Micanopy and Payne’s Prairie Preserve State Park

Old Florida is alive and well and living in Micanopy. After a tiring two weeks in a festival site we came to loathe, we drove to Payne’s Prairie Preserve State Park and checked in, quite dispirited because we had been sideswiped on I-75 while heading south. Fortunately, while there was small damage to our trailer, no one was injured. Like other Florida state parks we have visited, Payne’s Prairie campground is located toward the center of the park, far removed from road noise and bother. The park has 50 campsites with fifteen reserved for tenters. The campsites are separated by walls of palmetto, live oaks, and heavy brush allowing a lot of privacy. Toilet and shower facilities are centrally located, clean, and pleasant. While there are no sewer connections, the water and electric hookups are well-located and provide all that’s needed. The park is located about ten miles south of Gainesville along U.S. route 441 and perhaps five miles east of I-75. In late March, it is nearly completely full. We hooked up, showered, and took off to explore the village of Micanopy, looking for a place to access the Internet. That’s where the real surprises occurred.

We drove about a mile south and turned right into the village of Micanopy. Low houses from the early twentieth century with tin roofs and lots of shade which were built in the years before air conditioning saved or ruined the south, depending on your point of view. We drove down the main street, divided by a median strip with lovely trees and plantings on it. We stopped in front of a little shop called Coffee and Cream, part of a two story building with an antique shop attached. Inside a lone employee was sampling some of his own ice cream. He told us that the whole building was a Wi-Fi hot spot, so we gave up our hunt for the library, bought some ice cream and sat down at the comfortable sofa at the end of the room. Soon, Cliff Harris, proprietor of the shop when he’s not on the road in the dangerous job of rodeo clown, dashed in, welcomed us to Micanopy, asked our names, told us what was for lunch the next day, and invited us for ride on his boat on the lake on Wednesday. He’s a human dynamo with the energy of one of the bulls he risks his life to protect rodeo cowboys from.

The next day, one of Cliff’s employees, Tony, a refugee from north Jersey, filled us in with local history as he prepared corn bread muffins for lunch. Miconopy is the oldest town in Florida not on water. It was once a thriving town, but pretty much died when the nearby lake suffered a sink hole and almost completely emptied itself, leaving the swamp that is Payne’s Prairie. In recent years it has rebounded as a lovely stopping place for touridsts seeking some antiquing, good food, and a stroll around this lovely small town. Cliff has create a friendly, welcoming environment. He is much helped by Katie and Kayla, his two very pleasant counter and service people. The food is simple, tasty, and reasonably priced. A rotating group of local people, aspiring writers, and a busking guitar player, who plays and sings at lunch, make Coffee and Cream the sort of place a funny and touching situation comedy could be located. The film “Dr. Hollywood” with Michael J. Fox was filmed in Micanopy. Nearby, the Old Florida Café serves lunches and dinners on the porch and indoors. A lovely looking mansion offer bed and breakfast accommodations, and there’s a local history museum that should be visited. People looking for a taste of old Florida should be sure to take a leisurely day to stop and visit in Micanopy.

For RVers this stop should be combined with a stop at Payne’s Prairie Preserve State Park. The park is a 21,000 acre preserve partly a large swamp with abundant wildlife and partly a heavily forested area. The campground, while small, is spacious and very pleasant. On Wednesday afternoon we drove to the visitor center, which unfortunately closed at 4:00 PM, a modern looking building with a balcony overlooking the prairie. We took a short walk to a tower with good views of the Prairie, which was discovered in 1774 and continues to be a marshy, nearly treeless area with low wetlands, lots of water birds, and recently introduced bison. The surrounding woods contain huge live oaks dripping Spanish moss, providing a cooling shade that was lovely on this hot spring afternoon.

Other local attractions are the towns of Evinston and Macintosh, which we did not have time to visit, and the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park where the author’s restored home is located and which was the setting for several of her books, including the noted children’s Pulitzer prize winning novel The Yearling. Payne’s Priaire is about ten miles south of Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, where there is lots to do, good restaurants, and good shopping.

Suwannee Springfest - Part III - Saturday and Sunday

Saturday was a day, for us, characterized by wonderful music and a continuingly difficult environmental situation. Because of the hours we keep, when we awoke on Saturday we headed for the shower at about the same time a good number of other attendees were showering and using the toilet before heading for a few hours of sleep. The Herd compound was the center of a good deal of noise and a bass could still be heard pounding out its rhythm somewhere across the lake. At home we’d call it a pond; an impoundment of perhaps an acre with no visible inlet of outlet.

We arrived at the main stage to find a group of fellow campers brushing the leaves and dust off the concrete pad in front of the stage before placing their chairs. At around eight a couple of festival volunteers arrived to tell us they had been sent to clear all the chairs of the pad. This was actually one of the first efforts by the festival to enforce any of the principles that appear to stand for rules here. They managed to get the people standing around to move most of the chairs to the side before we put them right back. They commented that they weren’t there to be police. We ended up on the front row, which seemed to be a good thing at first, but later turned into quite a problem.

“the everybodyfields” were the second group on the bill for Saturday. A competent trio without much to distinguish them in either voice or musicianship, they continued the pattern of droning sadness we had heard floating up the hill on Friday. But the monotony ended there as The Infamous Stringdusters took the stage. This is a very versatile bluegrass group that plays both progressive and traditional music with enthusiasm and skill. Lead singer Jeremy Garrett and Dobro picker Andy Hall sing and play well. Chris Pandolfi on banjo is the guy whose brilliance on the banjo helped encourage renowned Berkley School of Music in Boston to permit students to major in banjo. Chris Eldridge on guitar provided strong flat picking with a strong rhythm guitar and quality voice. This Nashville based group has a distinctive northeastern sound and feel without ever spurning the southern roots of bluegrass.

Joe Craven appeared on Friday with Darrell Scott. On Saturday he appeared with guitarist Bobby Lee Rodgers in a thoroughly satisfying performance. Since Craven is a one man band, there was no need to worry about there performance appearing thin. Craven has led a diverse and interesting life as musician and scholar. He now prefers to blend his formal performances with musical outreach to local schools. It’s difficult to imagine that his school appearances aren’t very well received. We first saw him last year at Merlefest, where he appeared as a guest with virtuoso jazz banjoist Allison Brown. On one number in that set he got down on his knees in front of her and drummed on her banjo while she continued playing. Wonderful!! Craven opened his performance using his mouth and head as a soundboard, creating percussive sounds in accompaniment of Rodgers’ guitar. He also played a jawbone, his boot lace, his chair, and a cardboard box. In Craven’s hands, anything can turn into a credible instrument. I’d love to see him play a car with all its many surfaces and the sounds they could produce. His John Henry, sung and played on a canjo he had built out of a commercial size tomato can with a neck and two strings was a wonder. Craven, while seeming to be something of a novelty, does his thing with such skill and taste it never seems out of place. His fiddle and mandolin playing are also superb and should not be overlooked in the whole picture.

The wonderful thing about festivals, even ones that aren’t fully working for us, is the discovery of a new performer or group, one we had not previously heard or been aware of, that simply jumps out and grabs us. Verlon Thompson is a long-time Nashville songwriter whose songs have been recorded and performed by the biggest names in country music. Why he never became a headliner himself is a complete mystery. On this day he is paired with Shawn Camp, a younger version of himself, whose songs are well known and whose voice and flat picking are nothing short of great. Mike Bub, perhaps the finest bass player around, only makes any band he plays with better without calling undue attention to himself. We’ve seen him four times in the past year with four different bands, and each time he has added his rock solid beat and virtuoso sound to the mix, sometimes turning ordinary into special. Thompson’s song about Johnny Bench pictures this Hall of Fame catcher as a great who pays for his greatness with knees that won’t carry him anyway. The refrain from Thompson’s wit and freshness comes through in his “Tornado Time in Tulsa.”

Tornado in Tulsa’ll take the paint right off your barn.

Tornado time in Tulsa’ll blow the tattoo off your arm.

