The Benefits and Realities of Song Contests and Showcasing: Part 2

As featured in: Performing Songwriter Issue #28, January/February 1998. Visit performingsongwriter.com to order back issues or subscribe.

By Bill Parsons

Part 1| 2 |3

Networking

Indeed, though less true for straight song contests, one of the most widely reported benefits of showcasing at conferences and festivals is the networking and camaraderie between the artists. Steve Szymanski of Planet Bluegrass, the Lyons, CO organization that produces the Telluride Bluegrass and Rocky Mountain Folks Festivals, calls the networking aspects of his showcases “incredible.” And Alan Arnopole, Director of the Napa Valley Folk Festival’s Emerging Songwriters Showcase says the camaraderie among the musicians at Napa is one of his favorite things about the festival: “Napa is about songwriting, the camaraderie, the coming together for the purpose of celebrating the art.” Often that spirit endures in the form of lasting friendships long after a particular festival is over. And sometimes, those friendships develop into creative, professional relationships as well. 

DC-based singer-songwriter Tom Prasada-Rao met Tom Kimmel and Michael Lille as New Folk Finalists at the 1993 Kerrville Festival. A fast friendship formed between the three of them around Kerrville’s famous late night campfires, and they stayed in touch over the next couple of years—sometimes even going out on the road to tour together. Now the three have decided to collaborate with each other on more than an ad hoc basis. The result is an acoustic folk-pop trio called The Sherpas, and their 1997 North East Folk Alliance showcase was one of the most enthusiastically attended at the conference. Steve Seskin and Craig Carrothers

When Oregon singer-songwriter Craig Carrothers was invited to participate in the 1996 Napa Valley Emerging Songwriters Showcase, he had no way of knowing that a future buddy, production client and cowriting partner by the name of Steve Seskin was sitting in the audience. Seskin, who has penned such country hits as “I Think About You” for Colin Ray and “Life’s A Dance” for John Michael Montgomery, happened to be at the festival that day and was checking out the Emerging Songwriters Showcase when Carrothers performed. “Craig was playing at Napa,” remembers Seskin. “I wasn’t judging or anything. I was just there and listening to the showcase and there were a lot of people who were really good. And then my mouth was open. They (Craig and his performing partner Tim Ellis) just blew me away. We got to talking. He was aware of some of my songs but not aware of me as an artist. We exchanged CD’s, and his CD was great! I called him up and said ‘you ever produced anyone?’ And he said ‘no, but I love what you do and I’d go into it with a passion.’ And sure enough we made a record. We’ve now co-written about five songs.”

For his part, Carrothers remembers approaching Seskin at a workshop he was conducting at the festival and telling him he thought he was “really nailing some pretty esoteric things about writing that were hard to put into words, and he (Seskin) told me how much he liked my song ‘Little Hercules’....The next day he made a beeline over to me, and I’m thinking this is great! Not only do I like his songs, but this is one of the reasons why people go to these festivals. It’s a great contact. He said ‘Let’s get together and write’, and we started this mutual admiration society.”

“The underlying point,” says Seskin, “is a friendship, a working relationship, and a writing relationship that came out of this. We never would have met. I think a whole lot came of it.”

A Feather in Your Cap

“Generally speaking, winners of contests have an entree that exceeds that which they had before,” says LASS’ John Braheny. “Everybody’s looking for some credential to get them through the door.”

How good a credential is winning a song contest? Well, that depends on which song contest you win and what you’re hoping to leverage the victory for. Most people I spoke with agreed that national song contests carried more weight than local ones and that winning a national song contest is most useful as a hook with the media and venue operators.  “When I say Tanya Savory is a four time Kerrville New Folk Finalist, it’s impressive,” says Victor Heyman, who produces Vic’s Music Corner Concert Series in Rockville, MD and serves on judging panels for the upstate New York Falcon Ridge and North East Folk Alliance Showcases. “With all the people out there performing, how does anyone know who’s worth listening to a second time...or even a first time? It’s like a union card, a credential. It says ‘his peers think he’s good.’”

Ralph Jaccodine, who manages Rounder singer-songwriter Ellis Paul and Capitol Records’ recording artists The Push Stars, loves when his clients garner awards and showcase victories because it gives him something he can use to hype their act. “My job as a manager is to sell the sizzle. Whenever I could latch onto an award, that’s always a good spin on it.” “You get more press when you win a contest,” says Jim Fleming of the Fleming/Tamulevich Booking Agency in Ann Arbor, MI.

What if you’re an artist and you want to attract the attention of the Fleming/ Tamulevich booking agency? “We don’t sign anybody because they win a competition,” says David Tamulevich. “But it does incrementally increase your visibility. When you have 20...30...100 press kits across your desk, it gives that little edge of extra notice.”

