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virtually anytime you want, anywhere you want. We think it's the intelligent thing
to do. When I was a young man growing up in the early nineteen
seventies and Fort Lee, New Jersey and our thick accent we called it Fort
Lee, New Jersey, most of my friends spent their college years haunting the
bars and discos so popular at the time. But I was a little different.
I was totally captivated by the bohemian lifestyle taking place in Greenwich Village.
I eat the village that I had read so much about, particularly during the
so called Golden Age of folk music in nineteen sixties. So would either walk
across the Georgia to Washington Bridge, or take the bus across to the Uptown
Port Authority bus terminal, and then ride the A train downtown to West Fourth
Street, the beating heart of the village. As soon as I stepped out
of the dark subway station into the bustle of West Forth, I knew that
I was in a different world than the one I experienced in a relatively suburban
town where I lived at the time, and I did my best to live
the ideal that I felt was so ingrained in the village Psyche. I went
to most, if not all, of the famous music joint shops and cafes
that I had read so much about. But as I as much as I
dreamed about doing so, I never actually lived in the village and was probably
about a decade behind this houseon days I had romanticized about it left me feeling
that I was more. It was never more than just really a visitor.
Well on being frankly welcome, Welcome a woman who not only lived it,
she has even written a book about her days at the forefront of the folk
scenes, glory days in the nineteen sixties, even managing folk giants like Dave
Van Ronk and legend Bob Dylan, among others. It's called My Greenwich Village.
Dave, Bob and me. Welcome Terry Thal, thank you for joining,
Thank you, thank you for having me here. Certainly my pleasure.
And we've spent a little time before the program catching up, and we have
some mutual friends, including Neil Richter, our engineer, and some common experience
and one of them I want to get back to before we actually spend a
lot of time with the book. But I think we need a little background,
a little context, to get there first. And we've mentioned you didn't
grow up, if you will, in the village. In other words,
you really were in a child there. You really grew up in Brooklyn,
And certainly in that era of the fifties and sixties, Brooklyn seemed a long
way from Greenwich Village. So how did you get from one to the other?
Literally from one place to the other? Book, physically and emotionally,
that's funny. Physically it was the subway, you know, we lived on
the subway. I was born and beds Side, which I talked about a
bit in the village. I lived there for eleven years. Uh. It
was a It was very in retrospect, it was a very interesting neighborhood because
it was ethnically very mixed. It was a neighborhood and change. Um it
had been partly Jewish. I could you know, I could lived in by
Jews. UM. A lot of black people were moving in. UM,
A lot of Puerto Rican people were moving in at that time. When you
talked about Latinos, you really were talking about people who moved to New York
from from Puerto Rico. There was some Romanies and who lived in stores around
the corner for me and um, we all got along. You know.
It was it was heavily Irish, it was bie Italian. Uh. And
in retrospect it was kind of a I'm not answering your question yet. Continue.
Yeah, in retrospect it was very interesting because the kids all got along.
Um, there were no problems in school. We liked each other,
we played together, we did whatever kids did together. After school, both
kids separated into their own ethnic groups. They went back home and they played
with the kids who were like them. Um. And that's always that's always
been, you know, a kind of striking thing to me. When I
was eleven, we moved to Flatbush, which I think you know, and
Um, I was on I went. I was in Tuning High scho school.
I had been skipped and I was in what was called the SP of
the Special Progress class. We did three years in two and then I went
to Lafayette High School. I was on the edge of the Lafayette High School
district a block away, and I would have gone to Movewood And I did
not have a lot of friends in high school. When I was in high
school, I was five eleven. I was chubby this summer and I just
always felt different from the other kids, And looking back, I think part
of it might have been that I was skipped two years and I was two
years younger than everybody else school or at that age. That presents its own
difficulties, forgive me, but continued. Yeah, I always thought that was
a good thing. And about eight years ago, ten years ago, one
day I said to myself, she was maybe it wasn't such a good thing.
