The N.C. Folk Festival will go on this year, but you’ll be watching it from home | Entertainment

Carolina Blues Festival announces plans for live and virtual events

GREENSBORO — This month’s 34th annual Carolina Blues Festival will feature both live and virtual events, including a virtual performance by Vanessa Ferguson and an awards ceremony, and a live food truck rodeo.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s blues festival has gone primarily virtual, partnering with the annual N.C. Folk Festival during the weekend of Sept. 11 to 13.

The folk festival will broadcast pre-recorded performances online and on Greensboro Community Television. They will begin at 6 p.m. daily.

Among the folk festival virtual performances will be Atlanta-based acoustic folk/blues artist Veronika Jackson, presented by the blues festival and its sponsor, the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society.

Ferguson’s virtual performance will be presented from 8 to 10 p.m. Sept. 12, following the folk festival broadcast.

A Greensboro resident and finalist in the television competition “The Voice,” Ferguson will headline a lineup titled “Women of the Blues.”

Find more details and the performances at piedmontblues.org.

The blues festival is the longest, continuously-running blues festival in the Southeast.

In a news release Friday, the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society called this year’s blues festival “a stunning show of resilience amidst a global pandemic and national social unrest between Black culture and the American consciousness.”

“The pairing of technology and Black Arts Culture has been a consistent fixture of American history,” society President Atiba Berkley said in the news release.

“The opportunity to bolster our brand by utilizing both analog and digital experiences is on par with a five-year strategic plan we were already executing,” Berkley said. “Now, we have an opportunity to lead our genre into the 21st century.”

The 35-year-old, Greensboro-based nonprofit will raise money by hosting multiple live events in Greensboro, on social media, and via multiple broadcast platforms free-of-charge. They will start this Saturday.

The blues society has received support from ArtsGreensboro, YES! Weekly, The Weaver Foundation, Downtown Greensboro Inc., The Martha & William Charitable Foundation and Audio & Light, to name a few.

The Carolina Blues Festival includes a series of events to please fans who are used to their traditional concert weekend, organizers said. The festival is reminiscent of a family reunion that invites diverse communities to gather in the spirit of Black Arts Culture.

The PBPS Blues & Foods Market is a mobile food truck rodeo featuring live performances. Created several years ago, Blues & Foods Market was built to bring awareness to food disparity and highlight the connections these issues have to blues culture.

In compliance with public health advice, the event will be a drive-thru experience mandating that all who leave their vehicles wear masks. There will be intermittent performances held during the event at The Renaissance Shops, 2521 Phillips Ave.

Self-Help is the sponsor for this event with Second Harvest Food Bank as a nonprofit partner. On Saturday and Sept. 11-13, patrons can pull up in their cars to get food from any of three food trucks on site.

PBPS seeks volunteers who qualify as “low-risk” due to the pandemic. To find out times and further details follow Piedmont_Blues on Instagram or visit piedmontblues.org.

The Piedmont Blues Preservation Society has organized the concert featuring Ferguson, known for her powerful stage presence and range across genres.

The full festival experience is the aim each year and PBPS’s Board of Trustees also will follow through on its legacy of recognition in excellence that began over two decades ago, organizers said.

This portion of the program will occur during a planned intermission designed to give fans a chance to refresh snacks and settle in for a grand finale.

Mike Carr Junior Bluesman Award: Presented each year to one regional up-and-coming youth blues artist. The award recognizes emerging young artists for keeping the blues alive through their music and public displays of talent. The presentation is named in honor of former board member, Mike Carr, who encouraged the PBPS to reach out to young musicians in the Piedmont. The award is sponsored by Summerfield Family Chiropractic.

Recipient: Brendan Hinch, who will showcase his talent live.

Brendan Hinch is a 14-year-old native of Greensboro and the winner of the 2019 PBPS: Road to Memphis Blues Challenge, where he qualified to perform in the 2020 International Blues Challenge. He lives with his parents and older brother, Thomas, who was his first guitar influence.

