Music & Potlucks, a 501(c)(3) community organization, will present The 2nd Annual Doug Esse Memorial 5-String Banjo Cacophony on Sunday, April 11 at 4:00 pm CDT. The live stream event, hosted by Mark Dvorak, will benefit the Old Town School of Folk Music Employee Financial Assistance Fund (EFAF). The concert will feature Dvorak and six other banjo artists: Peggy Browning and Chris Walz, currently on faculty at the Old Town School, Max Allard and Alan Deaton, both former Old Town students, Jill Lagerström and Joe Michelotti.
Doug Esse was a student of Dvorak’s in a group banjo class at the Old Town School. He signed up for banjo classes following a diagnosis of stomach cancer, but kept his illness private, despite often struggling to practice and get to class. In a 2008 essay about Esse, Dvorak wrote: “Remarkably, he never got down on himself, which is somewhat inconsistent for a student who struggled in class the way Doug did. When he didn’t understand something, or couldn’t play something, I remember him often shrugging it off with a smile. ‘I’ll work on it,’ he would say.”
About a year later, Esse’s attendance had completely dropped off and Dvorak received a phone call from his wife telling him that Doug had passed away. Dvorak writes:
She told me how much he loved his classes and his classmates at the Old Town School, even though his illness didn’t permit him to work on his lessons. He was just too tired all the time from the illness, and from the treatment. He looked forward though to getting out of the house once a week to be with his friends in class and strum along as best he could.
She went on. Only the students in the class knew Doug was sick, and their instructions were to cover for him whenever the teacher got curious and began to ask questions. When I did get curious and asked his closest friends in class about him, their reply was always, “Doug is busy on a project at the university.” I never had a clue.
From the moment Doug was diagnosed, there was little hope of recovery. In his remaining time, he decided to do two more things. One was to visit the great pyramids in Egypt, as that was his field of study. He did that twice. The other was to learn the five-string banjo at the Old Town School of Folk Music. To Doug, playing the banjo was a way to celebrate living.
Dvorak is hosting this event for the second time although, even the first time, it was the “2nd Annual.” The first “2nd Annual” was held in 2008 in the back room of The Grafton, a well-loved pub next door to the Old Town School. As Dvorak tells it, “We scheduled a bunch of people to do short sets and then had a gathering at the end where everyone played along on some banjo standards, ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken,’ ‘Cripple Creek,’ and I think one other. It was noisy and wild and a lot of fun.”
Dvorak first began making plans for an event celebrating Doug Esse shortly after his death in 1992. “I was so touched by the phone call from his wife, it was only a day or two later that I had the idea for ‘Cacophony – A Celebration of Life.’ But later I thought ‘The 2nd Annual Doug Esse Memorial 5-String Banjo Cacophony’ was less solemn and more in the spirit of Doug’s upbeat attitude in his last months.”
I thought that “The 1st Annual…”would suggest we were going to do it every year and I knew that wouldn’t happen. I liked that “The 2nd Annual…’”seemed a little more irreverent. Sure enough that time we did it in 2008 a few people asked when the first one was. I told them this IS the first one. “Then why is it called ‘The 2nd Annual?'” the one guy asked. “Let’s play something together,” I said.
The event has now found a home with Music & Potlucks. Dvorak says, “The time was right to try this event again and involve some of the wonderful players on our local scene.” Music & Potlucks is dedicated to nourishing and supporting the community through cultural events and the organization has been going strong throughout the pandemic raising money for neighbors in need. Every Music & Potlucks event has a charitable component and all proceeds from this one will benefit the Old Town School EFAF. As Dvorak describes, the EFAF “was set up last year for teachers and staff people who were furloughed – couldn’t teach, couldn’t work. Many in our community had difficulty making rent, paying for insurance and buying groceries.” As for musicians everywhere, it has been a very challenging year at the Old Town School:
The school shut down March 16, 2020. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. There are like two-hundred and eighty teachers on faculty and I don’t know how many cafe workers, maintenance, music store, resource center and front desk staff were all suddenly out of work. Within days a handful of enterprising teachers who were familiar with ZOOM and other platforms started teaching each other how to create a meeting, what to do with sound, add cameras, etc. It was all pretty impressive how quickly and how completely this faculty got back on their feet, and the admin worked to support and keep classes running. It’s been that way for a year with only a handful of social distanced, safe in-house classes being held indoors and outside under the big tent that was set up in the parking lot.
Jim Newcomb, CEO of the Old Town School, says that the EFAF was set up the same day the school had to shutter in-person operations in an attempt to minimize the impact of what they thought would be a month-long shutdown. “As the pandemic wore on, we kept raising and distributing funds to make sure our folks could make rent, pay their mortgages, get groceries and the like. To date we’ve raised around $100,000 and distributed almost the same.” Even though it started in response to the pandemic, Newcomb plans for the EFAF to “continue as a permanent fund to help teachers, staff and, someday, even retirees in need.”
Head over to the Banjo Cacophony event page for all the details and to purchase tickets.
Click here to donate directly to the Old Town School Employee Financial Assistance Fund.