By turning it funny, Thompson increases the horror of the storm and makes it acceptable.

Similarly Camp’s song about his grandfather’s funeral called “The Grandpa that I Know” says:

I won’t commit this to memory,

That’s not the Grandpa that I know.

Lyric after lyric from each man sends a strong emotional message presented with conviction and in fine voice.

Crooked Still’s appearance proved without doubt why the cello is not a bluegrass instrument. The bass and the cello don’t meld well or fit in effectively with the very good Aoife O’Donovan is a fine lea

d sing

er. Rushad Eggleston on the cello is too affected for words and the de

pth of his cello clashes with the bass to make a sound unrelated to the material the band plays. Dr. Gregory Liszt on the banjo is quite good.

The Duhks, through some visa mix-up, were unable to appear, but their fine fiddler, Tania Elizabeth was there with a scratch band featuring Dan Freshette, Canadian singer/songwriter. Through good luck or good management, she also asked Joe Craven to sit in as percussionist, and he did his magic again, saving the evening. Around this time on Saturday evening, the young people had at last slept off last night’s party and began showing up and crowding the stage area. Deciding that the stage front was their territory, they crowded in front of those of us seated there, smoked cigarettes at will, danced wildly, and became increasingly drunk and intrusive. For many people, the smoke, which the rules require be kept behind the sound booth, was the greatest insult. People seated near the front tended to be older, to prefer sitting during the long hours of music, and to react negatively to cigarette smoke. The dancer/smokers cared not at all for these people’s comfort or ease; rather they pushed in front and took over.

Peter Rowan and the Tony Rice Quartet, that is the Peter Rowan band with premier flat picking guitarist Tony Rice, are familiar to both bluegrass and Americana fans. Rowan has the distinction of having been a member of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys and Jerry Garcia’s bluegrass band “Old and In the Way.” As such he spans the spectrum from bluegrass to rock. His song “Midnight Moonlight” alone would make him a famous song writer. In his performance at Springfest he was at a better level than we had ever seen him. Playing with Rice, a taciturn man who plays with great discipline appears to curb the self-indulgent excesses that Rowan is prone to. His band includes Sharon Gilchrist on mandolin and Kathryn Popper, replacing Bryn Davies, on bass. When he performs as a trio, Rowan manages to project a lecherous sensuality that some fine offensive. In performing with Rice, he seems somewhat more controlled, leading to a more nuanced and effective performance. Meanwhile, an offensive girl smoking in the front row and screaming, “I love you Tony,” managed to diminish a fine performance while calling attention to herself, something no one in the audience had paid for or wished.

The Avett Brothers followed Rowan. Before the Avetts appeared a mass of people intruded between the front row and the stage barriers, standing and waiting. As this very popular punk bluegrass band which at extremely high energy and speed uses banjo, guitar, bass, and a lot of screaming and jumping around to sell their brand of music to young hipsters. What’s interesting about them is that within their seeming chaos lies a level of discipline and musicianship beyond superficial early assessment. While not exactly our cup of tea (or anything else) they still create a level of excitement approaching hysteria that cries out to be danced to by young people. The lone security person tried his best to keep the dancers to the side, but eventually enthusiasm overturned discipline and the crowd triumphed. As the Avetts finished their performance, we headed for our trailer, passing up the Saturday evening performance of Donna the Buffalo, a cult seeking band that played into the night.

Opening Sunday morning was the kids camp group headed by a group of adults who must have been counselors and abetted by a clown on stilts. The kids sang three or four songs with enthusiasm. Efforts like this provide parents with an opportunity to be free of their kids while having them supervised and promises that at least some kids will grow up never remembering a time they weren’t involved in traditional music. This is a worthy effort. Sunday was a day devoted to the memory of the late great fiddler Vasser Clements who died a year or so ago. Never having been at Springfest before, it’s difficult to tell the extent to which his presence truly dominated this festival. Surely the tributes to him from co-promoter Beth Judy and especially from Joe Craven were heartfelt and moving. Nevertheless, the dominating spirit of this festival seems to be more Donna the Buffalo than the pure music played by Vasser who was one of the most creative musicians and whose sound covered everything from old time through bluegrass to jazz and progressive styles. He was a true innovator.

Sean Camp and Verlon Thompson kicked of the music with another set of their wonderful work. The two sets following exhibited some of the most exciting music found at this festival. It turned into an extended jam with most of the musicians remaining at the festival, with the exception of Donna the Buffalo folks, appeared on stage with the listed band and jammed with energy, skill, and enthusiasm. It’s hard to imagine a group of musicians, many of whom had never worked together, creating a more enthralling musical environment. Verlon Thompson and Sean Camp reprised Saturday’s performance with more great work.

Peter Rowan and his group returned to lead a jam devoted to the memory of Vasser Clements. This jam, mostly with a bluegrass feel and sound to it, included most of the performers remaining on the grounds. It was a particular pleasure to see members of a new generation of bluegrass players on the stage with men who had played with the first generation. Peter Rowan and Tony Rice, old masters, on the stage with Josh Pinkham, Shawn Camp, Tania Elizabeth and others, showed that passing the baton to new players will maintain old traditions while shaping acoustic music for new listeners and new players. The future of acoustic music is assured as long as the fans allow it to revere the old while finding new directions. Bands like The Infamous Stringdusters, The Pinkham Family Band and other bands Josh has and will play with, Crooked Still, and The Avett Brothers will continue to experiment with the old forms. Some will join the pantheon, while others will die off without leaving even a ripple. A problem of niche narrowcasting is that it doesn’t ask music lovers to learn to listen to developments in the music as they occur, and we become stuck in watching music die as its adherents pass away.

Summing It All Up – Springfest is not a great festival because it is poorly managed by both the promoter and the Suwannee Music Park. There are so many really good things to say about Springfest that it almost seems churlish to focus on the negative, however, what’s wrong with this festival so seriously interferes with the pleasure of so many that a reviewer cannot ignore them. Furthermore, the problems can be addressed and solved by the application of a little money and a lot of courageous leadership. Our own experience might, indeed have been quite different if we had known more about what we were getting into. Perhaps reading the web site with more insight or asking the proper questions when we made our reservations would have helped. At both Merlefest and Gray Fox we had the advantage of an active message board or mail list to ask previous attendees to help us understand the festival. In each case our experience was improved because of the advice we were able to get from resources sponsored by the festival itself. If we had camped in the loop rather than in the lake area, we would have slept better without finding ourselves so far away from the main stage that we would have felt isolated. However, no amount of planning would have solved the problems of smoking in performance areas, dancers impinging on viewers, inadequate concern for safe health practices in rest rooms and portable toilets, playing amplified music, and general lack of concern for the comfort and enjoyable experience of others.

It’s important to say that on an individual basis we met lots of people from a variety of communities who we enjoyed talking with and being around. What I have to say here is not a reflection on cultures or lifestyles. Rather, it’s a comment on behavior and the true meaning of mutuality and concern for others. Also, while we have definite musical tastes, we heard music that was new to us and will be on our list of music we want to hear in the future. My criticisms have to do with the need for leadership and modeling in an environment where youth, music, alcohol, and generations meet, interact, and try to have a good time together.

In the end, the issue comes back to leadership from the festival promoter. Randy and Beth Judy were happy to take the stage to speak of the great traditions of the festival, to introduce the bands, and to say they wanted everyone to have a “good time.” But when it was necessary to ask people at the Amphitheater Stage to alter their behavior, they sent a minor staff member to do the job. For instance, on Sunday morning, I sent a note to Beth asking that she request smokers to stay behind the sound booth as the rules of the festival request. She gave me a smile and a high sign, but sent someone no one in the audience recognized to deliver the message. And the message was delivered with no great conviction. Leadership requires the leader to stand up and be counted. If the Judys wish to host a festival where all have a good time, then they need to tell people that their behavior makes too many people uncomfortable to be continued. In the case of smoking, many people sitting in the “No Smoking” area commented how glad they were to hear the announcement, but it was to no avail. Also, there were no “No Smoking” signs in evidence, even though they were posted the week before at the bluegrass festival.

