'It's pretty ugly when the big boys are so desperate for money that they come for us'

Old-time music fans, relax. Thanks to some ingenuity in finding songs without copyrights, the jams at Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea** will go on.

By David Harrison Roanoake VA Times 3/18/2006

At first, all you hear at the Old-Time Music Jam are strings: plucked, bowed, stroked, strummed, pinched and hammered. After a couple of measures all those strings come together and things start to make sense. There's a tune, there are harmonies and there's a beat thumped out on a washtub bass. And that's where the problems start for the 15 or so musicians who gather every Wednesday evening at downtown Roanoke's Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea for some old time music. Unbeknownst to the musicians, some of those songs may have been copyrighted tunes, represented by BMI, a performing-rights organization that licenses music for public performances. And when the company notified the coffee shop recently that it may be breaking the law, it sparked fears that the downtown tradition would have to be silenced, baffling and angering the musicians.It took some research and some Internet sleuthing to bring the jams into copyright compliance and keep the music circle unbroken.

In January, Jeff Farmer, Mill Mountain's manager, got a letter from BMI informing him that some of those tunes may be copyrighted material. No copyrighted musical works can be played in public unless the establishment that plays them acquires licensing rights from a company such as BMI or its competitors, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Performers and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers. Farmer didn't do anything about it for a few weeks while he did some research on music copyrighting, he said. A few weeks ago, he told the musicians that they would have to stop playing copyrighted songs. The licensing fees would be too much for the coffee shop, he said. "Basically it's comply or you're breaking the law," he said. "It sounds vague but it's pretty black and white to BMI."

Jerry Bailey, a BMI spokesman at the company's national office in Nashville, Tenn., said the company gets publicly available lists of all eating and drinking establishments in a state and sends them letters explaining the basics of music licensing. "It's your responsibility to know for a fact that those songs are public domain," he said. Licensing fees from BMI start at $292 per year and increase depending on the type of business, Bailey said. That's probably how much Mill Mountain would have to pay to play copyrighted music, he estimates. Musicians at the Mill Mountain jam worried that BMI's letter would deal a fatal blow to the weekly event, which has drawn people to downtown Roanoke since the get-togethers started seven or eight years ago. But Lynn Osmann of Roanoke, who plays the hammered dulcimer, asked the players to send her a list of their favorite old-time tunes, and then she checked online to see whether they were copyrighted. Her list debuted Wednesday with about 400 songs, with more to come, she said, adding that she plans to send the list to BMI. That means the group can bask in the "Glory in the Meetinghouse," they can have their fill of "Cornbread and Butterbeans" and there's nothing wrong with "Whiskey Before Breakfast." Unfortunately, Osmann said, they can no longer "Nail that Catfish to a Tree."

The musicians don't get paid to play and they don't take tips. At most, they may get some free coffee, she said. "It's amazing how many people come," Osmann said. "It's their social highlight to come out on Wednesday night and listen to the old-time jam." The whole episode has "shocked and dismayed" some players who had a hard time understanding how people gathering to play old songs could be breaking the law. "What could be more sociable and cultural and all that than people getting together and playing homegrown music?" asked Rob Coulter, a Blue Ridge fiddler who plays "every chance I get." "It's pretty ugly when the big boys are so desperate for money that they come for us," he said.

The Mill Mountain musicians aren't alone. Last year, Gillie's, a Blacksburg restaurant, got into a spat with BMI over licensing fees for its music, including tunes played at its old-time jam. Others in Virginia and North Carolina have also been approached by licensing companies, Osmann said. Bailey said the point of copyright law is to make sure that songwriters and composers are appropriately compensated for their work. In the case of old-time and country music, determining whether a song is public domain can get a little tricky, however. In some cases, Bailey said, performers record an arrangement of a traditional song and copyright it. "The Carter Family is an example," he said. "The Carter Family took older songs and reworked them and copyrighted them." That means that playing the traditional arrangement of the songs is fine but anything that starts to sound like the Carter Family could mean trouble. Where the line falls, of course, can be in the ear of the beholder, which complicates matters, as Bailey acknowledges. On Wednesday, Osmann passed out copies of the set list and the group delivered jaunty renditions of such traditional -- and fully legal -- songs as "Fisher's Horn Pipe," "Jaybird" and "Charleston Gals." So long as they stick to the list, she said, they should stay out of trouble. She's no longer worried about BMI, she added. "They're welcome to come and listen to us every time."