John McLaughlin The Folk Life Conversation with Gene Shay

[This interview took place in Gene’s office at Kalish & Rice, the Philadelphia advertising firm where Gene, as he puts it at one point in the interview, was making his living, "in that crass, commercial world." Good-humored as always, he allowed us to take up a considerable part of the late afternoon, with his full and thoughtful answers to our questions sparking other questions in turn. Radio DJ, MC of the Philadelphia Folk Festival since its beginning, TV writer and producer, teacher and friend to folkies of all persuasions, Gene Shay remains one of the principal reasons why Philadelphia is such a warm and hospitable place to musicians and their music. We hope you enjoy the following conversation as much as we did.]

John: Can you tell us how you came to meet Joni Mitchell in the first place?

Gene: In the same way that I’ve come to meet most of the singer-songwriters, interpreters – concertina players – whatever – most of the musicians that I’ve met, on my program. Or met in the sense that I’ve been able to talk with them about their music. I came in contact with them through my program, which has been going on now, I think it’s in its seventeenth year. Since my program was on a Sunday night, and the coffeehouses in Philadelphia, even in the time of the Blue Laws – when bards couldn’t open on Sundays – coffeehouses could operate, so at one time, especially during the folk music revival, the American folk revival of the Sixties, from ’62 on, even before that, every Sunday night there was another performer passing through Philadelphia, or else in the clubs. There were always clubs. There were clubs all over the place. Levittown had one. There was The Second Fret, The Gilded Cage, there was The Main Point….

John: World Control?

Gene: No, World Control Studios came a lot later, towards the tail end of the ‘60s, the early ‘70s, as I remember it.

John: I only heard of it through Chris Dewalo.

Gene: Oh, there was The Guitar Workshop, and also a place called The Philadelphia Folk Workshop, in the Nicetown area of the city. It was a house. They were one of the earliest groups, apart from the Philadelphia Folksong Society, to sponsor concerts and workshops. They had Doc Watson doing a workshop, for instance. Joni Mitchell came to town for her first performance in Philadelphia at the Second Fret. At the time she was married to Chuck Mitchell, who was on the same program. He opened for Joni, and they came on my [radio] show together, even though they didn’t sing in performance together, they each had their own act. And Chuck Mitchell’s act was art songs, Kurt Weill/Bertolt
Brecht, "The Threepenny Opera" material.

John: The kind of thing that Judy Collins was doing then?

Gene: Well, Judy Collins was just getting into Jacques Brel’s music – we all were. It’s funny you mention that, because every time I’d see Judy Collins she’d say, "How are you doing, Gene, what are you listening to?" And I remember when I told her we were listening to The Incredible String Band, and she said, "Yay! So am I!" And just a few months later her album came out, and she’d recorded one of Robin Williamson’s songs, "First Girl I Loved." You know that one?

John: I love that song. She has it on her "Hello Hooray" album, as I recall, and Robin’s version is on The Incredible String Band’s "Chinese White" album – "Layers of the Onion."

Gene: Right. So that’s how I met Joni Mitchell – the same way I met Tom Rush, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, all those people.

John: Dave Bromberg?

Gene: Dave Bromberg. It’s also interesting that a lot of the people – for instance, when I first met Bromberg, he was not Bromberg the solo performer –

John: "Le Grande Frommage"?

Gene: No, he was an accompanist. But when I did meet artists who had other musicians with them, second guitar, bass player, whatever, some of these people went on to become recording artists in their own right, years later. So I had the opportunity, a terrific opportunity, to meet these people over the years, and watch them gain popularity. When I first saw them, they were making their first gigs in Philadelphia. Arlo Guthrie. It was the first time he had worked, had sung professionally – except for some things close to where he had lived – when he came to Philadelphia. And invariably most of these performers had a good time on the show, so the next time around it was much easier for me to get them to come around. People were wary of the medium, if you understand what I mean. They were a bit afraid of the standard kind of radio interview done in the old style. And my style was – it took them aback a bit, at first.