Randy and Beth can address these issues and improve their festival. All it takes is commitment and courage. Will they show it?

Suwannee Springfest - Part II - Friday

Take a campground unprepared for the five or six thousand people claimed to be here and combine it with a festival promoter more interested in everyone having a “good time” than in seeking to maintain the standards proclaimed in their written materials and you have a recipe for disaster. That Springfest hasn’t turned into a complete meltdown is a testimony to the general good nature of the majority of people here. It doesn’t take too many people not cooperating with the rules to turn what could be a good experience for everyone into a difficult or impossible situation.

The festival booklet has a page of “A Few Simple Rules and Reminders.” For instance, smokers are supposed to stay behind the sound booth, leaving a large smoke-free area. We noticed right away that “behind the sound booth” doesn’t include backstage. Thus, smoke constantly drifted into the audience from where the staff and performers congregate. But even absent this smoke, there seems to be no effort to keep smokers from standing or sitting wherever they wish. Not once did we even hear a request from the stage to observe the standards the festival espouses.

While there are lots of “security” people checking wristbands, it seems that once through the gate into the Lake area, anything goes. Prohibitions against amplifies music, drumming outside the designated drum area, and legal age restrictions for use of alcohol are publicly flaunted. The aroma of marijuana is evident. The restriction against coolers and cans and bottles in the performance areas is well-policed, because the campground has maintained the very lucrative beer concession. The exhortation “Please treat everyone as you would like to be treated” should actually read something like “Please let me alone to do what I want, no matter how much it disturbs others.”

In many ways, campground employees try to satisfy the problems that arise. While we were at the office doing our computer chores, several people came in complaining that their camp site was being squatted on by someone else. Efforts were made to accommodate these people even though moving people out of hi-jacked camping space, even those paid for by others, was no longer possible. It’s probably worth saying that the foregoing comments are not a disgruntled rant from a couple of old fogies. We attend lots of festivals and music events. While we prefer bluegrass, in both its traditional and progressive forms, we’ve been to rock and country concerts as well as other events. The pre-concert tailgating and in-concert behavior at a Bruce Springsteen concert in Hartford, CT was better controlled and more fun than most of what happens here.

All this having been said, the festival should be about the music, so let’s look at it. For the most part, the music we heard pounding up the hill to our trailer had a kind of monotonous, dreamy, drifty quality devoid or melody or passion – surprising to me. On the other hand, the bands we chose to see were really good. Scythian is a Celtic group fronted by a buff fiddler whose athletic appearance and defiant postures represent his playing well. The band offered a range of Irish and Scottish songs with a rock edge to them that works well.

The Pinkham Family Big Band with Josh Pinkham was terrific. Pinkham is one of the crop of great young emerging mandolin players that promise to keep acoustic music alive. Josh has only been playing mandolin for about four years, but has been recognized as a prodigy. He began his music as a drummer and has expanded. Since then his playing has only become better and his range has continued to widen. Singer Terry Pinkham, Josh’s mother but looking like his somewhat older sister, is a fine jazz/pop singer. Father Jeff Pinkham, by his own account, is a mandolin player who has played with the best but now plays rhythm guitar for his prodigy son. They were backed by a first rate drummer Kenny Suarez and bass player Manny Yannis, cousins from the Miami Cuban community. Jeff’s composing showed itself in Siren’s Lullaby, catching the longing sound of the siren’s song that haunts the listener ever after and a samba they also played. The band’s range showed in covers as diverse as Billy Holiday, Prince, and Bill Monroe.

I used to denigrate the mandolin as putting out too little sound and having no sustain, leading to a choppy unmelodic impression. How wrong I was. In the hands of a master, the mandolin is versatile, rich in resonance and nimble. It fits into a wide variety of music from bluegrass through rock to classical Italian songs. Josh Pinkham, at sixteen, is already a master. Players like Alan Bibey, Adam Steffey, Sam Bush, Chris Thile and many others each have a unique and recognizable sound that demonstrates the range and capacity of this marvelous instrument....

The Biscuit Burners were an old-timey bluegrass band that used to get a good deal of play on XM channel 14, Bluegrass Junction, which serves up a pretty conservative view of the genre. They have moved, at least for Springfest, toward a much more world music oriented sound. Their Dobro player spent part of last year in India studying a 22 string lap instrument that plays like a Dobro and sound other-worldly. A song, Annie Oakley, was particularly effective. Josh Pinkham joined The Biscuit Burners for a song that rocked. The band has recently added Odessa Jorgenson, who is both decorative and talented, on fiddle. This creative band is pleasant to listen to. It features lots of instrumentals that really are its best feature.

Darrell Scott is one of the great singer song writers. His lyrics tell of mis-spent childhood, the despair of addiction, and lost love. For his performance at Springfest, he added Joe Craven, an inspired musician who only adds quality and taste to whatever group he joins. Scott sang some of his great songs like “River Take Me,” “It’s Whiskey That Eases the Pain.” Scott’s voice bottoms out on the word pain sending the pain right into people’s guts. He sang “Helen of Troy Pennsylvania” which is a wonderful song about two teenagers’ first sexual experience with the lovely and generous local divorcee. A song we own but have not paid attention to called “The Indian Side of Chicago” tells of the difficulty of growing up poor in a big city. Scott’s deep, throaty voice adds an extra instrument to his group the compliments his own fine playing on both electric and acoustic guitar. Scott lays it all out on every song. His band, including Gary Ogan on drums and a fine bass player worked well together to present Darrell's great songs and voice.

Joe Craven, who also appeared on Saturday with his own group, is a natural wonder. He plays mandolin and fiddle very well, but is most interesting when he takes on the role of percussionist. He plays any instrument that can make a sound and uses mouth sounds to supplement them. More about Craven on Saturday. Craven and Scott had never played a set together before, but no listener could tell that this group was anything other than superbly rehearsed and practiced together.

The rest of the evening held little interest to us, so we went up the trailer to watch the NCAA games. A group parked next to us had set up a satellite dish with a large screen television set on the tailgate of a pickup to watch the Gators play. A cheer arose after each good play and the gators won. This good hearted group put a positive punctuation on the day, as we drifted off to sleep.

Suwannee Springfest - Part I

WARNING - THIS IS NOT A BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL!!

On Monday morning, after all the bluegrass fans had evacuated, except us and canoeist named Roger who is also staying over, a few pioneers began to arrive and set up camps. One group, not far from us, strung ropes in a big circle from tree to tree and hung tarps and tie-dyed cloths from them. Inside this compound they erected a couple of tents. Nearby, in another compound, a couple of pop-up tent campers and a tent were erected and the owners left. By Wednesday afternoon, they had not returned, but their territory is all staked out. On Tuesday afternoon we took a walk around the small, cypress surrounded lake, and found several more compounds laid out and minimally populated by squatters. They told us that by Friday there would be thirty of forty tents and maybe a hundred people inside their compound. Throughout Wednesday, additional cars arrived, tents were pitched, tarps and tie dies hung, fire pits arranged, and small individual villages gradually sprang up. We learned that we’re in the midst of a section where the herd stays. The herd are cult-like fans of Donna the Buffalo. Their music, described in the program as “a unique blend of reggae, roots rock, country, zydeco, Cajun, and folk traditions” apparently draws a cult-like crowd to their performance at festivals like this. Over our right shoulder an elaborate two tent construction containing padded chairs, a barbecue grill, and low, round tables is the place where Donna the Buffalo hangs out between performances. The host tells me it’s his job to keep them drunk as they perform better that way.

We are more than a little out of sync with this agglomeration of post hippie counter-culture types here for a great time. We don’t own a tie-dyed T-shirt between us, although we each wear a pair of Crocs. Our small travel trailer is quite elaborate compared to most of the tents pitched for this event. All these people are clustered around several acres served by one bath house facility with three showers and three toilets for each sex, which the campground deigns to clean every day or so. It’s difficult to imagine what this facility will be like by the weekend when seven to ten thousand people arrive.