Brendan enjoys most genres of music particularly blues, jazz, rock, punk and alternative. His musical influences include Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Prince, Gary Moore, Buckethead, Rory Gallagher and Michael Jackson. He admires many North Carolina artists; not least among them being John Coltrane, Tal Farlow, Eric Gales, Charlie Hunter, J. Timber and Sheila Klinefelter.

Hinch is a freshman at Grimsley High School. He loves to skateboard and hang out with friends when he’s not attending regional blues jams, an experience recently put on hold due to public health concerns regarding the pandemic.

Keeping the Blues Alive Lifetime Achievement Award: Presented to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the blues culture through their work, volunteerism or investment.

Recipient: Irish Spencer (aka Wild Irish Rose)

Spencer is an award-winning and highly skilled communications and management specialist with 30-plus years of experience in the field of broadcast and management. Based in Greensboro, she started her radio career at Murryhill Broadcasting (Power 97 and WEAL Gospel). Throughout her career, she has worked, consulted and managed several radio stations. She and her husband own Spencer Group, a corporate marketing, advertising and event management firm. Spencer Group also offers free veterans’ services under the direction of her husband, William M. Spencer Jr., a retired veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Spencer received her undergraduate degree from N.C. A&T, a Master of Humanities from Tiffin University in Ohio, and a doctorate in management from Colorado Technical University in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Spencer can be heard every Saturday at noon on 90.1 WNAA the broadcast voice A&T. Her show, known as Wild Irish Rose, features the popular Shout Out Saturday, News You Can Use, and Old School R&B Flavor. “I love my alma mater, A&T, and this is my way of giving back. 2021 will mark twenty years as the Wild Irish Rose at WNAA,” Spencer said in the release.

On May 1, 2015, Spencer’s hard work was recognized nationally by President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony presenting her with the ‘Champion of Change’ award. She recently co-chaired Carolina Theatre’s successful $2.5 million-dollar Setting the Stage capital campaign. Currently, she is the assistant vice chancellor for corporate and foundation relations at Fayetteville State University.

Spencer is a member of several boards, committees, and commissions locally, regionally and nationally. “I truly believe I am here to serve the least of these. My heart is most happy when I am helping and engaging others,” she said in the news release.

Before the arrival of COVID-19 forced the suspension of its programming, PBPS had community impact over the years with partnerships and programs such as PACE of the Triad and After Gateway. The group had been visiting schools, recreation centers and summer camps via the Blues in the Schools program for over two decades. Education has been at the core of PBPS programming, but Berkley explains that more cultural context is needed.

“Blues is more than music. It is ‘Black Arts Culture’ and as such it has always had crucial connections to other art forms and daily life, including victories and struggles of African Americans, as well as our full history,” Berkley said in the release.

This year the North Carolina Folk Festival extended an opportunity to collaborate. Expect to see 20 minutes of pre-recorded PBPS content via the folk festival as part of their new format. Between the two organizations there will be four hours of prerecorded and live performances and content from multiple genres airing nightly Sept. 11-13.

Headline performers are:

Vanessa Ferguson (Rhythm & Blues + Jazz) – from Brooklyn, N.Y.; Ferguson has performed from Beijing, China, and around the world with B.B. King’s Blues Club All-Star Band. She came into America pop-culture as a contestant on NBC’s “The Voice” where she competed as a member of Alicia Keys’ team. Her career since the show has been fruitful; frequently performing around the U.S. and sharing stages with headliners including Big Daddy Kane. The A&T graduate will perform two 45-minute sets spanning a wide range of styles.

Veronika Jackson (Blues) – from Decatur, Ga., by way of Florida; presented by the 34th Annual Carolina Blues Festival: Women of the Blues, will perform a tribute to N.C. blues legend Elizabeth “Libba” Cotton during the N.C. Folk Festival, which will include a ceremony from the N.C. Music Hall of Fame hosted by James Shields. Shot on location at the southernmost terminus of the Underground Railroad, the 2020 North Carolina Folk Festival Virtual Concert Series premiere includes content curated by HUMblMediaSvcs.com and will be available in three segments of about two hours each. It features artwork by Durham artist, Darius Quarles, for which there is also a fundraiser. It will be available on several media outlets. Live links will be available on piedmontblues.org and ncfolkfestival.com.

