by Peter Berryman
Mike Tuten, Part One (Click here for Part Two)
This is the first half of a heavily edited (for space) interview with departing Madison Folk Music Society President Mike Tuten, who has done a stellar job of steering the Society for ten years. Any awkward phrasing is due to my editing.
WZ: What is the history of Mad Folk?
MT: This is our twenty fifth year. The early beginnings that I gleaned from the archives...It was just a small group of people who liked folk music and wanted to promote it, and wanted to be able to bring an occasional artist into town... At that time a much stronger element of the organization was the monthly sing-alongs... We still are keeping [those] alive, especially with the summer sing-alongs at Blue Mounds State Park... But more and more people are finding it's easier to go TO entertainment rather than BE entertainment. I still think that there's a strong need to have the opportunity for sharing the oral tradition...
WZ: How do you define folk music?
MT:...It can be any kind of song that reflects some aspect about the person. And somehow ties to that person's... ethnicity or culture or experience in life... Also something that sort of resonates within you... Sometimes the songs that I sing in the folk genre may not speak of my own experience but may speak of someone else's experience. But it's nonetheless an experience that I can identify with or appreciate... One of the series of folk songs that I found very fascinating were the civil war songs that [Cathy] Barton and [Dave] Para have recorded... They were speaking to the times; they were sort of a musical history of the area. And to me that's a part of our culture that I'm pleased to at least have experienced... and can appreciate what was going on at the time when people were composing them.
WZ: Did your family sing?
MT: My mom has a great voice. And dad liked to play the ukelele... My sister closest to me in age has a great voice and she's done a lot of singing with musicals and things like that. My brother has also done a fair amount. I've done some singing and I've played a number of instruments throughout life... I've led folk groups down at St. Paul's University Catholic Center and that was how I became involved with the Madison Folk Music Society... I think it was about 1984, '85... It was just at the dawning of the computer age and so we bought a Leading Edge model D, with Word Perfect... and about that time Mad Folk needed someone to handle the mailing labels. ...So I was instantly elevated to a position on the board (laughs)... I thought that the organization could do more... I had an opportunity to run for president; I decided let's just see what happens... Because I just wasn't comfortable with where it was at... I wanted it to be an organization of people that functioned with input from a number of people. And for the large part I think we've accomplished that.
The biggest job I've had has been recruiting other people to do things... And being open to ideas and suggestions... I've always tried to find things that I thought would be a good fit that would benefit the organization.. As things have evolved we've picked up steam. We've grown to about three hundred and fifty members which is a respectable organization. We send out almost five hundred newsletters a month. The format of the newsletter changed from a fairly good sized tome sent every other month but written by one or two people to a monthly publication that has input from a number of people and has the calendar. The refrigerator cover sort of evolved from a past member's idea... I view it as a service to the folk music community. And I try to see the organization as functioning in service to the folk music community which is both performers and the audience. And trying to serve as an information conduit.
WZ: What were some of the first things you did when you became president?
MT: Well, I took a look at the bylaws and came up with an interpretation of them which allowed us to have a nine member board rather than a four member board... And so instantly expanded the ability for other people to be involved in the planning and guidance of the organization... I tried to establish more of a collegial committee structure. At the time I took over there [were]... people that were involved with the festival and they were worried about having money available from year to year to keep doing what they were doing, and I tried to throw oil on the water so that the people that were primarily interested in the festival knew that Mad Folk was a friendly organization that was in support of their efforts... And the other thing was establish a concert committee... And then expanding the number of people that were involved with the newsletter... [The newsletter is] a collective effort and to me it's a cornerstone now of the organization...
I've looked at the organization in terms of what's necessary to keep it commercially viable. I've had differences with people over the years about what we need to do to be true to our own roots but I've always tried to make sure that we do things in support of the full community but we don't slit our throats in the process...
We've increased the dues over the years to make it commercially viable. One of the things that we did in reestablishing the dues structure was to allow people an opportunity to contribute to more than just a standard membership... We've opened up the category called the Life Membership and modestly priced it at five hundred dollars. What we do with those memberships when they come in is that money goes into a CD. And we get about twenty five dollars a year interest. Which is enough to fund that membership for the year so the money from the interest is enough to keep that membership active for as long as time allows. Plus we never touch the principal that way. Little things like that. Just to ensure the economic stability of the organization... We've tried to be fiscally conservative, and it's worked. We do a lot more in terms of promotion for the events that we sponsor than many other organizations I'm familiar with. But we're at a disadvantage because we don't have our own venue. And so when we do an event, we have to come at it in a slightly different way than someone who has a venue and it's just a matter of who's going to be performing there... So we have to do a lot more advertising to make our events economically viable. And it increases the cost and to some extent that effects who we can have. We have to have someone that has a fairly substantial audience already in place...
PART TWO NEXT ISSUE... (Click here for Part Two)