““I knew...that there was a folk club in Los Angeles called the Ash Grove. I’d seen posters of folk shows at the Ash Grove and used to dream about playing there.””
Help us finish the film!
And have a tax deduction!
Through our non-profit Fiscal Sponsor, FILM FORUM, you can now make a tax-deductible donation to help us pay the completion costs so we can bring the film to you!
The ASH GROVE after the first fire in 1969.
the making of the ash grove started in 2008…
and now we are done with the editing but we need to pay for rights to archival material and technical finishing costs.
CREDIT CARD:
You can make a tax-deductible donation by CREDIT CARD at the Film Forum website Fiscal Sponsorship page at: https://my.filmforum.org/donate/i/21
When you get to Film Forum’s FISCAL SPONSORSHIP page go to the first alphabetical choice box - labelled “A to I” - and select “Fred Aronow/Ash Grove”. Then go to the check-out cart.
CHECK:
Make out your Ash Grove film donation check to Film Forum with a notation on the check Donation for Fred Aronow / Ash Grove film. Their address is Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, New York, NY 10014.
And a big thank you to Film Forum for making this important service available to filmmakers. When you’re in New York go down to West Houston Street and take in a show. There’s always something great happening at the FILM FORUM.
“It is with great sadness that we share the news that Ed Pearl, founder of the Ash Grove, passed away February 7, 2021. Ed entrusted the future of the mission of the Ash Grove to Get Lit, a sister organization in Los Angeles whose focus is to bring high school students to the power of poetic expression. The Ash Grove connection expands Get Lit’s focus to include music and the value of folk culture. In honor of Ed Pearl you can make a donation at GetLit.org with the notation “For the Ash Grove Music Fund in memory of Ed Pearl.””
The ASh grove Legend
Bob Dylan dreamed of playing there. Bonnie Raitt called it crucial and legendary for its many musical, social and political connections. Mick Jagger thanked the owner for the musical education he received there.
From 1958 until its closing in 1973 the Ash Grove was Los Angeles's preeminent roots music venue. In a time of increasingly successful commercial pop and folk music, the visionary owner, Ed Pearl championed the most obscure, raw and talented performers from across the United States.
These artists went on to become the legendary icons of blues, bluegrass, and folk, many making their first trip west to play the Ash Grove. Among the thousands of artists to perform on its stage were Lightnin' Hopkins, Son House, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Big Mama Thornton, Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson. If they were authentic and had something to say, Ed booked them.
At the same time, Pearl cultivated a devoted group of young people, aspiring musicians who came night after night to listen and learn at the feet of these musical masters. Watching every note played, hearing every story told, these Ash Grove alumni went on to become legends in their own right. Musicians like Taj Majal, Ry Cooder, Linda Ronstadt, Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead incorporated the traditional instruments and licks they absorbed at the Ash Grove into their own bands and changed the sound of contemporary music.
Never a businessman, always operating on a shoestring and breaking all the rules, Pearl made the Ash Grove his platform to change the world. He fused the Ash Grove's traditional music with the radical politics of a turbulent era that altered the world. It became an experimental classroom and cultural center where people exchanged ideas and musical riffs on and offstage, and where patrons and artists could really interact. It was a mixing place for people from widely different backgrounds, where the rich rubbed elbows with the working class, where celebrities, students, hippies, Black Panthers and truck drivers all came together.
Those who sat in those seats at the Ash Grove say it was more of a home than a club, and that there never was a place like it, before or since. Time and again, eminent musicians, artists, filmmakers, educators, community activists and public servants tell how the Ash Grove changed their lives.
And then, the club burned… not once, but three times.
““I can’t think of a better lens through which to view such an important part of our cultural history than a documentary on this wonderful club.””
““Ed Pearl is one of the most creative and thoughtful people who ever presented folk music in the U.S.A.” ”
““It looms large in my history because that is where I met Roger McGuinn. If there had been no Ash Grove, there would have been no Byrds.””