Learn more about the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society (https://piedmontblues.org) and the Carolina Blues Festival (https://carolinabluesfestival.com). The Piedmont Blues Preservation Society will continue to post updates on its Facebook page (www.facebook.com/PBPS85/), and on Instagram (instagram.com/piedmont_blues/).

To learn more about the North Carolina Folk Festival, and the performers and locations listed above, please visit ncfolkfestival.com. The North Carolina Folk Festival will continue to post updates on its Facebook page (facebook.com/NCFolkFestival), Twitter (twitter.com/NCFolkFestival) and Instagram (instagram.com/ncfolkfestival).

To learn more about 7 Cinematics, which has recorded the folk festival’s live pefformances for broadcast, visit 7cinematics.com, on Facebook (facebook.com/7cinematics), and on Instagram (instagram.com/7cinematics/).

Watch now: N.C. Folk Festival brings local performers to iconic Greensboro spots

GREENSBORO — The harmony of The Hamiltones broke through the quiet of a Saturday morning in August in center city.

As a crew from 7 Cinematics filmed and a few passersby watched, the R&B/soul trio from North Carolina sang five songs from their three albums and more.

The recorded set will become part of the virtual N.C. Folk Festival from Sept. 11 to 13.

This gig was particularly profound for trio member Corey Williams II, known to family, friends and fans as 2E.

He sang with J. Veto and Tony Lelo outside one of his hometown’s most iconic spots, the downtown International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

Williams has spent most of his 38 years living in the city.

Although he joined the group that became The Hamiltones 10 years ago, he still lives here.

“It’s a great feeling to be that close to a historical landmark,” Williams said later about the former Woolworth store where lunch counter sit-ins began in 1960.

“There’s a feeling you get when you look at that and know things that took place inside of that building.”

The Hamiltones got its name from singing background around the world with Grammy Award-winning Anthony Hamilton. But for the past two years, the trio from Greensboro and Charlotte has been out on its own.

The trio will be among 10 acts whose recorded performances will be part of this year’s annual N.C. Folk Festival.

The Grammy-nominated trio has sung in Carnegie Hall and other famous venues. With Anthony Hamilton, the group toured Africa and Europe and appeared on national television programs including “Good Morning America.” 

“You have a lot of artists, they get big, they go away, you never hear from them again,” he said. “I always tell myself, ‘Don’t forget about your home.'”

The multicultural festival spun out of the National Folk Festival’s three-year residency in the city from 2015-2017.

This year’s festival will take a new approach.

Instead of offering live entertainment, it will stream locally pre-recorded live performances online.

It will join forces this year with the 34th annual Carolina Blues Festival. The Piedmont Blues Preservation Society will present acoustic artist Veronika Jackson as part of the collaboration.

Planners of both annual festivals concluded that they could not create the usual face-to-face events downtown safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has canceled events worldwide and prompted statewide restrictions on large crowds.

So they arranged for filming by 7 Cinematics, the Emmy Award-winning video music and streaming production company based in the city.

That filming will produce about six hours of pre-recorded live acts, most from North Carolina. 

It will be streamed online and shown on the city’s Greensboro Television Network two hours daily from Sept. 11-13 — all for free.

The 10 acts — including The Hamiltones, Chatham County Line, Mandolin Orange and two other Greensboro artists: Justin Harrington — aka Demeanor — and Charlie Hunter have filmed in nine iconic locations.

“I was excited that they were still going to make something happen,” said Dave Wilson of Chatham County Line, before filming at the Old Mill of Guilford in Oak Ridge. “I really wanted the North Carolina Folk Festival to take root in Greensboro ever since I heard about it.”

Folk festival staff selected performers with advice from its program committee, said Amy Grossmann, festival president and chief executive officer.

“We made the determination to go ‘virtual’ in July, and we had to move quickly to coordinate the performances and logistics of the video production,” Grossmann said.

The Hamiltones had been on the festival’s radar for years. A scheduling conflict prevented the festival from booking them earlier, Grossmann said.

The Hamiltones just dropped its third album last week, titled “1964.” Its theme connects well to the civil rights museum.

“The whole album is pretty much talking about the social injustices that minorities have to deal with, especially in the current climate,” Williams said. “We call it our soundtrack for the current movement.”

Their folk festival set includes one of its tracks, “Message to America.”

“It’s a message to America, which is basically saying we just wanted to be treated fairly as Black people in general,” Williams said. “All we ask is to be treated equally and be given the same opportunities and access that others have.”

Their set also will include one of their early hits, “Gotta Be Lovin’ Me,” from their first album. 

The son of Corey and Colette Williams actually was born in Asheville. The family lived in New York, but his mother went into labor while visiting Asheville.

His father didn’t want people calling his son “Junior.” So he nicknamed him “2E,” pronounced two-ee.

By age 4, Williams recalls, he was living in the Southmont/Spring Valley area of Greensboro. He spent most of his young years at Frazier Elementary and Lincoln Middle schools.

Thanks to his father — now minister of music, arts and drama at Mount Zion Baptist Church — music long has been a part of his life, Williams said.

He remembers his father getting a record player, which Williams now owns. He liked the music that his father collected — Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Andre Crouch and Earth, Wind and Fire.

His father moved the family to Maryland to become a church music minister there.

“In high school, I had a group of friends who were musicians and trying to be rappers,” Williams recalled. “So I got in with those guys and started singing on different hooks and things. That’s where my juices really got going.”

He returned to Greensboro and graduated from Dudley High School. He tried Morgan State University in Baltimore. But he had a crush on a girl in Greensboro, and came back.

Although the relationship didn’t work out, “I guess it did work, because look at where I am today,” Williams said. “It led me back to Greensboro. That’s where the fun began.”

Local gospel performer LeJuene Thompson asked Williams to go on the road to sing with her.

“I had never done anything of that stature,” Williams said. “I tell her every time I see her that she was the first person who really believed in me enough to take me outside of Greensboro.”

From there, he performed with a group formed by local music producer Gavin Williams, known as Gav Beats. 

He picked up other background gigs. They led to singing background for five years with Fantasia Barrino, the High Point native who won the third season of Fox’s “American Idol” in 2004.

In 2010, Williams’ performing path led to Hamilton.

Hamilton’s background singers had been J. Vito, who grew up in Anson County, BJ the Chicago Kid and Jack “JK” King.

BJ’s career had started to grow. When he departed the trio, Williams came on board. When JK left to sing for Justin Timberlake, Tony Lelo from Morrisville joined, according to Charlotte website clture.org. 

“I was back working with people who I had worked with in the past in other situations,” Williams said. “I looked at it as more and more work, good work with a credible artist. I thought it was another dope opportunity to get out and do what I love to do.”

Hamilton’s saxophone player named the background singers The Hamiltones. It stuck.

Out on their own since about 2018, they are still The Hamiltones. They maintain a good relationship with Hamilton and still do music projects with him, Williams said. 

Williams calls The Hamiltones “my brothers.”

“Through all these years, we have really created a true bond and a brotherhood,” Williams said.

“Outside of being around my brothers, it’s cool to be able to the thing that you really love to do,” he said. “That’s the biggest and best benefit. My job is to do what I love to do.”

N.C. Folk Festival artist profile: Charlie Hunter

A lot of music has passed through his fingers. But with Charlie Hunter handling the notes, the end result is a sound like few other guitarists can equal. Hunter’s recipe calls for an added ingredient — an extra string that enhances his custom made instrument.

His seven-string guitar enables him to get a sound that includes bass and organ with the traditional guitar output. The guitarist started out his experimentation with an eight-string, but said the bass sounded floppy and the highest string wasn’t used much. So he updated the instrument, getting rid of one string.