You know, the age difference did make a difference. We were in
the same classes, we were in the same programs, but they hit two
more years than I did. And I think all the things that the psychologists
say about growing up may be true and relevant. H the summer I was
fifteen, my fifteenth summer I was. It was the end of my junior
year in high school. The way went away. It just disappeared. I
have no idea where it went, but it ran away from me and I
emerged with a body, and um I started having a bit more of a
social life. But my best my best friend in high school was a guy
named Stu Ritterman, And it was Stu who took me to the village.
Okay, old were you do you recall old you were at you were fifteen
that at that time fifteen, okay, I was in my junior year in
college. Uh And basically, you know, a lot of what we went
to were things like, um, there was a poet named Ted Jones who
later was one of the poets who read at the gas Light, and he
threw rent parties on the Bowery. I didn't know exactly what they were.
I didn't realize they were a commercial way of playing his rent, paying his
rent. But Stu took me there. We went to those. We went
to Washington Square during the summer occasionally, and that was really my introduction to
the village. What what were you expecting? Did you have any expectations at
that time as a fifteen year old girl in Brooklyn? Because I said,
as I mentioned, I started, and you should give us a year too,
because I'm a little bit later in the story. So they were thinking,
has already written it, had already been mythologized to a great deal.
Had it been so yet? For you at that point in your life,
was there any fascination or you just kind of went because this young man took
you there. Did you have a fascination beyond that? I'm embarrassed to say
that I didn't, that's favorite. This was nineteen fifty four, okay,
so I think before I graduated from high school and June fifty bove so uh
no, No, But there was another piece that was going on. I
was in school during the height of the McCarthy period, when the House on
American Activities Committee was created. Sure so called McCarthy is m etc. Sure,
well, McCarthy and um they saw a communists crawling out of every mousehole
and you know, in the floor and subpoena at people and put people in
jail for refusing to talk about their political activities. Somehow I had become very
interested in that and horrified by it. And I was reading up in Sinclair.
I was reading Johntos Passos, I was reading Leftish labor books. And
I'm not exactly sure how I related that to the village, but I did.
To me, the village represented a place in which that kind of thing
didn't happen, and later on I'll talk about that later if you want.
I wound up in socialist organizations that were part of the old Left, and
their offices were all in the village, So it kind of a kind of
came together for me in a very unexpected, unusual way. I mean,
I didn't go there because I wanted the folk music. I didn't know anything
about folk music when I was talk about that. I eventually get to that
too, but people, but just just before that, was there an epiphany?
Was there a single moment where you said, this is where I need
to be. And then the reason I ask, because that can happen at
a time that I live in a small Hudson River town, you know,
because you're not far away, Niac, and I did kind of have an
epiphany like that at one point where when I say, it just struck me
as I have to be here, this is where I want to be,
This is where I need to be. So I had that epiphany moment.
Can you say that? Can you point that to any particular moment in the
village. If I could, it would have come later. It would have
come when I was in college and part of the folk music scene, you
know, and part of that world and part of the socialist world. And
I mean, I can't say that one day I looked around and said,
oh, this is where I want to be. It was sort of a
gradual taking for granted almost that this was where I was going to wind up.
So when did you finally make the film move where you became a Denis
and a citizen, if you will, of the village. When did you
actually make the move where you left Brooklyn for two weeks after I graduated from
college. Okay, Dave and I moved in. Dave en Rond and I
moved in together. It wasn't exactly the village. It was a fifth floor
walk up in Chelsea, which was not Chelsea, the glamorous place at that
time. It was just another neighborhood. It was a little bit north of
the village. Uh. We had decided we were going to live together,
and um, some friends were vacating an apartment, me to go to the
apartment. And it was close enough to the village that, of course,
certainly closer than I was in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Is one block
north of fourteenth, which is considered said at the north end of the courage.
