Nurture the Future is this year’s conference theme. “It was something we felt needed to be communicated as our world is changing every second of the day,” says Jill Kettles, SERFA’s board president. “We aim to uphold the past, mold the present, and project it for future generations; this is not just important but vital.”

SERFA is a regional affiliate of Folk Alliance International (folk.org), a nonprofit organization that aims to serve, strengthen and engage the global folk music community through preservation, presentation and promotion. SERFA (serfa.org) exists to promote, develop and celebrate the diverse heritage of roots and indigenous music, dance, storytelling and related arts in the southeastern United States. It has produced an annual conference since 2008. This is SERFA’s third consecutive year at the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina.

The official showcases take place Friday and Saturday evenings, with each artist/act performing a 15-minute set. Unplugged private showcases follow from 10:40 p.m. to 2 a.m. Also on the agenda are daytime panel discussions and workshops, a Wisdom of the Elders session, a few thematic song circles, open mics, mentoring sessions, an awards presentation, an exhibit hall, communal meals, and plenty of other opportunities to learn, share and network –- including during built-in afternoon breaks in the programming. Informal jams and song circles also are apt to break out in the lobby and outside (weather permitting).

Rachael Sage, Award-Winning, Prolific Singer-Songwriter and Boutique Label Owner to Deliver Keynote Address

Daytime Programming Includes Workshops, Song Circles, Think Tanks, and Mentoring Sessions

Besides the workshops and panel discussions, there will be moderated, interactive “think tanks” on House Concerts and Small Venues and Hey, What’s Your Problem, one-on-one mentoring sessions, several thematic song circles, several thematic song circles, and a Wisdom of the Elders session during the daytime hours.

Wisdom of the Elders and SERFA Awards are Among Conference Highlights

The Wisdom of the Elders conversational panel session provides a structured opportunity for conference attendees to learn from and about veteran leaders in the folk community and for the elders to talk among themselves as well. Participants this year are Scott Berwick, Wayne Erbsen and Taylor Pie.

Berwick has long been active in American Federation of Musicians (AFM) Local 1000 (the traveling musicians union), has been attending SERFA conferences for the past decade, and has also been involved with the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, the Hudson Valley Folk Guild, and the Ashokan Center, as well as an informal, weekly song circle near his home in upstate New York.

Erbsen has been engaged in traditional American music for more than 50 years as a musician, recording artist (with nearly 20 albums to his credit), professor at Warren Wilson College and the University of North Carolina at Asheville, author and publisher (who has written and published 40 books), and a public radio DJ.

A Tennessee-based traveling folk minstrel and Americana artist, Taylor Pie (Susan Taylor) helped form the Pozo Seco Singers with Don Williams in the early 1960s and has been a solo singer-songwriter and musician since the folk group disbanded. Many notable artists have covered her songs, while Pie was inducted into the Old-Time Country Music Hall of Fame in 2015. Along with her friend Kathryn Harrison, she launched PuffBunny Records in 2007 to share her music and that of other artists she admires. Taylor Pie, who now handles A &R for the label, also stars in Nobody Famous, an award-winning music documentary that was screened during the 2022 SERFA conference.

Menius, who currently hosts “The Revolution Starts Now” on Hillsborough, NC-based WHUP, has hosted radio shows on four stations since 2007. The first executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), from 1985-1990, Menius also served as Folk Alliance International’s initial board president in 1990 and manager from 1991-1996, prior to serving as associate director of MerleFest for a decade and then as executive director of Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky and The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, NC. He’s also produced concerts, festivals and conferences and worked as a fundraiser, marketing director, emcee, stage manager, and writer.

