troubadour blues press kit 2011-2012

TROUBADOUR BLUES
PRESS KIT 2011-2012
Troubadour Blues is a journey into the world of well-traveled singer-songwriters
like Peter Case, Mary Gauthier, Chris Smither, Dave Alvin, Slaid Cleaves and
many more. Filmmaker Tom Weber spent nearly 10 years gathering material for
this feature-length documentary, which provides a revealing look at the
heartbreaks and joys of these modern-day wandering minstrels.
The 95-minute film premiered Oct. 14, 2011, at the Buffalo International Film
Festival. It features live performances of 40 songs by the artists who wrote them,
including Case's "Icewater" and "Entella Hotel," Gauthier's "Drag Queens In
Limousines" and "Wheel Inside The Wheel," Alvin's "Ashgrove" and Smither's
breathtaking rendition of "No Love Today."
We see the artists both on and off stage. In revealing interviews, the artists
discuss their craft and the state of the music business today. Case's story
provides the film's main narrative, and we go with him to Hamburg, NY, where he
grew up and learned to sing the blues, to San Francisco, where he polished his
craft as a street musician, and to Los Angeles, where he played in influential
bands like the Nerves and Plimsouls before launching a 30-year solo career.
This is a story that needs to be heard. In our media-saturated age of instant pop
stardom, there is real danger that the tradition of the itinerant working musician is
being diluted or lost. This is a concern expressed in the film by a number of
artists. Troubadour Blues explores the hidden corners of our culture, where
honest, authentic songs reflecting the human experience are still being written
and sung.
The film is available on DVD and for non-theatrical screenings. For more
information, contact:
Tom Weber Films LLC
[email protected]
http://tomweberfilms.com
http://www.troubadour-blues.com
1283 Cedar Blvd.
Pittsburgh PA 15228
(412) 257-2166 (o) or (412) 370-1736 (m)
TROUBADOUR BLUES SCREENING HISTORY
UPDATED JULY 15, 2012
Sept. 30, 2011
First pressing of 1,000 DVDs delivered (release date).
Oct. 14, 2011
World Premiere, Buffalo Int'l Film Festival, Buffalo, NY
Oct. 25, 2011
Pittsburgh, PA, Hollywood Theater, with Mark Dignam
Oct. 28, 2011
Erie, PA, Erie Art Museum, with Mark Dignam
Jan. 1, 2012
Shelburne Falls, MA, Mocha Maya, before Redbird concert
Jan. 2, 2012
Cambridge, MA, Club Passim, with Brendan Hogan
Jan. 4, 2012
Williamstown, MA, Billsville House Concerts
Feb. 23, 2012
Memphis, TN, Folk Alliance International Conference
Feb. 25, 2012
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Winter Roots & Blues Roundup
March 15, 2012
Austin, TX, South By Southwest
May 23, 2012
Nashville, TN, Douglas Corner, with Joe Scutella
June 5, 2012
Altadena, CA, Coffee Gallery Backstage w/Julie Christensen
June 7, 2012
Sacramento, CA, Swell Productions, with Peter Case
June 9, 2012
San Francisco, CA, KC Turner Presents, with Peter Case
June 13, 2012
Houston, TX, Anderson Fair with Vince Bell
June 14, 2012
Austin, TX, Jax Neighborhood Cafe w/House of Songs
June 20, 2012
Marfa, TX, Padre's, with Primo Carrasco and David Beebe
June 23, 2012
Phoenix, AZ, Rhythm Room, with Rocket 88
Buffalo News October 7, 2011
Troubadour Blues 1
Buffalo News October 7, 2011
Troubadour Blues 2
by Chris Kearin
Mt. Lebanon filmmaker Tom Weber gives us the 'Troubadour B...
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11293/1183322-60-0.stm
Mt. Lebanon filmmaker Tom Weber gives us the 'Troubadour Blues'
Thursday, October 20, 2011
By Manny Theiner
Eric S Swist
Peter Case in the movie Troubadour Blues for 10-21 Photo by Kerri B. McMullen
Mt. Lebanon resident Tom Weber recently underwent the ultimate baby boomer rite of passage -- turning 60. And similar to
the collapsing 401(k)s of his generational brethren, Mr. Weber endured a sea change, losing his teaching job at the Art
Institute of Pittsburgh.
So he created for himself a new occupation: documentary filmmaker. At an age when many kick back and retire, he is hitting
the road to promote his first project, a 91-minute peek at the art and lifestyle of itinerant singer-songwriters called
"Troubadour Blues," which holds its Pittsburgh premiere at the Hollywood Theater on Tuesday.
Mr. Weber's interest in music sprang out of a shared childhood experience for many boomers -- witnessing the Beatles on
"The Ed Sullivan Show" at the age of 12. "I'm part of that generation that picked up a guitar and started playing," he
explains. "But I also worked part time at my local paper, the Erie Times, so music and writing went hand in hand."
Although "Troubadour Blues" features interviews and performance clips from a number of important roots/folk artists (what
could be termed the "WYEP crowd," from Chris Smither and Mary Gauthier to Slaid Cleaves and Dave Alvin), he zeroes in
on the life of one particular artist, Peter Case, who started his career in the '70s punk band The Nerves (with Paul Collins)
and '80s garage-rockers The Plimsouls.
"I became familiar with Peter through the Plimsouls, and then saw him solo in the mid-'90s whenever he'd come around the
area," Mr. Weber recalls.
"I got my hands on some video gear and asked if I could follow him around, without a real idea of what I was going to do.
Then, cheap equipment came on the market, allowing me to own a camera. I had previously run a recording studio, so it was
a small step from writing, playing, and producing music to making a film about it."
According to Mr. Weber, the focus on Mr. Case provided a central narrative around which to base the film's flow. He
compares his observational style to the film "Don't Look Back," which covered Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England. "Peter
gave me a lot of access. His story was that of the archetypal folk singer: drop out of school, hitchhike to the West Coast,
become a street musician, and get involved in the music scene. He typifies that classic Woody Guthrie or Cisco Houston
type, the traveling musician who goes all over with suitcase and guitar in hand, as the Paul Simon lyric ['Homeward Bound']
says."
Through Mr. Case's contacts, Mr. Weber expanded his coverage, first meeting with Mr. Smither. "Through Chris I met Mark
Erelli [whose song "Troubadour Blues" provides the film title] and Tracy Grammer. I met most of the artists in an organic
way, although with some I called up their manager or went up to them after a show."
With well over a decade of sound and video recordings, Mr. Weber explains that the film took so long to compile because he
was still working.
"It's a weird coincidence that the day UPS arrived with the DVDs was the day I was laid off from my full-time job. So right
now, this film is my new job ... someone said I've caught 'Troubadour's disease.' "
That affliction followed Mr. Weber to such far-flung locales as Jorma Kaukonen's Fur Peace Ranch in southern Ohio, Plan 9
record store in Richmond, Va., and McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, Calif., as well as stops in Chapel Hill, N.C.,
Charlottesville, Va., and Fall River, Mass. There were also opportunities in our own backyard: Morgantown's Mountain
Stage, local bastions Club Cafe and the Rex Theater, and even a house concert. By following Peter Case over a long span,
Mr. Weber builds a sense of the gradual evolution of his songwriting personality. The first song in the film, Mr. Case's "Poor
Old Tom," stitches several performances from various venues, where the singer's appearance changes over time while his
observations remain ever relevant: "Every time you've got a Republican administration in Washington, it's really good for
folk music ... here's one I wrote back in the Reagan administration where more and more people were living on every street
corner around where I lived."
That political unease could easily be expressed today about Obama's recession woes and Occupy Wall Street, but Mr. Weber
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Mt. Lebanon filmmaker Tom Weber gives us the 'Troubadour B...
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11293/1183322-60-0.stm
is more interested in the modern itinerants' practice of a hardscrabble existence. "They don't have roadies or plush hotels.
[Short of hopping a train], this is as close to the traditional troubadour life as you can get. I wanted to focus on the idea of
doing it solo, the lone musician traveling the highways the way it was done years ago."
