Richard Weil (coordinator for Grove Stage) agrees… nooo problem!September 9th, 2017 – setting up for the Takoma Park Folk Festival at Takoma Park Middle School in (waitforit) Silver Spring, MD. SO much work left me SO SORE but it’s going to be an amazing day… (dozens and dozens of tables, hand lettering a billion signs, laying out hundreds of chairs…. next year the volunteers best get beefed up!)
“Hi, I’m trying to reach the owner of the business?” “Well, you’ve reached the ‘owner’ of an acoustic-grunge band called ilyAIMY.” “Oh, well if it’s not a business I’ll remove you from our li- ” (hangs up)
Probably the desired end result, but damned rude! Though I haven’t been acting like a savvy small-business owner this year (I’ve had a lot on my plate!) generally speaking ilyAIMY shows decent growth and though it operates as a collective of sole proprieters it operates just FINE thank you so very much! Enough so that I get a LOT of phone calls wanting to talk to the owner of the business… sometimes they want to give me a loan, sometimes they want to sell me toner, and sometimes they want to offer unknown and indefinable services that are probably not simply ill-advised crappy business deals but genuine scams.
Oh, and of course the DOZENS of calls per week about google placement (or more recently, the innovative “tired of getting calls about getting placed on google? We can STOP those calls! By letting us work with you on google placement!”). Sigh.
And generally I hang up on them. But if we ever DO get around to “and what kind of business IS this” they generally hang up on me. Dude. I need paper too.
Dick.
Heather, in a round with Allison Dietz on the Grove Stage, kicks off the Takoma Park Folk Festival on September 10th, 2017.I don’t know that I’d emotionally registered how big a deal the event was till I got a chill, and frankly legitimately teared up, listening to the first amplified notes of the 39th Takoma Park Folk Festival. It was a huge effort, but it really, really paid off.Richard Weil and Paul Loether – Silver Strings together.Robin Stearn in the house.Dave Godbey in the house…Gabrielle ZwiI don’t remember have religion booths at the Takoma Park Folk Festival, but I might have missed them – but I don’t think it’s terribly unlikely that they were shyed away from in the past : I’m an atheist but figure you can burble about your faith in controlled doses, so I’ve kind of rebelled here and there with TPFF. The first time I booked a Gospel act I got a LOT of blowback because we didnt’ want to be involved with religions (but happily booked Jewish traditional music, Muslim singer/songwriters that sang about their faith, etc etc) … I think the above approach (shove the Quakers and Muslims and Jews and everyone back to back) is the right one. Unfortunately, I think they all just tried to nab people out of the crowd rather than discuss with one another though… (at the Takoma Park Folk Festival on September 10th, 2017)Artem BankI think Kristen’s other band, Lulu’s Fate, may well have had the biggest crowd of the day!Jahiti is BEAT.QueenEarth!Cletus in the house!Heather and I enjoying an incredibly perfrect day at the Takoma Park Folk Festival on September 10th, 2017.Flo AnitoArt Isaacs is the lead engineer for the sound crew at the Takoma Park Folk Festival, and was integral in my part of getting things back up and running… cause he knew how things were supposed to get set up and running!\Celebrating an exhausting but very, very successful Takoma Park Folk Festival at the local diner. And now… the wedding!