For the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to various performers scheduled to be in the Emerging Artists Showcase at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in Hillsdale, NY this coming Friday. Initially, I worked off of the list on Ron Olesko's Folk Music Notebook. However, as I explored the websites a bit more, I found the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival/Grassy Hill: Emerging Artists Showcase 2009 list on SonicBids, which has proven to be a very useful way of listening to all the performers. For each performer, there is an Electronic Press Kit (EPK) on which you can listened to, and in some cases download their music.

Now, the schedule is up. On top of that, I started ranking the performers in terms of which ones I like best. However, they tend to blend together and depending on the day, different groups rise to the top. So, instead, I will list them in the order they appeared in Ron’s list, and will provide general comments. Initially, I looked at things like the design of the website and the use of social media. Later, I listened to the music of the performers on Sonic Bids and other sites.

A.J. Roach & His Strange Pilgrims – NYC - (EPK). A.J. appears at the top of Ron’s alphabetically sorted list, near bottom of SonicBids list, which is sorted by number of gigs won on SonicBids, and towards the end of the afternoon on the schedule. I really like his music, placing him near the top of my list, and a potential top three finalist. He has a good website based on Drupal, and lists links onTwitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Sonicbids, ReverbNation, last.fm, Flickr, purevolume, and VIRB. You can download five of his tunes from Sonicbids. On Twitter, he is @iHobo.

Aiden James - Philadelphia PA - (EPK). Aiden is second alphabetically, near the bottom of list of gigs on Sonicbids, and appearing next to last on Friday. However, I really like him and he has a very good chance of being one of my top three finalists. He can be found on Facebook, ReverbNation, MySpace, iTunes, sonicbids, CDBaby, and Twitter. He’s joined the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival 2009 event on Facebook. You can follow him on Twitter at @ aidenjamestour. You can download a couple of his tunes from ReverbNation.

Alastair Moock -Medford MA - (EPK). On SonicBids, Alastair appears around the middle of the pack. On the schedule he appears around the middle of the day. Yet he is another performer whose music I really enjoyed and has the potential to be one of my favorites. However, his website and social networking leaves a bit to be desired. The only site I could easily find was his MySpace page.

Angelo M. - Lancaster PA - (EPK). He is the fourth performer on the schedule and is ranked quite high on SonicBids where you can download a lot of his music. He is well worth the listen and is another top contender.

Bread and Bones - Ripton VT - (EPK). They don’t have much traction on SonicBids and are performing seventh on Friday. I liked them a lot as well, especially their rendition of Fair and Tender Ladies. Their website and social networking doesn’t jump out at me. Their on MySpace and not much more.

Calaveras - Lafayette CA - (EPK). They are ranked well on SonicBids. They are appearing a little later in the day. Their on MySpace and CDBaby, but their website has an annoying popup. I like their music. It is soothing, but all in all, they rank in the middle of the pack in my book.

chuck e. costa - New Haven CT - (EPK). They are sixth on the schedule and middle of the pack on SonicBids. Living just outside of New Haven, I’m glad to see some local talent at Falcon Ridge. The music is nice, down to earth, but not on the top of my list. He uses a splash page on their website, which I almost always consider a bad idea. He has a ReverbNation Widget, that I think is pretty cool, but it is set to autoplay their tunes, and I’m not a fan of websites with autoplay. If you click on the widget and go to the ReverbNation page, a Facebook and a Bebo link. Again, enjoyable music, but not something that jumps out at me.

Claudia Nygaard - Nashville TN - (EPK). Claudia is performing second on Friday. The songs in her EPK didn’t do a lot for me.

Colleen Kattau & Some Guys - Cortland NY - (EPK). Not ranked all that high on SonicBids, Colleen is scheduled to be the first performer. I like her music and her background. It should be a good way to kick off the showcase. If you poke around, you can find Colleen on YouTube, MySpace.

Coyote Grace - Santa Rosa CA - (EPK). Not highly ranked on SonicBids, performing later in the afternoon. I couldn’t find any social media links or any apparent downloads, though they do have a nice website and I liked their music.

Danielle Miraglia - Somerville MA - (EPK). She appears in the middle of the pack on SonicBids and later in the day on Friday afternoon. She’s on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Her music is enjoyable, but for me faded into the background and didn’t inspire me to write anything special.

Driftwood Fire - Fort Collins CO - (EPK). They are at the top of the list on SonicBids and performing third on Friday. You can find them on MySpace, if you want to. We’ll see if I like them better in person than I do on their EPK.

Emily Elbert - Boston MA - (EPK). She’s done pretty well on SonicBids and will be performing towards the end of the day. You can find her on MySpace, CDBaby, YouTube, OurStage, SonicBids, and last.fm. One of her sites described her as “jazz infused, acoustic folk”. To me, her sound made me think of Nora Jones. She may be one to watch in the future and could be a pleasant surprise, but she sort of blended into the pack for me.

Jenny Goodspeed - Ashfield MA - (EPK). Jenny does better than average on SonicBids and will be appearing around the middle of the day. You can find her on Facebook, MySpace, iLike, iTunes, and CDBaby. I felt her music was a little better than average as well and I liked a feeling of old time ballads that the music gave me.