Transitions between DVD chapters include shots of driving on the road, which was something Mr. Weber did as much as his
subjects. "I ran up a $20,000 credit card balance. When you own the gear, all you're really talking about is tape and travel
costs. I drove around a lot and stayed in a lot of motels. I wanted to work that way because I felt that I had less of a footprint
as a filmmaker -- instead of coming with a crew and lights, I would just be a fly on the wall."
Mr. Weber did have a bevy of Kickstarter backers, however, which helped pay for mastering and music rights. "You have to
talk with people at publishing companies...whose job it is to make money. About four dollars per DVD goes to music rights
-- they realize that I'm a little guy who doesn't have a lot of backing, and it's not in their interest to prevent [the film] from
coming out. If I went into broadcast or streaming, though, there'd be additional payments to be made."
"Troubadour Blues" debuted two weekends ago at the Buffalo Film Festival. "It's like the Three Rivers Film Festival but on
a smaller scale. After [Pittsburgh], I'll take it on the road, particularly during the film and [folk] music festival seasons -screening at the Folk Alliance in Memphis and flying up to Edmonton for the Winter Roots and Blues Roundup at the
University of Alberta. I'm also working with Peter Case's booking agent in Austin. That's an important market for me to get
into South by Southwest."
"I would love to get distributed into theaters," he adds, "but it's not a life-or-death scenario. I own a projector and screen, so
in the meantime I'll be doing screenings at house concerts. Anywhere I can get 20-30 people to watch my film, it's
worthwhile."
"Troubadour Blues" screens at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Hollywood Theater, Dormont, preceded by a 7:30 p.m. set by local
singer-songwriter Mark Dignam, with audience Q&A afterward. Admission is $5. Call 412-563-0368.
Manny Theiner is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer.
First published on October 20, 2011 at 12:00 am
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December 2011
‘Troubadour’ sings tales of life on road - BostonHerald.com
http://bostonherald.com/entertainment/music/general/view.bg?ar...
‘Troubadour’ sings tales of life on road
By Jim Sullivan | Saturday, December 31, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Music News
“All you need’s a simple song, three chords and the truth,” sings Mark Erelli as the closing credits roll during Tom
Weber’s music documentary “Troubadour Blues.” “Like Hank and Woody, Townes and Jimmie Rodgers all used to
do/Oh Lord I’m bound to ramble with those troubadour blues.”
Weber’s film, which makes its area debut at Club Passim on Monday at 8 p.m., has nothing to do with life in the
spotlight. It’s 180 degrees away from an “American Idol”-type stab at fame and fortune.
Here, the stages are small. The music is mostly acoustic and intimate. The bond between performer and
audience is strong.
The musicians who play and speak about their lives include former Boston area residents Erelli, Mary Gauthier
and Chris Smither, ex-Blasters’ guitarist Dave Alvin, Gurf Morlix and Amy Speace.
Peter Case, a 57-year-old former punk rocker with the Nerves and Plimsouls who has long been treading the
singer-songwriter path, serves as the film’s primary voice.
“If you’re expressing yourself and walking that walk, you’re doing it,” said Case, on the phone from Los Angeles.
“You don’t have to have a hit record. Nobody can fire you. You’re doing what you want to do.”
It’s not 24/7 fun — far from it. The movie shows the tedium of the road, the long haul between gigs and the toll the
trek takes over the years.
Photo by Eric S Swist
“Life on the road might get more arduous, but what are you going to do about it? The big thing is playing for people,” Case said. “I haven’t gotten jaded. I love to play. It’s
such a huge kick, the problems don’t compare.”
Weber, a Harvard grad and former professor at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, spent nearly 10 years making the film. A fan of folkies who played Passim in the 1970s,
Weber undertook this project while teaching full time.
“I see something that’s almost in danger of dying out,” Weber, 60, said on the phone from Pittsburgh. “I think people are getting a very confused sense about what music is
all about and what being a musician is all about. These particular artists, what they speak for is a tradition of minstreling that goes back a very long time. I wanted to convey
the sense that this is something you earn over a period of time.