John: That couch.

Gene: No. No, it was just sort of like the looseness and informality, so we’d forget it was an interview, it would just be a discussion, you know, or a jam session, because I either had artists who were playing two or three clubs at the same time in the area, who’d all converge, or whatever. I think I answered the question about Joni Mitchell, didn’t I?

John: I guess so!

Gene: And you also have to remember that Joni liked Philadelphia a lot and she became quite friendly with some people here. She wrote "Both Sides Now," and performed it on my show three days after it was written. She used to hang out in Philadelphia. She once had a gig at I think The Second Fret one weekend and The Main Point the next – it could be vice versa – during that week she stayed around. She used to shop on 20th Street, buy antique jewelry and clothes, sit in, she’d go over to The Trauma, which was the beginning, our first psychedelic club.

John: Early disco?

Gene: Well, there wasn’t any – we didn’t know the word "disco" back then. It was the first psycho-delic entertainment place, before the Electric Factory concerts open up, at 22nd and Arch. The Trauma was where Just Jazz now is, on Arch Street. It was owned by the same gentleman who owned The Second Fret. I’m just….

John: I’m fascinated. Because I never knew any of those places. I was elsewhere then. This may be a crazy question, just jumping in, but as a matter of context. Your radio program, now on WIOQ, I think you could say it’s become famous over the years for these interviews with performers. This may be a nutty question, but who was your best interview over the last, oh, six months to a year?

Gene: H’mm. That’s a tough one. A tough question, because I have to think over it…. I wish I had a list of all the people I’ve interviewed. You know something – I do. Let me just – I may have a list here (Searching among the papers on his desk). I do keep a calendar of people, of upcoming interviews, that I don’t….

John: I know it was on your show that I first heard that Kevin Roth would be giving dulcimer lessons to Judy Collins – and that was within the last six months.

Gene: Right. Though I don’t know if that was a particularly good interview. I know… In the past six months I’ll tell you one that I enjoyed very much was with Lou Killen. Because it was the first chance that I’d had to sit down and talk about British Isles music with someone like that. I’ve always been quite frankly envious of Lou Killen’s vocal equipment (Laughter) – I think he’s one of the best singers – since I have a penchant for British Isles music – and I guess it is Northumbrian –

John: In Lou’s case it would be.

Gene: Well, Lou does a lot of those sea shanties – those melodies! – and to have him bring his concertina and just sit there, without any interruption, and just talk about music and singing and the Ewan MacColl-Peggy Seeger influence in Great Britain – these are the things I read about and hear about and talk about with performers, but I was getting it first hand from the man – he is part of that, the early days of the revival in Great Britain.
And that gave me the chance to make mental notes in comparison, between the revival as I experienced it here, and that over there.

John: He’s very articulate. I spoke with him at the Philadelphia Folk Festival this year, and he talked a lot, not only about what he’d sing, but also about media questions – problems of radio interviews, live performance in different contexts – he’s very sharp.

Gene: Yeah! It’s really hard for a performer to open up – I’m not talking too much in an interview sense, I mean even doing a good performance with no audience present. I know some performers who just have to have people around them, and one of the nice things about my show is that the waitresses from The Main Point or from The Second Fret or wherever would always come over, and there’d always be some people who’d for ma little bit of an audience. And that can always, you know, stimulate any performer who needed that kind of thing.

John: Lou Killen could perform with an audience of one. I saw him with Charlie Chin
At one of he Philly festival hotel sessions, and Lou sang a couple of ballads and then Charlie played this huge Chinese ceramic flute across it. And just to catch the two of them together –

Gene: A zither-like instrument?

John: No, I don’t know what you’d call it. I think it’s a sakahachi – David Amram could probably tell me –

Gene: Oh, I know what you mean!

John: He played that, and Lou sang – just lovely music. Not to change the subject or anything – and it’s not, really – but you’ve MC’d the Philly Festival for I don’t know how many years –

Gene: Every year.

