Front Row Seat CD cover

3RFS is pleased to announce our first set of CDs, albums that highlight the very best of the efforts of our fine concert artists between 1993 and 2006. These make grrreat additions to your collection, and make fine gifts. Your purchase also helps keep the music flowing!

Front Row Seat is a two-CD compilation of live concert performances produced by the Three Rivers Folklife Society and released in August 2006.

This CD set provides you with 31 highlight performances, listed below, from concerts sponsored or co-sponsored by Three Rivers Folklife Society between 1993 and 2006. The concerts took place in the Tri-Cities, Washington, at either the Kennewick Highlands Grange, the old Community Universalist Unitarian Church in Kennewick, or Battelle Auditorium in Richland. Nearly all of this music has been previously recorded and is already available from the respective artists. This offering is not designed nor intended to be a substitute for these fine studio quality productions. In fact, a major purpose of this sampler is to encourage you to seek out the artists and purchase more of their remarkable material.

All of the commercial music that you purchase has had the dynamics reduced by electronic squashing so that it will sound satisfactory on your personal CD player and car stereo. Even if the music was recorded live, it no longer sounds live. We now offer you an alternative.

The most thrilling place to sit at an acoustic concert is in the front row. From this location a great deal of the dynamics of the music that you hear comes to you directly from the artist. It is more natural and intimate than the sound in the rest of the hall. This CD set presents our best efforts to preserve that front row presence and intimacy of the live folk concert experience. We have preserved, and are now delivering to your stereo system, the full range of unprocessed signals captured directly from the stage microphones. The dynamics have not been reduced, and when played on a good quality stereo it will provide you with a listening experience that rivals the intensity of the original concert. It will put you right back in your own “front row seat.”


Ordering Information

Price per each 2-CD set: $15.00
Shipping: $2.00 (for any number of sets)

Either mail a check or money order to:
Three Rivers Folklife Society
Front Row Seat
P.O. Box 1098
Richland, WA 99352

Or order from our 3RFS online store Here!

Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery


Album Contents

Disc One
  1. Fields of Gettysburg - The Cutters 4:50 - Sound clip (735 kB mp3)
  2. Camille - Chuck Pyle 3:14
  3. Tum Balalaika - Curtis and Loretta 3:59
  4. All the Young Boys - Paul Kamm and Eleanore Macdonald 4:50
  5. Talk a little Texan - Heidi Muller w Janis Carper and Dan Maher 3:10
  6. 1000 Candles 1000 Cranes - Small Potatoes 4:50
  7. The old Home Place - Cat Loves Crow 3:40
  8. Listen to the Ages Roll - JW Sparrow w Joe Debenedictis 5:13
  9. The Miner’s Song - Bill Staines 3:43 - Sound clip (687 kB mp3)
  10. The Portland County Jail - Shanghaied on the Willamette 2:47
  11. Trudy - David Maloney 5:40
  12. Song for Erin (intro) - 3:27
  13. Song for Erin - Linda Waterfall 3:35
  14. Freedom - Ellis 3:24
  15. See You Again - The Cantrells 4:03
  16. Prayer of St. Frances - Joe Jencks 4:19

Disc Two
  1. Roll Alabama - Hank Cramer & the Constellation’s Crew 3:17
  2. The Wreck of the Lady Washington - William Pint & Felica Dale 3:36 - Sound clip (769 kB mp3)
  3. Johnny Jump Up - David Lanigan & Skweez the Weezle 6:00
  4. Factory Girl - Tania Opland with Mike Freeman 2:51
  5. Sound the Eparch - Dan Maher with Lotus 2:47 - Sound clip (782 kB mp3)
  6. Crack Schooner Moonlight - Lee Murdock 3:17
  7. Rocket to Chicago - Hawkeye Herman 4:56
  8. Fishermen’s Cottage - The Cutters (Teresa Morgan) 3:11
  9. Coast of Barbary - Shanghaied on the Willamette 3:11
  10. In My Back Yard - Jeff Knoch 2:58
  11. The Broom of the Cowdenknowes - Heather Alexander w Hank Cramer & Constellation’s Crew 4:19
  12. Ex-Sailor Man - Tom Lewis 3:10
  13. Puff the Calamari - The Great Sänger & Didele 2:34
  14. Bonny Highland Laddy - Atlantic Crossing 6:07
  15. Lusty Young Smith - Spinnaker 4:58