The annual mid-April Arkansas Folk Festival (better known to some of us as the Mountain View Folk Festival), which was postponed and eventually canceled due to the virus, will get the proverbial shout-out with a special virtual event, Cabin Fever 2020, at 7:30 p.m. today at cabinfever.stonebank.com. The performance will also be archived on the Stone Bank YouTube channel.
The event will feature performances by area musicians, including Grace Stormont, Love Holler, the Bow Tanglers and The Gravel Yard Bluegrass Band, Pam Setser, Ed Nicholson and Stan D'Aubin The show will also feature as host Dave Smith, the on-air host of Ozark Highland Radio, and Mark Jones, who has a regular segment on the weekly radio show, which is carried on 130 public and community radio stations across the country. Details on all the performers are on the site of Stone Bank, whose headquarters are in Stone County (Mountain View is the county seat).
DRIVE-INS REBORN
The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival will host a movie screening of The Biggest Little Farm and a live musical performance by the band Sad Daddy on Friday night in the parking lot of the former Sears store at the north end of the Hot Springs Mall, 4501 Central Ave. (also known as Arkansas 7), Hot Springs. Tickets are $10 per car.
The film, a documentary set in Moorpark, Calif., "chronicles the eight-year quest of John and Molly Chester, who trade city living for 200 acres of barren farmland and a dream to harvest in harmony with nature."
Gates will open at 6:30 p.m., Sad Daddy will play at 7:15 p.m. and the movie will be screened at 8:15 p.m. Parking will be first-come, first-served, and guidelines for social distancing will be enforced. The sound from the movie will be made available over community radio station KUHS-FM, 102.5. For more information, call (501) 538-0452 or see hsdfi@org. (If it rains, the event will be held Saturday). Tickets can be bought through this link: https://bit.ly/2ZDv8f3.
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Those craving an actual visit to a real, live drive-in movie theater should head off to the Ozark foothills town of Marshall, and its Kenda Drive-In Theater, one of the three surviving drive-in theaters in the state. The drive-in will host two live concerts by contemporary Christian artists: Newsboys United at 7 p.m. June 18 and TobyMac at 7 p.m. July 9. The Kenda is at 107 Westwood Drive, just off U.S. 65.
Gates will open at 7 p.m. and the TobyMac show will start with an opening act, The Diversecity Band.
Tickets to each concert are $100 or $175; tickets are sold on a per-car basis, with a limit of six people per car, and cars will be parked in order of arrival in the tier bought. Lawn chairs or blankets are welcome but must be within the allocated parking space. No outside concessions or coolers will be allowed and the show will go on, rain or shine.
Order tickets for the Newsboys United show at https://bit.ly/3gmp8NL. Order tickets for the TobyMac show at https://bit.ly/36tKPHk.
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North Little Rock Drive In Movies, another drive-in concert (film) experience, will be held June 7 at 7318 Windsong Drive, North Little Rock. For insider information, join the Facebook group through this link: https://bit.ly/3d081PP.
James Snyder, the event promoter at Metroplex Live and Juanita's, is working with Rwake singer and concert promoter Chris Terry to screen the films and book the performers. Films will include the 2017 horror film 10/31, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii and Pallbearer: Live in NYC (with an opening live set from Sumokem); local performers will include Adam Faucett and a dueling piano show with Charlie Askew and Justin Elkins.
The shows will be free, but a $20 donation gets a patron a VIP spot. The site is the parking area of the former Windsong Performing Arts Center, just off Crystal Hill Road near the junction of Interstates 40 and 430. The site will accommodate 40 cars.
MUSICAL NOTES
Mark Edgar Stuart, Pine Bluff born but now a Memphian, did Web Show #4 May 20 on his Facebook page.
• Shawn Camp, a Perryville native, can be seen, with Verlon Thompson, in a tribute to former bandmate, the late Guy Clark. Camp has a show, if it is not canceled, Aug. 9 at the Fayetteville Roots Festival. He will be accompanied by Thompson (who also played with Clark and is in the tribute.) Read the tribute at https://verlonthompson.com/guy-clark-tribute.
• Ashley McBryde, Mammoth Spring's contribution to country music, had been scheduled to have a National Public Radio performance on its Tiny Desk program March 31, but a postponement moved the show, which became a tiny desk in McByrde's home, to May 14. She had released her second album, Never Will, on April 3.
Her appearance, along with two of her bandmates, on Tiny Desk featured a song, "One Night Standards," which NPR termed "one of our Best Songs of 2019," and "three more gorgeous songs from Never Will. In particular, 'Hang in There Girl,' — which opens the album and this set — is a perfect song for this moment, not that there's ever a wrong time to hear someone sing, 'Trust me when I say, you're doing fine."
Watch McBryde's concert here: https://n.pr/3c3VARG.
• Brick Fields (Rachel Fields and husband Larry Brick), who are based in Northwest Arkansas, can be heard in their song, "Belly of the Whale," which they posted on YouTube on May 19. Fields is the niece of the late Mike "Burger" Scoggins, who played in the band Sweet Magnolia, in the duo Burger & Tim and as a solo artist. Watch the video here: https://bit.ly/3ej2qnW.
• John Moreland was originally scheduled to play South on Main on March 15, then it was postponed until July 9. Now it has been canceled altogether.
• Michael Franti, who had been scheduled to perform as the opener for Kenny Chesney at Walmart Amp in Rogers on June 11, has postponed that show, along with their show at Busch Stadium in St. Louis on June 13. No mention on Franti's site of a show he was to do, minus Chesney, at the First Financial Music Hall in El Dorado, in the midst of that tour, on June 12, but the Murphy Arts District confirms its cancellation.
Speaking of Franti, a fine humanitarian who once performed a memorable concert at Little Rock's once great but now gone Cinema 150 theater, he offers an intriguing suggested "Michael Franti Shares Bathtub Pool Party Playlist" on the billboard.com site which mentions Franti's documentary, Stay Human, would be on YouTube in honor of Earth Day. Of his playlist, he explains "There's a lot of musical terrain covered here because there's a lot of mixed emotions in the souls of all of us during this time. I hope wherever you are, you will be with the ones you love and have a few moments in your life to enjoy an imagined beach in your bathtub, or just let the music wash over you."
• Judy Collins, the legendary folk singer whose career dates to the 1960s, is re-releasing her historic rendition of "Amazing Grace" on Friday. The song was released 50 years ago and remained on the U.S. charts for 70 weeks. For the new version, she will be joined by a choir of singers from across the globe, using a new technology, which welcomed all singers via globalvirtualchoir.com, between May 14-22.
All proceeds raised from the single will go to the World Health Organization Solidarity Response Fund, covid19responsefund.org/.
• Resources for musicians and associated workers of all stripes are assembled together in an informative article in Billboard magazine's site at billboard.com. The headline on the article is: "A State-by-State Resource Guide for Music Professionals Who Need Help During Coronavirus Crisis (Updating)."
There are also state-specific resources at the bottom of the story, and under Arkansas, the only resource is the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services ("Arkansas residents can submit an application for unemployment benefits here.")
• Banding Together, a concert to benefit the Colorado Music Relief Fund, will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday and will feature The Avett Brothers, Big Head Todd & The Monsters, Brandi Carlile, Dave Matthews, The Lumineers, Michael Franti, Nathaniel Rateliff, Sam Bush, The String Cheese Incident and others.
The show will be livestreamed and aired on radio station KBCO, 97.3. For more information, see the CMRF website, comusicrelief.org.
Weekend on 05/28/2020