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The name game
Takoma Park Folk Festival
performers describe the hunt for the perfect identity
BY CHARLENE PORTER
Lea, Aura Kanegis, Lisa
Taylor, Stacey Sloan, Cheryl Terwilliger, and Avril Smith,
the women formerly known as Zeala Pickle, dropped the pickle
when attempts at a logo were "just sort of foul."
It seems like
an unlikely entry in the annals of all-time great ideas. Take
the name of a generally maligned insect, misspell it, and
transform it into a word that generates billions in record
sales and becomes legendary in the history of popular music.
The success of The Beatles came from more than their name
alone, of course, but it doesn't seem the legend would
be quite the same if the Fab Four had stuck with their original
name, The Quarrymen.
That's the magic of a name in music. Choosing one comes
sometimes with long debate, sometimes by chance, and sometimes
from the music itself. The stories behind the names of the
bands and ensembles that will perform in the 26th annual Takoma
Park Folk Festival on September 7 run the gamut.
Members of Cantare, a three-woman Latin American folk group,
have chosen the Spanish verb meaning "I will sing."
Cantare member Cecilia Esquivel says the name encapsulates
the participatory performance style that is their trademark.
"We sing with the children and for the children and
make them sing the music from Latin America," she says.
"We use it as an invitation for them to sing with us."
The inspiration for the name of Peascods Gathering, who specialize
in traditional American and European music, came from an English
folk tune. Band member Carl Minkus says "Gathering Peascods"
was a tune in the group's repertoire when they were searching
for a name back in the mid-1970s, a peascod being an English
term for peapods.
"It's a giggly tune and a boring dance, in my opinion,
but we all liked the name," says Minkus.
They decided to reverse the words, and their satisfaction
with the choice now enters its fourth decade.
The Celtic Ocean Orchestra draws its name from both the music
and the personal journeys of director Jennifer Cutting. Her
album-in-progress is Ocean: Songs for the Night Sea Journey,
and all of its songs–from traditional ballads to her
originals–have some reference to the sea.
"I began writing and arranging the music for Ocean
during a great sea change in my own life," says Cutting.
"So I wanted very much to explore the rich symbolism
of water, with its mythological and psychological themes...I
also thought it might be a way to get some really plum gigs
at the beach."
Choosing a name that reflects musical style seems a consistent
goal for musicians, but finding a name and agreeing on it
frequently provokes a prolonged debate.
"We had been trying for the better part of a year to
come up with a group name, says Kim Catts of The Unusual Suspects.
"We had agreed on nothing. We'd come up with all
kinds of strange options, but nothing that all three of us
could come together on."
Then, one day, as Catts tells the story, the group members
were planning a party, and one member said, "Let's
round up the usual suspects" (Inspector Louis Renault's
classic line from the film Casablanca, which has worked it's
way into everyday usage). Catts says it was an "Aha!"
moment.
"But we're all of us a little contrary, and try
to be a little different, so one of us said, ‘it would
have to be "unusual,"'and that was it,"
Catts recalls. Other considered alternatives–Juvenile
Shoes and Honey Cured–were happily dismissed.
Landing on the perfect name for a group is tough because
performers want it to encapsulate so much, says Avril Smith
of Zeala.
"The ideal thing would be if [our] band name could indicate
that [we] are all women, the type of music that [we] play,
the fact that [we] have a horn section, and all that,"
Smith says.
She says their inspiration came from an unexpected source–meteorologist
Willard Scott's regular tributes to centenarians on NBC's
Today show. One day, Scott introduced this nameless
six-member group to a 100-year-old woman from Georgia named
Zeala Pickle. Her name appealed to all the players in the
band–for a while.
But after about six months, "three of us decided we
really hated the ‘Pickle' part of it," Smith
says. "We started trying to come up with logos, and everything
that had a pickle with it was just sort of foul. So we got
rid of the pickle."
Baltimore-based folk trio We're About 9 will tell you
their name is "an expression of our dissatisfaction with
traditional age roles." But the name has a story, too.
"‘I'm about nine' was something that
I would say periodically, in moments where I found myself
suddenly acting very immature," says member Brian Gundersdorf.
Before long, other members of the group took up Brian's
expression, and soon adopted it as the band's name. Now
We're About 9 is a familiar name in a fair number of
coffeehouses and clubs throughout the region.
These groups are just a few of more than 200 performers,
representing traditional, folk, blues, rock, jazz and dance
who will share their talents at the 26th annual Takoma Park
Folk Festival. The festival is September 7 from11:00 a.m.
to 6:00 p.m. at the Takoma Park Middle School.
For more information, visit tpff.org or call 301-589-3717.
The Festival Committee meets at 8:00 p.m. each Wednesday in
August at the Takoma Park Municipal Building, and newcomers
are welcome.
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