately not [00:13:30] quite that often have to delete shows that are no longer happening. But it's a, task just to keep up with what's happening because in community radio, which is where the majority of the folk shows are nowadays, it's.

[00:13:43] Art: National Public Radio in the U. S. has become so talk dominated in the last 20 years, that there's still some fine stations like WUNC and WNCW here in North Carolina that are NPR stations that play music and a lot of folk music. But [00:14:00] so many are on small stations and people come and go and you have to keep up with individual programmers that you discover doing a search for playlists.

[00:14:09] Art: Find out somebody you never heard of played an artist you were promoting and so there goes another entry into the database, another email to be serviced, and if they're big enough somebody else to mail CDs to.

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[00:14:23] [00:14:30] [00:15:00]

[00:15:08] Rosalyn: Do you notice Any difference now that a lot of radio is online as well, right? It's not just terrestrial. A lot of folks are broadcasting online. Has that, you know, improved the reach of some stations? Have you seen any kind of success stories with, with things being available online?

[00:15:28] Art: [00:15:30] Any community radio station online is essential because most of us have pretty low terrestrial power. Like WHUP, where Becky Johnson and I are, is only 100 watts over the air. So for people who are living further than 10 miles from the transmitter, over the internet is how you're going to listen to it.

[00:15:51] Art: And I can't hear it out in the car, but I actually listen online to my own radio station, because that's a much better signal than trying to pick [00:16:00] up that 100 watts. So, for most folk shows, it is essential that they get heard online, and it's important even for bigger radio stations to have 100, 000 watts.

[00:16:12] Art: signals. And interestingly, my campus radio station from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, WXYC, was the very first radio station to stream, starting way back at 1993, when a friend of mine on faculty named Paul Jones just [00:16:30] wanted to figure out if you could stream a radio signal online and people could listen to it.

[00:16:35] Art: So he invented that technology. And now it's taken off to where I'm sure a vast amount of listening goes on online today. You know, I listen online in my car too using an app called TuneIn Radio that has hundreds of radio stations in the U. S. and Canada.

[00:16:52] Rosalyn: I listen to KRVS from Lafayette on TuneIn and, it's so regional but sometimes I forget cause I [00:17:00] listen so often, the news will come on and I'll, I'll get shocked by something and like, oh wait, that's, that's, yeah,

[00:17:07] Art: Yes. Why are they giving the weather report in Fahrenheit?

[00:17:10] Rosalyn: exactly.

[00:17:11] Rosalyn: The weather report in Fahrenheit, you know, it's a pretty different climate than up here. But I, I, I do find that such a fascinating and I feel so lucky that we have that tool,

[00:17:21] Art: It's a wonderful thing, and I can listen to people show far away and surprise them with a live contemporaneous [00:17:30] thank you email.

[00:17:31] Rosalyn: Yeah, that's something that's also so interesting about the different formats now of of radio is like that live versus pre recorded format, right? Like I feel like we're getting a lot less of the live, I mean, I just mentioned the KRVS. I listen to that one all the time and Saturday it's all live and it's so fun because there's that interaction, right?

[00:17:53] Rosalyn: People are calling in, they're talking and it's, you know, they're giving shout outs during the songs and it's, yeah, it's such a, [00:18:00] it's exciting to listen to. why do you think that that's, less popular now of a format to do those shows,

[00:18:07] Art: I think it's almost entirely driven by the pandemic when suddenly we couldn't go into the station anymore. We started doing our shows from home and there's a heck of a lot of advantages just including not having to commute to the station. you know, from, I was doing a one hour show, still doing a one hour show and it was on a station that took 40 minutes to drive to.

[00:18:29] Art: That [00:18:30] just wasn't very practical. Now it'd only be 15 minutes. So I wanted to do it live at the studio, but I've gotten so used to the convenience of doing it at home, whatever the control I have over producing and I never got relevant phone calls anyway.

[00:18:45] Rosalyn: Yeah, I feel like maybe it's easier for people to do like a home setup for recording in, in a kind of higher quality these days.

[00:18:52] Art: Yeah. And I try to keep it pretty live. I'll leave mistakes that I don't mean anything in there.

