The overhead lighting in the back room of Herndon’s Tortilla Factory restaurant is dimmed, and the spotlight clicked on, lighting up the face of Reston-Herndon Folk Club host Ellen Kaminsky.
"First off, everybody take those phones out, turn them off," she said, holding out her own cellular phone. "If your phone goes off in this room while someone is playing, you’re buying everyone a round of drinks."
Laughter bubbled up from the more than 50 people who had come that night.
"Oh, don’t think I’m kidding," Ellen Kaminsky said with a smile. "We hear your phone, it’s a round of drinks for the room," she concluded, snapping hers shut, the noise echoing through the microphone.
ELLEN KAMINSKY WAS going through the introductions for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Reston-Herndon Folk Club at the Tortilla Factory last week on Aug. 21.
"Most of the open mics out there are in bars, where people don’t come specifically to listen to music," said Ray Kaminsky, president of the Reston-Herndon Folk Club for the last 12 years. "And most of the bars, nothing happens when the music starts. But here, it silences. People really come to hear the music."
That devotion has, over the years, distinguished the Reston-Herndon Folk Club as one of the region’s premier and regular folk music gathering places, he added.
The club’s monthly concerts have attracted nationally-known folk music names like John McCutcheon, Tom Paxton and Mike Seeger.
"This is the base really for the acoustic and folk music in Northern Virginia, really for the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. area," said Larry Mediate, a former club president and Herndon resident. "Everybody who is a regular attendant or a member of the folk club has musical asides … they come from other open mics, musical organizations, they are musicians themselves. Musically, it’s a very well-versed group of people."
One of those musicians is Greg Vickers, a Reston guitarist who runs a monthly folk music concert series at West Market Community Center and looks to recruit talent at the event.
"Everyone I’ve spoke to, they’ve never been to an open mic where people shut up and listen to the music, except for the Reston-Herndon Folk Club," Vickers said. "Everybody hangs on your every word here. This is just a special place and I have had many magical nights here."
WHAT STARTED OUT as a traveling group of area residents looking to promote folk music from America and around the world, the Reston-Herndon Folk Club was originally nomadic by necessity, jumping locations throughout Reston, according to early member Dave Hern.
The drive was spearheaded by Reston resident Rose Hascal, who, in the spring of 1985, returned to the area from the United Kingdom with memories of regular congregations of musicians meeting in pubs and other areas to share their cultural heritage through song.
"She saw a place where local musicians could come to preserve and share their historic music," said Hern, to the crowd as he recounted the story of the club’s founding. "It was music of the people that she saw them sharing [in the United Kingdom], and that’s what she wanted to do here. Preserving ancient oral tradition."
The group’s rocky first two years led it on a tour of Reston’s restaurants and resident community centers. Displaced for a number of reasons, like the establishment of a Chinese restaurant in place of one former home to being "chased out because of certain higher standards" after another restaurant switched to a more fine-dining format, the group flitted from site to site.
"But when they came to Herndon, they talked to a young, gullible fellow looking to impress the town’s be-its by showing he had a sense of civic pride," said Hern. "They found [Tortilla Factory owner] Chuck Curcio who was willing to take in this motley crew of people and give us a home, and we’ve been grateful ever since."
Over time, the club worked its way into the weaving cultural fabric and history of the Tortilla Factory, Curcio said.
"Though this may have started out as a community service project, it has become a place where I have a lot of friends and a lot of great memories," he said. In gratitude, the group presented him at the event with a painting from a local artist for his support over the last two decades.
WHILE SHARING FOLK music is the club’s primary directive, it has been the camaraderie and feeling of family that has kept it together over the years, according to members. Members of the folk club who met as part of its weekly activities have traveled throughout the world and country together, started new musical organizations and have even been married, according to Ellen Kaminsky.
"A lot of people have raised their kids in this room, and after some time, we started see those kids coming and playing as high school and college students," she said. "And if we wait long enough, we’ll see their kids coming back as well."
The group will continue to foster those relationships and stay on the same track it has been as the years continue on for the Reston-Herndon Folk Club, Ray Kaminsky said.
"We’re just trying to keep it going as we have been for as long as we can," he said. "It’s developed a really great reputation over the years and we want to keep that going."
"This has really become one of those great listening rooms in the region."