We are not daisy fresh.
It’s a heatwave. Awesome. Yesterday we arrived on the scene at around 3 in the afternoon, slathered ourselves in sunscreen and bugspray and made do with the heat. We’ve had showers and beds and no comes the hard part. We are performers and the badge that accompanies this privilege allows us the finest things known to THIS man – copious quantities of free, edge-of-frozen water and shade. Yesterday I might’ve said I’d like spare batteries, or a good wi-fi signal, or maybe coffee… but today ALL I care about is getting in out of the sun. The heat index is supposed to be a hundred or so and I’m wilting visibly. Once we’re all checked in with our stage, familiarizing ourselves with the stage manager and swapping jokes with the friendliest of the stage hands (he has a wealth of rabbit jokes – the people here are AMAZING) – we spend our time watching the other performers.
A lot of people are referring to this as the “Emerging Artist Competition” – and there IS a competition going on here. People will be able to vote for who they want to have back at the festival but I’m trying not to think about it. Most of the performers seem to be doing the same and there’s none of that air of competitiveness that is so common with things like this. As the afternoon wears on, I become increasingly impressed with this aspect of Falcon Ridge – though there are inevitable hints of clique and the scent of camp possessiveness, the nasty competitiveness that is SO common at all sorts of music festivals simply isn’t here. People are welcoming and friendly… it’s a great atmosphere.
[a later observation – perhaps it IS as cliquish as some of our other experiences, but maybe it doesn’t seem that way from INSIDE the clique? – with this possibility in mind I spend more time trying to hang with a couple of the “uninvited” singer/songwriters that hang around and near our camp]I get a chance to catch a good number of the Showcase: Brittany Ann, Karyn Oliver and Pesky J. Nixon are all Emerging Artists as well – and all of them are just as good on the main stage as they were at the Lounge. Of particular note: the woman after us, Suzie Vinnick from Canada has a really great blues voice and a killer guitar technique. I didn’t know they had the blues in Canada. Bulat Gafarov was the artist right before us and though his instrument arsenal seemed to include just about everything sold at House of Musical Traditions, he combined them with throat singing and a loop station into an intense 10-minute folk rave. Having THAT as our backstage warm-up music got us pumped and with that and a couple more encouraging rabbit jokes, ilyAIMY stormed Falcon Ridge and rocked the hillside like it’s rarely been rocked before.
I didn’t catch the name of this performer – and he only played one song – an angry tune with the resounding chorus of “KILL THE RICH!!!!” After he left the Budgie Dome you could track his presence in other camps with the faintly echoing cries of KILL THE RICH reverberating throughout the mountains.
In hindsight, we could’ve brought the whole band. Occidental Gypsy sure did. Great gypsy jazz with impressive instrumentals, violin, full-kit, GREAT bass player. Karyn joined forces with Dave Glaser, Pesky J Nixon borrowed a fiddle-player, I think Brad Yoder appeared on stage with a couple of different acts. There’s an interesting contractual proscription keeping any of the Emerging Artists from performing with other artists on any of the official Falcon Ridge stages (something about how it’s unfair to associate with bigger names, that the association would lead to an unfair weight in the judging) and I think that no other Falcon Ridge performer can appear with the Emerging Artists – but there are a Hell of a lot of big names that AREN’T performing as part of the festival, heavy hitters (including the Falcon Ridge “house band”) that freelanced back and forth; if not lending the weight of their name then at least lending the weight of their musicianship, forming instant supergroups and lending ornamentation to solo singer/songwriters allowing them to compete sonically a little more fairly with fuller bands like ilyAIMY.
We tore the roof off. Or at least, we would’ve if there’d been a roof. Of course so did a lot of other acts. There were no slackers and I’d be proud to share a bill with any performer on the list. Much like the Lounge Stage the night before, this buffet of artists alone, was worth the price of admission.
Note to the world: eats at Falcon Ridge are delicious. Holy crap.
Over the course of the afternoon we wandered to and fro and caught a couple of other acts including our friend Pat Wictor’s new(ish) project with Greg Greenway and Joe Jencks: Brother Sun, with their three-piece man-harmony and immaculate musicianship turned to the attention of traditional tunes and traditional-sounding originals reminded me of being back in the Mississippi delta listening to 50 year-old blues records a couple of years back. It began a weekend of dark folk that reminded me that gospel often is a little more fire and brimstone and a little less pearly gates – and I’m okay with some scary mixed in with my pretty.
The Honeycutters were bad-ass. I need to know what pickup their guitarist was using because he played it like an electric, getting a rich, textured bluesy Strat tone out of what appeared to be a Martin flat top.
Red Horse: I’d forgotten how amazing John Gorka’s voice was. I’ve not seen him in close to fifteen years and recordings continue to simply NOT do his voice justice. The rich bass of his voice is almost like he’s got a built-in subwoofer that clicks on the moment he strums his guitar. It’s not there when he’s simply speaking – but the moment a song kicks in, it’s like there’s another resonance chamber that opens up in his torso somewhere. I believe violation of the space-time continuum is involved, as he simply doesn’t have enough volume for the amount of volume he projected.
Luther Guitar Junior Johns and the Magic Rockers…. Sounded like they’d perhaps been drinking. A lot.
We escaped them up to the Budgiedome, named that for no apparent reason. It’s not a dome, there is no evident budgie and the owners aren’t “The Budgies”.
The unofficial stages are an interesting feature of Falcon Ridge. At Kerrville there were certainly song circles, camps, named circles, places to be seen galore and we didn’t have a guide to any of the above. Conversely, at Falcon Ridge a number of the camps were scheduled “stages” with individual styles and stage managers. Often booked after on-stage performances, time slots at the Budgie stretched well to 3am and their crowd was in it for the long haul. Friday night we performed well after 2.30 in the morning and we Lived up to our “welcome jolt in folk” blurb with a fierceness.
After we played into the cooling night we made our way back to Camp Loser and snuggled in for the night. Heather hung out a while later as Kristen and I fell asleep to the sound of her and our friends lilting a couple of yards up the hill.
Never mind – we DIDN’T fall asleep to our friends lilting. Whoever’s in the tent next door to us has a snore like a chainsaw. Earplugs in. Fall asleep to the sound of the static in my ears.
I apologize for the quality of the picture – but this was one of my favourite performers of the entire festival. Greg Brown. Amazing. Another amazing performer – Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. If I’d had any doubts that THIS was the folk festival for ilyAIMY – they were quelled by this band’s INSANITY! ilyAIMY at the Budgiedome. Photo courtesy of the BudgieMaster himself, Gordon Nash.