I mean, I was, you know, I was there, even
I knew that geographically. And you mentioned Dave and rock and his name is
included in the in the title. Uh. And he certainly a giant in
the in the folk music scene, a legendary figure how did that all come
about? Did Dave come before the folks scene? Did folks scene come and
then Dave? And then we got to bring it to Bob Dylan. We've
got to continue to give people context within the book and your life in the
village. So let me simplify it. What came first day or the music.
I'm going to back up a little bit. Okay, please please take
us there, please. What really got me hanging around the village was going
to socialist meetings. I was interested in. My motto I do talk about
this in the book has always been that every person in the world should have
food, shelter, healthcare, education. And I did not see that happening.
And I won't go through the whole thing, but I was part of
a in college, I became part of a group that was part of what
was called the left wing of the Democratic Party. And then I was sort
of recruited into, but never joined, a socialist organization UM and the office
officers were in fourteenth Street. I found myself going to fourteenth Street to meetings
every Friday night, and that really took me into the village. So it
was it was that really was my route in. And then in nineteen fifty
and I I was introduced to the folk music actually more through the Union songs
and labor songs and I w W songs. Um that sounded so exciting and
class conscious. You know, most inactiably linked folk music and protest music in
my mind certainly, yes, most be dreadful, but it sounded great,
you know. I was by then, I was about seventeen, and um,
uh that was you know, That's how That's how I moved towards folk
music. M My sister was at Brandeis University. She gave me folks say
albums ten inch albums that I still have of people like Woody and Woody got
three and sisterly Houston and lead Billy. But they were I thought they were
great. H That was kind of my entry into the into the folk music
scene. Uh Dave. I met at a party. I was at a
party up in one of those huge riverside drive apartments that existed then that people
could live in um without paying five million dollars a month, ten rooms,
twelve rooms, a kitchen so big you could put five of my kitchens into
it. It was thrown by science fiction fan people. There were people who
were science fiction aficionados. They put out fan magazines, they socialized. It
was a very very specific world dedicated to science fiction. I have no idea
how I wound up at a party of there at all. It must have
been, you know, but there were ties as some of the science fiction
people who were interested in left me in music were interested in socialism. It
was a teeny little world at that time, and everybody was kind of linked
in one way or another. So I was at this party and some guy
was sitting and driving me crazy, trying to urge me to go into a
bedroom. And I don't remember how, but I knew that he wasn't trying
to have sex with me. He was trying to get me to smoke marijuana.
And to me, marijuana was that evil stuff that grew in the fields
across from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, and I mean it was just no,
no, no, no, I don't do this kind of thing.
And I remember this was nineteen fifty six, Yes, sure, serious repercussions
at that time of court. Sure, yeah, yeah. And some tall,
skinny guy came over and started talking to us, and eventually he threw
he shoved off the young man who was trying to get me to smoke grass.
And it was Dave and we talked all night and then I ran into
him. We didn't We didn't see each other again, though. I ran
into him a few months later in the Figure, which was a coffeehouse on
the corner of Bleaker and Emma Dugal. I remember it, sure, I
remember it well. Everybody hung out. Yes, it was one of my
places. And I went because I entered so much about what ye maybe I
saw you. I was not at that point, the police continue. I
didn't mean to interrupt anyway, I ran into him. Um. It was
full, and obviously there was some friends from college who who were a lot
older than me and had graduated. We're in graduated school. And I remember
one of them was sitting there trying to plan how he was going to start
his class at NYU the next morning. What was he going to do?
It was a little late to plant, you know, actually, I mean
it was twelve hours away from the actual class. But Dave was sitting at
another table and we got to talking again, and he took me all the
held way home to Brooklyn, which was an hour trip getting to the subway,
and you know, he took me to my house. It was nine
blocks or eight blocks from the subway, and we started we started to see
each other and then you you don't have to again, I'm not prying.
