BY ALAN KAUFMAN | I’ve been invited to Kathryn Bloss’s East Village flat, to a living room performance by Nashville singer-songwriter David Olney, and I go, though knowing this guy Olney is some kind of country western folk guy — not exactly to my taste. But O.K., be a good sport, right? I mean, Bloss has promised that this Olney guy is some kind of genius.
On the night, I get that special seat, front row, just feet from Olney’s mike, the wall to my left, audience to my right. Olney plays a song about Van Gogh, one so beautiful tears shoot from my eyes. Horrified, I look anxiously around. I’m in a fix, my mortified face turned to the wall, shoulders hunched, trapped by tears I don’t want anyone to see.
By song’s end, I just give up and sit through the performance, alternately gasping, crying, laughing, oohing and ahhing as one after another of Olney’s astonishing songs grab my throat and my emotions ricochet off of Kathryn’s walls.
In the middle of one song, Olney launches into the poem “Kubla Kahn,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. What the hell? I thought this was some kind of country western show! But Olney lyrics transcend all genres. They are pure art, superior to most anything I’ve ever heard in my long transaction with the music and poetry world. His lyrics are set to melodies so gorgeous it makes your bones tremble. And now to top it off, here comes Coleridge recited to blues guitar and somehow, crazily, brilliantly, it all fits perfectly.
I find myself muttering to myself, in a way I haven’t since that time when I performed in Berlin with Allen Ginsberg, “Genius!” and that other time I mumbled the “G” word to myself in San Francisco as I read from Woodie Guthrie’s memoir “Bound For Glory” in a show that featured Stevie Earl and Country Joe MacDonald.
Kathryn Bloss is right: David Olney is a genius. But it took the genius of Kathryn Bloss to bring him to the East Village on the gamble that a cosmopolitan Manhattan audience would love his work.
And, so far, with over 50 house concerts behind her, she has been right. Some of the finest songwriters in America have performed in her living room, including Gurf Morlix, Tom Russell, Malcombe Holcombe, Diana Jones, Paul Sachs, David Massengill, Cliff Eberhardt, Sam Baker and Eliza Gilkyson. Kathryn has been called by Acoustic Live Magazine the New York “Hub of the Austin-Nashville” circuit.
The select songwriters she supports are to the folk song what the Elizabethans were to the English language or the Beats to modern verse: a new breed who live uncompromisingly for what I would call “outlaw folk music” — no — nonsense truth-dealing beauty-drenched songs of such harsh tenderness that they wrench your guts and fill your heart. The songwriters are outlaws whom the establishment fears to fully embrace because their songs are so powerfully true, their music too poignant. You need a heart to hear them. Kathryn Bloss’s heart is huge.
But she’s no mere fan. She paints the stage sets and props at the Metropolitan Opera House. You go see Puccini or to hear Pavarotti at Lincoln Center and if it’s one of the shows she’s worked on. Yeah, that’s her artwork up there 50 feet tall.
She’s also a songwriter whose music falls right in with the artists she loves. A walking, living history-making chronicler of outlaw folk music, in conversation Bloss will take you through the alleyways and legends of the genre’s heroes: people like Townes Van Zandt, regarded by many as the greatest singer-songwriter to come out of the outlaw folk scene, whose songs have been covered by everyone from Bonnie Raitt to John Prine; or Blaze Foley, whose songs were covered by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, yet who was blown away in his prime by the .22-wielding elder-abusing grandson of an elderly black gent in Austin whom Foley had sought to defend.
Legends.
Born in Ohio, Kathryn Bloss grew up on the outskirts of Chicago in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood and came to New York City in the ’80s on a prestigious art scholarship. She soon became an integral part of the Soho and East Village art scene. Interestingly, she came to the folk scene when she tried to turn her hand to poetry. Because her verses rhymed, she got cold-shouldered by the open-mike poetry scene, and so said goodbye to all that. She attended a workshop with singer-songwriter Marie Gauthier, who saw great talent and promise in Bloss’s lyrics. Encouraged, Bloss began to follow the music of artists few Easterners then knew of. Those who came to New York City played in her home to an ever-growing appreciative audience.
She doesn’t get a single cent from any of this. The singer-songwriters love her because she loves and understands what they do. She can walk into any backstage green room where they’re playing and will be warmly received. In the music world, Kathryn’s House Concerts have become as legendary as the musicians themselves.
Recently, she brought me to a Lower East Side concert by a young Oklahoman named John Fulbright. The usual shocked awe at the brilliance of the songs and music rumbled through me. After the show we went backstage. Though endowed with a talent as big as Beethoven up close, he just looks like some gentle kid from Oklahoma. Fulbright gratefully embraced Kathryn and confided that he had just taken his first-ever subway ride to get from his hotel to the gig.
“How was it?” asked Kathryn.
“Terrifying” he said.
We sat around talking about Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, the Oklahoman origins of the Texas term “red dirt music” and Townes Van Zandt.
Kathryn first met Fulbright when he performed in a Folk Alliance showcase. Just in from Okeema, Oklahoma (Woody Guthrie’s hometown), he was scared, alone, 23. Recognizing his brilliance, she booked him immediately for a house concert. After that, he stayed in her guest room whenever performing in town. These days he stays in Manhattan hotels, on the dime of the venues he plays.
In May, Kathryn will host two back-to-back house concerts, featuring Aliza Gilkyson on Sun., May 8, a 5:30 p.m. and Sam Baker on Sun., May 15, at 5:30 p.m.
On Sun., June 19, at 7 p.m., Kathryn and I will host The East Village Folk Festival at Theatre 80 St. Mark’s. It will be the first time ever that such a large array of these outlaw folk singers will assemble — truly a historic occasion.
Maybe the East Village, birthplace of so many major cultural movements and moments, can once more be a home to countercultural energy and creative brilliance. And the ones to make this happen just might be Kathryn Bloss and her outlaw folk singer-songwriter heroes.
For a little taste of Outlaw Folk Music, check out these fantastic tunes.
https://youtu.be/8bMaaac032k David Olney, “Jerusalem Tomorrow”
https://youtu.be/l6zD7ZMKLL0 Diana Jones, “If I Had a Gun”
https://youtu.be/ZB-qt0vZeBs Sandy Bell, “When I Leave Ohio”
https://youtu.be/zsGi7xQnqxw John Fullbright, “All the Time in the World”
https://youtu.be/aiGkOeO7GQY Blaze Foley, “Our Little Town”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK08w0h_MdE&sns=em Paul Sachs, “All the Junkies”
For more information on upcoming shows at Kathryn’s House Concerts, contact Kathryn_Space@yahoo.com . For tickets to The East Village Folk Festival, contact Theatre 80 St. Marks at 212-388-0388. For more information contact HYPERLINK “mailto:Akpoem2@aol.com”Akpoem2@aol.com
Kaufman is author of the memoir “Drunken Angel.” His forthcoming book is “The Outlaw Bible of American Art.”
