Matt Smith

Managing Director at Passim

Matt Smith 2: While always looking forward to what new things can we do and how can we keep this going, I’ve always got an eye looking back on what we’ve done and who’s been here.  Sometimes a strong history can be as much of a burden as it is a boon, where people look at “Well, Bob Dylan played in there and Joan Baez played in there, Judy Collins played in there,” so it’s this locked piece of sixties nostalgia. The first ten years of the organization was a defining time. That was when the whole world was seeing folk music in a different way for the first time. But here we are, forty plus years after that, and I think that we are having some of the most exciting times in the history of the club now. People look back at the history, and you look at that time, but no one was saying at that time, when Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were playing here, “Oh, this is culturally significant.” They were enjoying it in the moment, and I think that that’s happening now as well, and in fifty years we’re going to look back and say “Oh wow, can you believe that these people did that then?”