[00:18:57] Art: Canadian DJs have so much [00:19:00] freedom in a certain way compared to us. Cause if we're streaming, we're highly regulated because we can't play more than four songs by the same artist in a two hour span in the

[00:19:12] Art: States

[00:19:13] Art: and we can't Announce anything in advance. Mike Regan Streif publishing his playlist a week before the show would be highly illegal this side of the border.

[00:19:22] Rosalyn: Really? why is there

[00:19:24] Rosalyn: That difference?

[00:19:25] Art: It's all set up from 1998 fears by people [00:19:30] in Congress with Very little technical expertise in the area, being told that, well, everybody would just record albums off the radio and nobody would buy any music anymore, they would just listen to their cassette tapes that they make off the radio if they knew they could record a certain song or album at a certain time.

[00:19:48] Rosalyn: Hmm. I mean, we can't get that updated.

[00:19:51] Art: can't say bad words except between 10 PM and 4 AM.

[00:19:55] Rosalyn: was that spearheaded by like AFM or, the major labels who was

[00:19:59] Art: Tipper [00:20:00] Gore, the wife of the vice president in the 1990s, was the big advocate for cleaning up language.

[00:20:07] Rosalyn: what about the idea of, taping an album or tape, you know, we all did it at one point if we're over a certain age, you know, sat there, you know, waiting for the song that we love to come on to,

[00:20:17] Rosalyn: make our bootlegs. But I would think that that is, you know, rather far in the past.

[00:20:22]

[00:20:22] Art: it's totally irrelevant in the day where anybody with a streaming service can hear about anything.

[00:20:27] Rosalyn: yeah. And especially the role [00:20:30] that could have in marketing, right? it's pretty exciting to get your music played on the radio. One would think that if you had the agency to be able to tell the artists that their song was getting played and release your playlist so that folks could tune in that would be a pretty handy marketing tool.

[00:20:44] Art: Yeah, I think it never comes up as an issue because who is going to complain? Oh, you played my album too much. You played too many of my songs. As the copyright holder, I need to take action against you for playing so much of my music.

[00:20:58] Rosalyn: Yeah, well, that kind of helps [00:21:00] me segue into the role that radio has in getting artists paid, you know, in Canada, we can get royalty payments for airplay. And so I, I'm, it kind of surprises me that we've let it lag a bit as much as we have as artists because, for folks that are ditching the radio format to go stream, well, that means that you're not getting any payments, you know, in from, going to listen to your music Yeah, I'm wondering if you, still feel like in terms of like artists getting paid and seeing [00:21:30] some, some royalty revenue come in, do you still see, radio playing a, a vital role in that?

[00:21:35] Art: Well, I mean, with radio play, one play is worth more than twice as much, sometimes three times as much, as on any of the streaming services. Of course, the counting isn't nearly as good on radio as it is with an online service and the reporting. And of course, a lot in the States is still sampled rather than the actual play.

[00:21:56] Art: It's creating algorithms that model the play and, And it's [00:22:00] definitely set up down here to favor Taylor Swift over Sheen Hannigan. It's not an equitable system. But radio still does pay better when you get the plays, and the plays get counted, but mean, the biggest hit still is the loss in mechanicals, more than the loss in airplay royalties, because mechanicals just Paid so much more than streaming or airplay does, where you're getting up at 99 cents a song instead of 8 cents or 3 cents.

[00:22:28] Rosalyn: do you see it [00:22:30] coming back around? Do you see any renaissance insight for radio becoming more popular.

[00:22:36] Art: That's a really good question for which I can't offer a definitive answer, but I don't think radio's going away. I think people talking to other people, hearing people talk, having that kind of interaction, hearing music that other folks have curated for you, actual people curated rather than being curated by algorithm.

[00:22:59] Art: It's still a [00:23:00] vital service. It's still a connection to our core humanity, to what makes us homo sapiens. So I don't see radio disappearing anytime soon and folks have been talking about radio disappearance since around 1952 and we're still here, and certainly community radio is thriving.

[00:23:23] Art: I think there might be more doubts about how long commercial radio can maintain [00:23:30] its viability. But there still seems to be plenty of ads when I do get away from the left hand end of the dial here. I always end up over on the left in some way. But commercial radio stations still seem to be selling ads.

