[00:00:13] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Rick Marshall of the Daily Gazette, and this is the martial arts podcast in which I talk to artists around New York's capital region about their work, their inspiration, and the experiences that connect us all, regardless of where we call home.
In the last episode, I spoke to illustrator and muralist Quill Harrison about birds, art, and the tricky nature of human communication.
In this episode, I sit down with Troy based musician Scott Womer, the founder of the song City performance series and ink songwriter Retreat, which bring local musicians together in some unique and creative ways.
With a third season of song City beginning soon and the next songwriting retreat scheduled for this October, Scott has plenty going on in and around the local music community. So we had a lot to talk about in this episode of martial arts.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: So, Scott, it feels like a natural evolution of things to have you on the show here. I've already had two former Song City participants as guests, Aaron Harks and buggy jive. They're wonderful, and I'm not sure if you heard, but song City came up in my conversations with both of them. I want to discuss your musical background here, but for anyone who might not be familiar with song City or the local music community, can you explain what the series is all about?
[00:01:36] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. It is based on a format that is traditionally known as a song circle, called a few different things, but that's the traditional version where you bring in three or four songwriters, and they're traditionally in an actual circle and facing each other, and they'll each have an opportunity to talk about their songwriting, talk about what was behind maybe writing a particular song and then play that song, and they'll usually do multiple rotations around it. And that's really kind of where this began, was my hope that the local songwriters of all genres would have an opportunity to not only share their songs, but share some background and kind of share their personalities.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: There's a great interview with you that ran a while back on our Nippertown site, but for anyone who missed it, can you talk a bit about your own history with music and how it brought you to this point with Song City?
[00:02:35] Speaker C: I grew up in the area, in the capital district, and my father was a music teacher in a public school system, was also helping with music and arts in some of the local churches at the time. And as I grew up, I was just around music like that all the time and working with other people. And over time, I actually stepped into some similar positions in some local churches that were asking for. They had a lot of artists in their church, and they were looking for someone to kind of come in and speak that language and try to get them involved and create some community amongst those songwriters and painters and graphic designers and filmmakers and all sorts of things like that. So I did that for a while, and what I really loved about that, as much as I don't necessarily agree with some of the things coming out of the local church, what I really did love was their ability to take people within that community and just create just kind of a beautiful chemistry of people working together over time. Decided that things were kind of drying up here musically, and I wanted some more opportunities. So I made the move to Nashville like a lot of our local songwriters are beginning to do now, just to kind of see if the grass is greener over there, see what kind of opportunities there were. And I really didn't want to have it be an opportunity to make myself some kind of music star. What I was really looking for was just to be around great people. You know what I mean? Just experience people just at the top of their game and did that. Stayed down there for five or six years and experienced a lot of just great musicians, became friends with a lot of great music people, and be in.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: The heart of things. That's certainly the place to do it.
[00:04:28] Speaker C: It really is. It's unbelievable. And I know that a lot of people would leave here. They would go down there thinking, well, I was kind of a big deal in Albany, so I'm gonna be a big deal in Nashville, and then realize there are thousands of people doing what I do, except better down there.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Small pond, big pond.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: It really was. So I tried to prep myself ahead of time for that and just kind of be around some great people, and that's a lot of really what birthed song city ultimately was some of the experiences that I had down there.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: So when you came back here, how did you sort of get rolling with this plan? Because I feel like, you know, it's one thing to say I want something like that, but another thing to really get a community rallied behind it and get in touch with everyone, and I go through the steps necessary to just get the ball rolling to start with.
[00:05:20] Speaker C: I think that ultimately came out of, I spent some of COVID like, a lot of musicians writing and recording my own music, and when that was done, began to look around to see, okay, who can help me out here and kind of guide me with the local music scene and being a local musician, and realized that there was kind of a need for more community and more help and more outreach and more support for local musicians.
And having come from Nashville, one of the things that I really loved about Nashville was their emphasis on songwriting. At that time, when I was there, it was mainly folk, bluegrass, country, you know, that things we associate with. Right, right. This was before Jack White and all these people moved to Nashville, and things kind of opened up a little bit.
So I used to go to a particular venue called the Bluebird Cafe. Famous, famous, famous. This is where I. Keith Urban was discovered, Taylor Swift was discovered, et cetera, et cetera, and began going there.
