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You Gave Me a Song @ SLIFF

You Gave Me a Song offers a delightful profile of Alice Gerrard, a legendary bluegrass singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who plays with verve and skill guitar, banjo, fiddle, and dulcimer. An amazingly spunky 84, Gerrard remains sharp and active, her musicianship undiminished. The documentary makes clear her centrality to the preservation and propagation of old-timey music without resorting to hagiography. Gerrards career stretches back to the 50s, and she was a key part of the folk revival. Among her career highlights: partnering with the remarkable Hazel Dickens, marrying and performing with folk icon Mike Seeger, and founding and editing the journal The Old-Time Herald. As if that werent sufficient, Gerrard also served as co-director with the late documentarian Les Blank, a SLIFF Lifetime Achievement Award winner of Sprout Wings and Fly, a delightful film on old-time fiddler Tommy Jarrell. Gerrard is forthright and funny in her interviews shes utterly winning and the film features both a generous selection from her impressive archive of folk photographs and an abundance of terrific performance footage, both old and new.