3-Festivals-3
The great thing about folk festivals is seeing and hearing old friends; this goes for both performers and festival goers, I imagine. New songs, new licks, old favorites, good (we hope) weather make it something to look forward to.
The Tumbleweed Festival is in Garden City, Kansas and you haven’t seen flat till you’ve seen western Kansas. They have about 30,000 citizens there and many of them turn out for the two-day festival which is held next to the zoo. Great to be singingGoin’ To The Zoo and see two bison rolling in the dust in the background!
Three old friends were there: Don Edwards has been a Grammy nominee, Western Music Association Performer of the year three times and has won many other awards. He yodeled for Nanci Griffith on her Grammy-winning CD Other Voices, Other Rooms, and acted with Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer. He knows, and can sing, every cowboy song ever sung. Harvey Reid has been performing for 33 years and has some 20 CDs on his own label, Woodpecker Records. Harvey won the 1981 National Fingerpicking Guitar Competition and the following year he won The International Autoharp Competition. Bryan Bowers is an acknowledged master of the autoharp, winner of the Frets Magazine poll five years in a row. The scheduling allowed us all to hear one another’s sets at least once. Willis Pracht, the festival chairman, and his wife Connie entertained all the performers at their home on Saturday night and, sure enough, there was a kitchen table we commandeered. We had a wonderful time.
The following week I returned to The Philadelphia Folk Festival for the God-knows- how-many-eth time. It’s one of the largest folk festivals in North America and this year they loaded the bill big time: Steve Earle, Janis Ian, Kathy Mattea, Jean Ritchie, Judy Collins – the list goes on and on. Backstage was old home week and everyone kept jumping up to go stand in the wings to listen to one another. Some of these friendships go back for decades; others are more recent. The music is still prime.
The Tönder Festival in Denmark is down by the German border. Its huge. I’ve been there with Arlo Guthrie and Lonnie Donegan in the past, and this year with Mary Black and Tim and Mollie OBrien, among others. It goes for three loooong days and this year Mary and I closed the festival. Mary has one of the purest, strongest voices youve ever heard and is prominent on my iPod. Even more represented there are Tim and Mollie. Total favorites of mine, and in Tim’s case, Grammy-winning favorites. Three festivals in three weekends on two continents. I thought I was supposed to be slowing down!
