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March 20 - April 2, 2013
For Village Folkies of the 60s, Turning 70 is a Good Gig Times change, but the song remembers when
Photo by Michael Lydon
The entrance to the shuttered Gaslight, on MacDougal Street.
BY M I CH A E L LY D O N “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now,” Bob Dylan sang in 1964. Back then, the 23-year-old was a two-year veteran of the rough-and-tumble folk music scene that flourished in dozens of little clubs dotted along Bleecker, MacDougal and Fourth Streets in Greenwich Village. Almost 50 years later, Dylan is a vigorous senior. The scene that nurtured and sharpened his talent has changed and aged — but, more important, it has survived along with him. Most of the old clubs, however, haven’t survived. The Kettle of Fish on MacDougal, where Tim Hardin and Richie Havens hung out between sets at other clubs, is now a Vietnamese restaurant. Next door, The Gaslight, a basement bistro that once booked Doc Watson and Jose Feliciano, is shut tight. Above the steps, a faded sign boasts of the day “when poets and other arty types were known as bohemians not beatniks.” Across the street, the Players Theatre — where The Fugs chanted their X-rated ditties — is still there. But Speakeasy, the top folk club of the early 80s, has vanished without a trace. MacDougal Street has changed so much that when the Coen brothers recently shot exteriors for a movie about the Village folk scene, they set dressed a block of East Ninth Street rather than trying to reconstruct the original. Gerde’s Folk City, at Mercer and West Fourth in Dylan’s day, moved in the late 60s to the former Tony Pastore’s restaurant
Photo courtesy of Erik Frandsen
Left to Right: Erk Frandsen, David Massingiull and Dave Van Ronk in a Village bar, in the 1980s.
explain why Europe is going to hell.” Frandsen also acted, sang and played guitar in long runs of “Pump Boys and Dinettes” and, with banjoist Charlie Chin (another MacDougal Street veteran), put together a Hawaiian swing band whose
Photo by Michael Lydon
Erik Frandsen in his MacDougal Street apartment.
on West Third near Sixth Avenue. Run for years by the legendary Mike Porco, Folk City hung on as a music club until 1987. Bleecker Street’s The Bitter End became The Other End and then, again, The Bitter End — and now features more rock than folk performers (Lady Gaga is the latest star to win a first following at the 52-yearold venue). “But what are you going to do?” asks Erik Frandsen, a fine finger-picking guitarist and Folk City regular through the 70s,
“Give up because a club closes? Never!” Frandsen, who still lives above the old Gaslight in a tiny apartment crammed with songbooks, CDs and old VHS tapes, often drops into Caffé Vivaldi on Jones Street to play a few late-night tunes. Living through lean times by selling guitars at Matt Umanov’s on Bleecker, he slowly built an acting career. “By now I’ve done dozens of ‘Law and Order’ episodes, and on ‘The Colbert Report’ I play Heinz Beinholtz, the stern German ambassador who comes on to
‘But what are you going to do?’ asks Erik Frandsen, a fine finger-picking guitarist and Folk City regular through the 70s, ‘Give up because a club closes? Never!’ syrupy repertoire grew into “The Song of Singapore” — a musical that ran for a year and a half at the Irving Plaza. “Now I’m 66, on Social Security, so you could say I’m semi-retired. But hell, with a few pals, I’m trying to launch a new musical comedy about the CIA, ‘John Goldfarb, Continued on page 22