“In our culture, we seem to judge art by how much money it makes,” he continued. “The yardstick we use to judge movies is box office and TV, it’s ratings. In music, you’ve
got the Billboard charts. I’d like to judge the music by the level of craft that it shows. Some of these songwriters work very hard in crafting their songs to express, where
there is no word out of place.”
The future for those in this life?
“There is no future,” said Case, who plays about 100 concerts a year. “It’s all in the present. You keep the wheel turning. If I break a leg, I’ll go out in a wheelchair. You
always want to make the show something people want to see and will remember.”
“Troubadour Blues,” at Club Passim with opener Brendan Hogan, Monday. Tickets: $10; 617-492-7679, clubpassim.org.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/music/general/view.bg?articleid=1392198
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Arts
Ballad of local singer-songwriters:
‘Troubadour Blues’
Filmmaker pays tribute to acoustic artists
By James Sullivan | G LOB E C ORRESP ONDENT
JANUARY 01, 2012
Tom Weber is a Harvard man, class of ’72. During his
years in Cambridge he spent countless hours at Club
Passim, the Unicorn Coffee House, and other venues
that hosted singer-songwriters. He saw Jackson
Browne, John Prine, Tom Waits, and many other
performers who went on to stardom. “I got to see all
my heroes up close and personal,’’ says Weber, who
now lives in Pennsylvania.
Four decades later, Weber is still attending
acoustic-music shows. For the past 10 years, he’s
done so with a digital video camera in hand. Monday
night at Passim, Weber will screen “Troubadour
MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFF
Blues,’’ his feature-length movie about the rhythms of
Mark Erelli (pictured last month at Club
life for the current generation of musicians toiling on
Passim) appears in Tom Weber’s
the songwriters’ circuit. Though this is Weber’s first
“Troubadour Blues.’’
film, it’s not his first music-related project: he
coauthored a 1998 book about Jamaican music
culture, “Reggae Island.’’
The title of the film echoes that of a song by Mark Erelli, one of several Boston-affiliated
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musicians who appear. Chris Smither lives in Western Massachusetts; Mary Gauthier ran the
Back Bay restaurant Dixie Kitchen when she lived here.
The film centers around Peter Case, a sometime rock ’n’ roller who has spent much of his
career playing solo, in small clubs and coffee shops and at house parties, inspired by old
bluesmen and Beat poets. No one in the film is a real star; they’re all blue-collar, hard-traveling
workers whose trade is their songs. “You create this thing, you live it all the time, and you take
it to people,’’ says Case in the film.
Erelli appreciates the fact that Weber concentrated on contemporary artists, without trotting
out a historical lesson on roots music and the folk revival of the 1960s.
“This is going to sound horrible, but I’m kind of tired of hearing about the ’60s,’’ says Erelli, an
indefatigable writer who has released nine albums under his own name since his 1999 debut. “I
feel there’s as much, if not more, great music going on today. That said, a lot of us owe a great
debt to the ’60s, just as the ’60s owed a great debt to what came before that.’’
Like Weber, Erelli isn’t too fond of the term “folk music,’’ which often implies the performer
has a political agenda. “Hackles are raised by topical songwriting,’’ he says. “I try not to feel like
I’m up there on a soapbox, spewing my opinions.’’
The artists filmed in “Troubadour Blues’’ surely have political views, but the majority of their
songs are like short stories or phone calls, full of emotion and observation. “It’s already written
on your soul, what your subject matter is,’’ says Case in the film.
There’s romance in the troubadour lifestyle, notes another songwriter, Eve Goodman, on
camera. The troubadour, she says, is a “modern-day cowboy.’’
Erelli, who grew up in Reading, says he discovered classic country music through Southern
rock bands such as the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At a recent show at Passim billed
as “Under the Covers,’’ he joined Lori McKenna, Jake Armerding, and Zack Hickman playing
twangy acoustic versions of songs by Tom Petty and Creedence Clearwater Revival, among
others.
“I felt like I was Indiana Jones, unearthing these artifacts no one else knew about,’’ Erelli
recalls of his first exposure to roots music. When he started borrowing his parents’ car to
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attend church coffeehouse shows, his parents were nervous. He told them, “Everyone there is
your age! I’m the youngest by 20 years, at least.’’
At Bates College in Maine, he began booking shows, starting with Chris Smither (through
whom he met Weber). Delving into the music of Texas songwriters such as Townes Van Zandt
and Jerry Jeff Walker, he was thrilled to find a photo of another Texan, Robert Earl Keen,
wearing a T-shirt of the late New England songwriter Bill Morrissey.
“That was a real crystallizing moment for me,’’ says Erelli, who has a master’s degree from
UMass in evolutionary biology. “I realized, oh, this is all the same stuff. And New England was
a valid territory for roots music as well.’’
Weber says he logged more than 100,000 miles over 10 years, most of it around the Northeast,
in gathering footage for the film. He estimates he spent $20,000, mostly on gas, meals, and
motel rooms. He raised $12,000 in donations, which he used to pay for rights to the music in
the film. About $4 of each sale of the DVD goes directly to the artists, he says.
Like the troubadours he documents, he’s taking the film out on the road. “I’m not Morgan
Spurlock or Davis Guggenheim, a bankable documentarian,’’ says Weber, who was laid off from
his job teaching filmmaking at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh the same day the first copies of
the DVD arrived at his door. “But I think I have a good film here, and I’m doing what I can to
get it in front of people. It isn’t a film that’s going to go out of date quickly.’’
“I’m glad he chose to take a page from the troubadour playbook,’’ says Erelli with a laugh. “The
poor bastard.’’
James Sullivan can be reached at [email protected].
© 2012 THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY
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shape, Soll gleans insight fiom historians,
members of Jim Henson's family, and various filmmakets who've utilized puppetry.
By scaling down from a sweeping survey
of the art form to one troupe's experience,
Puppet may sacrifice some edutainment
value (ventriloquist dummies go unmen-
of Washington professor Thaisa Way, who
notes that although histories of the profession often focus on male practitioners, fe-
tioned, as do Team America: Woild Police,
and Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's popular
against it, using various low-maintenance
shrubs, trees, and flowers to create designs
that are often quite stunning. Stoney sees
these professionals as combining art with
marionette fantasies, such as Thunderbirds).
But the film carries a deeper emotional
resonance and appreciation for Hurlin's daring vision-and a glimpse of what equally
imaginative artists could do with puppetry.
Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)
Troubodour Blues
***
(2011) 91 min. DVD: $24.95. Tom Weber Films.
. Tom Weber roams the country to speak
with roots-oriented musicians who travel
from town to town, much like the troubadours of old. Since most only use a guitar
as accompaniment, they can cover a fair
amount of territory for a modest amount
of money. If some, Iike Dave Alvin, don't
necessarily enjoy the rigors of touring, they
still feel it's worth the effort in order to
perform in front of live audiences. As RB
Morris puts it, "l feel like a circuit preacher."
Although the tools of the trade-guitar
and harmonica-have virtually remained
unchanged from the heyday of Woody
Guthrie and Pete Seeger, the ability to use
the Internet for promotional purposes
represents a significant difference. With
overhead costs going down over the years,
Chris Smither feels that he's "doing better
than I ever did in my life." Artists who
have been burned by the record business,
such as Gurf Morlix, also appreciate doing
things for themselves, even if that means
more work on their part. Morlix plainly
states, "I detest the music industry." Weber
spends most of his time with Peter Case,
who played in the Nerves and the Plim-
in the 1980s. The Plimsouls had an
alternative radio hit with 'A Million Miles
Away" and appeared in Valley GirI, but Case
souls
has been a solo act for decades now (and
says he originally started out as a street
singer). During filming, Case undergoes
heart surgery, but soon returns to the stage.
In between the performance clips, Weber
works in thoughts about songwriting and
the risks of the road. An interesting documentary, this is recommended. Aud: C, P.
(K. Fennessy)
Women in the Dirt: londscope Architects
Shoping ()urWorld
ff*
(2011) 73 min. DVD: $29.99 [$295 w/PPR], Blu-ray:
$34. Wind Media Productions (avail. fromwww.
womeninthedirt.com). ISBN : 97 8-0-983817 7-1-0.
