History

The Folk Club – a Brief Review (from December 2004)
By Dave Hurd

Every so often it seems appropriate to publish in the newsletter a piece on the roots of the Folk Club we all have come to enjoy and count on.  After nearly 20 years in existence (an extremely long existence for an organization made up wholly of volunteers) we find the Folk Club going as strong as ever.

There are few among us who come every week to the Tortilla Factory who were there in May of 1985 when Rose Haskell saw her dream (a gathering of people in a local establishment for music) become a reality.  The place was The Acorn in the Tall Oaks Center in Reston.  A small band of friends, soon augmented by people who heard about this new and wonderful opportunity to perform, listen and enjoy music.  Rose’s dream of a Folk Club stemmed from her experiences in Britain with her husband John when he was working there.  He found the pub (for a relaxing tipple) and she discovered the music of the regulars who met to sing and play and preserve the local music traditions.  When they returned to the States she joined with friends Bev and Jack Osburn, Susan Schoebel and others and they searched for a location and convinced the owners of The Acorn this was a good thing, and it was.

Unfortunately, the Acorn was on its last business legs and about 6 months later the brand new Reston Folk Club was looking for a home.  We didn’t have to go far, just across the plaza at Tall Oaks to The Red Caboose where we were welcomed for our weekly hit of music and camaraderie.  The attendance continued to swell and Rose had begun to have special guest performers come to the Folk Club on occasion.  Many were touring artists from the British Isles (Alistair Anderson and Beggars Velvet come to mind) and local fare like The Boarding Party and Clam Chowder whose fare was highly Brit/Scot/Irish influenced.  We also saw John Jackson as a regular and had Saffire among the special guests in that first year or so.

As with most startups there was much change in the group and for us that seemed to be location.  The Red Caboose went upscale dining and we no longer fit their image formula and were asked to find another home.  This was found in the townhouse community of Jonathon’s Keep off Temporary Road in Reston.  With this move we gathered many more of the friends who have been with us since our days in Reston and who have contributed greatly to the Folk Club.  At Jonathon’s Keep we were in a community room and responsible for all of our own setup and cleanup each week.  This worked quite well for a while, at least until the community hired an activities director who saw use of the community room in a different light.  On the road again.

This time it was on to more far reaching sites and Rose and the crew came across the line to Herndon and Chuck Curcio and Ronnie Fox at the Tortilla Factory.  A match made in heaven was begun.  Chuck and Ronnie have adopted us as their community service project of the centuries (we’re in our second century, and millennium, with the Tortilla Factory as this is written).  The Folk Club had landed and we have been here almost every week for going on 18 years (next August).

Now that we had a stable home other changes began to happen with the Folk Club.  We attracted a whole new batch of folks from the Herndon area, especially the musically oriented people in the Herndon Arts Council circle.  Up ‘til this time the management of the club had been almost a single person operation (Rose) with volunteers helping make the weekly open mike a success.  But life changes occur and graduate school classes and personal direction changes began to take a toll on Rose’s time so it was suggested that the Folk Club GET ORGANIZED.

Well, when you get a well meaning group of 15-20 highly involved, intellectual, artistic individuals together to create a more structured organization, you’ve got at least 30 ways to do anything.  So it was with our efforts.  Throughout the spring and summer of 1989 we toiled in regular meetings to get organized.  We were all friends and the effort wore on everyone.  We argued, cajoled, compromised, debated some more and did it all again at least three times.  We even incorporated group sing and group hug as mandatory ending of every meeting to make sure we remembered we were all friends working toward a common goal.

Out of this in November came the organization we have today and which is mostly invisible to everyone because it works so well.  If you would like details, ask at the Folk Club and we’ll share.  We implemented the Board of Directors, established membership in March of 1990 at $12 a year (still the same today) and began a way of doing things that involves a few (but not too many) rules and has withstood the test of time.  We haven’t made many changes in how things work over the years but we have tried a bunch for short periods.  We are interested in your ideas and get them regularly.  The main reason is that the “we” referred to is “all of us”.  There may be a few individuals who seem to be “running things” at the Folk Club, but it is really a collective, working together.

At the moment we have slots for members of the Board that are unfilled and are always looking for people to step in.  We’re probably the highest paid volunteer organization in the world, no money just great personal satisfaction.  And it couldn’t happen without the regular support of the 40-60 people who show up on Tuesday evenings to sing and listen.  Thank you.