Personally, you became husbanding life for a while for a time, but also
professionally. You managed him as a singer, and people who were familiar with
the folk scene would know the name. And that's an interesting thing beyond that
genre. Very few these days, you know, many of the great folk
people, of which Van Ronk was one. But how did you go from
protest sympathizing and music management. You actually managed him as a singer, would
help him to book gigs in the village, et cetera. How did that
transition happen? Well, we moved in together and maybe we might have been
July d July in nineteen fifty nine, a few weeks after I graduated from
college, which and it was because I was at Brooklyn College that I was
able to go to all the socialist meetings. I did not go to an
out of town college, I you know, I went to Brooklyn, which
was a great place in at that time. Yes, killerschool as a management
when I graduated from college, there was no way for folks singer to make
a living in New York, just none and Daven only wanted to live together,
so I christioned a teacher's license. I did not want to be a
teacher, but I figured I could do that until he was able to make
a living. And we wound up living in Chelsea, and I wound up
teaching in a high school in Chelsea. About a year and a half later,
day start, which is a whole other story. I love teachers stories
back. Don't worry, we got a stories to talk about it now.
About a year and a half later, folk music clubs started to open up
and Dave was able to get work, and I went to graduate school.
I wanted a PhD. I wanted to major in American American studies. I
couldn't find a program in New York that did American studies, and I wound
up in grad school at City College, in majoring and political science, which
I hated. I thought it was just like sociological studies. I had one
wonderful professor and I started. I did all my class work, and I
started to do a thesis which was supposed to be a Marxist study of one
of the small socialist sects, and now it moved to the right, and
I did a ton of research. Meanwhile, Dave had Dave was working and
a man from Detroit, a manager, had approached him and he had become
Dave's manager. One week, Dave was working in a club in Pennsylvania and
not not either of the well known clubs in Philadelphia or elsewhere, and it
was a new club, and it was clear that they were going broke.
They just weren't going to make it. And I had gone there with Dave.
I traveled with him for a while the first year he worked. And
we caused his manager and he said, what should you know? What should
he do? Um, he's going to get stuffed, And I said,
yes, to workout contract and then maybe you can sue. Well, we
knew there wasn't to make anybody too. They weren't get to have any money,
but Dave worse house contract and he said, I don't. And the
marriage was right legally to Dave horse House contract, and he said, um,
I'm firing him being my manager. And I would start it well,
and it was more fun than graduate school. So I said, to it
now, and you mentioned and from that you developed a career within that business
and your book mentions Dave, Bob and Bob being Bob Dylan. Of course
the legend um, So how did you wind up meeting Dylan and becoming his
early manager? There and the and the glory days of the village. Tell
us a little bit about that story. When when Bob came to the village,
he played a couple of basket houses, and a basket house was the
place where literally, in order for performers to get paid, waitresses past the
basket and people put in tips. Bob was in one of them. Dave
was down on McDougald sweet and heard him when I came home, and he
said, you got to hear this kid. He's a genius. So I
went down and I heard Bob, and somehow we all became friends. He
spent a lot of time in our apartment. We hung out together. When
he met Susie, she became a good friend. And Susie actually was a
good friend of mine and Dave separately until she died. And at some point
Bob says to me, would he get me gigs? And we talked about
it, and we kind of I never asked him to sign a contract,
but we talked about I would get him gigs. I wouldn't take any commission
until he was making enough to pay permissions and what I would then get.
And I did not try to change his music anyway. I thought that he
was going to become, quote a better musician. But the guy had a
such with genius. I was going to ask you about that. You sense
that you sensed that immediately. Is that a fair statement that you sensed there
was something extraordinary about this person. Yes, it was not a great guitarist.
He was not a great singer, but he had an incredible memory.
He remembered what he saw, what he heard, and he listened to an
enormous amount of folk music. He had a background in rock rock music.
I mean, that's really what he came out of, and he amalgamated it
into He emalcimated both into his into his music. People thought he was a
Woody Guthrie imitator, which he was not. He was doing he worshiped Woody.
He was doing a lot of Woody guthrough stuff, but his InfoNation was
different, his arrangements were different. He wasn't imitating anybody word for word.