We took a walk in the afternoon and discovered that a huge stage was being erected in a meadow about a quarter mile away from our campsite. It has grown off the bed of a flat-bed truck with all eight wheels lifted off the ground on jacks. Several vendors set up tents nearby. Across the meadow from the Meadow Stage, vendor’s row was being set up. The music doesn’t start until 4:00 PM on Thursday afternoon, but by Wednesday evening, quite a few people have already set up and begun to enjoy themselves.

Springfest has five performance areas for large and smaller events, including workshops and lesser known performers. The grounds here are spacious and well spread out, able to accommodate a crowd like this. It seems to us that there are not enough toilet facilities or water sources for a crowd like this. Time will tell. Much depends on how often the pump-out trucks service their portables. Or maybe we’re too anal….

On Wednesday morning we stopped by both the park office and the festival office to complain about the condition of the bathrooms. We gather some others did, too. The upshot, as of Thursday afternoon has been that there is a pair of park employees stationed outside the door keeping the place absolutely spotless. I suggested to the man of the pair that they put out a tip jar and we plan on posting signs on both the men’s and women’s side that we do our best to fill it up. We’ll see how the service continues and whether they’re there for the next three days.

Music begins on the meadow stage at 4:00 PM and we wander down around 7:00 where a blues singer from Texas named Seth Walker is concluding his performance. The smallish crowd is spread out, some are dancing, others twirling huge hula hoops, small groups chat and drink beer sold by the park in each venue. There’s lots of smoking, but we learn that the area in front of the sound board is supposed to be smoke free. We head up there as a group called Ollabelle comes on. The choice turns out to be between too loud music and too much smoke – a devil’s dilemma which we solve by heading back to our own campsite. It’s pretty quiet as we head for bed, but the noise level increases around 1:00 AM as the performance of Donna the Buffalo closes. When we take our showers at 5:00 AM on Friday morning, people are still awake talking and laughing in their campsites and the odor of marijuana fills the air. Irene is constantly amazed, despite plenty of evidence over the years to disabuse her of her idealism, at the lack of consideration some people show for others. She comments that people in New York City are more considerate.

Dancin' Dave's Festival Camping

We were sitting in our camp site recuperating from last weekend’s bluegrass festival when we saw the big suburban pulling a large utility trailer with Dancin’ Dave’s Festival Camping scrawled across the side in script. I knew Springfest was going to be a big festival when I saw him arrive. I had never met Dave before, but I knew him from his contributions and promotions on the mailing lists of Merlefest and Grey Fox. Dave provides a service unique to bluegrass and Americana music festivals.

Dancin’ Dave rents on-site tent accommodations to people wishing to attend a festival who do not have camping gear and who don’t want to or can’t afford to rent a class C motor home to attend. Many festivals are held in venues where there are few motels available or the ones available are booked months or years in advance. They are often in rural areas, on farms, music parks, or campgrounds where the facilities are limited or non-existent. Through Dancin’ Dave a person or family can rent a bare tent or a full setup with tent, sleeping bags, cooking equipment, and folding chairs at a range of prices from $200.00 to over $600.00 depending how elaborate the setup is and how many people are involved.

I strolled over to his tent and introduced myself, and, to my surprise, he knew my name from the e-mail lists. Dave was busy, but not too busy, putting up one of the Eureka tents he uses as rentals. He said he works seven festivals a year (Suwannee Springfest, Merlefest, spring and fall Lake Eden Arts Festival, Grey Fox, Floyd World Music Festival , and Magnolia Fest in Suwannee) and can handle up to about twenty clients. At this festival he pitches all his tents on one site, but at others, like Merlefest, he has clients at four different campgrounds. He has very little problem with his equipment being mistreated.

Dave is not only a festival entrepreneur, but he is a noted dancer, as his nickname attests. He has a laid back, easygoing approach to life. For a day job he works for his home town in northern Wisconsin, where he drives a snow plow. Because he’s been on the job for many years and works holidays and vacation periods he builds up lots of comp time, which enables him to get away for the festivals he works. Since most of the work takes place before and after each festival, he is free to enjoy the music and get plenty of dancing during the festival itself.

You can contact Dancin’ Dave at:

dncndave@wildblue.net

or
www.dancindave.com

If pulling a trailer half way across the country to attend one of the festivals he serves seems like too much of a bother, or even if you want to meet a guy whose zest for life enriches the experience of those around him, you might just give Dancin’ Dave a call.

Spirit of Bluegrass Music Fest at Suwannee Music Park

We arrived early on Wednesday afternoon at Spirit of Suwannee Music Park, about four miles north of Live Oak, FL to discover a large operation prepared to handle crowds of music lovers, appropriate for a Music Park that hosts a range of events. We’ve come for the Spirit of Bluegrass Music Fest this weekend and then the Suwannee Springfest next. It’ll be interesting to see how these two festivals, the first a bluegrass festival and the second an Americana festival differ and how they fit for us. We find our camping site, which is just at the back of the main stage performance area and permits a limited view, but good sound. If we get tired, we can listen from home. The amphitheater is tiered with railroad ties and covered with fallen oak leaves, a characteristic of anywhere there are live oak trees providing good shade for hot days and some shelter from possible rain.

A good bluegrass festival presents a mixture of the tried and true, the up and coming, and national headliners. It also offers a mix of traditional and progressive styles of music. By that measure, Spirit of Bluegrass met the goal.. Promoter Don Miller and artist contact and promotion man Ernie Evans have hired a significant range of bands for the weekend. A cynical fan might suggest that the economics of the business make such a mixture a necessity, but organizing this way insures the future of the music by showcasing bands for the future as well as satisfying the desires of fans to hear and see established bands.

The program opens with a group of teenagers from Gainesville, all still in high school and looking and sounding it. It would be unfair to apply critical standards to this band that might be applied to a professional group. A main stage performance is important to the development of a young band, unused to handling the extra stress of performing before an audience, no matter how supportive. Sweetwater Special came on stage looking and sounding scared. As their performance progressed they found a groove and looked and sounded increasingly self-assured. Their instrumentals, especially a jazzy version of Blackberry Blossom, were spirited and interesting. Their voices are still too immature to manage the Rhonda Vincent and Cherryholmes covers they chose to perform. These kids will continue to improve and the presence of young, enthusiastic players in bluegrass will assure a continuance of the music.

New Found Road, a national bluegrass-gospel band, followed and opened the real festival with vigor and skill. Lead singer Tim Shelton has a self-assured voice; trios and quartets are strong. An a cappella “Rock of Ages” was a wonderful closing song for their second set. Mandolinist Rob Baker plays an exceptional mandolin filled with fast, complex fingerings. From time-to-time, as he plays, a small smile drifts across Baker’s face, as if he were appreciating something delightful coming from his instrument. He later commented that his new Ratcliff mandolin was just barely broken in and he is enjoying learning what it can offer.

Family bands have been a part of bluegrass music since before the famous Carter family. Bluegrass has traditionally been learned within the family circle as older members passed it on to younger people coming up. The Lewis Family has been touring for more than fifty years. Don Miller showcased two young family bands this weekend, The Wilson Family on Friday and Saturday and River Town Girls on Saturday morning. Furthermore, he contrasted this with a mother daughter band featuring sixteen year old Melissa King with her mother on bass and an established band, the Chapmans, three brothers and their father. These bands provide very interesting contrasts. Rivertown Girls features two teenage sisters and their cousin on banjo. The banjo playing cousin is clearly the most accomplished of the group. The two sisters try hard, but their performance fell short and they failed to sell themselves through enthusiasm or personality. The dominating figure of the father, hovering over each girl during solos seemed almost diabolical. The Wilson family, on the other hand, provided a sharp contrast. Father Robert and mother Melissa provided able support for their two kids, both talented musicians who are clearly on their way in bluegrass if they wish. Sixteen year old Clint is becoming a fine banjo player and offers a droll and persuasive sense of humor. He later played banjo with Ernie Evans and Southern Lite, carrying this assignment ably, too. The star, though, of this group is eleven year old Katie, playing the fiddle and singing with sure strength and in tune as well as providing harmony vocals. A high point was her performance of a novelty song about feeding the family with a five pound raccoon hunted down by the wheels of her car. The other high point of their performance was a song Katie had written called “The Old Man” in which she sings:

His daughter moved to the city,

His only son went off to the war,

He tries not to lie there in self pity,

But he just can’t take it any more.