While Fleming and Tamulevich professed not to care whether a prospective client ever actually won a competition, Jaccodine declared himself to be more impressed with contest victories: “It gets me interested a little more than the average bear. I mean, finalist this, finalist that. But when somebody actually wins something, it makes a difference because I know how hard it is to actually win.” Charlie Hunter of Young/Hunter Management, who manages folk sensation Dar Williams and Canadian roots rocker Fred Eaglesmith among others, says that he submits showcase applications for his artists at SXSW, the Folk Alliance, CMJ, and the LMNOP Conference in New Orleans “for exposure”, but he doesn’t give them much credence in the big scheme of things. “They can’t hurt. I mean if I’m reading, it doesn’t make me less interested...It’s a great thing. I just don’t pay too much attention.”

Jaccodine’s client Ellis Paul, who was on the verge of signing his record deal with Rounder when he was invited to participate in the Kerrville New Folk Competition on his fifth try, takes a decidedly Egyptian perspective on the importance of song contests: “All of these things are just building blocks to create a pyramid so that people can hear about your music from as many different sources as possible. No one block is essential, but the contests can be a decent sized block. On their own they don’t mean much, and none of them are so important that they can’t be missed. But taken together they build a career.”

Getting Better Gigs

Another thing showcasing and song contest victories appear to be good for is getting better gigs. For one thing, venue operators are music fans, too, and so tend to populate the audiences at major festivals and showcases—often scouting for new talent. Some festival promoters even see it as their job to get venue operators out to their new talent showcases. “We try to have a lot of presenters there, especially New England coffeehouse presenters,” says Falcon Ridge Coordinator Anne Saunders. “We twist their arm as much as it can be twisted without breaking it, and guilt trip them into being at the showcase so the artists can get some exposure.” As a result, it is not at all uncommon for artists to walk off the Falcon Ridge showcase stage with a couple of new gig offers from presenters who have just heard their performance.

When New York City harp chanteuse Dee Carstensen traveled to Lyons, CO for the 1996 Rocky Mountain Folks Festival Emerging Songwriters showcase, she did not know what to expect. “I had absolutely no idea what would come of it,” recalls Carstensen, “but it was really amazing because Jim (Fleming) was there and Rod (Kennedy) was there, and Rod became a big fan and brought me to Kerrville and Nashville. It just all started to snowball.” Robert Haigh was managing Carstensen at the time: “Dee had been performing for many years, but she was just getting her feet wet in the coffeehouses and small acoustic venues. She wasn’t sure it was going to be worth it, but history tells us that it was...It opens other doors that aren’t a direct result of being a winner. For example, the folks at the Strawberry Music Festival and Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe wound up having Dee play (as a result of her showcase in Lyons).”

Carstensen had a similar experience at the 1997 National Folk Alliance Conference in Toronto. “Since we didn’t get picked for the formal showcase in Toronto,” explained Haigh, “we were invited to appear in two showcases—one sponsored by BMI and one by Richard Flohil. As a result of those showcases and that weekend, we were invited to play the Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver folk festivals.”

And what did Jim Fleming think of Carstensen’s Rocky Mountain performance? He offered her a booking deal. “If I hadn’t been there, and seen her perform, I wouldn’t have signed her into the roster,” says Fleming, “ but we went to see her because for two years people had been saying ‘see her, see her’.” Adds David Tamulevich, “Word of mouth is what influences us.”

Sometimes the gigs showcase artists wind up getting are mainstage slots at the very festival where they’re showcasing. In fact, most of the festival promoters I spoke with cited their new artist showcase as the quickest way to access the mainstage at their festival. “In an average year at Kerrville,” says producer Kennedy, “thirty former New Folkers will be on the mainstage”. At Falcon Ridge, the promoters ask the audience to vote for their favorite showcase artists and then invite the top three vote getters back for a “Most Wanted Song Swap” at the festival the following year. “We’re looking for the farm team,” says Planet Bluegrass’ Szymanski. “If you can stomach the contest, it’s the quickest way to get into our Colorado festivals and getting us to notice.”

Neo-traditionalist Gillian Welch definitely got noticed at the 1993 Chris Austin Songwriting Contest sponsored by the Merle Watson Festival in Wilkesboro, NC. Her song “Tear My Stillhouse Down” won the competition that year, and she was subsequently invited to perform on the mainstage at MerleFest with her partner David Rawlings in 1995, 1996 and 1997. Moreover, in an ironic footnote to her Chris Austin victory, the other song that Welch submitted that year, “Orphan Girl”, did not win but was subsequently recorded by Tim and Molly O’Brien and by Emmylou Harris on her Grammy award-winning album Wrecking Ball. A direct result of Welch’s 1993 Chris Austin experience? Well, sort of. “Mostly what happened at the song festival was that I got introduced into that whole community and probably because of the song winning and being in such a ‘victorious’ position, I met those people on a good foot,” says Welch.

Welch is not the only writer to have had her songs performed by other artists after submitting them to a showcase. Folk icon Peter Yarrow, who helped Rod Kennedy found the Kerrville’s New Folk Showcase in 1972, tells of hearing songwriters like Buddy Mondlock and David Wilcox for the first time at Kerrville and subsequently bringing Mondlock’s “The Kid” and Wilcox’s “Show The Way” to Peter, Paul and Mary. “That constantly happens,” says Yarrow.

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