John Elliott - Los Angeles CA - (EPK). John appears about the middle of the pack on SonicBids, about the middle of the day on Friday. His blog links to Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and Twitter. When I looked, I didn’t find any references to Falcon Ridge. I liked his “The Ballad of Wallace Green & His Dog” and enjoyed his other songs as well. I will be interested in hearing his performance on the main stage.

K.C. Clifford - Oklahoma City OK - (EPK). K.C. appears in the middle of the pack on SonicBids. She is appearing around the middle of the afternoon. Her website includes links to Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace, although on revisiting it, I couldn’t find the Twitter link. Her website autoplays her songs, which as I mentioned above, I’m not a fan of. Each time I listen to her, I think, I will have to come back and revisit her site when I’m not busy trying to gather my thoughts about all the different performers. She could be a pleasant surprise on Friday.

Kelleigh McKenzie - Rosendale NY - (EPK). Kelleigh has a better than average status on SonicBids and will be appearing in the middle of the afternoon. Her website has a splash page, which I skip. There are links to MySpace, Facebook, and Youtube. She has a nice cover of Eleanor Rigby, but she sort of blends into the background.

Liz Longley - Downingtown PA - (EPK). She’s middle of the pack on SonicBids and on the earlier side of mid afternoon on Friday. She has links to MySpace, iLike, ReverbNation, and GarageBand, although the link to ReverbNation is broken. The website has autoplay which I dislike. Her bio talks about listening to Joni Mitchell and Karla Bonnoff in a pea green Volkswagen buggy. Reading her bio, I thought I would really like her. Her music is okay, but not as good as I hoped it would be after reading her bio.

Mary Bragg - Brooklyn NY - (EPK). She does very well on SonicBids and also will be appearing on the earlier side of mid afternoon, two performers after Liz Longley. Her website links to MySpace. Her music in her EPK didn’t do a lot for me.

Nels Andrews - Brooklyn NY - (EPK). Middle of the pack on SonicBids, later in the afternoon on the Main Stage. One of the problems with listening to two songs from twenty-four performers, whether it is sitting on a hill at Dodd’s Farm, or clicking on EPKs on SonicBid is that after a while, it all blurs together and better than average performers end up sounding like just part of the pack. I think that may be why I was unimpressed with Nels the first time I listened to him. However, listening to him again, I enjoyed his music. His website was hard to find. He’s also on MySpace, but I couldn’t find it on his website, nor could I find any reference to Falcon Ridge. His website did have autoplay music. All of these things may have added to the reason I was less than impressed with him the first time I found him. He does link to AJ Roach which I thought was cool. I will try to listen a little more closely to him on the Main Stage.

Robyn Landis - Vashon WA - (EPK). One of the better ranked performers on SonicBids. She will be performing fifth on Friday. Her bio on her EPK starts off by highlighting that she is a 2009 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artist Showcase Selected Artist. It goes on to say how others compare her to Richard Shindell, Gillian Welch and Dar Williams. Those are some of my favorite musicians, so that’s a pretty big claim to make in my book. Her EPK has fifteen songs to listen to and her website has several songs that can be downloaded. I haven’t listened to all of the music she has online, but I really like what I’ve listened to so far and will come back and listen to more of her music later. She will set a high bar for later performers to try and meet. Her website links to MySpace.

Sean Rowe - Albany-NY - (EPK). Middle of the pack on SonicBids. Around the middle of the afternoon as well. My initial reaction was positive. On his SonicBid page, his tagline starts, “If Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen had a kid...” Robyn does a good job of delivering a mashup of Richard Shindell, Gillian Welch and Dar Williams. Sean’s mashup isn’t quite as compelling to me, but it’s pretty good. I didn’t think much of his website. It uses a splash page, which I dislike. He does use Twitter, but his most recent tweet said “I totally just fell. It was awesome!” If he was channeling a little Eric Lowen in Learning to Fall, that would be one thing, but I don’t think that is what he had in mind. Prior to that was a blog post in the Times Union entitled Death by wild mushroom! If you read the first paragraph, you think he’s full of it. However, the first sentence of his second paragraph says, “By the way, the above sentences are mostly crap.” Anyway, back to his website. It uses KarmaCMS, which is worth checking out. Besides Twitter, he’s also on Facebook and MySpace.

Swing Caravan - Northampton MA - (EPK) Pretty low on the list on SonicBids. Final performer of the showcase. They’re on MySpace. They are okay, not the bottom of my list, but no where near the top of my list.

The Brilliant Inventions - Atlanta GA - (EPK). Middle of the pack on SonicBids, third from the end of the afternoon. They’re on MySpace and Facebook. Their website has a funky flash based webpage, which detracted from the experience. I liked them enough to come back and revisit there music when I’m not quite so tired.

So, there are my thoughts about the emerging artists showcase for 2009, which I’ll manage to get up the day before I leave for Falcon Ridge. If you get a chance to share your thoughts, either before, or after the showcase, please do.