Katie has written a classic bluegrass lyric which would do James King or any other purveyor of sad, pitiful songs proud.

Mellissa King is a pretty sixteen year old girl from Alabama who will be able to move well in bluegrass or country music. She has a good voice and, backed by her mother’s baritone harmonies and very good sidemen, she showcased her limited repertoire ably. Unfortunately, she performed in three sets over two days, but only had sufficient material for one. As she develops she will remedy this. The Chapmans are a family band that’s been around a while. Three brothers and their father play a pleasing mixture of traditional bluegrass and some jazz and R&B; their encore on Saturday night was Sam Cook’s “You Send Me.” As I listened to this pleasing rendition, I thought that Bill Monroe would have approved the blending of this music into a bluegrass setting. Father Bill on banjo provided a grounding presence while his three sons, young men in their twenties and thirties, explored places to take bluegrass while remaining true to its traditions.

Cadillac Sky is one of those bands that proves controversial at bluegrass festivals. By dint of some inspired schedule juggling they closed both Thursday and Friday nights, as well as having an early afternoon set on Friday. This band plays high energy rocky grass with a Texas twist. Their rendition of Darrell Scott’s “With a Memory Like Mine” rocked and wailed. Much of their work was written by members of the band, a group of excellent musicians seeking to meld a rock sentiment with the instruments of bluegrass, usually with a good deal of success. This is the kind of band seldom seen at Florida bluegrass festivals and not to everyone’s taste. Allowing attendees to have a taste of their music and then scheduling them for a long closing set on Friday made lots of sense. Warmer weather would have made the decision one of genius, but the young and adventuresome were well-rewarded by this showcase group with a growing reputation.

Randy Kohrs provided us with another band we had not previously heard. Kohrs is a master Dobro player with a strong country music strain in his music. He hits the stage hard and plays his instrument hard, wringing stunning arpeggios from the resonator guitar. He is one of the masters of this unusual instrument. His band provides him with strong instrumental and vocal support and his performance was thoroughly satisfying on this day featuring a lot of fine musicians.

Michelle Nixon lost her favorite pillow in Canada a month or two ago and got it back from a Canadian promoter on Saturday night. She is a vivacious singer, so good that no one would notice she hardly plays the guitar she sometimes carries. Her singing belongs in the same circle as Valerie Smith and Alicia Nugent, good company. She has already garnered one IBMA award as a member of the “Daughters of Bluegrass” and will receive more recognition in this group of women who have recently achieved center stage in bluegrass. Once known as a “boys club,” bluegrass is increasingly a venue for singer/songwriter/performers who either front bands or play in them. Some are talented musicians, like Allison Brown, while others are flat out great performers like Allison Kraus, whose fiddle playing was well-recognized in bluegrass before she became an international sensation. The list goes on – Rhonda Vincent, Claire Lynch, Dale Ann Bradley, Lorraine Jordan, Gina Britt, and others. Michelle Nixon comfortably belongs in this company and gives good value every time she takes the stage. And she easily communicates a wholesome, all-American girl niceness that carries over to the time she spends with her fans.

Sometimes it takes a while to learn to appreciate a band. Two bands at Suwannee fell into this category for me. We had seen Blue Moon Rising a couple of times during the past year, and each time we saw them they had seemed sort of lifeless and unexciting. Nevertheless, when we hear their music on XM radio, we like it. Their hit recording, “This Old Martin Box and Me” by lead singer and guitarist Chris Hill is a very good song, and he has written much of the rest of their material. Irene likes them in person more than I do, but they’re a good band, having been named IBMA emerging artist of the year a couple of years ago. And there’s something to be said for musicianship without an excess of showmanship.

IIIrd Tyme Out is a classic bluegrass band that has been around for quite a while. Recently, founding member Ray Deaton announced he will be leaving the band at the end of this season to join his fiancée Anita Fisher’s band. But the two other anchors of this band, Russell Moore on guitar and singing lead and Steve Dilling, one of the great banjo players, will find a way to replace Deaton’s booming bass voice and rock solid beat on the bass fiddle. It was at this performance that Dilling and Moore came forward to me as the fine musicians they are. Along with the very active and intense mandolinist Allen Perdue, they will keep this great old band going and continue to find new ways to make it sing while preserving older and more traditional bluegrass. They were joined for a song by Tyler Williams. Painfully crippled by cerebral palsy and blindness, Williams was carried onto the stage by his caretaker and placed in a chair. Then he opened his mouth and sang like an angel. Wonderful renditions of old classic bluegrass songs flow from his crippled frame. He’s a superb, inspiring performer, and we haven’t seen the last of him at Suwannee.

Well designed festivals build to a climax on their last day. Three day festivals ending Saturday can go long into the night, while Sunday festivals usually end in mid-afternoon to enable attendees to be home for work on Monday. Sunday festivals also often have a strong gospel flavor for much of the day. The Spirit of Bluegrass festival ended on Saturday with a couple of highlight bands as well as strong performances from lesser known groups. Peachtree Station opened Saturday morning with a traditional bluegrass performance featuring good, solid playing and singing. They were followed with more of the same from The Williams & Clark Expedition. Blake Williams, whose career includes a long stint with Bill Monroe as one of the Bluegrass Boys, always provides good stage humor along with fine banjo work. Bobby Clark, a former world champion mandolin picker, and Wayne Southard, a first class flat picking guitar player provide solid backup for Kimberly Williams’ singing and bass. Blue Moon Rising and The Chapmans each offered two solid sets to assure that every act on the bill was worth hearing.

Somehow we have missed the two featured bands of Saturday. Kenny and Amanda Smith combine wonderful vocals with Kenny’s superlative guitar picking. There are more guitar players at a bluegrass festival than any other instrument. The guitar often serves primarily as a rhythm instrument in the hands of singers who aren’t first rate pickers. While the importance of rhythm instruments in driving bluegrass sound cannot be overestimated, a band with good banjo and mandolin players and a rock solid bass beat can get along with a weaker guitar. Also, the guitar is not a loud instrument and must be very carefully miked and well-served by the sound people This festival has been blessed with some very good flat picking guitar players, but Kenny Smith stands head and shoulders above the rest. He is simply one of the two or three best flat pickers in the world. His fast and accurate playing compliments Amanda’s vocal range and modulation to lift this group above most others. (One of my highlights occurred backstage where Kenny was jamming informally with seventeen year old Cory Walker, a wizard banjo picker who was playing guitar and staying with Kenny note for note.) Amanda’s voice is silky smooth and always under control. Her well modulated singing seems almost effortless, as powerful when singing quietly as on more raucous tunes. She is at her best in balladic songs. Their band features lots of committed gospel music as well as traditional vocals and instrumentals and their own compositions. Joey Cox, recently added to the band on banjo, is fast and accurate and demonstrates greater range than he did with Blueridge. Jason Robertson on mandolin and Zachary McLamb on bass round out this terrific group. The interaction between Kenny and Amanda, which focuses on their deep devotion and mild good humor works well with the younger, more brazen voices of their sidemen. It all comes together into a delightful performance. Their recordings are wonderful, too.

