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Singer-songwriter Ernie Oakleaf will compete with nine other songwriters from around the country at the Tucson Folk Festival in May. (Photo by Randy Metcalf) Oakleaf chosen for national songwriting competition Sunday, Apr 9, 2006 By Deborah Horn Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Start with the long-standing tradition of storytelling, sprinkle in a smidgen of imagination, and add the allure of Arkansas' back roads and bayous. That's the recipe Ernie Oakleaf of Little Rock used to gain a top 10 spot at the Tucson Folk Festival's songwriting contest. Oakleaf is invited to perform his original music as part of the competition at May's 21st annual festival in Tucson City, Ariz. Oakleaf quit writing for several years but picked the pen back up about eight years ago, eventually entering his songs into folk song competitions. But nothing happened, he said, until he entered his work in the Tucson Folk Festival. Beth Judd, executive director, said more than 60 songwriters from around the country submitted songs this year. "It's one of our biggest years," Judd said of the number of submissions from a wide variety of folk genres including gospel, bluegrass and Celtic. "Almost anything is accepted," Judd said. Songwriters perform during the competition playoff at the Tucson Museum of Art. "We're not looking for the professional songwriter, but we're looking for up-and-coming songwriters," she said. Besides a purse of $500, the first place winner is given the opportunity to play on the festival's main stage. The committee also names second and third place winners. "It helps get their name out there," Judd said. "I've been writing since I was teenager," said Oakleaf, who grew up in Crossett. Of course, he played around with a rock-n-roll garage band, but it wasn't until after he started classes at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in the early 1970s, working on a degree in sociology, that he turned to folk music. He won a spot opening for acts like Cindy Williams, now known as Lucineda Williams, David Newbern, a former Supreme Court Justice who was a law student at that time, and Rhonda Fleming, who later went to Nashville and wrote hits for Barbara Mandrell at the university's Coffee House in the Student Union. While he was playing folk music, he came to know other people who were singing and writing their own tunes at a time when most were wooing audiences with popular cover songs lifted from the top 40 play list of the day. The Band, then known as The Hawks, also hit the Fayetteville scene occasionally, because of Levon Helm's Arkansas connection. With all that talent, Oakleaf couldn't help but pick up the pen and try his hand at songwriting. It would remain an endeavor, he "did on the side." He also met a young woman from Fort Smith, the former Zoe Durilla, who later became his wife. Then in the mid-1970s, the Oakleafs moved to Iowa City so both could work on doctorate degrees at the University of Iowa. There was The Mill, a restaurant, were folk-nicks like Greg Brown, now of National Public Radio's Prairie Home Companion fame, and Don Lange, who gave up the business for winemaking after cutting a couple of "albums," played. In 1977, his wife received a Fulbright Scholarship and the couple moved to Cambridge, England. Oakleaf found small club and college venues around the area and continued to play. During the day he taught sociology for the University of Maryland at an airbase in Cambridge. Two years later, it became "clear that a lot of people like us were looking for academic jobs." At the same time, Zoe's dad was diagnosed with a rare vascular disease and she moved to be near him while he was treated at the Mayo Clinic near Iowa City. While she worked on her dissertation, Oakleaf set up a home base in Little Rock and began teaching sociology at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Life and a daughter intervened, and for several years Oakleaf put down the pen. Together with his wife, who has a Ph.D. in history, Oakleaf started Opinion Research Associates of Little Rock, a market research company primarily doing telephone surveys and conducting focus groups. Opinion Research has been doing political polling for the Arkansas News Bureau since 2002. Commercial folk music is hard to separate from modern rock, Oakleaf said. But purists tend to use acoustical instruments; many still haven't forgiven Bob Dylan for switching to the electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Oakleaf said what he writes "isn't traditional folk music," strictly speaking. But he does stick to acoustic instruments. "It's a hobby to entertain myself," Oakleaf said. At the Tucson Folk Festival, he is scheduled to perform two songs - "The Flower of Mer Rouge," and "The Ouachitas." The first song is set in a small Louisiana town named Mer Rouge, on the Arkansas-Louisiana border. "It plays off the social and geographical differences of the area," Oakleaf said. It is a fictional love story set against a backdrop of the old cotton culture clashing against the more modern timber industry. "Sometimes a song comes almost full grown," Oakleaf explained about his songwriting process, but this one he "continued tinkering with for a couple of years." A few years ago, Oakleaf ran into the legendary 1960s songwriter Tom Paxton at church, and they "got to talking." Oakleaf sent Paxton a tape. The seasoned veteran offered this advice, according to Oakleaf: "Take a machete to it and chop out all the unnecessary words to a sharp point." "He never writes throwaways," said Little Rock musician Kat Hood, who recorded "The Flower of Mer Rouge" on her CD, "The Comfort Zone." Upon first hearing the song, Hood said, "I knew if it was done by the right person it would fly." Hood said that in the Tucson competition, Oakleaf is up against some of the best songwriters. "It's a big deal," Hood said, that could "bring him some recognition and will hopefully inspire him to write more." Before submitting "The Ouachitas," a musical collage of Arkansas images, a group of fellow songwriters offered Oakleaf one criticism: The song doesn't have a story. Well, Oakleaf already knew that, but wanted to build a song around Ouachita images. "It's a mysterious place," Oakleaf said of the bayous and area that is home to poisonous snakes and loggerhead snapping turtles. In one line, he warns of an "ice thong bite," inspired by a friend who stepped into a bayou and a nest of water moccasins. Oakleaf wrote much of that song while on vacation in Key West, Fla., but most often, he said, "I work wherever the muse visits me." Many of his songs are inspired by real life and humorous incidents. "Our Southern heritage is rich with stories from the tragic to the ridiculous, and everything in between," Oakleaf said. ----- Deborah Horn is features editor of The Times of North Little Rock. Her e-mail is dhorn@nlrtimes.com |
