Fast Folk
Encyclopedia
Fast Folk Musical Magazine (originally known as The CooP), was a combination magazine
and record album published from February 1982 to 1997. The magazine acted as a songwriter/performer cooperative
, and was an outlet for singer-songwriters to release their first recordings.
started a songwriter's night at The Cornelia Street Cafe
in Greenwich Village, New York, after a less formal group started by singer/songwriter/Greenwich Village legend Jack Hardy
lost its spot at a local tavern called The English Pub. The group, which included artists like Jack Hardy
, Carolyne Mas
, David Massengill
, Tom Intondi
, Cliff Eberhardt
, Michael Fracasso
, Jeff Gold, and Rod MacDonald
, gave writers a chance to perform for their peers, work on songs in front of an audience, and receive feedback from fellow songwriters. This group, sans some members, and with some new members added, eventually became known as the Songwriter's Exchange, recording an album on Stash Records which was released in 1980. The album was made possible due to the efforts of Robin Hirsch, one of the owners of The Cornelia Street Cafe
, who single-handedly had turned the increasingly popular cafe into a hotbed of artists, musicians, poets, and writers. The Greenwich Village music scene was also booming at the time, receiving lots of media attention from major newspapers like The New York Times
, which also helped fuel the popularity of the New York singer/songwriter scene in general. The Songwriter's Exchange eventually evolved, and under the guidance of Jack Hardy
, the group formed a cooperative and took over the booking of Greenwich Village's SpeakEasy in 1981. The CooP, which was launched in February 1982 , was later renamed Fast Folk, and gained status as a non-profit organization
.
The organization formed at a time when the cost of recording equipment
and packaging of vinyl LPs were prohibitively expensive for the independent artist. The organization managed to document serious, non-commercial songwriting first in the form of vinyl LPs and later as CD
s. Although many of the writers were active in the Greenwich Village
scene, the magazine included artists from across the United States
and some international artists. Some of the included writers went on to commercial success, and some became influences in newly formed musical genres such as alternative country
and anti-folk
.
Alumni who recorded first for Fast Folk include Grammy Award-winners Lyle Lovett
, Suzanne Vega
, Julie Gold
, Tracy Chapman
and Shawn Colvin
, as well as John Gorka
, Michelle Shocked
, Suzy Bogguss
, Rod MacDonald
, Christine Lavin
, Richard Shindell
and Lucy Kaplansky
of Cry Cry Cry
. Over 600 writers and 2000 songs were documented.
They also released a compilation album
titled Fast Folk: A Community of Singers & Songwriters
.
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
and record album published from February 1982 to 1997. The magazine acted as a songwriter/performer cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
, and was an outlet for singer-songwriters to release their first recordings.
History
In December 1977, singer/songwriter Carolyne MasCarolyne Mas
Carolyne Mas is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, pianist, and producer. Mas broke out of the Greenwich Village music scene boom of the late 1970s, along with other artists such as Steve Forbert, The Roches, and Willie Nile...
started a songwriter's night at The Cornelia Street Cafe
Cornelia Street Cafe
The Cornelia Street Cafe, in New York City's Greenwich Village, first opened its doors in July 1977. It quickly became a magnet for the artistic and highly creative folk who loved their art just off the beaten path. On any given night, one might hear writers, poets, or musicians, spilling their...
in Greenwich Village, New York, after a less formal group started by singer/songwriter/Greenwich Village legend Jack Hardy
Jack Hardy (singer-songwriter)
John Studebaker "Jack" Hardy was an American lyrical singer-songwriter and playwright based in Greenwich Village, who was influential as a writer, performer, and mentor in the North American and European folk music scenes for decades...
lost its spot at a local tavern called The English Pub. The group, which included artists like Jack Hardy
Jack Hardy (singer-songwriter)
John Studebaker "Jack" Hardy was an American lyrical singer-songwriter and playwright based in Greenwich Village, who was influential as a writer, performer, and mentor in the North American and European folk music scenes for decades...