Would saw many of the young folk singers did. They wanted to sound like
somebody, and they literally note for note, InfoNation for InfoNation, breath for
breath. They would make believe they were somebody else. And later a lot
of the rock tripy bands did that and it would be crazy, frankly,
but Bob wasn't doing that. Bob was bringing something that was his to the
music, and on stage he was very interesting. He was doing the kind
of thing Charlie Chaplin did. He was funny. He was jerky. I
mean literally jerky. I don't mean foolish. I mean his emotions were.
His motions were fast, they were uneven, they weren't smooth, and everybody
thought, or most people thought, that there was something odd about him.
We thought it was deliberate, and this was all part of Dylan developing his
is very very own style. Yeah, I thought he was. I thought
it was a genius in some ways, you know. I read good portions
of his biography and one of the things that surprised me so much is how
much of a family man he was, how how important his family was to
him, and often he really wanted to see himself as he wanted people to
see him. As he saw himself was as a musician. First you know,
the voice of a generation, etc. He kind of felt, at
least from what I read into it, felt uncomfortable with that as a title.
He really wanted It seemed to me he wanted to be known more is
like, Hey, you know, I'm a guy who plays good songs,
but you know, I want to be known for my music, if you
will, not necessarily for the message first, for the music first, wild
would you agree with that? From from what you know of him, he
wanted to be known for the music. I can't talk I cannot talk about
him as a family man because by the time he became quote a family band,
he had moved out of out of our world. And yes, it
was up in Woodstock, he mentions at his time there that should be more
specific in context. Yes, um, but yes, he wanted he you
know, he wanted he wanted to be known for his music. He wanted
to Um, he wanted to be famous, and he did. He had
he had that that lust for fame if you will. One night in Um,
but I don't think he really I don't think he really knew what fame
was or meant. UM. I remember one night New Year's Eve. I
can't remember the night maybe sixty three sixty four. Um Dave and I and
Bob and Susie his then girlfriend, Susie Roller, decided not to do anything.
We weren't going to a party. We were going to hang out at
home. David I didn't particularly like going out New Year's Eve. It was
crowded, it was noisy. He was stupid. But at some point we
decided to go to a party uptown. And we had been in my apartment,
Dave Dave my apartment on Unwaverley Place, and we walked over to Seventh
Avenue, seventh Avenue South looking for a taxi to get us to whatever party
we wanted to go to, and cabs wouldn't stop for us. There were
almost no empty cabs, and it was New Year's Eve and they were all
occupied. Every now and then an empty cab would go pass and it would
pass us up. We didn't know why. Maybe we were too scruffy,
maybe we didn't look like we hadn't enough money. Maybe they just didn't want
any passengers at that point. But I remember all running out into seventh Avenue
the South, waving his hands and yelling, I'm Bob Dylan, pick us
up. You got to stop for us. I'm Bob Dylan. Someday you'll
be sorry. It was this somebody who thought he was going to be a
a Nobel Prize winner. No, it was a kid. Bob's a little
younger than me, so he must have been twenty three of that time,
you know, something like that. But yeah, he wanted There must be
so many great stories in the book, Terry. So before we take a
break, tell us about Let's bring it up now to the book. We
got a little background. What you're a little bit about with the village was
a little bit about and the scene at that time. Now the book.
You decided to write a book. What gave you the impetus at this time,
at this moment to write this book. Oh my, I should say
something scipulating. I have written all since. Even even when I was in
the folk music world, I did press releases, I did public relations for
my performers. Later in school and after I left folk music and went to
work in the not for profit world. I wrote, I wrote papers,
I wrote speeches. I wrote speeches for the president of Yeshiva University at some
point in the eighties. I've been involved enough for profit organizations. I write
white papers. I write government stuff. I've never written fiction. And for
years people said to me, oh, you should write about the village,
you should write about those days. And I kept saying, who'd read it?