[00:23:44] Art: And related formats like Americana still seem To be thriving and still have an audience for folks who want to hear something other than the top 40 Pop or country you know, even the Americana stations are just adding one or two new [00:24:00] songs a week We're on my little one hour show.

[00:24:02] Art: I'm adding 11 songs tomorrow that I haven't played before.

[00:24:06] Rosalyn: That's great. And you know, this podcast also has a radio format so we publish the interviews, but then we you know, we add in new releases by folks from our community. And it's been really. neat to see how excited folks are about, just new folk shows popping up, you know, and, and, and places that will play their music.

[00:24:26] Rosalyn: And I'm wondering if you can maybe give some insights into like how [00:24:30] somebody who wants to get started, In radio, someone who want, you know, is interested in dipping their toe in, how do you get started?

[00:24:37] Art: The best places to learn are on the community stations. There's a great world of campus stations in Canada that have pretty open programming. And in the states, since we started low power community stations 20 years ago, The community radios where most of the people who used to have folk shows on [00:25:00] NPR affiliates at 50 and a hundred thousand Watts are now in the lower power world of community stations, but they exist.

[00:25:08] Art: to empower community members to become radio broadcasters. So training and providing space on the dial is exactly their mission. So go to a community or campus station near you go to their website, find out how you make a show promote a proposal or how you can apply to be trained as a DJ.

[00:25:29] Rosalyn: [00:25:30] And do you have any tips for, let's say people get their foot in the door. Yeah, do you have any, general, tips for how to create a show that's long lasting or impactful?

[00:25:41] Art: think you got to go with a show that You want to hear at least that's how I think about things. Make a show that makes sense to you. That's manageable. A part of the fly my show The Revolution Starts Now is all political songs because I also need some filter, because I get sent 700 [00:26:00] songs a week.

[00:26:01] Art: By limiting it to political content, that filters out several hundred of those, and I actually have a manageable amount of songs to go through. Do something that's meaningful to you that you want to share to the community, because it is about sharing music and getting stuff out there for people to hear that they might not hear in any other place.

[00:26:22] Art: I think the answer is follow your heart and ears and create a format that plays the music you love best that you're [00:26:30] most comfortable playing, and then get the word out Out to it by reporting to charts by sending playlists to people like myself. And just keep using social media. Get the word out to the industry so you get serviced and to the public so you get listeners.

[00:26:46] Rosalyn: And then for artists and, Primarily, you know, DIY artists that maybe aren't in a position to like hire someone to help them out. If they're trying to go it alone, to get some radio play, how do you suggest that artists go about that without, [00:27:00] you know, that team support?

[00:27:01] Art: I have a free download of an ebook on artmeniusradio. com. It's a couple of dozen pages about how exactly to do that, how to build up your list to radio stations, how to handle the digital distribution and the physical mailing of CDs. Pretty much What I've learned over this last decade of doing it in a little handbook I update about every six months.

[00:27:25] Art: So I think the quickest answer is to go to Artmeniusradio.com and [00:27:30] download my ebook on how to promote to folk radio.

[00:27:33] Art: At folk radio, you still can do it yourself, though it gets harder and harder, but you know, with Americana or non com or AAA, you can't do it yourself anymore. It's become too institutionalized where you have to go through a promoter who works those formats to get any consideration at all.

[00:27:52] Rosalyn: to hear that Indie folks still have a chance there and also really generous of you to put that together and to share that. And we'll, we'll absolutely [00:28:00] link to that in our notes.

[00:28:01] Art: folks can still do it who are willing to do the work, and it is a lot of work to get it out there as an independent artist, because I have so much infrastructure built in that the artist would have to create for themselves, but those who really go after it and put in the time, like, Kirsten Granger and True North, a couple of years ago, did just as well as any promoter would, but those five people worked their tails off doing it.

[00:28:27] Art: Writing personalized notes on every [00:28:30] CD, everybody in the band having contacts they were supposed to follow up with. They figured out how to do it, but They definitely earned all that airplay.

[00:28:40] Rosalyn: That's a lot. But you know, hopefully there's a payoff there and folks saw some success, coming from, doing that. What about, does radio still have a role to play in the promotion of, of live music?

