June 21, 2007
Today is the first day of summer and the 21st anniversary of the 1986 recording at Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival of the Hudson River Sloop Singer set at the Beach Stage. That set and a few tunes recorded in John Guth’s studio became Broad Old River, the Hudson River Sloop Singer record in 1987. I wrote a song in 1982, The Sailor’s Husband’s Lament which was recorded in that set and on the record. In March a small group of us decided to get the record onto CD by the 2007 Clearwater Great Hudson River Revival which was last Saturday and Sunday.
Last weekend we sold the entire run of 100 Broad Old River 20th anniversary limited edition CDs at Clearwater's 2007 Great Hudson River Revival at Croton Point Park in Croton on Hudson NY. It includes a 20 page booklet with color photos and one song per page lyrics. It is a home digitized, light scribed, hand cut, printed production. All proceeds go to the two wood sloops-Clearwater and Woody Guthrie.
The Circle of Song tent on the way to working waterfront had 4 beautiful flags made for me by Claire Francis. Two say Clearwater with a sewn gaff gig sloop-Clearwater, two say Circle of Song using the topsail sun theme. She has another set which will debut at the Aug 5th Newburgh Beacon Swim. They say River Pool at Beacon and have the proto pool design with a turtle on it. The Circle of Song seats were full all day long. Each day from 12:30-2 we had an open round robin. Sunday so many song leaders came by a few people didn’t get to play a song (and it was a one song limit).
Hudson River sloop singers had a reunion set on Sunday at 5pm at the waterfront circle of song tent. It started off with a group of 13-Pete Seeger and 12 of us Hudson River Sloop Singers. As the audience grew so did the sloop singer roster to 26 participants. Other sloop singers listened and sang along from the audience. Another sloop singer took pictures and posted an album of the festival weekend.
There will be a 1000 run of a phase 2 Broad Old River with bonus track(s) planned to be available by the Beacon Sloop Club October 14th Pumpkin Festival. The engineer has started the digital remix. For that to happen we need money. Please consider if you can send a check toward production costs (ballpark $4000) to Vincent Cerniglia, 1213 Burlingham Road, Pine Bush, NY 12566. Write Broad Old River or BORRC on the memo line. I’ll send you an annual email of how much money we send to Beacon Sloop Club and Clearwater as a result of this. Thank you for your support.
We'll be setting up a Circle of Song on the Beacon side for the Newburgh to Beacon Swim across the Hudson River for River Pool at Beacon Sunday August 5th. Let Mel know if you want to participate, it’s a small venue under a popup at the river’s edge entertaining the setup crew and the supporters of the swimmers and kayackers. The event takes place at slack water and the Coast guard stops traffic in the channel while the swimmers and boats cross. Beacon NY is home to the sloop Woody Guthrie.
Mel and Vinnie
photo by Econosmith