Who would care? Then Dave wrote his book and it's sold. I
don't know how well it's old, but it's old well enough for it to
stay in print. And everybody started writing books, and people said to me,
you should write a book, and I said, I wasn't a musician.
Who's going to read my book? And I did a couple of test
chapters and I took them to a writing group and people with them, and
they said, you are a very good writer. You have wonderful stories,
but I don't feel you in that thing emotionally. And I said, I
can't do anything emotionally. That isn't me. I don't do that. And
I quit. I said, what do they want me to write about?
But I cried that I left. I really had a vision of it having
to be very explicit, and I thought I couldn't do it. People kept
saying it to me and saying it to me, And what finally kicked it
off is a young man was writing a book about Bob Dylan in New York.
He had written one about Dylan in London. He was doing one about
Dylan in New York, and he got in touch with me and asked me
a bunch of questions and I kept thinking, I'm not going to answer them
because while you know, if I give away all this information and I said
to people a lot, I mean, I always felt I was giving away
information. I should board for my own book. And I said no.
And then I said, Terry, you know you're being a church you're eighty
smadives holth. Do you haven't written a book? I wrote answers to the
questions. He turned them into a chapter in his book which I ran past
a lawyer, and it's a chapter in his book by Keith Miles Dylan in
Dylan in New York. And a few months later his publishers got in touch
with me and said, are you writing a book? Wow? And we
talked and they're English publishers and I like them. I felt very comfortable with
them, and I said okay, and I started to write the book.
Terry, We're going to take a quick break and we talk more about the
book. There's a festival coming up to the book release party. I want
to talk a little bit about those dates and talks a little bit about some
of the favorite parts that you have of the book. If you can pick
one or two of your favorite stories beyond some of that that you shared with
us. My guest is Terry Thal her book, My Granwich Village, Dave,
Bob and me as my guest. This is being Frank. We're the
only way to be is Frank. I'm your host, Frank Labonna. We're
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to Being Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm your
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any podcasting platform that you might have. We got a great show. We're
continuing. My guest is Terry Thal. She wrote a book about the folk
scenes glory days in the nineteen sixties. It's called My Greenwich Village. Dave,
Bob and me Terry. Before the Break we started to getting more into
the book and I want to talk about it in a little bit more detail.
Obviously, there are many stories. You shared some of them with us
before the break. Do you have a favorite story in the book, that
one that stands out in your mind that you would like to mostly to share
with people, or any favorite stories you can even do more than one.
Is there something that sticks out in your mind that you would really like to
share with people. That kind of is emblematic of what the book is about.
I'm going to do one that isn't exactly a story, but the the
photograph on the cover of the book is of Dave and Bob and me walking
down the street. And that's a funny story because it is apparently a very
very well known picture. It was taken by a photographer named Jim Marshall who
became a major rock photographer. And what happened was Dave and I and Bob
and Susie went out for breakfast one morning or late one morning, or it
might have been one afternoon or whenever we got We all got up and I
vaguely remember, only vaguely, that Jim was doing a photo session of Bob,
but he did a photo session of the four of us walking west in
the village, walking a Hudson street, going back, walking down Washington,
I'm sorry, seventh even in the south, and he was with us all
the way shooting pictures, and at some point the young woman joined us.
I have no idea who she was. Nobody ever knew who she was,
and later people said they thought she was Karen Dulton, who she wasn't but
we were polite, we were young, we were friendly, and we didn't
tell her to go away. So that was that, and the photo session
ended and I forgot about it totally. Years and years later, maybe within
the past ten years, I learned that the photographs from that session were online
on Facebook. They are all over the place. People have traced every step
we took. They've identified the stores we passed, they've identified cars that we
passed, what year it was, what week it was, what address we
were at. I mean, I don't remember any of this, but people
and I don't understand it. I really do not understand this kind of thing.