[00:28:53] Rosalyn: You know, you'd mentioned giving away tickets and, and how does that work?

[00:28:56] Art: I think concert promotion is, still where [00:29:00] radio is extremely strong, and it's been my belief for several years that radio, at least folk radio, is better at selling tickets to live events than we are selling recordings, since people don't buy recordings nearly at the volume they once did. But, so we're Probably more sending folks to listen to streams than we are sending folks to buy downloads or hardcopy, buy concert tickets. Radio definitely has a power because we are the direct [00:29:30] medium to local audiences and local audiences are who go to shows when we do interviews, we give a chance for the listeners get to know the artist a little bit better than they would otherwise.

[00:29:43] Art: Again, getting back to that personal high tech, high touch. Concept that we could do. So, yeah, we could sell concert tickets. There's no doubt about that.

[00:29:53] Rosalyn: So then for folks who are, promoting live show or a tour do you have like a recommended way to reach [00:30:00] out or a recommended timeline of like when people should be reaching out to local radio where they're going to be performing?

[00:30:06] Art: I think at least a couple of months ahead of time because many of us do record in advance and are planning shows out. Maybe not as far as the late Bob Sherman from New York City, who recorded typically five to six months in advance of the broadcast date. But still we have to schedule and work in interviews So it's the sooner the better to get on [00:30:30] somebody's calendar And you can go to the Folk DJ listserv and you can find the link if you go to FolkRadio.org, which is the Folk Alliance's radio site, Folk Radio.org. Get their contact info off the list and write directly with a link to download your album or to stream your album and the details about the show. And I mean include the details, sort of like the date, who the presenter is, at what time the show [00:31:00] is.

[00:31:00] Art: Not just coming to your area soon, which is a bit too vague, but people actually forget those details of pitching Interviews. We get the music out there. The info about the show say a blurb would be wonderful. If you do have time to do an interview, we love doing interviews. So let's set that up. But get it out there ahead of time and not at the last minute so many folks Every week send stuff just too late, like send in Father's Day [00:31:30] stuff to me now instead of in mid May.

[00:31:32] Art: Like it's Mother's Day, it's time to send out your Father's Day solicitations.

[00:31:36] Rosalyn: That's great advice, thanks Art. So before we wrap up, I'm going to ask you maybe the most difficult or the easiest question. You've done so much in folk music and served this community for so long. What does folk mean to you or what draws you to folk, and this folk community.

[00:31:57] Art: Oh, this folk community is home. [00:32:00] The folk community is that place when I go there, they have to take me in more than anywhere else I've worked, and I've always been looking for a home and folk is home. These Folk Alliance conferences and events like FMO are so natural to me. And I'm so happy to be amongst the community in person talking to people.

[00:32:22] Art: They're the small towns I'd really like to live in. And I live in a really cool small town with lots of [00:32:30] artists and writers and creative people here. So many of them are working in fields other than folk music, and it's so wonderful when you go to a place where people talk your language, where people understand where you're coming from, where you could be.

[00:32:45] Art: fast friends in a few minutes because you have so many shared Connections both in interest and in people.

[00:32:52] Rosalyn: Well, thank you so much, Art. I feel like I could truly talk to you all day. It's been such a treat to get to chat with you, and I really [00:33:00] appreciate it.

[00:33:00] Art: Well, thanks so much for doing this Rosalyn. I really enjoyed it It's a great chance to talk to my folks in Canada I certainly have a lot of friends and a good deal of clients in Canada, and I'll be glad to be back

[00:33:14] Art: up

[00:33:15] Rosalyn: Yeah, we, uh, look forward to seeing you soon. Take care.

[00:33:18] Art: Thanks so much Rosalyn

Credits
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[00:33:26] Rosalyn: That's all for this episode, friends. The ReFolkUs Podcast is brought [00:33:30] to you by Folk Music Ontario. Find out more by heading to folkmusicontario.org/refolkus. That's R-E-F-O-L-K-U-S. The podcast is produced by Kayla Nezon and Rosalyn Dennett and mixed by Jordan Moore at The Pod Cabin. The opening theme is by King Cardiac, and the artwork is by Jaymie Karn.