May 16th, 2009.

I’ve got to admit, I’m already exhausted. Playing in the sunshine (even “mostly cloudy”) and vicious (and viscous) humidity just rips the energy out of me and I keep debating whether falling asleep will make me feel better or worse. There’s a sunset of pastels to my right as we race south on I-97, making our way from the Reisterstown Bloomin’ Arts Fest to the Maryland Faerie Festival’s evening Summerfest. Rowan and Sharif are converging from their own points further south and a concerned festival has already called to see if they can accelerate our schedule at all.

The Gypsy Nomads performing at the Maryland Faerie Festival’s Summerfest. It was great to be able to watch them again – they’re just so damned charismatic. Scott demonstrated the welcome fact that the gremlins hadn’t merely assaulted MY guitar, because he broke a string in HIS first song TOO.

Despite both festivals having specific load-in and gig times, not to mention “rain or shine” clauses in the contracts, both have called today trying to see if we can hasten things a bit to avoid any weather trauma. My feeling is that, to avoid weather trauma, you put ilyAIMY in the headlining position, as it rains after we play. That’s just the way that shit works!

The first year we played the Maryland Faerie Festival, is probably one of my most favourite events ever. The second year, it was an absolute nightmare full of chaos and disaster. This year is kind of right between the two – a little too cold, not enough sunshine, not many people, but very pleasant if you were willing to brave the threat of rain.

The Reisterstown Bloomin’ Arts Festival WAS pretty pleasant. It was a good day for dog watching, but unfortunately, most of the people watching we could do was that of watching people walk by. We had a great stage, a great soundsystem, and careful, efficient and attentive soundguys, but the not-already-there-specifically-for-us portion of the audience mostly just checked us out in passing.

The Storyteller of the Enchanted Wagon at the Maryland Faerie Festival getting sassed by her dragon, Joe. She’s a major part of my absolute adoration of this festival. Her charm and the awe that her creations inspire are … well… awesome.

I’m not sure how to transform that. It seems that on some streets we do amazingly well: Richmond, VA, Bowie, MD… most memorably (and provably repetitively) Frederick, MD is where we can stand on the streets and draw people in from across the road, down the street…. People will pull over to come listen to us…. But today I felt like our ensnare factor was simply set in the off position.

*One of the coolest things ever devised, the* Enchanted Turtle Wagon THING (not it’s real name) was DIFFERENT this year! He was a SEA turtle! Turns out she’s got four of the beesties… and I want to see ALL of them.

The rain continues to toy with us, flirting with downpour. The sun is setting swiftly leaving the overcast to glow over top of us. It’ll take a while for the light reflecting off the clouds to drain out of the sky – which can either mean we’ll have a rosy glow about us, OR that the festival won’t be sure whether or not to turn on the lights and we’ll be caught in an in-betweening of illumination.

Just gots to wait and see.

*The audience watching dancers between musical sets at the Maryland Faerie Festival.*

*And so I was glad I’d packed another guitar. Scott of the Gypsy Nomads was kind enough to tune my Seagull up and hand it up to us after Heather split the nut on my poor old Takamine.*

Well, I figured that after having broken a string in my first song of the set at the Bloomin’ Arts Fest that that would be the end of my tech distress. But it wasn’t. I was pretty impressed with myself because I restrung it WHILE we performed Oklahoma is Overflowing without missing a damned harmony note… but then I snapped the string that I was replacing it with… absolute nightmare. And THEN Heather snapped a string at the end of the song – so I had to restring HER guitar while she performed another tune….

After our performance at the Maryland Faerie Festival in Upper Marlboro, MD, Heather gets mobbed by the peeps, many of which had wings. It was one of the cooler experiences of getting surrounded by people who wanted our stuff and our attention. I’m glad Heather was ready for it – I was sort of in a weird head-space and all too happy to let Heather take it all on.

*A hottie contact juggler at the Maryland Festival… for some reason, now, looking at pictures, she reminds me of Doctor Who. Huh.*

And then we went to the Faerie Festival, which I misdirected us to, got to JUST in time to play our set… and I proceeded to break another string in the first song of THAT set.

It was so frustrating. We’d arrived just in time, the wind was picking up, Sharif did this really fun bit right at the beginning, running up on stage… and then I BLEW it.

By the end of the night, as I thought about it more and more I was kind of devestated. It could’ve been such an amazing night and I totally fucked it up.

Shauna Burns performing on the Holly Stage at the Maryland Faerie Festival. I was really taken by her performance, full of knowing looks and winks and tossed hair.

Bright side… bright side? Well, I vowed that for local shows I should ALWAYS have a spare guitar with me – and so the next day, packing up for our second show at the Maryland Faerie Festival, I loaded my Seagull into the car alongside my Alvarez. With the rain slacking off, slowly being replaced by wind and cold, the whole festival started a little bit late. However – the storm of it all was sort of inspiring – with the wind whipping my hair and threatening to throw the overhang down onto us – at one point all of the sound guys and volunteers came running towards us. It was only after they’d saved us that I realized they were rushing us because one of the speaker stacks was tottering towards us. That was the performance we should’ve been able to give the night before.