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Saturday, March 26, 2005
Things started to return to normal on Saturday. Yes, we had to dodge to the occasional rain storm, but none of them were on the same scale of ferocity or duration. In fact, other than the unusual concert sites, you could not really tell that a crazy storm had blown through the previous morning. The amphitheater had been pumped out by Saturday morning, but it was never used all weekend. The meadow was still a lake for the entire weekend, and it was quite humorous to see the beer kegs floating out in the new "lake" because the beer tent had been stranded out in the middle of it all.
Roy Book Binder - I headed down
to the music hall, because Roy Book Binder was set to have a hands-on lesson
that morning. He teaches a folk-blues fingerpicking style, and it is definitely
something that I'm wanting to learn. There wasn't much of a crowd for him.
I think it was partly due to the weather (storm clouds were starting to
darken the skies), and that not everyone was sure where the lesson was going
to take place (was it going to be held at the actual music hall or the "new"
music hall due to the location changes). Still he's a great teacher that
fills his lesson with humor and information. Near the end of the session,
the storm rolls in and begins to dump more rain on us. So I had to split,
because I realized that I had my parents umbrellas, and they had no way
to contact me when they got on the festival site.
After taking cover for a quick morning shower, the music got underway on time. My parents showed up shortly afterwards, and all was well.
Clyde Walker - I had intended to
check out Clyde Walker, but I never expected his set to end up about a thirty
second walk from my campsite. The Florida Stage tent had collapsed in the
storm, and those sessions were moved to the picking shed in the loop. Clyde
Walker had a tough situation to deal with, because he was used to not picking
his guitar very loud. He was accustomed to amplification, and he normally
plays very lightly. Still, Clyde Walker absolutely tore that guitar up,
by playing a style that he says gets inspiration from Merle Travis and Chet
Atkins. The majority of his songs were instrumental, but he did play a few
that had lyrics as well (with help from the next artist Marie Nofsinger
on one song). I remember that Clyde had mentioned in his set, that he was
only playing gigs in Florida right now. This set off a bell for myself.
I approached him afterwards, explaining that my wife and I had our first
house concert less than a month ago. I asked him if he was interested, and
he said he was. So we hope to have him to our house sometime in the next
year, which would be outstanding.
Caroline Herring - I ended up hearing Caroline much by accident. Because her sets got mixed around, I was expecting that I wouldn't be able to hear her music live this weekend. I was very much looking forward to her though, due to her samples on her web site before we arrived at Springfest. I was able to check out part of her set in the music hall, and it was a much more polished sound than I ever remember hearing. It was polished so much that you could easily imagine hearing her on a local country radio station. I guess that is good for her, but I've always had a negative reaction to such sterile sounding music. My dad thought she had a bit of Joan Baez in her, and I can hear it, but the overall presentation of this set really turned me off. Which is a shame, because I admired her lyrical songwriting abilities from what I read.
Valla Turner Williamson (VTW) - This band plays older tinged bluegrass.
The singer does a nice job of covering the vocal range that Nanci Griffith
does. The guitar picker was top notch. The band had some obstacles facing
them though. The sound men were giving them fits with constant feedback
killing the band in the monitors, and their set ended up being pretty short
considering they were just getting going after finally outlasting the sound
problems. I didn't see enough to really impress me, but I can say I saw
enough to improve upon my impression from them last year.
Reeltime Travelers - We were on the wrong end of the music hall for this set. We were down by the small stage, and this band was on the main stage. They were playing another great set, but most of the people around us seemed more interested in drinking and talking loudly. It didn't bother me too much since I had already seen them for a set. I did enjoy watching a mother and her young daughter (about 3) and son (about 5) dance in front of me. She was dancing in a silly way along to the music, and the kids were getting a kick out of it and dancing along. It was a nice diversion to enjoy watching instead of letting imperfect music settings get to you.
Pinkham Family Jam - I missed seeing Josh play with the exception of a quick one-off song last year with the New Traditionals, so this was my first real exposure to him. Simply put, the kid is a marvel on the mandolin, and it's hard to imagine where he'll be with a mandolin when he reaches Ricky Skagg's age. They started off by playing "Sweet Georgia Brown" and went from there. He brought up various family members as well as friends of his. The one special song was where he brought up two younger boys than he (one played the mandolin and the other the banjo), and they ran through the song like pros. You could sense the pride in Josh at being the "old man" in the group. Amazing set of music, which turned out to be one of the highlights for myself for the weekend.
