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| Gary Clark Jr. shredding it at Floydfest 2012 |
In the summer of 2010, an old high school friend called me up and invited me to join a group of other high school buddies, one of which I had not seen since Beach Week 1976, to go to All-Good Music Festival in Masontown, West Virginia. This same group had gone to at least one bluegrass festival in Berryville,Virginia at a campground called Watermelon Park circa 1975. In brief, it was all good.
When we arrived at our high school in the early 70's, all things rock and roll, especially hippie covers of roots music, now know known as Americana, were kicking ass. Especially popular with this Clarke County crowd was a new bluegrass album featuring Jerry Garcia as a newbie mixing it up with the Old Guard which featured the likes of Vassar Clements on an album titled Old and in the Way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_and_in_the_Way I guess we liked bluegrass because it featured breakdowns. Bluegrass breakdowns, as in some forms of jazz, featured each instrument taking turns playing the melody of the song and improvising around it, while the rest of the band kept the groove going, in contrast to Old Time Mountain Music, where all instruments play the melody together. As in the rock and roll of the day, breakdowns gave the players a chance to compete and show off, and gave us drunken high schoolers a chance to do a little flatfooting, war hooping, yelping, stomping and general woo-hooing.
I remember in the car camping area of Watermelon Park, on the Shenandoah River which is still alive,well, flourishing and kickin' ass today
http://www.watermelonparkfest.com/, there were many impromptu jams around the fires and tents that lasted until dawn, the moonshine fueled music sometimes so brokedown that it resembled Hendrix on mandolin. And how cool was that.
Alas, I digress. 35 years passed and I never went to another festival. So a friend's daughter took a old school bus, did some painting, and voila: a magic bus on it's way to Morgantown with a bunch of Watermelon Park veteran codgers most definitely on the bus.
I know that these festivals began as pagan harvest/solstice orgies of sex, drugs, music, food and sometimes, depending on the culture, beheadings and other fun blood sports. Millenniums later, after Woodstock, some festivals specialized in continuing to celebrate hippie culture, with generations of young and young at heart people following the Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic and so forth, but I was not part of it.
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| Man on stilts works the crowd in search of wackiness. |
Let's just say All-Good was wide open, even for a libertarian scene where the weird and wacky are rewarded with hugs and bubbles. What I liked about it was the value of it. Whereas, in regular camping, the entertainment, is around the fire, here you could hike to a natural amphitheater and see what was left of the Grateful Dead, a band who all but invented the genre, until 2:00 AM (more rave bands until 4:00 AM, if one was so inclined) and then safely aim for your air mattress back at camp. During the day there were dozens of "under the radar" bands, who I would normally not be exposed to, playing at their best because of the massive competition. Then back to the campsite for regrouping, and at everyone's leisure, as a group or alone, do it all again the next day. $175 for four days of this,
and you got to camp and bring your cooler of Bud Light.
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| The Leake dudes |
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| Giles successfully solving a power issue |
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| Hunter under the "Loitering Allowed" sign in downtown Republic of Floyd |
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| Chef Hunter preparing delicious and cost effective meals back at our camp |
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| Chillaxin between shows |
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| Too much fun? |
Another thing I like about these festivals is that hippie culture sees nothing odd, maybe even thinks its cool, to see people in their late 60's seriously breaking it down. So, as we wrap up year three of successful current festival going with family, old friends, and friends I haven't met yet, I am thankful to the muckety-mucks of the world for allowing this economical and fun scene to continue!
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| Thank you like minded homo sapiens! |
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