"Old-timey community sing-a-long with a strong sense of foreboding."

Murder Folk Night is a music series in the spirit of an old-timey community sing-song, dedicated to covering the gamut of morbid material both traditional and popular.

EVERYONE contributes to the band – whether singing, blowing the old jug, shaking the bells, clawing the washboard, or loud mumbles "O ya." Some instruments, noise-makers and junk instruments will be on hand but you are welcome to bring your own instruments, crazy sound-makers and your voices!

Your sepulchral host poet/musician Ryan Kamstra will have a number of Murder Folk standards to lead the group in. For some examples of material, the Murder Folk

Hymnal can be found online: http://pdfcast.org/pdf/murderfolk.

BRING YOUR OWN MATERIAL if you wish. Because murder folk is a group activity, it is great also to bring either TEN music sheets with simplified chords and/or lyrics to share or something easy to instruct the group with, whether a simple group harmony, a call-and-repeat part, etc. This is not an open mic, and as such, anyone bringing material is asked to lead the group in song, not simply perform.

All levels of musicianship are encouraged to participate. The event is free, with a pay-what-you-can suggestion of $5 when the hat is passed.

What constitutes murder folk? Subject matter typically includes killing your cheating lover, bank robberies, depression-era acts of amoral desperation, disaster capitalism, lewd and unholy courtships, suicide, madness, the dark arts, selling one’s soul to the devil, morbid episodes of unrequited lovesickness, murderific elisabethan broadsides, Victorian gallows ballads, and the ever present counterweight of a dire and vindictive personal deity. Both contemporary music retrofitted as folk music and rare or obvious finds from the past encouraged.