The highlight of the festival for me was seeing Sammy Shelor and the Lonesome River Band. I knew that Shelor was a wonderful banjo picker, but I had been confused by what appear to be constant changes in the band’s personnel. Not to worry. Shelor’s dynamism and powerful picking assure that they’ll stay excellent, no matter who plays with him. He has a dominating stage presence. He is tall, lithe, and his shaved head gives him an appearance somewhat reminiscent of James Carville. He dwarfs his Huber banjo, not unlike Kenny Ingram. He moves around the stage with unusual grace, almost dancing as he moves into and then away from the mike, giving his playing great dynamic range. Brandon Rickman, lead singer, would have been the best flat picker at Suwannee if Kenny Smith hadn’t been there. During their performances, Rickman broke several strings and managed the feat of continuing to sing lead while changing his strings on the fly. Shelor has not, to my knowledge, had a Dobro in his band before, but Matt Leadbetter carries his name well, adding fast riffs and the colorful support only the Dobro can contribute. Andy Ball on mandolin contributes strong tenor and lead singing. This group, despite years of touring and pretty constant changes in personnel just can’t be beat. They brought Tyler Williams on stage for three numbers, and he only contributed more quality to the mix. Their jam on Molly and the Tennbrooks with Williams singing was a highlight.

This is an ambitious festival that wants to grow. Irby Brown did a competent job as m.c., mixing homespun humor with keeping the event moving along on schedule. Promoter Don Miller took some chances in bringing bands like Cadillac Sky to the festival as well as providing some of the best traditional bluegrass bands in the country. The programming taste he and Ernie Evans show in scheduling and band selection assures that this will continue be a first class festival if it receives the support it deserves. It is aided by being in one of the best locations possible. There is lots of good jamming all around the camping area. The amphitheater at Spirit of Suwannee could handle four or five times the crowd who came for this year’s bluegrass festival. It deserves to be filled.

Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen brings a mordant sense of humor, an eye for the telling detail, and an ear for language to the southern mystery novel. Double Whammy is concerned with the apparent murder of Bobby Clinch, whose bass boat has flipped over on Jesup Lake. Bobby is found a day later, floating face down in the lake, his hair pecked off by ducks seeking nesting material. A sample of Hiaasen’s world:

“I heard you got divorced.”

“Right,” Decker said.

“That’s a shame, R.J. She seemed like a terrific kid.”

“The problem was money,” Decker said. “He had some, I didn’t.” His wife had run off with a time-share-salesman-turned chiropractor. Life didn’t get any meaner.

Or

“He hated trailer parks; trailer parks were the reason God had invented hurricanes.”

Peopled with an odd assortment of indigenous characters, each of whom adds a special flavor to the mix, Double Whammy starts off with a bang and keeps on moving. The world of bass tournament fishing, known to most of us through moments spent surfing the cable on Sunday mornings looking for an alternative to fundamentalist sermons, comes to oddball life. The book is filled with surprising plot twists and interesting local color, red neck characters who Hiaasen paints with a mixture of affection and disdain. He has an eye for the grotesque and the absurd. His protagonist, a .former fashion and newspaper photographer named R.J. Decker, who has done time for assault as a result of his temper, now works as a private investigator specializing in photos of errant husbands and stolen vehicles. He has an ex-wife whom he still loves, a lousy life he hates, and is recruited to investigate a cheating bass champion. Decker’s investigation leads him into a world of evangelical preachers, a governor of Florida who failed because of his honesty, some cops, and some criminals too funny to be very scary. All of this leads the reader on with each new plot twist complicating an already complex maze. Hiaasen’s anger at the destruction of old Florida is made palatable by his effective use of humor.

Hiaasen is a graduate of the University of Florida and was a reporter for the Miami Herald before becoming a regular columnist. He published his first novel, Tourist Season, in 1986. Since then he has published nineteen books, including a couple of children’s books and collections of his columns. He has been published in thirty languages and won numerous awards.

Double Whammy is one of Hiaasen’s early novels, published in 1987. Despite some technological references which now seem anachronistic, the book is still not too great a stretch in the public policy realm of the twenty-first century. I look forward to reading more of these books.

St. Mary's, Georgia and Crooked River State Park

Having about ten days off between bluegrass festivals, we decided to check out a state park in Georgia we had heard of from a neighbor camper last year. Located in the southeastern part of Georgia just north of the Florida line, Crooked River flows through tidal marshes behind Cumberland Island National Seashore, a barrier island thankfully left completely undeveloped and reached only by a ferry that carries visitors to the island twice a day. The Cumberland Island itself has no conveniences except fresh water and some toilets. Visitors must carry whatever food, drink, clothing, and sun block they will need for a day. People wishing to camp there for the night must bring everything they will need. Because Cumberland Island does not offer the usual Atlantic coast beach access, high rises, and cottages, the little village of St. Mary’s is largely unspoiled. There’s not a single Whales beach store in town.

Crooked River State Park is a short drive north of St. Mary’s past the King’s Bay Submarine Base, home base of the Triton nuclear subs. This small park contains 42 campsites, mostly with electric, water, and basic cable TV on two small loops. Each loop has a restroom-shower complex in the middle with convenient washing machines and dryers. Georgia State parks take reservations, but campers cannot reserve specific sites. On arriving, you’re given a card with your name and date of departure on it. You then drive through the park and place a reservation card on a post at the end of the site you want. There are a few large sites fronting directly on the tidal marsh with great views of the river, the marsh, and the birdlife that lives there. During our stay the park was quite uncrowded during the week, but nearly filled on the weekend with local campers. This is a lovely campsite with two pretty big reservations. First, the gnats are terrible! Even with our screen room, liberal doses of insect repellant, burning Coleman bug repellant coils, and fogging, the bugs proved too much for Irene, who was forced inside much of the time. Very few people sit around outside at Crooked River. Either they’re up and moving or inside. Second, the rest room complexes are not kept as clean as they could be. Washing them is sporadic and provisions for toilet paper and such are not always made on time. Despite these two setbacks, Crooked River State Park offers easy access to the Golden Isles just north and the Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge as well as Cumberland Island and the village of St. Mary’s. It’s also a convenient and inexpensive stop for those heading up or down I-95.

Georgia route 40 runs directly from the sprawl surrounding I-95 exit 3 into the village, narrowing to two lanes just before entering town. Passing the Public Library, which provides daily except Sunday free computer access including Wi-Fi, the road curves past an ugly factory into a neighborhood filled with towering live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. Several 19^th century buildings now serve as bed and breakfasts and there are a number of very pleasant looking restaurants as well as shops, a cut above the normal tourist oriented places. There are two book stores and a couple of consignment/antique shops specializing in Red Hat accoutrements. A well-equipped canoe and kayak shop called “Up the Creek” sponsors trips into the surrounding waterways as well as a weekly trip to the Okeefenokee swamp. We ate an overpriced and small lunch at Lang’s seafood restaurant. Out the back door is a ramp leading to the marina, well stocked with impressive looking yachts cruising the Intracosatal waterway.

A visitor can take a leisurely stroll through the town, visit the shops, eat a meal at one of the dozen restaurants in town, stop at the Submarine Museum, or take the ferry out to Cumberland Island. A walk through the village takes a visitor past lovely old and newer homes shaded by some of the finest live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss that can be found anywhere short of New Iberia. All-in-all, St. Mary’s and environs is worth a couple of days. While we didn’t stop there to eat, an unobtrusive restaurant called Aunt B’s Country Buffet at a small strip mall on Spur 40, the direct route to the Base gate, seems to be a local favorite. As I sat in front of the very nice Internet café a few doors down on Sunday morning, dozens of folks fresh from church or ready for a day off in shorts and jeans came in for Sunday dinner. They all spoke of the quality of the food. If it weren’t for the beastly bugs, St. Mary’s and Crooked River State Park would be one of the great stops.

The Woodbine Opry

The music Bill Monroe developed in the forties and which came to be called bluegrass after his band The Bluegrass Boys emerged from its roots in gospel, mountain music, popular music of the day, jazz, and the beginnings of rock to become a show music played by acoustic bands on stages. It is fast, tight, intricate, and addictive to those who come to know and love it, but it many ways it has become so constructed as to lose touch with its roots. The Woodbine Opry returns bluegrass lovers to the very roots of the music.

