Brian Bailey didn’t set out to be a band booking impresario;
he just wasn’t entirely satisfied with his concert-going experience. As a folk
music fan, Bailey felt Rochester was getting passed over by national touring
acts, and what shows did make it to our dirty little city along the mighty
Genesee were being booked into venues that weren’t necessarily a good fit for
the artist or the fan.
“I just
don’t think promoters were bringing it in,” Bailey says. “Not enough from my
perspective. It seemed every time I looked, I had to go to Buffalo or Ithaca or
Toronto. I’ve been to the Newport Folk Festival a number of times; I just love
the music they have there. And I think a lot of it doesn’t come to Rochester.
It felt like we were left out of the loop.”
Inspired by
the Newport Folk Festival and the success of the Rochester International Jazz
Festival, Bailey initially shot for the moon. “We got a little ahead of
ourselves in the beginning,” he says. ‘”If Newport can have a folk festival,
why can’t we?”‘ Alas, reality set in.
Not one for
hand-wringing or lamentations, Bailey and his like-minded friends Greg Wiktorski, Jenna Knauf, and Joe
Moore founded Honest Folk to address the deficit by bringing indie-folk and
singer-songwriters into town and presenting them in a pop-up setting. It was
both unique and infinitely more appropriate for those who wanted to listen and
actually hear what the artist was saying.
“Words are
important,” says Bailey, who’s a college professor by day, “so are the melodies,
and the violin, and the cello. And someone’s talking while you want to listen.”
But
according to Bailey, the quartet that formed Honest Folk weren’t really a
booking agency, but rather middlemen with good taste in music.
“It was more
like, ‘Let’s do some pop-up shows where we front the money, bring in a band we
think is really good, and eventually people will think if we’re doing this, the
band must be really good,'” he says.”What we’re doing is taking artists that are too small for a big venue
yet good enough that you wouldn’t want to hear them in a bar and instead see
them someplace where you can focus on it and really hear it. You know how it
is, you go to a bar and it’s really loud. It doesn’t work.”
The beauty
of the pop-up show is its non-convention. Honest Folk transforms a non-musical
setting — like Restaurant Good Luck, The Arbor Loft over Hart’s Grocery Store —
and elevates it into an intimate performance space capable of holding right
around 180 to 300 souls.
“We feel
that amount of people is ideal,” Bailey says. “We’re bringing in nationally
touring acts; they have guarantees. Anything below 180, it’s hard to make the
math work financially.”
Honest Folk
keeps the overhead low by charging $25 to $30 per ticket with 10 percent of all
food sales, beer sales, and ticket sales going to the Center for Youth. And
whatever waste generated by these pop-up shows is handled responsibly by Impact
Earth, a local zero-waste solutions company. The beer, wine, and food is
covered by the caterer, and the shows are always put on in a public space,
unlike house concerts. There’s hired security in place just in case.
“It’s pretty
mellow,” Bailey says. “Our audience tends to drink a few beers, and sit in
chairs and listen to music.”
With two
sold-out shows to its credit so far, Honest Folk relies on social media and word
of mouth. And they target everyone; this isn’t just for the cooler-than-thou
elite. There’s not a hidden, speakeasy aspect to it.
“I think
they are serious music lovers who come to our events,” Bailey says. “We tend to
do these events on Monday nights, so to some extent, I think it’s
people looking for something different to do. And we’re not going after
traditional folk. We’re not going after Peter, Paul and Mary. We’re going after
contemporary singer-songwriters and folk artists. I think it would be cool to
do some genre bending, too, like hip-hop with a folk band. We’re definitely
open to genres, but right now our sweet spot is folk.”
Honest
Folk’s next pop-up concert is the strikingly sparse yet harmonically rich band Tow’rs from Phoenix, Arizona. Beyond that, the plan is 4 to
6 pop-up shows annually.
And the word
is out; according to Bailey, Honest Folk’s phone is beginning to ring. Bands want
to play an Honest Folk show. They may have to wait. “We’re really picky how we
curate this,” he says.
This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2016.
