hey not booking right now

The Ivy Room Hootenanny was curated by Lucio Menegon. Beginning in 2010, Alan Korn and Suki O’Kane, who sought to wrangle Lucio’s vision and their undisciplined ideas about Hoots into a series of themes:

• The Ukelele (that worked)
• Pornography (never happened)
• Bass Players. Lots and Lots of Bass Players (still a dream)
• Buddah Tag (tried to get a game going one night and was blown back by glares)
• Illegal Infusions (done!)

What We Told People Who Wanted To Play

The Hoot was intended to be structured for chaos, creating an opportunity for musicians to play in new combinations in the unconventional setting of the Ivy Room, laid out like a living room with no traditional stage and PA. It split the evening conceptually between a couple acts and an interstitial curator who would bring as many other musicians in to fill the moments between the acts. This had a range of effect on participating musicians. Cough.

But if you want to try this at home, feel free to purloin this language.

1. Please understand that the Hootenanny is not an ordinary gig with sets, stage, sound, lights, complicated riders and guarantees. It’s an evening of music playing that encourages continuous / contiguous sound, spontaneous collaboration, and, well, drinking. It’s mildly refereed to make sure we hear from everyone who bothered to show up with an instrument.
2. The money is tiny. We play for tips and a split of the small contribution from the bar. This arrangement is generally insufficient to support even the most austere budget of a working artist. We wish things were different.
3. Your sound needs to be very portable. The Ivy Room has a splendid DJ coffin which we hijack for a PA. There is one microphone, rarely on a stand. This gig is about sitting on your amp, frankly.
4. We imagine you will stay until the end. It’s true. Monday is a school night, but the Hoot won’t nanny unless everyone stays in the sitch. After the initial refereeing is over, the stage is open to collaborations until 1am. This has been pretty crazy. One late set had a DJ, a guy knocking out demented guitar/vocals, a sax and a guy on a bike with speakers, screaming. Another featured film projections and a clown making pet balloons and floating them around the room. Nuts.

If you are still interested, thanks. We just wanted people to walk through that process.

---

So to book the Hoot, please send an email to ivyhoot at gmail dot com that contains

1. The word or phrase you want to hoot about (see above)
2. The third monday you wish to perform on (check the calendar)
3. The critical details about your act / your band including

• instrumentation
• personnel
• links to music samples and web presence

Concerned about whether you make the “right” kind of music for the The Ivy Room Hootenanny?
As a fact, we are stylistically agnostic, but we tend toward the experimental and improvisational forms of any particular genre (so not simply country music, but insane country music; and not simply jazz, but stop motion animation jazz; and definitely not simply rock, but vegan pecan rock). The main thing we’re looking for is that ineffable quality of

Plays Well With Others.

Give it a shot.