Conferences like this are a big investment for us, since we are responsible for covering our own travel costs, hotel, food, and conference fees. The draw is that we get to present our best music to a lot of important people, but every time a conference rolls around, we have to make a careful calculation about how “worth it” it will be, since the payoff is something that we won’t see until (fingers crossed) the bookings come through in the next year or more. It is the support of you, our patrons, that makes it possible for us to say yes to important opportunities like this, so we want to say a huge THANK YOU for helping us invest in our future growth and expanded touring!
Some highlights from FAI 2022:
-our Official Showcase set! The video at the top of this post is our performance of The Song of Hard Times from our Official Showcase stage, which was in an area called the Garden Terrace, an incredible indoor garden jungle that made such a beautiful and unique setting for our show! We affectionately referred to it as the “Rainforest Cafe” (remember those?!)
-reconnecting with the Librarians of Congress 🙂 – it felt particularly special to sing The Song of Hard Times at FAI this year, since it’s a song we arranged in preparation for FAI 2020, when the Library of Congress invited us to participate in their showcase called the Archive Challenge. Since then, we’ve developed a great friendship with the folks at the LOC, and it was wonderful to see them again in person as well! We are developing plans to go down to DC and spend some time in the physical archives at the LOC to do more research into old songs of social struggle, a trip that’s been several years in the making!
-hosting the Global Music Match USA room! Another feature of these conference events is the late-night showcases. People transform their regular hotel rooms into mini house-concert-like spaces, with music starting around 10:30pm and going til 3am! We co-hosted a room with a group of musicians we met through Global Music Match, the virtual artist collaboration program we did last summer. It was a total delight to finally meet folks in person after having spent so many hours on Zoom together! This blurry selfie is the only photo we got of everyone together… fortunately our collective musical talent is at a much higher level than our photography skills! 🙂
–we got to hang out with our agent! Last summer, we signed with Mike Green of Mike Green & Associates (who also reps some of our favorite artists, like Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, as well as Jay & Molly Unger!), but since he lives in Michigan, we haven’t actually seen him in person since the last Folk Alliance conference in Jan 2020. It was so nice to sit face to face, share a few meals, and have a chance to connect as humans as well as business partners.
–meeting other artists! It’s always a delight to connect with other musicians and swap stories at festivals and conferences, but I (Lauren) am still not used to people (especially artists I admire) knowing who Windborne is before I introduce myself! One of my personal conference highlights was chatting with folks from the Henhouse Prowlers and Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards, two groups that are also alums of the American Music Abroad program we did in 2014. Though we all traveled to different countries as cultural ambassadors through music, there were so many commonalities in our experiences, and it was especially fun to share memories about AMA’s program director, who is quite the character.
There is so much more we could share about the conference, but I want to end by saying thank you again for your continued support as patrons. Even as we resume some amount of performing, it is still such a comfort to have this community here–our touring schedule is still pretty sporadic, and we anticipate that will continue for some time as we all work to figure out this new normal.
In gratitude and harmony,
Lauren, Lynn, Jeremy, and Will
