Tim Harrison
45 Years in Folk Music
Note: This is a work in progress, much of it cribbed from a point-form C.V. Expansion of those points, together with anecdotes regarding people, places and events, will be added as time permits.
A deeper interest evolved when my older brother David and I formed a folk trio with a friend. David wrote many of the songs, while my forte was playing the guitar and harmony singing. We did many local church coffee houses, and when my second brother, John, the eldest in the family, opened a coffee house in Owen Sound called "The Inside", David and I were regular players.
But the real recognition of my "bliss" regarding folk music came when brother John took me to the Riverboat in Toronto in 1965. Gordon Lightfoot was playing that night accompanied by Red Shea on guitar and John Stockfish on the bass. My vision from that night in the Riverboat, though it was a dark and narrow space, was that it sparkled like a diamond. Reflections from the guitars in the spotlights glimmered and bounced off the walls. The music heaven-sent...the shimmer of the 12 string supported on the bottom end with patterns never heard before on a bass, and the honeyed stream of riffs from Red Shea's finger-picked guitar.
After that, I'm afraid, I was completely distracted by music. Also the alternative lifestyles and "radical" social upheaval experienced by all who were teenagers in the sixties affected me deeply. I moved to PEI in 1970 and built a log cabin there, lived off the land and survived by lobster fishing, haying with local farmers, and working any other odd job I could find. At that same time I began to develop my skills as a guitar player and began to cut my teeth as a fledgling songwriter. I worked with the PEI Puppet People at regular shows at the Georgetown Theatre, and eventually played some noon-style concerts as a solo at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown.
I moved to Toronto in 1973 and began my career as a struggling musician in earnest. As with many of my contemporaries, I was signed to management deals, and publishing deals and had the opportunity to record in Eastern Sound studios, then the top recording studio in Toronto. It was thrilling times for a young musician and there were many life lessons learned in those days. But, like all good things, it came to an end rather abruptly when the face and format of the music industry changed completely.
It is my belief that what changed that countenance was so-called modern business methods and bottom-line blindness...too many MBA's I guess. Prior to this time the truly "popular" music charts featured everything from the Beatles to the Kingston Trio, James Taylor to a bag-pipe version of "Amazing Grace", and instrumental orchestral music by people like Paul Muriat (Love Is Blue). Anything and everything would fly so long as the public and radio stations accepted it. This included a liberal number of folk musicians and, more importantly to me, a singer-songwriter contingent which included Dylan, Neal Young, Joni Mitchell and the aforementioned James Taylor to name a just a few. However this was all to change in the mid seventies.
I mentioned above the MBA's...what happened in the music industry at that time was a complete make-over of how the business would interact with the public and, consequently with artists. The concept of "target marketing" took the business by storm and before the decade was finished every artist, every record label, every radio station and media outlet had been folded, bent and mutilated into one solitary musical category or another...New Country, R and B, Punk, M.O.R, A.O.R., etc...the Billboard Chart became the Billboard "Charts" and the overall notion of what was "popular", and a universal "pop" chart, were out the window. Gone were the innovative, original thinkers in the music business like John Hammond Sr. who had developed Dylan, Leonard Cohen and others. The problem for many folks like me was there was no category created at all for singer-songwriters or for acoustic or "folk" music. The Kingston Trio-types and the Joni Mitchells were "out on their ass once again" in the words of songwriter Mickey Newberry....at least as far as "popular" music went. The odd one survived, like James Taylor, but only by abandoning their own material and switching to the recording of innocuous Middle Of The Road standards or recycled pop hits (Wonderful World, Handy Man etc.) By the end of the seventies even people like John Prine, who could fill the concert halls of most North American and European cities, found themselves without a record label to distribute their work...hence the growth of the "indie" movement, but the demise of many a music career.
So this change in the industry left me, and many others I knew, with no management contracts, or publishing contracts, and which certainly changed the directions for our lives which we had been planning. I left Toronto and returned to my hometown of Owen Sound, Ontario to take stock and reconsider careers. It was then that the opportunity to be involved with Summerfolk presented itself. It was 1976, the year of the Montreal Olympics, and cultural seed money was being spread around the provinces to coincide with the Olympic Games and to demonstrate Canadian Culture to the world. The Province of Ontario had such a programme and the Grey-Bruce Arts Council saw the opportunity for some programming funding money if they could come up with a suitable event. My brother John coincidently happened to be president of the GBAC at the time and our mutual interest in folk music led us to think about, and develop an idea which might qualify for the "Cultural Olympic" funding. The notion was to start a Mariposa-type event in the city of Owen Sound to promote traditional folk music and support original acoustic music artists...an alternative to the way the music business had excluded so many artists and art forms with their new approach. And the rest seemed to take care of itself. We came up with the name Summerfolk, did the research into how other festivals were organized and received the funding to begin the festival. This was the spring of 1976 and the first festival happened in August of that year.
My history in folk music continues at this juncture in a point form synopsis cribbed from a C.V. As stated above, it is my sincere hope to continue to work on this personal history and include anecdotes about the people, places, and events which I experienced, together with photos, programme book covers etc. I must also state this form of the history of the festivals does not pay adequate tribute to the many, many people who gave time and money to the various events listed below. It is about my experience and is of necessity "Tim-centric", but, again, none of these things could have happened without the participation of many, many folks.
Founding Artistic Director and Festival
Co-Coordinator
·
Responsible for traveling to and
investigating the organization of various festivals already in place including
Mariposa, Winnipeg, Home County Festival etc.
·
Incorporated such organizational
protocols from these other events into a working model for a new festival in
Owen Sound and responsible for successful planning and delivery of festival.
·
Responsible for developing expense and
revenue budget and working within it.
·
Helped identify appropriate site for
the event and planning that site.
·
Identified and delegated volunteer
individuals to assume responsibility for various aspects of the festival and
chaired the meetings of these individuals in order to facilitate the creation of
the event.
·
Organized publicity strategies and
advertising strategies in order to publicize the event.
Worked with local and national media to facilitate this.
·
Founded and hosted weekly folk music
radio show on Owen Sound’s commercial Am Station, started and hosted weekly
folk music TV show on local cable network featuring local and touring artists
·
Organized fund-raising events and
oversaw all details inc. FOH, sound, publicity etc.
·
Negotiated with the artists or their
agents, and contracted the artists to appear at the festival and programmed the
event including all concert and workshops, and gave direction to all workshop
hosts.
·
Intimately involved in all aspects of
the festival and met with co-coordinators individually to plan: volunteer
co-ordination; food arrangements for performers and volunteers; commercial food
vendors; site security; site planning and animation; Front of House; stage
construction; craft vending; etc. Hired
and contracted sound company, wristband manufacturing, tee-shirt manufacturing,
and all other aspects of the festival.
·
Worked on granting proposals and
pursued sponsorship for the event as the years went on.
·
Prepared information packages for
volunteers and performers and made logistical arrangements for travel,
accommodation, food.
· Reported to the Board Of Directors and learned much about the structure of Not-For-Profit Organizations.
·
Hired by Mariposa Folk Foundation to
book their “Mariposa Mainland” concert series at Harbourfront.
Responsible for booking weekly folk music acts and publicity.
·
Hired to become Artistic Director of
the all-Canadian Mariposa on the Bathurst Quay.
·
Toured through Ontario, Quebec and the
Maritimes to find and book talent for the event.
·
Executed programming and concert
schedule for the event.
- 1982 - Released Mose Scarlett's "Stalling For Time" on Second Avenue Records, Bruce Cockburn, producer.