John: I didn’t know that.

Gene: Every festival. Well, I was one of the founders of the festival, one of a number of people who started it. And at that time, since I was the person on the radio, it fell logically to me to MC the evening concerts, I guess. So I’ve been doing it every year since then. This will be my seventeenth year coming up – I think my seventeenth. [It’s now his fortieth, as of 2001 – Ed.]

John: What changes have you seen in, let’s say, the last five years?

Gene: The last five? Well, I think I’ve seen for a while the trend to more contemporary music and song – it’s varied from year to year. But there has always been a fairly good balance. I felt that this year the balance wasn’t – even though the festival was, it was a very good festival and I enjoyed the performances – but I still felt there was something missing – certain areas of music that were missing this year. But I think this would be improved on. The festival is, as you know, and always has been run by the folksong society. The booking part of it used to be run by – fall on the shoulders of one person, with the advice of others. And of course occasionally some performers would be booked, and then – you have a performance that is nicely balanced, with just enough blues, just enough bluegrass and so on, and then invariably something will happen, someone will cancel or something, and then suddenly you’re out of balance. Then you have to make very quick changes! That’s happened. The most dramatic change in the festival booking has been this year, going back to a much quieter, more laidback, folkier program. Something that I don’t object to at all! But that’s really no excuse to be boring either! Being traditional and getting back to more "roots" music and to traditional singers or interpreters of traditional music, there are an awful lot of exciting performers and performances. I didn’t see to many exciting performances this year, and that was a disappointment to me. Perhaps there were – I’ve been told there were some exciting moments during the workshops, and because I MC the evening concerts I stay up pretty late, and I unfortunately miss a lot of workshops that I’d like to see. That’s something I can’t quite seem to reconcile, though.

John: That’s the thing that’s difficult about a festival with 17 or 18 workshops all over the place – there’s a synergistic argument for it, but you can also argue the other way.

Gene: Yeah, that concept – I understand at the Winnipeg festival it isn’t worked that way, and that’s a good one. There are no conflicting workshops there.

John: Well, Winnipeg is Mitch Podolak’s baby.

Gene: Yeah, Mitch, right. Well, it’s just a different concept, but there are arguments both ways. It all depends what you’re after. I would like to see a festival with fewer performers on the evening stage, so that we can get more of those – I think twenty minutes is not a set, as far as I’m concerned. Sometimes it takes it 25 minutes to get off the ground!

John: I know the Red Clay Ramblers – I have all their albums and I’ve seen them kin performance elsewhere, and they were very different at the Philly Festival from any time I head them before I asked them about that, and they said themselves that they’d had to change tempos, to squeeze thing in –

Gene: To keep up with the schedule?

John: Sure.

Gene: Well, that’s a shame.

John: On the other hand, I did hear Odetta do, "The Water is Wide," and the same night Lou Killen did it, and the difference was startling.

Gene: Oh, yeah, I’m not saying – look, in ten minutes you can captivate an audience!
Certain people – Odetta is a powerful performer, Lou Killen’s a powerful performer – certain people can do that. Certain people can excite an audience even with a slow song, can be very compelling. But I’d still rather have, rather than ten acts of 20 minutes, I would prefer four acts with a lot more time to get to know that performer, and get to know the material. I think it’s a question of – I think people who run festivals feel an obligation to keep the balance so that you have a certain amount of bluegrass, you have to have a certain amount of blues, you have to have old-timey, they have to have Scots-Irish, British Isles – Clogging! Bagpipes! And you know, put them all together, and you get either it’s pandemonium or else it’s very choppy – one act on, one act off, that kind of thing.

John: It’s the same thing at bluegrass festivals – I think bluegrass festivals are always over-booked.

Gene: I would like to see a festival – this probably wouldn’t help sell tickets, but it would be my kind of festival – one night would be country music, one would be old-timey and bluegrass, one night British Isles and sea-shanties, one night blues and Black religious music. With maybe three acts or four performers. But it’s a different kind of festival.