““I got my improvisational approach from Scotty Stoneman... the first guy to set me on fire.... I went down to hear him the first time at the Ash Grove in L.A. in 1965.... The place was transfixed.” ”
““At this place in West L.A. at that time you could have this education and not go wrong. People say, ‘How did you learn this music?’ I said, ‘that’s how, by being at the Ash Grove, with Ed, by the bar at my chair.” ”
THE COMPANY AND THE FILMMAKERS
The Company: Ash Grove Film, LLC
Based out of Los Angeles, California, Ash Grove Film LLC is producing this documentary. Its principals are Jolie Pearl, Jerry Kay and Fred Aronow. It was founded in 2015 with the cooperation of Ash Grove Music, Inc., a non-profit foundation whose mission was to continue the legacy of the original Ash Grove club through concerts, lectures, community performances, support for young artists and other initiatives that support roots and folk music and related arts in the Los Angeles area. In 2019 Ash Grove Music, Inc. was folded into the operations of a sister-organization, GetLit, where that work continues.
Director / Producer : Fred Aronow
A veteran filmmaker who has worked in Los Angeles for the last 40 years, he started in New York working with Shoshoni Productions working on the groundbreaking PBS series Vanishing Wilderness. As part of the Wintersoldier Collective he worked on the production and international release of the feature documentary Winter Soldier, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival Critic’s Week. He followed that up with work on the PBS Special Black Coal, Red Power; the made-for-PBS feature A Secret Space, and the independent Guyanese feature Aggro, Seizeman, before moving to the west Coast. His work since that time has continued his focus on issues of justice, human dignity, ecology, access to healthcare and the many issues that negatively and positively affect the daily lives of people around the world.
Producer : Jed Riffe
Jed has served as producer on more than 30 documentary projects seen internationally and nationally including 15+ programs seen on PBS. They span subjects ranging from anthropology to politics and cultural justice. They have garnered 40 National and International Film Festival Awards and an Emmy nomination. In these productions he has developed the techniques and understanding to work with the masses of archival material that are frequently part of documentaries that require authenticated visual images from the past.
Recognizing the difficulty of producing independent documentaries, he has also been able to find paths to funding, completion and releasing the projects he considers worthwhile. This part of his activity has been recognized by the award of the Gerbode Fellowship for Non-Profit Management.
Jed was selected as a 2009 Sundance Documentary Film Program Grantee and a Sundance Fellow and he is a Sundance Alumni.
Editor : Chris Jones
Chris is a documentarian concerned with themes of environmental and social justice. His short-documentaries Trash, Manufactured and Junk raise global awareness about the impact of plastic polluting our oceans. Since completing a post-production internship on Ken Burns’ Country Music series, Chris has served as assistant editor to Academy Award-winning documentarian Freida Lee Mock on her features Ruth and The Choir and Conductor, co-editor alongside Academy Award-winning director Terry Sanders on his feature 9th Circuit Cowboy, and associate editor on Suzanne Joe Kai’s Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong Torres. In 2019 he co-wrote and edited Wake Up: Stories from the Frontlines of Suicide Prevention. His latest project, Bad Faith, tracks the rise of Christian Nationalism in American politics.
An appreciation of those on whose shoulders we stand
This project would not exist without the foresight of the first team that started collecting interviews and archival material in 2008: Jerry Kay, Aiyanna Elliott, and Ed Pearl. And a second crew with Spencer Showalter and Samuel Curtis, brought the project back into production in 2014 working with Fred Aronow.
PROJECT STATUS
The Ash Grove film project began in 2006 under the direction of Aiyana Elliott, Sundance-award-winning daughter of Ramblin' Jack Elliott. She interviewed more than thirty people associated with the Ash Grove as performers, staff, friends, supporters and members of the audience.
They filmed and recorded the Ash Grove's 2008 50th Anniversary UCLA Royce Hall sell-out concerts and workshops and the organizing of the event.
They gathered archival footage, photos, fliers and original taped Ash Grove performances. By 2010 the project was put on the back burner for several years, but in 2015 a new team was designated by Ed Pearl and the Board of Directors of the non-profit organization Ash Grove Music, Inc. The new team with Spencer Showalter and Samuel Curtis began work on the film under the supervision of Fred Aronow. They added more interviews and arrived at a rough cut. Fred continues work on the film, now with editor Chris Jones, and they have created a fine cut with a running time of 90 minutes. Adding producer Jed Riffe to the team, they are now are now working on all of the completion processes to release the film.
To complete the film, financing will be required for final editing, licensing, legal services and technical processing. We will take every possible course that cuts costs as long as we can tell the Ash Grove's story in a way that is as dynamic and engaging as was the Ash Grove itself.