But it's been traced. The picture. So there is a picture of
Dave and Bob and Susie and me. Susie and I were behind the guys,
we were talking to one another, and it is what is called,
quote an iconic photograph. I hate the word iconic, I truly hate it,
but that's what it's called. And when we were talking about book covers,
my publisher wanted to do a montage of pictures and they wanted to use
that as one of them, and I actually had a pay to use a
picture of myself. That's great. So we managed to get I managed to
get the somebody managed to get the price down, and I did. And
when they decided not to use the montage but just to use one picture,
they chose that picture. And I had some reservations about it because I am
walking behind that I noticed my pants were a little too short, because I
love it, and I couldn't get pants long enough to go all the way
down to the crops of my shoes, which I've always been a little manic
about. Um, Susie got cropped out because the picture would not have fit
properly if four people were in it, and that wound up as the cover
the cover of the of the book, the book My Dreads Village, Dave,
Bob and Me by Terry Thal Terry, what do you What do you
hope people take from the book after they've done reading it? What what do
you hope to have accomplished? You know, I can't say anything grand like
I want them to understand the relationship between the music and the politics, because
I don't really go into that. I was not writing a theoretical book.
I was writing a book about my life in the village, and one of
the things that you know. There's a couple of things. One of them
is that I hope that people could see that you can be a woman,
you can live with people, you can be married to people, and you
can live your own life. Uh. Even though Dave and I were worked
together, which probably was not the best idea in the world. Um,
and stay very very good friends until he died. Even though we separated.
You and I have talked about that, you know, we had no reason
not to be um. Uh. That and I had a great life after
working enough for not for profit organizations. UM. I hope that they take
that, they take that you don't have to suffer, you don't have to
be um um a victim, that you can you can do what you choose
to do and make it happen and be very happy. And uh. Uh
that that's one of the story. You know. That's one of the things
that I hope people see. The other is uh the other, and I'm
going to link it to the movie Inside Lewen Davis. The village and the
folk music scene and even its ties to the left wing organizations. It was
a great world. The village. The folk music world was exciting, It
was vibrant, we heard really good music. We heard great music. People
like John Hurt, Reverend Gary Davis, people I still listened to, were
phenomenal musicians. I mean, they weren't folksingers who came out of the back
hill someplace and could do three notes on a guitar. They were astounding musicians.
And they became and I became part of a really supportive scene. People
liked one another, people were friendly. We didn't all hang out in the
same places all the time. There were different worlds. There were people who
hung out at Alan Block sandal shop. There were people who hung hung out
in my apartment, which turned into almost the hotel. I mean, I
remember having twelve people there. David and I had invited nobody, and they
came and they stayed at dinner, and that wasn't unusual. One night,
we were so many people there. We looked at each other at some point
and said, we didn't invite anybody. Who went off to the movies and
left everybody. I do not remember whether they were there when we got home.
I you know, I don't know, but it was. It was
a supportive world. If people discovered an out of town club, they told
everybody about it. They recommended not just their friends, but people they quote
with good musicians to the club. There was no fighting great The book My
Grantich Village, Dave, Bob and Me by Terry Thal Terry, Now,
I understand the book is available for pre order. Now, how can people
get the book? And I understand there's a good, big book launch coming
up in September, and I know you've got to get your notes to be
able to do that because there's a lot to go on. So first,
can people get the book now? They can get the book now. It's
for sale on presale on Amazon. If you order it now, you will
get it. I forget the exact day. Amazon keeps changing the date that
it's coming out on, but it's coming out in early early October. So
if you pre order it now, you can get an Amazon. You can
get it on the Barnes and Noble website. And there's a third website for
people who hate the big companies, but I can't remember what it is,
Okay, now tell us about that. There's also a launch party that's also
involved with activities in the village. Sounds like a great time. You can
tell us a little bit about what that's about. That's coming in September.
