Not sure this is the right forum, but if not, where?
About 175 years ago, a man named Moses Broadwell established a stagecoach stop/inn a couple of miles from what would someday be the site of the town of Pleasant Plains, Illlinois. A few years later he renamed the Inn CLAYVILLE in honor of The Great Compromiser, Henry Clay.The inn, possibly the oldest surviving brick building in Illinois survived its first century as an inn, a tavern, a farmhouse and possibly other stuff. In the 1930s, the inn was listed and studied by the New Deal HABS (Historic Buildings in America Survey)By the late 1950s, it had fallen to the useful but unglamorous role of hay barn.
Along came a physician, Dr. Emmrtt Pearson, who bought the old place, fixed it up and got it listed on the National Register. He also actively sought out other old buildings such as barns and log cabins and managed to get them moved to and reconstructed on the Clayville property. Age intervening, he gave the 13 acre property to what was then Sangamon State University, now the Springfield campus of the University of Illinois.
SSU renamed it the Clayville Rural Arts Center, hired a curator and occasionally assigned a few student summer workers, an otherwise pretty much neglected it thereafter. The site went on to become a popular destination for student class trups.
In the hippie sixties, through the efforts of the Clayville Folk Arts Guild, The site became well known for events such as quilt shows and craft festivals, and one of the most beloved family destinations in the area.
In the seventies, the Guild expanded to include music and a fair number of professional traditional musicians. By the end of the decade, Clayville began to host an annual music (and later storytelling) festival. The craft/music orientation of the Guild was never comfortable, often adversarial, but the festival grew to entertain some regional repute.
Come the nineties - The university, grudging even the half- er, hearted (yeah that’s it - hearted) support and maintenance they were providing, swung an under the table deal which re-privatized the site and gave it to a politically connected museum guy who had many big plans for the site. An antique mall. A restaurant. Sadly, this beneficiary of the public largesse was, as the old Texan Saying goes: “all hat and no cows.”
For the next fifteen years, the site was repeatedly vandalized and sank into a tough thicket of scrub trees and weeds. An eyesore, it was also a source of great sadness for those who remembered it at all. The Guild members slowly died off or faded away.
Enter 2009
Numerous residents of Pleasant Plains and the Springfield area formed the not-for-profit Pleasant Plaings Historical Society (http://www.pleasantplainsil.org/PPHS.html ) for the purpose of purchasing and saving Clayville. They raised the money, got an option to purchase, cleared a thousand or so scrubby trees and began to repair the damage. Along the way, Clayville slowly staggered into yet a third life, with a limited program of events and a christmas reception. More and better are to come.
SO. why am I bothering the remarkably diverse C&F universe with the story??? To put it simply - WE WANT THE MUSIC BACK AT CLAYVILLE!!! I can speak for the leadership with great confidence. We really want our music festival back - and a slate of smaller musical gatherings, besides.
Clayville is a great place for it. We have 13 acres, historic structures, a primitive but well built and well-powered performance stage and an eager audience. What we don’t have is, well, the foggiest idea of how to do it. The dissolution of the old Guild saw many of the musicians move away or quit performing. What few of the Guild that were left (me, mostly) love the music but have no illusions about our skills.
So, my qustion (FINALLY!!) for all of you fine folks is this. How can we attrract the real musicians back to Clayville. We’d love to host musical gatherings, possibly in conjunction with our other events. We have a little bluegrass interest already but we want MORE! Single-genre, whatever, with the end goal always a real musical festival starting in the Summer of 2011.
So how, remembering that our lovely site has been blessed with literally THOUSANDS of hours of sweat and strain, but not so much with money, do we get the word out to players and groups that we’d really love to have them?
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=119280182280
Thanks