Booked and Programmed Northwind Festival
on Olympic Island
Booked and Programmed Tenth Annual Owen
Sound Festival
·
Booked and programmed folk music
concert series at Hotel Isabella. The
eighties were a “dry” period for folk music and artists included Odetta,
Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, and Dave Van Ronk.
·
Traveled to New York to seek artists
in New York’s burgeoning songwriter revival scene.
·
Booked and programmed Northwind Folk
Festival in 1984 and 1985. The
organization already existed so I lent expertise where possible in various
aspects of the organization but primarily focused on negotiating with performers
and their agents, and programming the festival.
· Invited to return to the Owen Sound Summerfolk Festival to book the event’s Tenth Annual celebration. Negotiated and booked artists, and programmed all workshops and concerts as well as chaired the organizing committee. (see below)
·
Formed the Tim Harrison Band, released
“In The Barroom Light” LP for Fogerty’s Cove Music (Ariel Rogers) and
toured the band to many festivals including Winnipeg, Mariposa and Owen Sound.
· Started “Acoustic Espionage”, a weekly folk music radio show at Ryerson’s College Station. The show ran for two years, when I “retired” I recommended Joel Wortzman to take over the show, which he changed to “Acoustic Routes” and the show is still running.
·
Was asked to sing at the Parliament
Buildings when artist Stan Rogers was presented the Diplome d’honneur by the
Canada Conference For the Arts. Backed up by guitarist Paul Mills (Stan’s producer) and
Stan’s former bass player David Allan Edie.
·
My son was born in 1990 and, as my
spouse was a CBC employee at the time, I took over duties as “Mr. Mom” from
my son’s age of 3 months to 18 months. A major educational experience!
·
Studied U of T’s per-university
course for qualification as a mature student at U or T.
Achieved a mark of “A” on the course and was accepted as a part-time
student. Have completed 5 courses
toward an English Specialist Degree.
·
Negotiated with performers and planned
programming at the Free Times Café from June of 1991 to January 1992.
Developed publicity strategies including a printed monthly calendar of
events.
1993-1999
·
Hired to book acts and execute
workshop and concert programming for the “Eaglewood Earth Festival”
· While the festival had enjoyed some success since its beginnings in 1991, the programming lacked focus. Since the primary performers were from the folk genre, I suggested a name change to the board of directors to be the “Eaglewood Folk Festival”
·
Implemented organizational protocols
used in the Owen Sound Summerfolk Festival (see below) to improve Eaglewood’s
over-all organization.
·
Expanded the festival programming from
one stage to three full stages plus an intimate acoustic workshop area. Planned
layout of these stages and incorporated them into a new site plan.
·
Responsible for developing and working
within festival budget.
·
Learned much about the disabled
community and its politics as the festival was held on a resort for the disabled
and programming included ASL signing. I then set up the printing of Braille programme books for the
festival through the CNIB to further enhance the access of the festival.
·
Recorded and Released CD “Bridges”
of original material to critical acclaim (1997)
·
Recorded and released eponymous titled
CD “Tim Harrison” to critical acclaim (1999)
·
Toured England and Scotland in the
fall of 1999 after my last production of the Eaglewood Folk Festival
Recent
·
Toured throughout Canada and the
United States performing in House Concerts, soft-seat venues, and coffee
houses…please see my web site for details…www.timharrison.ca
·
Acted as consultant for Hugh’s Room
(Toronto Night Club) suggesting artistic direction, purchasing sound equipment
and hiring sound company
·
Set up a recording studio in my home
and taught myself to record to computer in a fashion acceptable for commercial
release and world-class recording standards.
·
Recorded three more CD’s of my own
material: “Sara And The Sea”; Wheatfield
With Crows; and “Grey County” in my studio “Second Avenue Studios”.
·
Organized recording sessions and
pre-production for nine other CD’s by various artists including Enoch Kent
(four CD’s which were then released on Second Avenue Records), Jim Layeaux, Peter Verity, Steve Paul Simms and others.
· Developed promotional strategies and press kits for my career.