Fiddle Workshop - Darol Anger,
Tania Elizabeth,
Nate Leath, &
David Blackmoon - I'll
quickly run through each performer, and in which each band they currently
perform. Darol is in Pschyograss, Tania is in The Duhks, David's in Bluegrass
Underground, and Nate is Old School Freight Train (had to do some research
about him since I never saw OSFT that weekend, and I missed getting his
name during this workshop). I only caught the last couple songs during this
workshop. I was stationing myself for the next set to be perfectly honest.
The last couple of songs had more of a classical bent to them, which made
sense since the majority of them admitted that they came from a classical
foundation. Darol's enthusiasm for the fiddle, and his desire to spread
that love of the instrument is strong as ever. Which is why he is always
a great guy to lead such a workshop.
Songwriter Workshop - Rodney Crowell,
Guy Clark,
Verlon Thompson, &
Will Kimbrough - This set turned
out to be everything I hoped, plus a bit more. There was no real help given
to the crowd on how to write songs, and there was no pretense given by the
performers as to it was supposed to be ran that way. Each performer took
their turn, with preference given to Guy and Rodney as much as possible.
Guy played a few songs that he hadn't in other sets, and most notable in
this situation was "Black Diamond Strings." Rodney's songs did not do all
that much for me, but his personality and story telling abilities between
songs sure made up for that. The story of how step-father disagreed with
the lyrics to one of his songs, and then later finally understood them was
a great one. Verlon played a yet to be released song, and it's clear that
he's still in top form with "Joe Walker's Mare." Finally with his top notch
guitar work and his funny lyrics, Will damn near stole the evening. I did
some research on Will's CD's, and most of the albums are in the style of
Beatlesque/College-Alternative. It's not the solo, acoustic style that we
enjoyed during this workshop. You can tell that Guy and Rodney were cut
from the same cloth, although they took different professional paths. This
turned out to be easily one of the best sets of the weekend.
Banjo Workshop - Béla Fleck - I stuck
around for this workshop, because I just wanted to see Béla close-up in
person. He is considered by many to be one of the best banjo players in
the world. After the completion of the workshop, I can understand why he's
so respected. He is willing to try and take the instrument in totally new
directions, and he seems to completely ignore any supposed limitations of
the banjo. I know very little about the banjo, but you could tell how many
banjo players were hanging on his every word during the workshop. He actually
ended up playing very little during the workshop, because so many wanted
to pick his brain. I did find it admirable though, that he would be so open
about his inability to still play the majority of the work from his classical
banjo album, "Perpetual Motion." He flat out said that it would be too difficult
to him to remember and keep fresh unless that is all he practiced, and he
wanted to keep trying new music adventures. I thought it was a great workshop,
and I don't even play the banjo. My guess is those that do, liked it even
more than I.
After the banjo workshop, I headed back to the campsite. A storm was coming in yet again, and it was touch and go the rest of the night whether we could sit out in the open around the fire, or sit under the canopy. It was so crowded in the music hall that everyone at our campsite gave up trying to attend the big acts for the night. We did listen to a couple of the sets though on the radio broadcast of the show.
Béla Fleck Acoustic Trio - This act was so amazingly tight, and yet you had to realize that this was the band's first performance in a live setting. One fiddle, banjo and guitar player, and they all were playing extremely fast, clean, technical bluegrass. It really was a display of three top-notch musicians all challenging each other to push their music to another level. I am assuming this band will record something, and it will be amazing if they can capture this energy they have in the live setting in the studio. Stunning stuff.
The Duhks - I'm kind of glad that I only caught this one on the radio. The music hall was simply packed, they played roughly the same set, and I had already seen them twice that weekend. I did notice later that some of the people who were later impressed with the Duhks in a live setting on Sunday, just did not appreciate them that much on Saturday on the radio. They are definitely a band to be experienced in a live setting.
Saturday night, we played music late into the night. Four ladies turned into bunnies during the witching hour and delivered Easter Eggs through our campsite and in the loop. That Springfest moon does strange things to people.