Down On The Corner

By Paul Moffett

What with planning the Seminar and trying to get all the tunes from the contest cut, in spite of the closing of a couple of studios where sessions had been scheduled, the crew at the Louisville Music News has not exactly had time to gather news, write it down and paste it up. Ditto for this column, so pardon me if it's a little heavier than usual with songwriter stuff -- I haven't been talking to anybody else for about a month.

And getting right into that, guess who showed up at the Awards Banquet with BMI's Kurt Denny? -- Barbara Carter of Shaking Family. It seems that Denny had been to Lexington the night before to check out SF, and I heard later that he was at the Phoenix Hill Tavern, where one of the bands was -- Shaking Family. Aren't you surprised?

And continuing with SF stories, Vince Emmett phoned to schedule a time for an interview (finally) and said that Shaking Family is busy, busy, busy. They're scheduled into Nashville's Cannery in the first part of December.

Sorry to report that the Butchertown Pub's SongMarket has closed, at least for now. Layton Howerton, who was hosting the writer's stage, said that there is a possibility that the SongMarket might return in the future. Meanwhile, Layton is writing, playing a few jobs and getting his voice back into shape after some surgery earlier in the year.

It was fun while it lasted, Layton. Thanks for the good job.

Rob Pickett over at Modern Music tells me that John Huffman, lead guitarist for Sweet FA, reported that all that's left for the band to do to finish their new album is lay down the lead tracks out in LA. The band is an Indianapolis & Louisville-based group.

The Mudcats are planning to go into the studio to cut a few originals, written by Rob Pickett, Jim Rosen and Susan O'Neil, plus some other collaborations.

Dick Van Kleeck, director of the Lonesome Pine Specials, was impressed at the diversity of songwriters at the Awards Banquet. When Velma Klein got up to receive an Honorable Mention, he remarked that he found it hard to believe that the L.A.S.C. had grandmothers writing songs. It was necessary to tell him that Velma not only wrote songs but wrote good songs and had gotten one on the second L.A.S.C. album.

The Benefit for the Spouse Abuse Center at Uncle P's went off pretty well. There was an excellent crowd early in the evening, with a quite curious mix of thrash fans, women associated with the Spouse Abuse Center, folkies, players of all sorts and, of course, old rockers. Haven't heard if they made lots of $$$ yet. Tom Browning's set with Gretchen Wilcox on violin, and a couple of other players whose names I didn't get, was rather unusual; one of the players was bowing a Japanese instrument and the other was playing a sax. Their set was performed with a studied casualness, so studied in fact that several members of the audience inquired if they were playing or just tuning and warming up. It wasn't practice it was the real thing.

That's it for this month. Send news -- write if you get a gig.