Landscape architect Carolann Stoney
profiles seven women working in her chosen
fteld in this informative documentary that
*____!__
males have long been active. All of Stoney's
subjects reside
in California, and for the
most part they prefer to work with the
state's Mediterranean climate rather than
function in their parks, gardens, and
street-scapes. From the subjects' perspective, they are melding their ideas with the
needs of their clients and communities, so
some degree of constructive compromise is
inevitable. The interviewees come across as
artists, horticulturists, structural engineers,
and environmentalists, each of whom adhere to different styles and philosophies.
While Isabelle Greene concentrates on
flora and organic shapes, Pamela Palmer
focuses on water and angularity. Although
most of their commissions are for highend individuals and organizations, Andrea
Cochran has created calming gardens for
low-income properties, like San Francisco's
Curran House, while Mia Lehrer has been
working for years to transform the 32-mile
Los Angeles River Basin, possibly the most
ambitious project featured here. Stoney's
other subjects are Katherine Spitz, Lauren
Mel6ndrez, and Cheryl Barton, and she
adds context-providing commentary from
writers, editors, sculptors, urban designers,
city commissioners, and other landscape
architects. Recommended. Aud: C,
(K. Fennessy)
P.
500 Miles to Freedom
***rn
(2011) 33 min. DVD: $129: public libraries; $229:
colleges & universities. W & B Productions (dbt. by
TlansitMedia). PPR.
On June 4, 1844, 27 -year-oldJohn W. Jones
and four other slave men quietly escaped
from a plantation in Leesburg, VA, heading
north along the Underground Railroad. The
quintet traveled mostly by night in order to
avoid the bounty hunters who scoured the
Virginia-Maryland-Pennsylvania corridor
in
search of runaway slaves. Jones began his
new life as a fiee man in Elmira, Nl where
he worked as a church sexton, learned to
read and write, and eventually saved enough
money to buy a house that served as a refuge
for those seeking liberty in Canada. This
wonderful documentary short by Richard
Breyer and Anand Kamalakar traies Jones's
remarkable odyssey, highlighting the courageous abolitionists who provided him andhis
traveling companions with food and shelter
(actions thatwere against the lawin pre-Civil
War America). The filmmakers follow the
interviewing assorted subjects
along the way-historians, ministers, farmers,
ferryboat captains, and others. The film also
identifies the still-extant houses where the
men took refuge during their perilous flight.
Most astonishing is a segment that recalls a
escapees' route,
long-forgotten chapter of Civil War history:
the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp at
Elmira.Jones worked here duringthe conflict
as part of the facility's burial staff-the fact
that he would voluntarily provide dignified
-'l
Ihe Block
Power Mixtop e 1967 -1975
***rn
(2011) 96 min. DVD: $24.98. MPI Media Group (avail. from most
distributors). ISBN : 0 -7 886 -1443 - 6.
'A documentary in nine chapters" is how The Black Power
Mixtape 1967-1975 bills itself, covering eight critical years of
the civil rights struggle (plus a prelude) in the United States as
it evolved from the nonviolent approach of Dr. Martin Luther
KingJr. to the more militant/revolutionary stance signaled by
the rise of Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panther Party,
as well as Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. The real
twist here, however, is that the material hails from Swedish
TV, not U.S. media. The "neutral" Swedish reporters appear to have no agenda or
preconceptions, and many interviewees-including Carmichael, Angela Davis, and
Bobby Seale-look more at ease with foreign reporters than they did with whiteestablishment American counterparts. Some material is indeed revelatory, such
as a soft-spoken Carmichael making frightening good sense about the shortfalls
of nonviolent protes! here, he's far from the radical image often ascribed to the
Panthers. Modein-day commentators add their reactions to archival footage, mostly
progressive-to-left activists/entertainers (Harry Belafonte, Erykah Badu, and others),
rather than a broader cast of black academics, politicians, and opinion leaders. While
it states up front that this is not a complete chronicle of the Black Power movement
(rather, a "mixtape"), this is still an important addition to our understanding of
the intersection of race relations, U.S. politics, and history during a turbulent era.
DVD extras include a documentary short, a featurette, and additional interviews.
Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)
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