And for anybody that hasn't been to the bluebird or seen that before, it's a traditional song circle for artists in the center of the room, going around, rotating. Like I said before, what's interesting about the bluebird is that it's not as much recording artists playing at it. A lot of times it's writers. So you've got these mostly 50 year old white guys that spend their life in a basement of a publishing house someplace writing hit songs for the stars. And a lot of what was at the Bluebird were these. These songwriters, and they would tell the story behind the song and as they would get playing it, although they were not amazing necessarily as performing artists as they played, he'd be like, oh, yeah, that's that Vin skill song, you know, or, you know, whoever. And so it was super interesting to hear their concept. You know, what went into it. What was not great was their performances. And because it was one genre that kind of got to me a little boring, you know, over time.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: What makes song City here in the capital region different from that Nashville experience and from the usual live music events people are probably most familiar with?
[00:07:42] Speaker C: Yeah, I think what I tried to do was to expand our minds on what a songwriter is and get beyond kind of a traditional genre called a singer songwriter and move to a place where we realize that hip hop artists are probably our greatest songwriters right now, and instrumental artists are songwriters. Even though there's no lyrics, you know, they're amazing songwriters, and to try to expand that and to give support to those songwriters, so that's really. I think the biggest thing that sets song city apart from other song circles I've been to is the ability to have a curated group of artists that are playing together. I often refer to it as, it's almost like creating a meal, you know, where you don't want all the same thing. You also don't want competing things that are going to make it a little rough. So I try to put a lot of time into looking at four artists and saying, okay, you know, if we have a hip hop artist here and a instrumental artist and a singer songwriter and maybe some alt rock artist or something like that, you know, who are the right people that it's kind of become this really perfect blend of artists and really allow, especially the audience who probably would not go to a hip hop show, you know, but to be in a setting like Song City, where it's, for instance, like, I remember Ozzie came, great local hip hop artist came and played and just brought his acoustic guitar player, and it was just the two of them together. It was this really beautiful, intimate hip hop moment that I think for a lot of people, they were like, oh, this is. I like this. This is actually amazing, you know? So it kind of kind of expose some things that maybe a lot of audience members wouldn't have known about.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Well, you mentioned Ozzy's performance. What have been some of the other highlights from song City series so far? What have been the moments that sort of made you feel like this? This is why I started doing this.
[00:09:50] Speaker C: Right, right. And Ozzy actually brings up one of those moments specifically for me, because Ozzy, the night that he was playing, he was paired up with three other artists, one of which was Joseph Biss, who's amazing folk artist from up in the Adirondacks. And Joseph was actually right before Ozzy in the circle. And I can remember the first song that Joseph played, and he finished it, and Ozzy looked at him and was like, I didn't even know what folk was like. That's folk music. That's amazing.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: You know, that's an amazing exchange.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: Right? And by the time we got through that entire program, in all three rounds, they were actually talking about collaborating on something. So it's moments like that where, even for the artists, they're being exposed to things that they hadn't experienced before. You know, Caitlin Barker, Barbie Barker from Kandy, ambulance standing there with her flying v in the middle of this crowd of people in this packed room, just singing with her kind of ethereal voice was a huge moment. Angelina Valente, who just gets everybody singing with her. I mean, I could go on and on with just amazing moments. That kind of show what that's all about.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: Well, you've mentioned a few times now the arrangement of the room, and I think that that is a key thing with song city. It is a very intimate. I feel like intimate is an overused term, but it is a very intimate experience. I feel like that's fair in this case. Can you tell me a little about the setting for it? Cause I think it's important for people to know what that vibe is like there.