, Carolyne Mas
Carolyne Mas
Carolyne Mas is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, pianist, and producer. Mas broke out of the Greenwich Village music scene boom of the late 1970s, along with other artists such as Steve Forbert, The Roches, and Willie Nile...
, David Massengill
David Massengill
David Massengill is an American folk singer/songwriter, guitar and appalachian dulcimer player. His best-known songs include "On The Road to Fairfax County," recorded by The Roches and by Joan Baez, "The Great American Dream," and "My Name Joe," about an illegal immigrant restaurant worker...
, Tom Intondi
Tom Intondi
Tom Intondi was an American singer-songwriter first based in Greenwich Village and later in the Northwest. Intondi recorded three solo albums, and toured and recorded with a collaboration called The Song Project that also included Lucy Kaplansky, Frank Christian, and Martha Hogen.Intondi died of...
, Cliff Eberhardt
Cliff Eberhardt
Cliff Eberhardt is an American folk singer-songwriter. He is a founding member of the Fast Folk Music Cooperative in New York City. Eberhardt joined Red House Records in 1997 and has recorded five albums for the label, the most recent in 2009, 500 Miles: The Blue Rock Sessions...
, Michael Fracasso
Michael Fracasso
Michael Fracasso is a singer-songwriter based in Austin, Texas. His music spans country and rock as he sings in a high tenor that evokes the "high lonesome" sound of early country....
, Jeff Gold, and Rod MacDonald
Rod MacDonald
Rod MacDonald is an American folk singer/songwriter. He was a "big part of the 1980s folk revival in Greenwich Village clubs," performing at the Speakeasy, The Bottom Line, Folk City, and the Songwriter's Exchange at the Cornelia Street Cafe for many years. He co-founded the Greenwich Village...
, gave writers a chance to perform for their peers, work on songs in front of an audience, and receive feedback from fellow songwriters. This group, sans some members, and with some new members added, eventually became known as the Songwriter's Exchange, recording an album on Stash Records which was released in 1980. The album was made possible due to the efforts of Robin Hirsch, one of the owners of The Cornelia Street Cafe
Cornelia Street Cafe
The Cornelia Street Cafe, in New York City's Greenwich Village, first opened its doors in July 1977. It quickly became a magnet for the artistic and highly creative folk who loved their art just off the beaten path. On any given night, one might hear writers, poets, or musicians, spilling their...
, who single-handedly had turned the increasingly popular cafe into a hotbed of artists, musicians, poets, and writers. The Greenwich Village music scene was also booming at the time, receiving lots of media attention from major newspapers like The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, which also helped fuel the popularity of the New York singer/songwriter scene in general. The Songwriter's Exchange eventually evolved, and under the guidance of Jack Hardy
Jack Hardy (singer-songwriter)
John Studebaker "Jack" Hardy was an American lyrical singer-songwriter and playwright based in Greenwich Village, who was influential as a writer, performer, and mentor in the North American and European folk music scenes for decades...
, the group formed a cooperative and took over the booking of Greenwich Village's SpeakEasy in 1981. The CooP, which was launched in February 1982 , was later renamed Fast Folk, and gained status as a non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
.
The organization formed at a time when the cost of recording equipment
History of sound recording
Methods and media for sound recording are varied and have undergone significant changes between the first time sound was actually recorded for later playback until now.- Acoustical recording :...
and packaging of vinyl LPs were prohibitively expensive for the independent artist. The organization managed to document serious, non-commercial songwriting first in the form of vinyl LPs and later as CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
s. Although many of the writers were active in the Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
scene, the magazine included artists from across the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and some international artists. Some of the included writers went on to commercial success, and some became influences in newly formed musical genres such as alternative country
Alternative country
Alternative country is a loosely defined sub-genre of country music, which includes acts that differ significantly in style from mainstream or pop country music...
and anti-folk
Anti-folk
Anti-folk is a music genre that takes the earnestness of politically charged 1960s folk music and subverts it. The defining characteristics of this anti-folk are difficult to identify, as they vary from one artist to the next...