Dom Flemons, an Arizona native and Chicago area-based musician who has earned the moniker “The American Songster” since his repertoire covers more than 100 years of American roots music, records for Smithsonian Folkways. He is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist (banjo, guitar, harmonica, jug, percussion, quills, fife, and rhythm bones), music scholar, actor, slam poet, record collector, and the creator, host and producer of American Songster Radio Show on WSM in Nashville, Tennessee. Earlier this year, he was named the grand-prize winner as well as first place honors for Best Folk/Americana Roots Album (for American Wildfire) in the International Acoustic Music Awards. In 2020, he received the prestigious United States Artists Fellowship Award in the Traditional Arts category. Two years later, he received a degree as Doctor of Humane Letters from his alma mater Northern Arizona University and was the commencement speaker at the graduation ceremony or the Class of 2022. Flemons was a founding member of Carolina Chocolate Drops, a Grammy Award-winning African-American old-time string band.

Junior Appalachian Musicians, Inc. (jamkids.org) is the nonprofit parent organization for more than 50 afterschool programs for children ages six and up. JAM provides communities with the requisite tools and support to teach children to play and dance to traditional old time and bluegrass music. Its program model introduces music through small group instruction on instruments common to the Appalachian region and provides youth with opportunities to learn traditional music with their peers from local teaching artists and to perform in their communities and regionally.

Taylor Caffery, the longtime host of “Hootenanny Power” on WRKF in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is the recipient of this year’s Kari Estrin Founding President’s Award. His weekly radio show incorporates musical styles and cultural influences from Caffery’s five decades on radio that began when he hosted his first show while in the U.S. Navy and continued with his college radio station KCSL. To that musical gumbo, he mixes in new discoveries from Folk Alliance International and SERFA conferences.

Dozens of Artists to be Featured in Official and Guerilla Showcases

Slated to present official showcases on Friday evening, May 10 are (in order of appearance) Sue Horowitz, Chris Haddox, Ron Fetner, A Tale of Two, Dustin Gaspard, Nicholas Edward Williams, Helene Cronin, and Admiral Radio. Saturday’s official showcase lineup features Jess Klein, Wes Collins, Bett Padgett, Cast Iron Bluegrass, Ruth and Max Bloomquist, Stone & Snow, Couldn’t Be Happiers, and Ordinary Elephant.

Here’s a link to a Spotify playlist that features one song from each of the official showcase artists.

Following the official showcases on Friday and Saturday, as well as an open mic on Thursday, late-night guerilla showcases will take place in various meeting rooms for several hours. AcousticMusicScene.com, which has had a presence at SERFA conferences since 2011, will host a couple of late-night song swaps and a midnight hoot (featuring more than two-dozen artists/acts – each performing one song) on Thursday, May 9, overnight. The AcousticMusicScene.com Midnight Hoot is a pre-arranged round-robin song swap that is intended to provide concert and festival presenters, folk DJs and others with an opportunity to get a small sampling of the music of a lot of artists in a short period of time on the conference’s opening night. It also enables artists to enjoy and each other’s company and music before the conference really gets into full swing on Friday.

Here’s the AcousticMusicScene.com Showcase schedule:

10:40 Brooklyn in the House: Carolann Solebello and Pat Wictor

11:00 Long Island Sound: Hank Stone and Jim Whiteman

11:30 Midnight Hoot, Part 1 (one song each):

Antonio Andrade, Max & Ruth Bloomquist, Dan & Faith, Katie Dahl, Annie Stokes

12:00 Midnight Hoot, Part 2 (one song each, not necessarily in this order)

Taylor Pie, The Farmer & The Crow, Amy Speace, Annie & Rod Capps, Marc Douglas Berardo, Karyn Oliver, Lindsay Whiteman, Miles & Mafale, Rachael Sage, Emma Frances, Nicholas Edward Williams, Noah Zacharin

1:00 Midnight Hoot, Part 3 (one song each, not necessarily in this order)

Jon Shain & FJ Ventre, Erin Ash Sullivan, Robert Bidney, Rob Lytle, Jim Patton & Sherry Brokus, Meg Braun, Alice Hasen, Brian Ashley Jones & Melanie Jean, Couldn’t Be Happiers, Reckless Saints, Siena Christie

Devon expressed thanks to her dear friend Chris Dupont, who produced the single and is “responsible for those magical harmonies.” Calling him “a joy to work with,” she said: “He did an amazing job making the song so powerfully heartfelt and sincere.” The Mid-Atlantic Song Contest’s judges apparently agreed, and Devon is “completely blown away and honored” that ‘”Our Garden” won Gold in the Folk/Acoustic category and the Grand Prize.