Woodbine, Georgia is in the southeast part of the state a few miles west of Interstate 95 and a million miles away from the coastal resorts of Jekyll and St. Simon’s Islands. About ten years ago, the old high school in Woodbine was replaced and members of the community decided to save it. The Woodbine Opry developed as a way to raise the money to save the old building and rally community spirit. Seven years ago they began a bluegrass and gospel evening on Friday and a year later they added a Country and Western music evening on Saturday. The music is performed from the stage of the old auditorium, which seats just short of 300 people, and begins at 7:00 PM sharp.

Before the music begins, the ladies of the town provide a pot luck supper. It’s pot luck because no one knows before they get there what’s going to be served since the food is prepared at home and brought to the school to serve a southern style home cooked buffet. We arrived at 5:45 and found a line of Red Hats ahead of us in line and the rest of the line rapidly forming behind us. For $7.00 we bought our tickets and proceeded to wend our way through the line. Greens, beans and ham, corn and grits, tomatoes and okra, spaghetti, fried chicken, kielbasa, lots of casseroles in slow cookers, macaroni salad, potato salad, slaw, corn bread and biscuits, peach cobbler, banana pudding, marshmallow delight – what you’d expect at a family reunion in the south. We join a couple we had met from Canajoharie, NY and a woman from West Virginia and enjoy their company over a leisurely supper.

Folks start to move into the auditorium where seat cushions were stacked in piles at the back, and the music began. Obviously there is a group of regulars on the stage – mandolin, lots of guitars, a couple of resonator guitars, one banjo, some fiddles – up to twenty musicians on stage at once. It is quite obvious that anyone with an instrument, including voice, is welcome to join the group on stage and perform. Soloists make their way to the mike, call a song, and kick it off with everyone else joining in. Tempos are reasonable to enable less able pickers to feel comfortable. One fiddler, a handsome woman from Vermont, stands out with her “Red Wing” performance. Some of the performers start their bits off with good old corny jokes. The quality of the music isn’t what the Woodbine Opry is about, it’s the character of the people and the enjoyment they generate for themselves and the crowd that comes to see and hear them. They offer good old bluegrass and country songs with enthusiasm and vigor. From time to time during the evening, a group of women would prance down the aisle in outrageous costumes, drawing men from the audience to dance and clown with. Ranging in age from little Zachary, a three year old guitar player, to men and women well into their seventies, they represent the best of what people think of when they recall country folk and ways.

The audience is a mixed bag. There are more local people on the stage than in the audience. Two groups, a church group and the Red Hat ladies, create a larger than ordinary crowd. A large contingent from Jekyll Island stands out because of their dress and accents. When the M.C. asks where people come from, shouts of Canada, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin, and more came from the audience. One guest had brought his bagpipe and played Amazing Grace as part of the final song before intermission at 9:00. People stayed in their seats for fund-raising raffle drawings for cakes, hats, and t-shirts as well as a surprisingly large 50/50 drawing. We head back to our camper at the intermission after a happy evening, agreeing to try to meet our new friends the next day.

Information about the Woodbine Opry can be found at www.woodbineopry.com . People planning to attend should arrive in plenty of time to finish dinner before heading into the auditorium for a fine time.

Collapse by Jared Diamond - Review

Collapse by Jared Diamond, Penguin Books (Paper), 2005, $17.00

In his earlier book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond showed how geography facilitated the rapid development of societies in certain parts of the planet. He describes how people living in temperate climates with certain grasses, indigenous domestic table animals, and ease of contacts with other people were able to develop more quickly than peoples living isolated lives in harsh environments. Along the way he demonstrates how the differences between peoples are more differences of circumstance than ability

In Collapse he takes the opposite end of the development spectrum and demonstrates convincingly how societies, through a series of choices they make fall and disappear.

Early in his book, Diamond lists environmental and social factors:

• Environmental damage.
• Climate change.
• Hostile neighbors.
• Friendly trade partners.
• Societies’ response to their environmental problems.

Diamond applies these five factors to ancient and modern communities and whole civilizations that either survived because of their ability to respond to their situation or collapsed because the combination of negative factors became too much for the society to continue and it died gradually or collapses precipitously and completely.

Diamond examines past civilizations in small and isolated settings where he can focus on particular elements from his factors. He uses such past societies as Easter Island, Pitcairn and Henderson Islands, the Anasazi, the Greenland Norse and the Maya as past societies that collapsed due to a combination of the factors listed. He then applies the same criteria to modern societies like Rwanda, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, China, and Australia to show how the same factors continue to operate in the modern world. Finally, the last three chapters examine what the practical lessons of these studies are and suggests ways we, as a world, can adjust to the way we have been mining our available resources and lives to make it possible for us to continue to develop as human beings on our planet. He suggests that our collapse is not inevitable, but changing our future will demand thoughtful adjustments and facing the reality of our existence.

Jared Diamond is a big thinker. His specialty is the rise and fall of whole civilizations, of societies. As I read his opening chapter on Montana, I began to see how the five principles of societal collapse he has enunciated apply to places we know and have visited in our life and travels. Towns or regions like the Adirondack Park, Myrtle Beach, Florida, Beaufort SC, Southport NC and others exhibit the same factors in operation as his locales. My understanding quickly went from saying that he had hit upon a coincidence to realizing he had developed a deep understanding of how things work.

Often increasing population ­> increased food production > deforestation > erosion > competition for scarce resources > fighting > social decline > collapse. While this pattern isn’t exactly followed in each social collapse, it represents a general pattern that Diamond observes in the collapse of past societies as well as in progress in contemporary ones. He points out that “…the values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity.” (275) For instance, the insistence of the Greenland Norse in continuing to farm the sparse land on which they had settled in order to be able to eat beef and grow wool denuded the land. Instead of learning from their neighbors the Inuit, the Greenland Norse maintained their self image as Europeans and Christians through the 500 years of their existence in Greenland. As a result, their ability to clothe and feed themselves gradually declined until they died away, leaving only ruins. Had they been willing to learn from the Inuit and adjust to a fishing and hunting environment that made greater use of the sea, they might have survived.

While Diamond emphasizes deforestation, erosion, and decline of arable land combined to create the conditions leading to population decline, often accomplished through genocidal behavior, he says people resist these explanations because they confuse explanations of behavior with excuses for that behavior. Often, as in the case of Rwanda, the Hutu vs. Tutsi murders were the proximate cause for a large condition needing rectification, the overpopulation of a landscape not able to support the population growing there. He argues that alternative scenarios such as birth control, reforestation, alternative fuels, and a multitude of other approaches can eliminate social decline if people are willing to change their behavior. He suggests that clinging to ideas like the primacy of private property or the imminent coming of the savior eliminating the need to conserve make it difficult to make the necessary changes. He contrasts this with the willingness to reduce the forces of national pride and boundary that developed into the European Community.

Diamond’s book is long and might seem tedious to many, but his insistence on providing numerous examples of the application of his principles makes his arguments carry increasing weight as the book continues. In his chapters about the oil, logging, and hard rock mining industries, Diamond takes a position showing that the stereotype of both the environmental activists and the pro-business absolutists are in error. He focuses on the environmental record of Chevron Oil to show how enlightened environmental practices can increase corporate profitability. I found myself becoming angry at our current administration as Diamond shows how subtle and insidious the dangers are and how difficult the solutions. He also says that one of the best ways to encourage people to change is to provide good models of appropriate behavior. This means that the U.S. cannot continue to consume without limit while expecting those in less developed countries to reduce their demands for more comforts and better food.

The lessons from Diamond’s book take a good deal of thought and some perseverance to internalize. While Collapse does not present an entirely pessimistic view, it challenges us to change and adapt, an argument we (as consumers, a nation, a race} ignore at our peril.

