Harry Smith Folk Music Festival wows Millheim crowd, benefits HOPE Fund

MILLHEIM — The Elk Creek Café and Aleworks hosted the ninth annual Harry Smith Folk Music Festival on Nov. 13. Several musical acts performed sets of songs from the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music during this fundraiser for the Penns Valley HOPE Fund charity.

Harry Smith was an archivist, musicologist, film maker, artist, mystic and collector of 78 rpm records. He worked with Smithsonian Records in 1952 to produce the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, a multi-volume work of more than 100 recordings that revived many blues, string band and Cajun recordings made between 1927 and 1933.

Over time, these recordings became highly influential in American music, and some would say they single-handedly jump-started the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. They have shaped the music of artists such as Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and Elvis Costello, among others. The songs displayed a blend of feelings of desperation during the Great Depression, and optimism for a better future.

Festival acts included Eric Ian Farmer, The Rest, Erin Condo and Bill Ritzman, Kurt Gegenhuber, Chicken Tractor Deluxe and special guest performer Charlie Parr.

Parr is an American country blues musician, born in Austin, Minn. He plays a Mule resonator guitar, a fretless open-back banjo and a 12-string guitar, often in the Piedmont blues style. He has released 15 albums as well as contributing to numerous folk/bluegrass compilations during his career.

The capacity crowd of bluegrass and folk music fans at the Elk Creek Café clapped and cheered vigorously as each act took its turn on the stage. The Rest, composed of three local teenage boys, seemed to take the crowd by surprise by putting a boisterous heavy metal spin on some of Smith’s folk songs.

Funds raised from the festival benefited the Penns Valley HOPE Fund charity, which helps people in the Penns Valley area facing major medical crises and/or personal disasters. HOPE Fund board chairman Dan Gensimore addressed the festival crowd, thanking the cafe and its owner Tim Bowser, the performers, and the audience for supporting the HOPE Fund at this event. He also recognized the efforts of festival organizer Kai Shafft.

Gensimore noted that the HOPE Fund is a 100 percent volunteer organization, and has dispersed more than $410,000 to families in the Penns Valley area since its inception in 2008. “We’re thankful that we’re able to do the work in this valley that we do,” said Gensimore. “I would say we accomplish a fair amount.” He noted that the Harry Smith Festival has contributed nearly $20,000 to the HOPE Fund during the previous eight years.  

The Harry Smith Folk Music Festival has grown into a major event status on the folk music scene, and has become an attraction for people from Pennsylvania and several nearby states every November.