Early on, Hunter tired of critics and reviewers lumping his music in the acid jazz category, so he came up with the term “antacid jazz” for his eclectic compositions and adaptations. But his recent characterization as a folk artist by the N.C. Folk Festival suits him just fine.

“Yeah! Well, I am,” he said by phone recently from his Greensboro home. “Everyone is a folk artist. It just depends on who owns that narrative and who decides what that is.”

Like its parent organization, the National Folk Festival, the N.C. Folk Festival redefined in a lot of people’s minds what folk means, bringing in all kinds of music from all over the world under that one umbrella. It’s world music, different styles, an array of genres from a lot of diverse folks.

“To me, Thelonius Monk is one of the greatest folk musicians of all times,” he says. “But it’s all relative. (It) all depends on labeling and marketing and stuff. I guess there’s layers to that, and you can have as many layers as you want.”

Hunter proved that point in 1995 with the recorded debut by his group T.J. Kirk which played only the music of Thelonious Monk, James Brown and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Even done straight up, it would have been an unruly grouping, but Hunter’s free-form eight-string interpretations, alongside six-string guitarists Will Bernard and John Schott with the percussive backing of Scott Amendola, took it into the interstellar range, carving out a brain-busting intergalactic funk version of Brown’s “Get on the Good Foot,” along with renditions of Monk’s “Four In One,” and Kirk’s “Serenade to a Cuckoo.” Hunter moved on from that project long ago, but has pursued eclectic projects with a variety of sidemen ever since.

Hunter’s journey started in Rhode Island, jumping to Berkeley to Paris to Greensboro. “I grew up in Berkeley, went to Europe for about three years, then went back to California, then I’ve been on the road for the last 30 years,” Hunter says. But before landing in Greensboro, he was in New York and New Jersey for nearly 20 years.

“My wife and I were just ready for a change, and we had friends in Winston-Salem who were looking around at the area, and we liked it, so we moved,” he says. “It reminded me of Berkeley when I was a kid in the ’70s. I feel comfortable around lots of different people, and I just felt comfortable.”

Hunter’s mom was a luthier, but he says her skills didn’t rub off on him. “Oh, no,” he says dismissively. “No way.”

Nevertheless, he developed his own instrument and now is part of Hybrid Guitars, a company based in Hillsborough that manufactures six-, seven- and eight-string instruments. But you won’t find any 12-strings hanging around the establishment. “Well, no, because that’s a really different thing, because a 12-string is just octaves and doubled, so it’s really just a six-string guitar with extra courses added.”

Hunter has stayed busy during the pandemic working on some new material and releasing some old stuff as well. “Right now, I’m mixing a record that’s kind of a secret, but it’ll be out in a couple of months with an artist named Daron, from Greensboro. I had another record of my own I did where I played all the percussion on it and then put my instrument on top, and that should be out in a couple of weeks, hopefully. And I say ‘out’ in quotes because who knows what that even means at this point.”

Hunter has already released two albums this year, one with drummer Carter McClain. “It’s just intended as a play-along record with the two of us, but people say they like to listen to it while they’re walking or working out or cooking. It’s pretty fun,” Hunter says of the McClain collaboration — “Charlie Hunter/Carter McLean Volume One.”

The other — “Avant Blues” with Bobby Previte — is a project Hunter made with drummer composer Previte over two years ago at his place in upstate New York that Hunter categorizes as “all very interesting reconstructions of blues songs.” But the music is not sold in stores, online or on TV. “You can only get that from us. If people want it, they can just reach out to me on Instagram, and I’ll hook ’em up with a download,” he says.

Hunter usually works as a duo with a drummer, but keeps up his chops on percussion as well, devoting at least an hour every day to playing drums. “If I don’t have that, you don’t really understand how all the rhythms go together,” he says. “My feeling is that I really have to have that deep outstanding of how all of these rhythms work together, awareness of where the beat is and where the pocket is.”

Hunter has blues in his pocket as well as jazz and a snaky, funky second line that keeps trying to wear a hole in his pocket and escape. “That comes from doing your homework and also from playing with lots of New Orleans musicians for a long time. You just learn all the vocabulary and language you can and then try to put that in your narrative,” the guitarist says.

