Re: [Harp-L] Dave Payne and the Ohio championship and let's be hosts of some more contests

[David Payne <dmatthew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gang, 

I have to say I am very touched by all the response I've received about my recent winning the Ohio State Harmonica Championship, both offlist and onlist. The best ones are usually offlist, including tales of me raising hell in Ohio and slipping across the Ohio River with Ohio militia on my tail like John Hunt Morgan (only I didn't go back and get captured).
That was my second time at the Ohio championships. First time was two years ago. An Ohioan beat the pants off me that time. I got third. This year, he came in second, I got first. We had a really great exchange afterwards. He said "I was really going to play 'I'm so Lonesome I could Cry,' thank goodness I didn't." Then I told a story of my being humbled by him two years ago. 

But the greatest thing about it all was getting the harmonica in the community. The Ohio State Harmonica Festival is part of Chester/Shade Days, with people in 1800s dress, although their Civil War reenactors there wear a far less pale shade of blue cloth than ours do in West Virginia, and lots of stuff for the public to do. The West Virginia championship is held during the West Virginia Hot Dog Festival (We West Virginians are crazy about our style of hot dogs: http://wvhotdogs.com). My contest, the Ohio Valley Harmonica Championship (noon to 5 p.m. Sept. 18 in Belleville, WV) is held during the Belleville homecoming. All three of these events have become cornerstones of their respective parent event. All three are held in the midst of an already-gathered public who are eager to see, and hear. People see different types of harmonicas, especially at the Ohio event, where the Buckeye club comes down with some 48 chords, basses and stuff. They hear what
 harmonicas sound like when played well. If we ever hope to regain some minute portion of the popularity the harmonica had in the 1930s, we have to get it in the community like that. 

I think every club ought to strongly consider having some sort of contest as part of a larger non-harmonica festival. It's easy to do and festivals are very receptive to this. You see, for every hour you've got a contest going on, THEY DON"T HAVE TO PAY ANY BANDS TO FILL THAT TIME SLOT. They love free entertainment.
Every state ought to championship. But they don't. Most states don't. If
we had enough of these state championships, we could have those as
qualifiers for a national championship, the most obvious place for it
would be at the SPAH convention.
It would be easy enough, I think, for Garden State to present a New York State championship. This new Crescent City Club down in Lousiana could get a contest going. 
You don't even have to have a club to do it. You don't have to scrape a bunch of $$$ together for it, either. I had neither when I started the Ohio Valley CHampionship, all I had was an idea. That's all you need. For my prizes, Cumberland cases donated this gorgeous leather multi-harp case, C.A. Seydel donated an 1847 (W.Va. Bob won both of those), Seydel also donated a Big Six and Solist for 2nd and 3rd. Both Jeff and Seydel had banners on stage and it Seydel's case, it worked out pretty well, their banner wound up big and easily read on the front page main art of the newspaper (it was a pic of a solo performance of Jason Ricci before the contest started).(note: they both got plugged again for the umpteenth time).
This year, Elk River Harmonicas Specialty Harps is offering one of the American Chestnut harmonicas as a prize, and an Elk River Specialty Tremolo as a special award for the best old-time player... and I still need to talk to folks about the other prizes. But the point is, each of us has the power to do something like this.
 
It's fun for us when we can get together someplace like Buckeye, or Spah and promote the instrument among ourselves, but when we can bring it to the general public, the instrument will live on. It would do my heart good if each of us could have a hand in creating something like that.



Dave
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www.elkriverharmonicas.com