Today is hotter. The sun and the heat wake us up at around 9.30am. I hate camping –
but it’s well worth it to be here on the ground – partners in adversity and all that. Our nerves are little bit frayed and I wake up horribly congested. I take a handful of allergy pills but walking around the dusty, dry, 100+ degree (heat index) camp swiftly builds the congestion into full out Falcon Lung which, when I describe to others, turns out to be a completely known malady lamented by many.
Of course, the last couple of years it’s rained heavily and the dust was damped down into a thick slurry. From THIS came Falcon Rot. I imagine that those who don’t drink enough water may get the Falcon Fever and I don’t want to know where one might catch Falcon Pox, but it seems there’s a whole slew of Folk Fest-specific maladies going around. Heather’s got Falcon Feet and I think some of the more enthusiastic players are probably developing Falcon Fingers.
In any case. It’s fucking hot.
I catch a full set of John Gorka and fall asleep in the middle of Lucy Kaplansky. It’s not a comment on the material – I’m simply exhausted and the dirt was so inviting and I lay back for just a moment and – I was out. I woke up to experience Lucy being pretty relaxed about her set: “I don’t really know this song. And actually I don’t really know how to play mandolin. But you guys are just so inviting…” She even had her 8-year old daughter play drums for her.
The crowd goes wild.
I’m never going to be completely comfortable at Folk Festivals if ONLY because of the children. There are too many of them. They scream and holler and caterwaul through beautiful sets. Listening to John Gorka is great. Listening to John Gorka while someone’s child is screaming “NONONONONONONOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” re:
vegetable intake is NOT great.
Sigh.
Suffering heavily from the heat, Kristen and I end up back at camp with a couple of the natives just hanging out and chatting through much of the late afternoon. I made the mistake of having ONE hard-lemonade which knocked me on my ass for an hour. The heat and the alcohol swiftly conspired to give me a pounding headache and something akin to narcolepsy. Kristen was in similar straits and it’s a damned good thing we had nowhere to go.
We made it back to the main stage to catch Marylanders Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen – an interesting bluegrass act whose lead is also a gourmet chef. They offer a house concert and dinner package where they come to your place, cook a meal, do a show, (and contrary to their name) clean up and get out. Kind of a cool hook. Amazing players.
And after that – perhaps my favourite performance of the entire festival: Greg Brown. I’d had a couple of recordings of his in high school or college, so he wasn’t an unknown quality – his voice is reminiscent of the Tom Waits / Nick Cave / Leonard Cohen trifecta – dark and deep and creepy. There was something about him, his age, his movements, his voice, that made it seem like we were watching a public suicide note full of regrets and wistfulness. He managed to turn the depths into something bearable with humour though. The “Fat Man Blues” was one of the funniest songs I’d ever heard, especially in its delivery, but maybe mostly in comparison to things like “Poet Games” where he seems to almost lament his choice of profession, or “Stiff Ole Bones” where his slow blues and baritone voice combined into a visceral proclamation of age that made my spine ache.
The last act of the night was something I’d heard a lot about. And heard a lot of – though not clearly. Friday night during Red Horse I was VERY aware of one of the other stages bleeding what was apparently rock music all over the folk festival. I couldn’t make out anything really clearly, but when we COULD make out the Ramones “I Wanna Be Sedated” it was clear that something was afoot.
Enter Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams. Their legend proceeds them: apparently originally something more akin to a punk act, the head of the band and principal songwriter decided that he hated the nastiness of the punk rock scene and, after attending a couple of really friendly folk shows, decided he preferred THAT community. Voila – rebrand the band (reband the brand?) with accordion and mandolin and baritone guitar and their bizarre cross of Pink Floyd psychodelia and hillbilly metal was born.
Bad ass doesn’t even cover it.
With Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams echoing all over camp, we eventually met up with Spuyten Dyvil and Pesky J. Nixen to practice a couple of tunes together (and I do mean TOGETHER as in 15-piece act “TOGETHER”) before racing across the entire festival to perform said tunes back at the Budgie Dome. I can’t really get into a full description because the night defied one, but let it be said that even though we decided against the chaos that was a pretty decent rendition of Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath” w. bouzouki, guitar, bass, snare, cello, accordion, mandolin and something like five-part harmony – the same instrumentation worked quite well with “Stand By Me”. Weird.
Also: We’re About 9. Still wow. Also, also: Susan Schneider? You make an admirable musician herder, but even you couldn’t have gotten ilyAIMY, Spuyten Dyvil and Pesky J. Nixon + random additional singer/songwriters all the way across the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival without losses. We never did find Brittany Ann again, not till the next morning.
For Susan – though there were a LOT of different booths selling a lot of different things it was the tie dye booth that made me think of her! Though we spent most of our daytime hours at either the main stage or the Losers Lounge and most of our afterhours at the Budgie Dome, we also wandered to some of the other camps like the Front Porch, above.
And I think we lost Chet Williams to the Front Porch. And I don’t think ANYONE knew where SD’s bass player was till he joined us on stage. And I STILL don’t know who Other Eric REALLY is or where the clarinetist came from. And I think they think they lost ME for a while too, but I know exactly where I was. It was everyone ELSE that was sadly misplaced.
