Sam Hinton Folk Festival is coming to Old Poway Park

Old Poway Park will come alive with the sounds of folk music on Saturday, June 5 as San Diego Folk Heritage hosts the 2010 Sam Hinton Folk Heritage Festival, featuring an eclectic lineup of local performers.

The event takes place from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the park, 14134 Midland Road, and is free. Templar’s Hall will be the site of a 7 p.m. evening concert of storytelling of haunting stories that has a $10 admission.

Dick Jay, the group’s chairman, said this is the fifth year that the 22-year-old festival will be held at the Poway park. It was named after Hinton, the beloved singer songwriter and marine biologist who died last September at the age of 92. Hinton made his last public performance at a festival in 2002.

Ken Graydon will be presenting a tribute to Hinton at 12:30 p.m. on the main stage, and Jay said he’s sure that many of the performers will include some of Hinton’s songs in their sets.

Earlier in its history, San Diego Folk Heritage brought in performers from out of town and charged an entry fee, which Jay said was often a money-losing format, since the money collected by admission didn’t cover the cost of the performers.

The organizers decided to make the festival free and focus exclusively on local performers.

“Our mission is to present and preserve the folk arts here in San Diego County,” Jay said. “This is a large part of that effort.”

He added that the group has a broad definition of folk music, presenting singers and songwriters whose work touches on western music, jazz or blues. The only similarity is that it’s all acoustic-based.

“Folk music is anything created by folks … but we don’t do rock or commercial country,” he said.

He added that unlike other concerts experiences, in which the line between the performers and their audiences are clearly defined, folk music tries to blur the line by encouraging listeners to join in.

“It’s very welcoming music and in a way, you can say that the distance between the performer and the audience is less strong than in most types of music,” he said. “We encourage people not to feel self-conscious and to dance or sing or clap along.”

This year, the performers on the main gazebo stage include Ken Graydon, Joe Rathburn, the Poway Folk Circle Pickers, Charles Johnson, Brooke Mackintosh and Sven-Erik Seaholm, Gregory Page, Allen Singer and Dane Terry, Mark Jackson, Patty Hall and Trails & Rails.

For the times of the performances, go to www.sdfolkheritage.org.

Starting with this year’s festival, the main gazebo stage has been renamed the Tanya Rose Stage in honor of a local folk singer who is gravely ill with pancreatic cancer, Jay said. Rose, who has been editor of the San Diego Folk Song Society newsletter, has been a regular performer at the festival.

The celebration will also include a workshop by Allen Singer on guitar playing from 11:30 to 12:30 p.m. and one on harmonica by Dane Terry from 12:30-1:30 p.m.

The Poway Folk Circle will be hosting an open mike stage all day, as well as a day-long jamming session for those who want to bring their instruments and play. Templar’s Hall will host a contra dance from 1-3 p.m. and there will be storytelling sessions throughout the day.  Also, for the first time ever, an area will be set aside to let people swap or sell instruments.

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Posted by unestidstwern on May 28 2010. Filed under Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry