Nashville to Asbury
On Wednesday, May 16th, Let's Get Folked Up! comes to The Watermark in Asbury Park. The brainchild of Chris Brown, Nashville's Jo Smith, and Megan O'Shea, the evening will be a "songwriters in the round"-style concert featuring Brown, Smith, and a host of some of the best singer / songwriters in the Asbury music scene. If things go well here, and I'm sure they will, there's the potential for Let's Get Folked Up! to become a recurring series that brings together artists from Asbury, Nashville, and beyond to share songs and stories and maybe even interact with the audience.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, let's talk about May 16th. I sat down at The Annex in Asbury Park last week with Chris and Meg to get the lowdown on the inaugural Folking.
Tell me a little bit about Let's Get Folked Up.
Meg: Chris and our friend Jo Smith from Nashville pulled me into it a few months ago with the idea of creating a bridge for Nashville artists to bring them here and get them involved in our music scene. And we're really excited about it.
We have an amazing line-up. Jo Smith isn't around here too often, and I'm so excited for her to get involved in our music scene and meet everybody, make friends, and expose her music to everyone here.
Who, in addition to Jo, is on the line-up for the inaugural session?
Chris: Matty Carlock, J.T. Makoviecki from Jackson Pines, Renee Maskin from Lowlight, and myself.
And what's the format?
Chris: Songwriters in the round. When Jo and I met in December playing a show, we got to talking. We were just going to try and trade off and help each other out with shows. But Jo loved the songwriters in the round idea because it's huge in Nashville. And I think it's a great concept. It's a listening room-style thing. There are stories. There are narratives. It evokes "Storytellers" or "Unplugged" from back in the day when we were kids. It's such a cool thing for artists to communicate together.
I knew that Jo knew Meg, so I reached out to Meg and said, "Maybe we can all brainstorm this and turn it into a recurring series."
Is everyone onstage all at once?
Chris: Yep. Someone will do an opening set. Then the rest of the acts will join. There will be a collaborative song at the end (that we haven't figured out yet).
So is it a planned set or more improvisational?
Meg: A little bit of improv, I think. We're gonna just let the artists kind of roll with it and see what stories they come up with, what songs they're in the mood to play.
How did you hook up with Jo?
Chris: She was booked to play at Anchor's Bend for a Christmas show that my dad and I were playing. We just got to chatting. She's super-sweet and super-talented, and she was eager to get into this scene more. Jo is an established artist, and she just wants to see if we can bring more Nashville artists to Asbury; and, maybe in the future, bring some Asbury artists down there.
Nashville is a huge music city in the way that Austin is a huge music city, and I think it would be cool to have that bridge to Asbury.
How did you end up at Watermark?
Chris: I played something similar there in, shit, 2011? It was Emily Grove, myself, Michael Dante Summonte, my buddy Andrew Holtz, and Michael Brett. It was the first time I ever met Emily, Michael, and Michael. Andrew and I were best friends from high school, college roommates.
I remember looking back at the photos from that show, and the room was so elegant. I had talked to [Watermark owner] Russell [Lewis] back then about how they never designed it for music, but acoustic music sounds so good in there. It bounces off the windows. Just the aesthetic of it with the ocean behind you and everything…
I reached out to Russell about it. They're usually closed on Wednesdays anyway, and he said sure. We thought it would be a fun, elegant, last hurrah before summer when this place gets crazy again.
You've talked about potentially making this a series. Would it be resident at the Watermark or do you think you'd move it around?
Meg: We talked about maybe bouncing from venue to venue. There's so much here. It would be silly not to take advantage of it.
Chris: Places like The Anchor's Bend, Danny Clinch's Gallery, even House of Independents could be really cool. There are so many different rooms with their own cool aesthetic.
In a general sense, is it important to you to bring outside acts into Asbury to inject some fresh sounds into the scene?
Chris: I think so. The music scene in Asbury is very diverse, and it could only benefit from becoming more diverse. All of a sudden, you expose an artist from Nashville to this scene and people think, "Hey. I can do a country number." It doesn't have to be a punk rock town or an indie rock town or a folk singer town. Even with people recently being frustrated by the lack of hip-hop or R&B categories at the awards… ...I say why not? Music is the universal language.
Do you have plans for any future installments or is it just wait and see at this point?
Chris: Kind of tentative at this point. Maybe not June, but maybe July to give more time for planning. We do want to see how this one goes. But we've already had a solid outpouring of interest from people who want to participate. I'm already thinking of different line-ups in my head of people we could bring together. Even putting the most polar opposite personalities on the stage could be fun! Maybe the singer for a punk band with some soft-spoken, folky artist.
I'm really interested in the whole dynamic of having everyone on stage at once, playing off of one another, taking it wherever it goes…
Chris: Even the cues you take from whatever song an artist might choose without any prompting. I'd love to see it evolve into something where maybe even the audience gets involved.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Meg: It's going to be a great night. We have such an amazing scene around here, and I'm just really looking forward to pushing our artists further and seeing what they do when they're put on a stage together.
Chris will be playing. Meg will be emceeing?
Chris: Yep.
Meg: Yeah. I'm excited. Each and every one of the participants, I know pretty well; and I've seen all of them do amazing things in the years that I've known them. It's going to be fun.
Let's Get Folked Up! takes place on Wednesday, May 16th, at Asbury Park's Watermark on the boardwalk. It features Jo Smith, Chris Brown, Matty Carlock, Renee Maskin, and J.T. Makoviecki. Doors are at 6pm, and $10 gets you inside.
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