John: The Middletown Folk Festival this year put Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys one right next to a Black Baptist church choir. So you had the Bluegrass Gospel and the Black Gospel right there next to each other.

Gene: White Gospel and Black Gospel? That would be nice. Because then you could probably hear some crossover things.

John: Oh, you can tell, when you listen to Irish music and then to American old-timey bands, that there’s a syncopation influence from Black African music that’s so clear in American music, and it’s just not there in the Irish tradition.

Gene: Oh yes, Black music has influenced just about every kind of American music there is, including symphonic. Contemporary composers like John Cage. Just syncopation itself – and the whole call-and-response thing. Though that’s a workshop thing you can probably get from the shanties.

John: That’s probably a much more restricted influence though,

Gene: I was thinking of things like prison songs, field hollers, that kind of thing.

John: You remember Bob Dylan’s old line about that – "Went down south to get me some chain gang songs, but they wasn’t singin’!"

Gene: Well, Alan Lomax went down, and they sure were singin’! (Laughter) Either the wrong prison, or…. I’m not sure what made the difference there.

We used to rehearse them, then do them live, so you can imagine all the mistakes – on the seven o’clock Channel Six News…! Of course, now we videotape all our commercials, but I’m still doing that kind of thing. But the Entertainers’ Workshop is a closed circuit situation, using both videotape and stereo sound, and I’ll be teaching a course in Commercial Presentation, for men and women, boys and girls, anybody who has the looks and the potential to stand up in front of a camera. That’s giving the person the opportunity to learn all the little tricks of the trade – the techniques of how to read a cue-card and not look as if you’re reading a cue-card. And that’s just another night of my week.

John: I should take that course – it’s always one of those crossed-eyes things, right?

Gene: Well, with videotape and instant replay it’s going to make it a lot easier for people to critique at once how someone looks in front of a camera. At the same time the school is also for performance development, in a sense that a trio that’s never been on television could come into the Entertainers’ Workshop, and see themselves on TV, see how they look, and say, "Oh my goodness, I never realized I had this nervous habit of raising my hand up to my right, that looks just terrible!" And something that turned off an audience before could be corrected. Of course, they’d be getting the suggestions also from people who are professionals, a professional comedian who’s going to be doing the comedy course, I’ll be handling the commercial presentations, and a vocal coach, and a performance coach. So that’s just one of the new things. So I’m going in a lot of different directions. But I’d like to stay in the music area. If I had my druthers, I think I’ve always had this secret desire to be a folklorist and get to graduate school. But maybe I’ll wait until I retire! I envy Mick Moloney – I envy all those people – Ken Goldstein, the MacEdward Leaches, Tris Coffin, all those people. I used to audit those classes – I would sit in on their ballad courses with Kenny and MacEdward Leach.

John: I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there was maybe a wee bit of envy going the other way too, Gene.

Gene: How do you mean?

John: Well, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are some people on the other side, saying, "I wish I was Gene Shay!"!

Gene: Well, what can you say?

John: The funny thing is, that next question I had for you was, "If you had your druthers, would you try to focus on one or the other of these activities, or would you diversify even further?"

Gene: You know, I didn’t even mention the magic book? Talking about diversification…
As you know, last year I did a book about magic, and I’ve been planning to do a book on music, using a .lot of the verbatim answers transcribed from the early interviews I’ve done, with people like Jim Croce and John Denver, Arlo Guthrie and Jerry Jeff Walker, Janis Ian, Melanie, those people. But the research involved is overwhelming, and also one of my biggest problems is trying to recapture them. I didn’t tape all of those early programs, and some of those interviews are unfortunately lost in the vapor. Every now and then I run into someone who has one of mine. I just got a Doc Watson interview I did. But getting back to what we were saying, if I had my druthers I’d like to do something new every year. I feel like going into these different areas not only is fun, and is challenging, it’s adventurous, it keeps me on my toes. So – maybe next year it’ll be TV. Maybe I’ll syndicate my program – I have been talking about doing that for years. Or taking snips and pieces of these interviews where I do a valid comparison. I might take a basic Child ballad, where the primary story is pretty clear, and do two completely different variations. I have some modern jazz versions of "Gypsy Davey," for example, I have synthesizer versions of the Irish ballads. Now compare that with Joe Heaney singing, back to back, you’ve got almost two different things, but based on the same theme….. I’m thinking about – and this is not necessarily in answer to your question – about the way Steeleye Span and Fairport over the last few years have been very dynamic, and do really good music, and are also, I think, very true to the background.
Even though it is electrified in most cases. The song is done with a certain amount of integrity and respect for its traditional roots. I was thinking – is there an American group that does that? Am I overlooking somebody?

John: I know that Robin Williamson’s "Journey’s Edge" has a Celtic thing underlying it.

Gene: You mean Robin Williamson and his Merry Band?

John: Right, not The Incredibles. They do this one, "Voices of the Barbary Coast," that’s both very sweet and also very complex. It’s a mingling of themes from the kinds of music you’d have been liable to hear out in California over the last one hundred years or so.

Gene: H’m. It’s something that’s been missing from the American folk – or, "folk rock" – scene. Or perhaps I’ve just missed it.

John: I wonder. Bill Hicks, of the Red Clay Ramblers, has been using an electric fiddle in some of their more recent gigs. And their version of old-timey music is the most – I don’t know – jazz-influenced?

Gene: H’mm. I don’t know. I don’t know the Red Clay Ramblers’ work as well as I feel I should. That’s a problem, with me in particular – because I’m going in so many directions at once. So many new albums coming out – so many old albums coming out! I do feel it’s important I do my homework, and that means listen to as many of the records as I can. I have to keep this kind of thing in balance. The rest of my activities are pretty time-consuming. For example, I go out a lot in the evenings because a lot of the performers ask me to come hear them. And people ask me how they can get on my program, and I say – "Do me a favor – send me a cassette. You don’t have to go into a studio – just s home-produced cassette." I’ve actually auditioned people over the phone! They didn’t send me a tape – I just said, "Put down the phone and sing me a song." I mean, my standards aren’t – I’m not a Gong Show! [Laughter] But at the same time I would like to hear everybody who’s on my show, and 99 percent of the case every record that you hear on my show is one of my favorites, or it’s something I like. I rarely try a new album out on the air, or even a new cut.

John: I know the band Watertite that you had on the air –

Gene: I know Watertite, and they’re very good. I never did answer your question, what was my best interview. I think Lou Killen was my most successful in some ways, but I’ve had some tremendous – Watertite now, I just got a new tape from them. That band has changed a lot. Ed Rhoades is a very sensitive musician, who I think is adventurous in the sense that he’s very innovative, he’s always looking for new material, he’s always looking for very good sources, and he’s selective. So they have a fairly nice repertoire.. I haven’t heard the new tape, the current one, but I have it on my list of tapes that I have to listen to – in that stack of things to do tomorrow – or maybe the day after! [Laughter]

John: The last regular question I had to ask you – we had some backups if we have the time – is whether you have any plans for the immediate future that you’d like to share with our readers.

Gene: Oh, I think we’ve covered that so far. I think we did talk about my long-term dream, if that’s what you’d call it, to package my program and syndicate it. I’ve been told by people from New York and the West Coast, people who travel around a lot, like Josh Dunson, that the show is very unique. And the old tapes I started to talk about earlier – if anybody could come up with them, get in touch with me, who has tapes – I remember seeing an ad once, someone who was writing a book about Richard Farina, and who wanted to get hold of the old interview I did withy him. Now I don’t even have that tape!
And Mississippi John Hurt – that’s an old tape that’s missing. Fred McDowell – Phil Ochs, maybe five or six times, a long time ago, and I only have one or two of those tapes. You see, I couldn’t tape every station I worked at. But if I could get some of the back, I’d like to do something with them.