FILM

Anderson Fair presents a Special Wednesday Screening: Troubadour Blues, a film by Tom Weber. Wednesday, June 13. Doors open at 7:30pm.

True stories from the front lines of American music.

On a highway not far from where you live, a solitary musician with a guitar and a box of CDs is driving to another gig. No tour bus, no band, no road manager, no crew: just a need to make music and a bag full of songs based on hard-lived experience.

Tonight, in a bar or a coffeehouse or a church basement or somebody's house, the troubadour will share those songs with a room full of people. He or she will crack some jokes, tell some stories about how those songs came about, and sell some CDs to the newly converted at the end of the night.

A round of goodbyes, a night in a spare bedroom or a cheap motel, and it's time for another drive to another town and another room full of people.

Troubadour Blues is the story of modern-day wandering minstrels who ply their trade outside the media spotlight and far from the glitzy world of pop stardom. They are contemporary equivalents of the medieval troubadours who brought the news from village to village, or the itinerant bluesmen and folksingers who hopped freight trains and hitched rides across Depression-era America.

The 95-minute film had its World Premiere on opening night of the Buffalo International Film Festival, Friday, October 14, with a personal appearance by Peter Case, a native of the Buffalo area.

Troubadour Blues is a journey into the world of well-traveled singer-songwriters like Peter Case, Mary Gauthier, Chris Smither, Dave Alvin, Slaid Cleaves and many more. This 95-minute documentary, produced over a 10-year period by filmmaker Tom Weber, provides a revealing look at the heartbreaks and joys of these modern-day wandering minstrels. The film contains live performances of 40 brilliantly crafted songs, as well as informal moments and interviews in which the artists reflect on audiences, songwriting, the music business, and life.

This is a story that needs to be heard. In our media-saturated age of instant pop stardom, there is real danger that the tradition of the itinerant working musician is being diluted or lost. This is a concern expressed in the film by a number of artists. Troubadour Blues explores the hidden corners of our culture, where honest, authentic songs reflecting the human experience are still being composed and sung.