The Kingston Trio: 'Just 3 guys standing on stage with their guitars'

By Cathy Scott

The Kingston Trio, circa 1960

I met Nick Reynolds, a founding member of The Kingston Trio, when I interviewed him in the summer of 1990. I was the business editor at the time of the La Jolla Light newspaper, and the band was having a reunion concert there, so I covered it.

I called Nick to set up an interview, and he invited me to his Coronado home. Once there, we sat down in his family room, surrounded by Kingston Trio memorabilia and musical instruments. His then-girlfriend was there too. My sister Cordelia, brother-in-law Bob, and I attended the group's reunion concert, part of a two-dozen cities tour, this one held at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla at the Aventine, outside on the tennis courts.

Backing the band was the San Diego Chamber Festival Orchestra. Our seats were up front and you could see the emotion in the band members' faces as they performed. "When we go into a ballad and the orchestra comes in behind us, tears come to my eyes," Nick told me. "It's powerful -- not just three guys standing on a stage with their guitars."

So it was with surprise and pleasure this week to see The Kingston Trio receive a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award for their work. It was long overdue and well-deserved. They were a pioneering folk group and leaders of the ’50s folk revival best known for the chart-topping songs "Tom Dooley," as well as "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Tijuana Jail."

What struck me about Nick, who played a tenor guitar, was his enthusiasm for the group's music, even after all those years. He strummed his guitar during a break in the interview. In the room was memorabilia from the days when the group was in its heyday. A couple of The Kingston Trio members switched off over the years, but Nick Reynolds, Bob Shane and John Stewart were the best-known lineup. I saw Nick again a few months later at the Honolulu, Oahu, airport, when we coincidentally ran into each other while waiting at the gate for a flight back to San Diego.

Nick didn't live to see the group's Grammy honor. He passed away in 2008 from chronic heart disease. Bob Shane, the only surviving original member, accepted the award on behalf of The Kingston Trio. Nick would have been proud.

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The Cool 'Big Book of Social Media'

By Cathy Scott

Adriel Hampton's review of The Big Book of Social Media: Case Studies, Stories, Perspectives is now out on Creating Government 2.0 and Social Media site -- and it's a good one.

The many contributors who make up the anthology, Hampton says, are "the product of 20 media conferences."

Indeed. I spoke at three of those conferences and loved every minute of them. But little did I know that a book would follow. A big book.

I learned about Bob Fine's first Twitter conference, beginning mid-2009, when my sister, Cordelia Mendoza, spoke at the first Cool Twitter Conference, held at Croce's Restaurant & Jazz Bar in the heart of downtown San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter. How cool was that, to have the conference at Croce's? The energy in the room, Cordelia tweeted, "was contagious." I was more than curious. So I contacted Bob and signed on for the next conference.

Bob Fine and Cordelia Mendoza

I met him for the first time at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, where my friend, attorney Vickie Pynchon, also spoke. I was hooked. What else would Bob come up with? First, Croce's, and now, the House of Blues.

Well, when he invited me to speak at the CTC conference at The Playwright Tavern in New York City's Theatre District, I couldn't resist. I was going to be in the city just before the conference, so I added a couple of days to my trip to attend. Again, how cool was that? Bob had an uncanny knack of being able to land hip venues-for-a-day as the conferences winded their way from city to city.

I spoke again at the Orange County, California, conference on the continuing tour from coast to coast, as well as internationally. Cordelia was the official Twitter coordinator, gathering tons of steam and followers as she tweeted, quoting speakers live from The O.C. And while the venues were awesome, so were the presenters, who were fired up to share their passion for getting out the word via social media.

A few months after the Cool Twitter Conferences had finished its run, Bob invited me to contribute to his Big Book of Social Media.

Nothing Bob Fine does is small, including this book, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise that he had a big, ambitious idea to incorporate many of the people who had spoken at his conferences -- tweeters, Facebookers and social media hounds from all walks of life who were successfully using new media in a variety of ways. As an author, I know what it takes to put together a book. My sister, too, was invited to write a chapter for the book about how she uses social media to help spur sales at Cottage Antiques, her shop in Ocean Beach, a coastal town in San Diego. With so many contributors, would it actually happen?

But Bob, just like he had with the conferences, pulled it off, and The Big Book, as Hampton writes in his review, "collects the best thoughts of an amazing cast, from marketers to true-crime novelists to activists and small business owners."

Hampton quotes from my sister's chapter, which is titled Something Old, Something New: "Antique store owner Cordelia Mendoza writes of 'broadening the market for antiques through social engagement,' going far beyond the typical listing of for-sale items to photograph, blog and tweet changes in displays, unusual inventory and visits by prominent customers."

Combine 42 of the best-of-the-best who spoke at the Cool Twitter Conferences, as well as at the Cool Gravity Summit last year, roll them into The Big Book of Social Media, and it's a star combination

Thanks, Bob, for a great run of better-than-cool conferences and an even cooler Big Book of Social Media. I'm proud to be a part of it.

A sad time for our family with the loss of our sister

We're writing on our family blog about our sister Sally, who recently passed away. Please click on the photo, below, to go to the blog:

Cathy, Cordelia and Sally