I think this is really this piece is really exciting and I am thrilled to
be part of it. Several years ago, two people, a woman who
lives in London who edited a book Robert Shelton who used to be a New
York Times review who wrote about Dylan, and a man who lives in the
village organized the thing called the Village Scrip and they host and promote and produce
an incredible number of events over a period of two weeks in the village in
September, and they invited me to introduce my book at an event there and
to accompany, to accompany me or to do better than me, whichever.
We've been listed to folksingers who were around at that time, and there ain't
that many of us left, so that I will be there with talking with
and people can listen to Tom Paxton A Happy Town Wow, And I'm really
really excited about that. That's going to be on September twelfth. It will
be a bitter end on Bleepot Street still there after all. Then there it
Ends is one of the clubs I write about in the book. It was
a really exciting place and it's the only performance site that still exists. Yeah,
from a lot of them. I remember Kenny's Castaways in the back Fence,
and so many and then so virtually all of them come and gone except
for that. Well, terrific tickets. If people are interested, google the
Village Trip, the Village Trip, okay, the Village Trip three words,
and when you get to the site, you can choose a number of different
places to go. Click on musical events and you will see an incredible,
incredible array of different musical events you can go to. But go down to
number twelve and number twelve is the concert and my talk and it's on Tuesday,
September twelfth, and click on that and you can buy tickets. Great
Terry, we come back again before the book has launched, and maybe even
before the big festival and share more stories with us. They have been great.
This is terrific. I would love to I would also love to urge
people to look at all the musical offerings and other events the Village tripments do.
It is amazing. I am awestruck. I really am at what um
Liz and Cliff have been able to do pulling this together. I mean,
they have our full stories of contemporary musical events um that are just amazing events
by h M. Minimalist composers, um oratorios. It's it's it's it's just
great. And that begins with the twelfth of September. You said the week
of the Did I get that correctly? It starts on the tenth, the
tenth, okay, so let's correct that. So September tenth my concert,
my event is the twelfth, twelfth, Okay, So I got that straight.
So it starts a tenth years on the twelfth. Just about at a
time, I want to again mention the book my Greenwich village, Dave,
Bob and me. I want to thank you for being here, for your
intelligent conversation. As they said, so much fun, great stories, and
you'll please come back once again to being Frank. I would absolutely Adris thank
you for having me well. It is our pleasure. And of course we
always think that man, mister Nichil Richter. Yeah, he's looking. You
can't we can see him. You can't what you're You're lucky you can't see
him. We can, but we always thank him for doing such a great
job keeping us going and keeping us streaming. Of course, we offer special
thanks to our listeners who take time to give us a voice in their lives.
And remember we offer a fresh topic every week. You can catch us
wherever and whenever you get your favorite podcasts like Apple, Spotify, our radio
speaker, and more. Remember we have a Facebook page. We also have
a website, Hudson River Radio dot com where you can catch all the terrific
shows that we stream from there. And of course I always leave you with
two little nuggets as I like to call him. And since Bob Dylan was
part of our conversation, let's get a little something from like a rolling stone
when he said, when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
Simple enough, And we got some great music. It's a new release from
the rock and Ruse Brothers, Billy It's Stephen Ruse. Let's go find Johnny.
It's a kick ass tune. I think you'll enjoy it. I'm your
host, Frank Lebono. Thank you for being Frank with us. We'll see
you next time. Green Up came them on. Don't get down. Look
good friend Nigel around. I'm about being fasier and I want to talk about
you. Oh my god, you let go, my got let go,
got it. Let's go n got it, Yeah, takeing, go down,
h run down bloom friend and got it, got it home, bringing
out most out she could walk out n my mind and don't find me round
somewhere with my favorite shake monda for you go your nan gonna let you don't
want to hand of the worm, shake a mind, I like the can't
let you save love a god dude, then don't I don't go if you
want to hit him blue. Let's go, my god, my god it
go, my got it. Let's go, my god it say to let
go got it. Let's go, my god, let go. Yeah,
you go tell them when I'm go, look for my time, go my
collar, let go, my got it come, Let's go my god it
shake them up, alright, go. This is Hudson River Radio dot com