Meanwhile, Hunter keeps honing his craft and encouraging others to take the enforced lay-off time off to re-examine their musical approach.

“I’ve been doing this for a really long time,” Hunter says. “But for younger generations, they’re just stating out on their careers, it’s their chance to completely re-imagine what it means to be a musician and totally change the narrative so that it works for them, and works for their generation going forward.”

N.C. Folk Festival will stream pre-recorded performances shot live in Greensboro

GREENSBORO — The N.C. Carolina Folk Festival will take a new approach to this year’s event, streaming locally pre-recorded live performances online from Sept. 11 to 13.

“It’s novel,” Amy Grossmann, folk festival president and chief executive officer, said about Monday’s announcement. “I have not seen any other events doing something like this.”

The change came when planners of the annual festival concluded that they could not create the usual in-person event downtown safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has canceled events worldwide and prompted statewide restrictions on large crowds.

Together with the annual Carolina Blues Festival, the folk festival will bring in North Carolina artists, who don’t have to travel far to get here, performing a variety of music. The two roots-music festivals had announced in May that they would be presented jointly this year. 

The 2020 virtual multicultural festival will be produced in partnership with 7 Cinematics, the Emmy Award-winning video music and streaming production company based in the city.

Last year, 7 Cinematics filmed and produced the first live-stream from the pyramids at Giza in Egypt — a concert by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

For the local festival, the company will film musical artists’ performances in August at iconic locations across the city, mostly outdoors. Filming will be closed to the public.

The pre-recording will offer time for editing and likely adding in snippets from people explaining the location, Grossmann said.

That filming will produce about six hours of pre-recorded live acts, with two hours to be streamed online each day of the three-day festival.

It will be streamed on the folk festival YouTube channel and other social media, as well as Nugs.net, the streaming service with which 7 Cinematics has partnered on other high-profile projects such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

As with the local festival, viewers can watch for free. Performers will be announced over the next few weeks.

This will be the third year of the N.C. Folk Festival. It spun out of the National Folk Festival’s three-year residency in the city from 2015-2017.

Last year’s event featured 106 performances and workshops by more than 45 artists at five outdoor and nine indoor venues, attracting about 156,000 people to center city.

“While we will miss gathering together in downtown Greensboro this September, we believe the high quality virtual festival experience … is the best way to ensure the health and safety of our audiences, staff and artists during these unprecedented times,” Grossmann said in a news release.

This will mark the 34th year for the annual Carolina Blues Festival, presented by the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society.

The society, its board and membership are excited to be able to present when so many organizations are facing challenges, society President Atiba Berkley said in the news release.

“In this unique time in America, the blues speaks to the enduring legacies of American Folk and Pop culture,” Berkley said. “Our 21st century presentations of blues and Black arts culture are poised to provide healing and inspire social dialogue as always.”

Likewise, 7 Cinematics CEO Adam Paul said he is excited about the folk festival project.

“It’s going to be a really big and surprising success,” Paul said.

The company’s work has included streams and broadcasts of such artists as Kanye West, Jack White and the reincarnation of Jerry Garcia’s old band, Dead & Company.

It filmed The Avett Brothers last year. That film will appear nationwide on Aug. 28 on PBS, for its pledge special, Paul said.

Paul spent 20 years building his company in Charleston, S.C. In 2017, he returned to his hometown of Greensboro.

He still lives and headquarters the company here, with production facilities in Nashville and Los Angeles, closer to artists who aren’t traveling during the pandemic.

Paul said he had spoken with folk festival organizers a few years ago, but they weren’t quite ready to incorporate streaming and digital.

With this year’s pandemic, the festival called, seeking ideas.

This won’t be a typical live-streamed event with one camera angle.

The crew of 7 Cinematics will use multiple camera angles and drones. Using Nugs.net to broadcast the pre-recorded performances will give the festival more international exposure.

Paul looks forward to filming in his hometown. “It’s going to be a heck of a lot of fun,” he said.