Musikfest was grueling and beautiful. It felt very ALIVE and that’s something I’ve not been feeling outside of music for quite sometime. Gigs all this past month have brought about a rebirth feeling, rob renaissance or somesuch nonesense. A boiling of the blood. A whirling dervish of drive.
And I’m so thankful for it.
Anyone who’s been reading this Journal for a long time knows that my Love affair with Bethlehem, PA goes back to a Love affair a lot further back than even the Journal goes. My Love for the sense of history and endurance this eastern Pennsylvania town engenders goes far beyond the music festivals, and I am just as enamoured with Bethlehem on a quiet, abandoned-feeling night as I am on during the vibrant chaos of Musikfest, but being here for the opening weekend of a festival, surrounded not just by musicians making their way to the half-dozen or so stages and busking stations, but also by the crowds of people who take up positions in front of the stages and clearly LOVE the music… my friends can Love Austin and SXSW, they can Love Nashville, they can wax poetic about the HILL at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival – Hell – I’ll revel in the joyous memories of Takoma Park Folk Festival – there just really isn’t anything quite like Bethlehem, PA during Musikfest.
Part of it has to do with how the music scene in Bethlehem is something… frankly a little artificial! Yeah, Godfrey Daniels has been here forever… but the bulk of the festival scene comes from a dying steel town struggling to remain relevant, and finding a path forward through music. I feel that through my BODY.
Reinvention of self.
That’s just like being young again. Timid, scared, tentative, making bad decisions and making them loudly.
We walked. A LOT. We parked too far from the stage and walked a half mile with too much gear. I said “no thank you” to the Martin rep. We played Tool and then we played our barbershop quartet number. And an audience who’d come to one of the most oddly-programmed festivals, where you can get oompa and hip hop and us and Willy Nelson and Boyz II Men and Disturbed and Joy Ike, well… it was like we were a microcosm of the whole of Musikfest.
Holy crap I’m proud of that.
And we did that with Ella and Heather’s husband in tow. The latter was part of the plan. The former was not. With Rowan’s wife on a trip, his daughter was SUPPOSED to have a sleepover and grampa’s, but heeeee went on a trip and came back with COVID, so with no other option, and very little warning we had to pack a 7 year-old (?) girl in with the 4 guitars, 5 growed-ups, 2 cajons, djembe, cello, various ephemera and foofera, stands and cymbals and laptops and clothes and changes of clothes … and though I must admit I got grumpy band uncle at her more often than I should’ve, she’s also quite charming.
And so – before I wrap this up, I must regale you with Ella’s song. Because there were many songs but most of them were just her humming and la la laing loudly from the backseat while I beatboxed and the rest of the car made the best of it…
“Horsey field
Horsey field
Horsey field
ALSO YUMMY CORN!!!!” (repeat)