[00:11:29] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And it began originally at the ruck in Troy on the second floor, which was this tiny, packed in room. It almost felt like New York City. When you go to a comedy club or something, you come into the bar and you go up to this packed little room. And it was such a perfect way for us to start because you could fill that room with about 65 people or so. And the crowd is kind of, in a sense, a circle or whatever shape around those four artists. And so you're really seeing up close exactly what's happening and that interaction between them. Recently, we made the move to a slightly larger space in downtown Troy, right off of Franklin Alley. Really what's kind of becoming kind of a music district in Troy, because, you know, we've got no fun on one end. And Song City was there, and 518 craft is there, and twisted fiddler is there, and the Troy music hall is there. And it's all kind of within like a block and a half and really incredible, incredible music. So, yeah, we've got a bigger room now, so we can kind of actually fill it out and make it more comfortable. But it really allows the audience to be right in with what's happening and really experience it.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: I was watching the video of Buggy Jive's performance at Song City, and it is just this wonderfully close, like physically close audience around while he's playing. You can see the movements of the people around him. Really, I think gives a great sense of, of what the experience is like to be there.
[00:13:08] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. And I think it gives the artist the feeling like it's a safe space. And I've seen more and more so artists come and say, you know, I'm going to do something new tonight. I'll always encourage the artists ahead of time and say, you can play your hit, but use this as an opportunity to kind of experiment and do some things you wouldn't normally do. And I see them doing that where they do, you know, a song that's never been played before, Barbie Barker played just recently, and she said, here's a song that's not even done yet.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Hi, it's Rick again. The rest of this interview is coming up, but I just wanted to take a short break to tell you that if you like this podcast and want to support it, please make sure to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and leave a review.
This isnt the only Gazette podcast either. Gazette sports editor Ken Schott has been interviewing people in and around the Capital regions sports scene for hundreds of episodes. Now in his parting shots podcast too. And if youd like to stay up to date with everything happening in the region and beyond, be sure to subscribe to the Daily Gazette or sign up for the Gazettes newsletters, which deliver links to the top stories across the Gazette family of newspapers directly to your email.
Okay, now back to this episode of the martial arts podcast.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: I'm sure that any series like this evolves over time as you get more in tune, pun fully intended, with what the community and the audience want from it and everything surrounding it. How has Song City evolved from that first season to now? Because you're about to hit the third season and I'm sure it's changed.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I think that really the biggest change in it, although it stayed pretty consistent, the biggest change has been bringing more and more artists in that people don't know.
I think in the beginning it was a lot of kind of our local name artists that you would expect to be there where now more of these artists are kind of coming out of the woodwork that are just amazing, that need to be heard. So to include them into it, I think has become a big part of it. Another thing that evolved over the first couple seasons was the amount of not just artists talking about their song before they play it, but conversations happening amongst the artist in the center of the room. I admit in the beginning I didn't want that. I just wanted, you know, one artist to talk. And after the first one, some artists came to me and said, boy, I would have loved to have had some questions for that other artist that was playing. And I finally realized, oh, okay. And we opened it up and now they'll get into these really wonderful conversations. Somebody will play a song and intro it, and then the next artist before they start will say, hey, can you tell me more about, you wrote these lyrics in this song. What was, what was behind that? And it becomes this real insider picture of what was going on at the time.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: The new season of song City kicks off in just a few days on September 10. What can people expect from the new season? Who's performing?
[00:16:31] Speaker C: Yeah, so we've got the new song City is coming out next Tuesday, which is actually the 10 September at 730. And just recently did the artist reveal, which we do a couple weeks beforehand to let everybody know who's playing at that one. It's an amazing, amazing lineup. Ed Schwarzschild, who is the frontman for a local band called Doctor Baker, he actually was on the ink retreat last year, and a great songwriter. He's playing a duo called Drank the Gold, which is kind of a folk, with maybe some celtic overlaying elements to it. Husband and wife, they're playing Sidney Worthley, who's a well known great pop artist who just had a new album that came out recently, she's playing, and Belle Skinner, who's just this magical folk singer songwriter that actually played season one, and we're actually bringing her back for this season to play because it was just such a. Such a great experience.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: You're already getting repeat performers.
[00:17:37] Speaker C: Yes. Yes, we are.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: One thing I also think is really amazing, and as amazing as Song City is, this really impressed me when I started sort of researching you and the work that you had done here. Recurring songwriter Retreat, Inc. That happens this October. Tell me a little about it. What happens during a songwriter retreat?
[00:17:57] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a lot of songwriting retreats out there, and they tend to fall into one of three categories. One is more of a speaker or teaching driven retreat where you're paying pretty big bucks to go. And Livingston Taylor, some great songwriter, is going to show up and teach on songwriting, and then you get a little bit of time to kind of write and work with that artist. Maybe then on the other end, you've got a much more casual songwriting retreat where really we're just giving you a place to stay and you really just take that time and use it however you want to.