A previous winner of several Silver awards in the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest, as well as its Young Artist Award, Devon recalled winning her first honorable mention in MASC about seven years ago. “I remember going to the awards gala at Jammin’ Java [in Vienna, Virginia] and being star-struck. This is a dream come true. I am so grateful.”

A graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy and Berklee College of Music, Devon has also been a two-time finalist in the prestigious Kerrville New Folk Competition (2017 and 2018) and has had a couple of her largely introspective and personal songs placed in TV shows.

Here is a link to listen to Teghan Devon’s grand prize-winning song, “Our Garden.”

More information about her may be found at teghandevonmusic.com

Denikos describes “Purple Hearts” as “a song about how ‘hurt people hurt people’ and then realize what’s been lost. It’s a song about coming to terms with all that. It is a self-reflective, harshly so, tune put to a melodic finger-picking blues tune that is intended to be mockingly playful and yet tragically somber lyrically.”

Of his second-place-winning song, Denikos said: “Stylistically, it was obviously inspired by the finger-picking Piedmont blues style that Elizabeth Cotton mastered, as well as the unfortunate life experience of having a long-term relationship/marriage of mine end a few years back in 2018.” Acknowledging “the song cuts pretty close to the bone,” he continued, “If a blues song doesn’t rearrange the marrow a bit, you are really not writing a blues tune as much as you are parroting one. And, in my opinion, nothing is worse than that.”

Here is a link to listen to Tony Denikos’ second-place song, “Purple Hearts.”

More information about him may be found at tonydenikos.com.

Overall and Select Individual category winners in the 2022 contest include:

Grand Prize: Teghan Devon for “Our Garden”
2nd Place: Tony Denikos for “Purple Hearts”
3rd Place: Jim Johnson for “Continental Divide”
Director’s Award: Christie Chirinos for “Empathy” spelling
Young Artist: Ava Della Pietra

Adult Contemporary: Gold – Jillian Matundan for “Frozen”, Silver – Louis Café for “Shot in the Dark (Roll of the Dice”)
Americana: Gold – Jim Johnson for “Continental Divide”, Silver – Tony Denikos for “Purple Hearts”
Children’s: Chris Hardy and Katherine Hardy for “All the right Vehicles”, Silver – Bett Padgett for “Where Did Papa Go?”
Country/Bluegrass: Tedd Swormstedt and Victoria Banks for “Shade of Blue”, Silver: Andrew Wolf and Elizabeth Wolf for “All I’m Hearing is Goodbye”
Folk/Acoustic: Gold – Teghan Devon for “Our Garden, ” Silver – Ron Fetner for “Down a Gravel Road”
Freedom Songs: Gold – Will Diehl for “Sunflowers,” Silver – Domingos Muekali, Jr., Kavi Lybarger, and Natalie Fitzen for “America”
Instrumental: Matthew Holsen for “Goodbye to All That,” Silver – Seth Kibel for “How Will I Know?”
Lyrics Only: Charles McCullough for “Reservation Blues,” Silver – Roderick Deacey for “Maybe Later”
Open: Gold – Jacob Rubin for “The Cars in My Mind,” Silver – Chris Hardy for “I Wish I Knew You”
Video: Gold – Juliet Lloyd for “Ghost Light,” Silver – Kevin Lucas for “Cahokia Winds”
Vocal/Jazz/Blues: Gold – Seth Kibel for “Robert Johnson in 1972,” Silver – Mike Franke and Larry Sakayanna for “Key Lime Pie”

A full listing of the winners, finalists and honorable mention recipients in the preceding and other categories may be found at saw.org/masc.

Established in 1979, the Songwriters’ Association of Washington (SAW) is a nonprofit organization that seeks to develop, promote, and encourage songwriters through education, networking, and performance opportunities throughout the Washington, DC metropolitan area. SAW hosts open mics and showcases, workshops on the art and business of songwriting, peer critique sessions, and social events, and its SAW Serves community service program.