.
Alumni who recorded first for Fast Folk include Grammy Award-winners Lyle Lovett
Lyle Lovett
Lyle Pearce Lovett is an American singer-songwriter and actor. Active since 1980, he has recorded thirteen albums and released 21 singles to date, including his highest entry, the number 10 chart hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, "Cowboy Man"...
, Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Nadine Vega is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.Two of Vega's songs reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner"...
, Julie Gold
Julie Gold
Julie Gold is a New York singer-songwriter. She is best known for Bette Midler's version of her song "From a Distance" which won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991....
, Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman is an American singer-songwriter, best known for her singles "Fast Car", "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution", "Baby Can I Hold You", "Give Me One Reason" and "Telling Stories". She is a multi-platinum and four-time Grammy Award-winning artist.-Biography:Tracy Chapman was born in Cleveland,...
and Shawn Colvin
Shawn Colvin
Shawn Colvin is an American singer-songwriter and musician.-Childhood and early career:Colvin was born in Vermillion, South Dakota. Her formative years were spent in the town of Carbondale, Illinois, where she attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She learned to play guitar at the age...
, as well as John Gorka
John Gorka
John Gorka is a contemporary American folk musician. In 1991, Rolling Stone magazine called him "the preeminent male singer-songwriter of what has been dubbed the New Folk Movement."-Biography:...
, Michelle Shocked
Michelle Shocked
Michelle Shocked is the stage name of Michelle Karen Johnston, an American singer-songwriter.-History:Shocked received her first international exposure in Europe, particularly Britain, with her debut album The Texas Campfire Tapes .Her first U.S...
, Suzy Bogguss
Suzy Bogguss
Susan Kay "Suzy" Bogguss is an American country music singer. In the 1980s and 90s she released one platinum and three gold albums and charted six top ten singles, winning the Academy of Country Music's award for Top New Female Vocalist and the Country Music Association's Horizon Award.After...
, Rod MacDonald
Rod MacDonald
Rod MacDonald is an American folk singer/songwriter. He was a "big part of the 1980s folk revival in Greenwich Village clubs," performing at the Speakeasy, The Bottom Line, Folk City, and the Songwriter's Exchange at the Cornelia Street Cafe for many years. He co-founded the Greenwich Village...
, Christine Lavin
Christine Lavin
Christine Lavin is a New York City-based singer-songwriter and promoter of contemporary folk music. She has recorded numerous solo albums, and has also recorded with other female folk artists under the name Four Bitchin' Babes...
, Richard Shindell
Richard Shindell
Richard Shindell is an American folk songwriter. Shindell grew up in Port Washington, New York. He currently lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with his wife, a university professor, and their children....
and Lucy Kaplansky
Lucy Kaplansky
Lucy Kaplansky is an American folk musician based in New York City. Kaplansky also has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University.-Biography:...
of Cry Cry Cry
Cry Cry Cry (band)
Cry Cry Cry was a folk supergroup, consisting of Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky, and Dar Williams. The band released a single eponymous album of cover songs on October 13, 1998.- Tour :...
. Over 600 writers and 2000 songs were documented.
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, now maintains an archive of Fast Folk which includes the master recording tapes, magazines and paper records of the organization.They also released a compilation album
Compilation album
A compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...
titled Fast Folk: A Community of Singers & Songwriters
Fast Folk: A Community of Singers & Songwriters
In February 2002, twenty years after the original publication of the magazine Fast Folk, Smithsonian Folkways released a two-CD compilation album of 36 tracks selected from the magazine's fifteen year history titled Fast Folk: A Community of Singers & Songwriters.- Track listing :Disc 1:# "American...
.
External links
- Archives at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
- Fast Folk and Coop Database, with artist crossreferences, by Steven Alexander
- Fast Folk Musical Magazine page at balladtree.com
- SpeakEasy Musician's Cooperative
- [ Fast Folk Musical Magazine] entry at Allmusic