SERFA will present awards on May 19 during conference in Montreat

Press release from SERFA:

The SouthEast Regional Folk Alliance (SERFA) will honor folk music Renaissance man Jim Rooney, veteran musicians Ginny Hawker & Tracy Schwarz, and veteran Miami broadcaster Michael Stock on Friday, May 18 during its 11th Annual SERFA Conference in Montreat, NC. The SERFA Awards begin at 2 PM, followed by the keynote address by Rooney, are open only to conference registrants. Attendees can register through May 9 at www.serfa.org. and on site.

Jim Rooney, who will also deliver the keynote address, recounted his career in the 2015 memoir In It For The Long Run: A Musical Odyssey (University of Illinois Press). He has played nearly every position in music. He has exceeded as a recording producer and engineer, songwriter, musician, music publisher, festival producer, folk club manager, and author. Highlights include starting the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and programming the Newport Folk Festival, producing Nanci Griffith and John Prine, running the Forerunner publishing house, performing across six decades with Bill Keith, and writing Bossmen, the first biography of both Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters, and Baby Let Me Follow You Down, the first history of the Boston folk scene.

Ginny Hawker & Tracy Schwarz, long time West Virginia residents, have enjoyed distinguished careers performing traditional folk music separately and together, without even considering Tracy’s stellar role in the New Lost City Ramblers and the Strange Creek Singers. Since they met in 1988, they have wrapped their songs in stories of the people and the places of the music, transporting audiences to another time when life was more real and families were held close. Their harmonies are hair-raising and representative of the finest American traditional music. Spanning old-time, Cajun, ballads, gospel, and bluegrass, they have recorded and performed together, solo, and with numerous bands and duos, including Dewey Balfa, Hazel Dickens, Marc Savoy, and Kay Justice. Ginny & Tracy have released two albums together. Ginny is credited with six albums, four of them with Justice. Tracy has at least 30 album credits. Ginny and Tracy have appeared in concerts and festivals throughout the United States, Canada, and England. Each summer they teach southern traditional singing at several music camps, introducing people to the music they love. Recently they started teaching students in their home.

Michael Stock was one of the 120 people who formed Folk Alliance International (then the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance) in Malibu in 1989. Every Sunday from 2-5pm, since 1981, Michael has produced “Folk & Acoustic Music” on public radio station 91.3 FM WLRN in Miami. The show consists of select recordings, old and new, of all types of folk music from bluegrass, blues, old-time, gospel, to contemporary singer/songwriter Americana music. After being exposed to Dylan in high school, Michael became fascinated with the roots of American music, from the minstrel shows to the protest music of the 1960s. During the late 1970s Michael became a concert promoter, operator of a folk night club, and host of a cable TV folk music programs. “Folk & Acoustic Music” features interviews and in studio performances of local and traveling artists, recently including T-Bone Burnett and Jesse Colin Young. Videos of more than 500 of these appear on his YouTube channel.

Saturday, May 19, at the SERFA Conference will bring the annual Wisdom of the Elders at 10:45 AM. The program offers a collective interview of folk music greats of a certain age. This year they are Rooney, Hawker & Schwarz, and Billy Edd Wheeler, a local resident who composed many hit songs including “The Gambler,” “Jackson,” and “Coal Tattoo.”

Formed in 2002, SERFA (www.serfa.org) is the southeastern regional chapter of Folk Alliance International (www.folk.org). According to its website, The SouthEast Regional Folk Alliance exists to preserve, promote, develop and celebrate the diverse heritage, of roots and indigenous music, dance, storytelling and related arts of the southeastern United States. It has produced its annual conference at the Assembly Inn in Montreat, NC since 2011.