I've tried to find kind of a middle ground that I would call kind of a guided retreat in that we're bringing in ten local songwriters that are from different genres and keeping that consistent with song City. So, for instance, we just got our ten for this coming one, and it's a mixture of bluegrass and pop and hip hop artists and this amazing singer that I hadn't even heard of who actually comes from an opera background. I mean, it's just beautiful artists and a great amount of real diversity in what they're doing artistically. And we will get together.
We're at a beautiful lodge that we have right off of Lake George in the Silver Bay area, and we will really spend the days collaborating on things and spending their own personal time writing. We have discussions. We use Rick Rubin's great book the Creative act, which is one of my favorite books that's come out in the past few years, and that's really inspired them through that book and through those discussions to look at songwriting in a different way, to take this as an opportunity to go about it differently. That might be musical, might be lyrically, it might be that they're collaborating with someone from a different genre and really coming up with something kind of new and special.
It's also a chance, I think, for us to kind of provide for those artists with some opportunities and really make it not only cost effective, but something that could really increase their, their time there. So, for instance, we have an engineer and a demo studio on the first floor so that as they're writing, they can book time to go down in the studio. And Anthony Kubitsch, who's a great engineer and songwriter in the area, runs that. And they can go down and they can work throughout the time that they're there with the song and come out with a really great demo. We bring Kiki up, who's great local photographer, does all the music photography in the area, and she comes up for an evening and does kind of a pro photo shoot for each of them. So they leave with very comprehensive, with great stuff. We have amazing food. Melanie from O'Malley's oven, which is a great bakery in Troye, is there on site, does all the cooking on site. So they're eating well, and it just becomes just a really a great time for them to grow and for them to get some things that I think they deserve that'll help them with their career.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: It certainly feels like they're being nurtured. Their creativity is being nurtured. This is the second year for the event, if I'm not mistaken. How did the first one go?
[00:21:29] Speaker C: First one was amazing. Honestly, it was like anything that you do for the first time, you have big plans, and then you wonder how that's going to work out and how many changes you're going to make for the next one.
Surprisingly, I didn't make a lot of changes for the second one.
It went that well.
The artists were great, and really a lot of these artists didn't know each other going into it and came out of this. And now our guest appearing on each other's Eyes albums and helping produce others people album, they've really become this, this kind of beautiful little body of work themselves.
So there wasn't really a lot of big changes that I made, except that we had a lot more people apply this time because they had heard about it, and that gave us the opportunity to. It was, it was a tough decision, to be honest with you, to decide who, who are going to be the right people that kind of, not only musically could use this, but create that kind of chemistry that I think came out of the last one.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Well, Scott, thank you so much for chatting with me here. Where can people find more information about you, about Song City, about the ink retreat and all of these things? Maybe most importantly, where can they get tickets for Song City?
[00:22:51] Speaker C: Absolutely. Tickets are on sale now and you can get them through songcitytroy.com, and that's where you can buy tickets. Tickets will also be on sale at the door when you get there for a slightly increased price. And so that's the main place to get tickets if you want information. Certainly songcitytroy.com is a great place to get information on all the things we do.
And we also have a real strong instagram presence at Song City Troy for just up to dates. And you'll certainly see a lot of clips from past song cities, so you can kind of get a taste for what, what you're stepping into and I think gives a lot of great information.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Scott, thank you so much for joining me. This has been a great conversation.
[00:23:40] Speaker C: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Love what you're doing here.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: This has been the martial arts podcast with guest Scott Wilmer. You can find more information about the Song City series and the upcoming song City events, as well as the ink songwriter
[email protected]. you can also watch clips from song City performances and see photos from the events on Instagram. Viaong Citytroy thanks for listening to this episode of Martial Arts. If you like what you heard and want to hear more, make sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. And for more coverage of the regions, arts and entertainment scene, head to DailyGazette.com and Nippertown. This episode was produced by me, Rick Marshall for the Daily Gazette. If there's a local art story or artist you'd like to hear more about on this podcast, you can contact
[email protected] or via social media.
