Tickets: $15 at the door

All are invited to attend an Autumnal party at the Farley Center – What A Hoot!

On Sunday, October 10, the Farley Center with co-host SWWAP, will be throwing a “Hootenanny” with the Hoot’n Annie String Band. The fun begins at 5 PM.

There will be a free general tour of the Farley Center at 4:00 by Farley Center Board Chair Jeanne Meier. There will also be Farley Center honey for sale.

Attendees are invited to come early and walk through the Sanctuary and Farley Center farms, Pack a picnic, bring a beverage, chairs, blankets or even a cheese tray (seen at previous concerts).

Tickets are $15, and are available at the event. The Farley Center is located at 2299 Spring Rose Rd, near Verona Wisconsin. For more information on this event, please contact programs@farleycenter.org.

So, What’s a Hoot?

Websters defines *Hootenanny as “an informal gathering with folk music and sometimes dancing”. There will be plenty of that at the Farley Center on October 10.

A decade ago, at the beginning of the crackdown on protests at the Wisconsin Capitol, people gathered daily at noon to sing songs of solidarity. Now known as the Solidarity Singalong for nine years years, (the longest running protest of its kind in recorded history). Solidarity Singalong musicians who played instruments would gather to accompany the singers, calling themselves The Learning Curve, and many of them would stay after the scheduled sing, and play folk songs. Some were gospel, some were Americana, and all were fun to sing in harmony. Hoot N’ Annie continues to adopt new songs, new stylings and acquire new fans.

Hoot ‘n Annie is made up of 5 friends that play in several bands in and around Madison. Daithi “the fiddler” Wolfe on fiddle is in too many bands to mention them all, but you may know him from The Currach Irish Trio and Yid Vicious. Prentice Berge on guitar (Prentice is a Mt. Horeb native, graduating from Mount Horeb High School in 1981, before going on to St. Olaf College where he majored in music) and he also plays in County Hwy PD with Daithi, and often gigs with the Mad City Jug Band. Michael Bausch is on guitar and harmonica and also plays in the Wright Combination. Cindy Murphy is the multi-instrumentalist of the group, playing cello, mandolin, banjo and tenor guitar. Yes, her house looks like a magical music store full of rare and beautiful instruments. Our newest member, Tim ‘the librarian” Haub who has been playing with us regularly since 2014, officially became a member of Hoot ‘n Annie String Band in the summer of 2019.

*According to Pete Seeger he first heard the word hootenanny in Seattle, Washington in the late 1930s. It was used by Hugh DeLacy’s New Deal political club to describe their monthly music fund raisers. After some debate the club voted in hootenanny, which narrowly beat out wingding. Seeger, Woody Guthrie and other members of the Almanac Singers later used the word in New York City to describe their weekly rent parties, which featured many notable folksingers of the time. In a 1962 interview in Time, Joan Baez made the analogy that a hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz.