Bio
Bio
Cal Folger Day is a songwriter in Brooklyn. Sometimes alone with a guitar, sometimes with a four-piece off-country-songbook outfit, she performs across the city and beyond.
Press
"…the real thing, straight down the line from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, June Carter, and Memphis Minnie...breaking our hearts and making them sing – no mean feat. A wonderful voice, hot chick, fast mama." (Matt Sage, Catweazle U.K.)
"Standing just north of five feet, hidden under bookworm glasses and heavy waves of curls, the longing within her sultry voice will bring up heartbreak memories of Janis so distinctly that you’ll wonder how its grand emotive power was so well concealed beforehand. Cal Folger Day is a presence on stage." Go Folk Yourself, Brooklyn "Don't you dare try and sass Miss Folger Day or she Will Lay The Smack down on you. Country Blues style. For real." (Isaac Gillespie)
Why I Am Antifolk
Well I hope all this mouthin' off comes out to somethin' in the end, but I just can't manage something quick and cute here: back when the Church was real big back in Old Europe, folks in the clergy who were puttin' on the services were split up into two opposin' groups over the problem of what kind of music they ought to be making for folks to hear. Of course, all folks agreed you needed some kind of melody to get the Holy Spirit across. But some folks were bringin' into the Sanctuary those tunes that everybody was singin' all over the place, and puttin' the important words of the Good Book on top of 'em, and using squeezeboxes and old-fashion fiddle things -- today we might say they were bringin' a Saturday night right into a Sunday morning. Other folks felt like all that concentration on makin' the music sound so good was stealin' the focus away from the message of the Lord itself, and that a heapin' spoonful of sugar was helpin' the tidings go down a little too easy, and at the end of the day all that pleasure was gonna be hurtin' the chances of souls of gettin' into Heaven. (Of course, maybe all folks actually do want all other folks to go to Heaven, at the end of the day, so that all those folks can just keep on keepin' on they way they know how.)
But anyway, these days, folks need to be saved, same as ever -- and songs is the best thing for it, same as ever. Now, you can go and hear music all over New York City, and all over this country, and of course everybody singin' all those songs is trying to tell you something important about makin' it through, the silly songs and the sad ones and the strange ones, all alike. And folks still have strong ideas about what's the most important, the sound or the sense. For instance, say a song sounds too pretty -- that's when somebody might say that it don't have any sense in it. Then a song sounds too ugly, somebody else might say you can't bear to listen in for the sense anyway. But nobody sings a tune that doesn't have some sort of sense somewhere, and nobody sings a tune that doesn't have the joy of makin' it somewhere in there, too. When folks sing songs in the Antifolk way, sometimes those tunes are full of beauty and joy, and sometimes they are full of ugly and joy, and sometimes they are full of beauty and pain, and sometimes ugly and pain -- but every good Antifolk tune, however and by whomever it's been put together, it rarely forgets that sound and sense always work together to make the song work for your carnal body and your spiritual soul alike -- your ears are right there next to your brain, after all -- to be listenin' is to be thinkin', and to think is to listen, likewise. The feeling of a good song in your throat now, that's as good as a little taste of Heaven later on, like Philadelphia brand cream cheese!
Antifolk and folk heavily overlap in that both glorify the obscure and earnest achievements of creative people.