Kissimmee Bluegrass Festival - Review

As we drove into the Osceola Heritage Park near Kissimmee, Florida, I felt my heart drop. The Heritage Park is a large entertainment and convention facility containing a major league spring training facility where the Houston Astros prepare for the season, a rodeo ring and associated pens and barns, and a multi-purpose open space building. The large parking lot held a scattering of RVs. It didn’t look at all like the sort of simple grounds we’re used to inhabiting at an RV festival. There wasn’t a Porta-Potti in sight, a problem for us. The hall itself offered a large room with space for camp chairs and plenty of convention style padded seats, too. The area was divided roughly in half, permitting concessions and artists’ sales areas to be separated from the performance area. As Thursday passed, more RVs showed up and several groups began jamming.

We checked in at the Festival office, where promoter Steve Dittman and his wife Janice were busily getting set up. Steve is a tall, jovial man who wears his half-lens glasses dangling from a strap around his neck. He’s wearing a T-shirt advertising one of his other festivals (Yahoo Junction), jeans, and a smile that never seems far from breaking out across his face. Steve has assembled an interesting and varied lineup for this festival, leaning heavily toward the traditional and offering bands he knows will appeal to a largely retired Florida crowd. His cell phone is constantly buzzing, and it’s hard to have a conversation with him as he puts out organizational fires with good humor and dispatch. It’s easy to imagine him in his day job as an insurance adjuster. Last year he spent nearly six months on the Mississippi gulf coast helping settle claims after hurricane Katrina. Familiar faces from other festivals, both here in Florida and in the northeast show up all day long. The bluegrass community really is small and tightly knit.

The three day lineup for Kissimmee seems to have a different focus for each day, even though most of the performers will be available over a two day period. Each day presents headliners, solid standbys, and a heavy dose of nostalgia. Lorraine Jordan and the Carolina Road Band kick off the festival with vigor and power. First position in a festival is difficult for a band, because they must perform to half-filled seats as people arrive and yet attempt to establish a sound and level of energy that sets a tone for the coming weekend. Lorraine, who has become a friend of ours during the past couple of years, fronts a band that has changed completely in personnel and sound during the past two or three years. The current band, with Josh Goforth on fiddle, Todd Meade on bass, Bennie Green on banjo, Jerry Butler singing lead and playing guitar, and Lorraine singing and playing mandolin. Each change Lorraine has made has improved the band. Butler, the latest, has brought a new lightness and an element of humor to the band. Josh Goforth plays a fine fiddle, but can play all other instruments in the band, except mandolin, which he can’t pry from Lorraine’s very capable hands.

Michelle Nixon and Drive hit the stage after Eddie and Martha Adcock, about whom more later. Nixon belongs in a solid group with other bands headed by women, like Valerie Smith and Alicia Nugent. Her voice and enthusiasm sell a strong combination of fairly recent and traditional songs. The band is well named, as it has plenty…of drive, that is. Her song “I Know Rain” delivers bluegrass emotion the way fans like it, the pain hidden under a lilting melody and driving rhythm.

The James King Band took the stage with a new face. Banjo player Chris Hill apparently feel in love and left the road, a wise choice if he want to sustain a relationship, difficult to do in a band that travels as incessantly as the King Band does. His replacement, Adam Poindexter, spent eight and half years on the road with King previously and fits in well, despite the fact this is the first gig of his return. He closes Friday night talking of his need to drive a thousand miles before the next evening. King’s band seems to fly without a playlist as James makes his choices depending on some combination of how he feels, what the band wants, and whether he can remember the song. His band has a strong combination of excellent musicians who can roll with his moods and choices. Kevin Prater, about 80 pounds lighter over the past year, has a strong tenor voice he uses to good effect both as a solo instrument as a member of the trio and the gospel quartets the band does so well. “Just As the Sun Went Down” is one of their best. James’ patented “pathetic” songs like “Bed by the Window” and “Up on Echo Mountain” are crowd pleaser, made more so by the tears he brushes away as he sings.

The Lewis Family followed with their combination of a deeply felt gospel message and Little Roy’s clowning mad palatable by brilliant instrumental work on banjo, guitar, and auto-harp. His aging sisters manage to hang in and smile benevolently on their naughty brother. Polly, who sadly is quite ill, performs gamely and keeps on trouping. The Lewis Family sings only gospel words, but includes lots of patriotic and other familiar instrumentals. Janice Lewis’ son Lewis Phillips ably supports Roy on banjo and guitar. The center of attention, though, is always Little Roy, who between sets sometimes shows a completely different self. On Friday afternoon he picked up a Deering Goodtime banjo, a plain wood entry level instrument, and jammed with a bunch of novices at The Dixie Sweethearts music concession. Here Roy showed exactly how good he is by pulling terrific music out of a much lesser banjo than he usually plays while teaching and joining in with musicians who couldn’t possibly keep up with him on stage. Impressive. An hour later, towards the end of the second King set, Roy wandered on stage wearing a white cowboy hat like the king had, but only his red suspenders over his lily white skin. He wandered up close behind King, who was concentrating and didn’t realize Roy was there until he turned around.

Saturday – Steve Dittman schedules his festivals so that most of the bands play for two days. On Saturday, Carolina Road, Michelle Nixon, and Eddie and Martha Adcock returned for a second day. Nevertheless, the day had several high lights worth mentioning. In a sense, Saturday became a day of nostalgia for past great groups and promise for the future of bluegrass.

The past was represented by former and present members of cornerstone group The Country Gentlemen. Formed by Charlie Waller, John Duffey, Eddie Adcock and Tom Gray in the 1962, this pioneer group from the Washington, DC used songs from folk and rock music with a bluegrass sensibility to broaden the appeal of the music. While Waller and Duffey have died, Tom Gray and Eddie Adcock were at Kissimmee along with Jimmie Gaudreau, an innovative mandolin player with a distinctive sound, and Charley Waller’s son Randy, who sang with the reunion band as well as his own, now called Randy Waller and The Country Gentlemen, also. Adcock, who performs as a duo with his wife, Martha, can no longer hold a banjo up, but has invented a banjo stand permitting him to play without bearing any weight. He still shows a remarkable sense of creativity and tonal variety unusual for the banjo despite the debilitating effects of an Intent Tremor which keeps him from being able to play anything like he once did. Gray, who stood in for one song with his cousin Lorraine Jordan as well as playing with the reunion band and as part of a trio with Eddie and Martha, is still a brilliant player, touring with John Starling, his former band mate with The Seldom Scene. Gaudreau, who is somewhat younger than the others, plays a fine mandolin and sings well, too.

Randy Waller, son and heir to Charley Waller, currently tours as Randy Waller and the Country Gentlemen. My reaction, after several chances to see him perform, has been, generally, negative. He mugs, looks smug, and rolls his eyes, seemingly mocking the very music that he claims to celebrate while misusing a marvelous baritone voice. A conversation with a friend well-connected in the genre on Sunday afternoon helped me to understand Waller, who, my friend says, needs to pull himself out from under his Dad’s shadow and find a way to come into his own as a singer and song stylist while still giving his father’s memory an appropriate platform.

Carolina Sonshine is a gospel group which also features the comedy impressions of its lead singer, Danny Stanley. I commented two weeks ago about Dennis Cash’s rendition of a song, “God’s Been Good to Me,” that bothered me. This weekend I had a chance to discuss my concerns with him, and I’m glad I did, as we found more in common about ways of seeing the world than the ideas separating us. We also had a chance to spend some time with banjoist Tom Langdon, whose solo project is quite good. Carolina Sonshine has made a step up in the bluegrass world and belongs in the company it is joining. In order to sustain their position in this wider world, however, they will have to expand their repertoire. Meanwhile, they have a pleasant sound and fit well, especially on Sunday, with their deeply felt gospel renditions.

The Gary Waldrep Band, coming out of the hills of Alabama, is a marvelously entertaining and highly skilled band. Waldrep, once world champion banjo player, is fast and clean playing Scruggs style and one of the few banjo player who truly loves playing clawhammer style, too. He is also one of the truly most generous players around. This weekend, three of the women playing in the groundbreaking album “Daughters of American Bluegrass,” produced by Lorraine Jordan, happened to be at Kissimmee at the same time, Mindy Rakestraw from Waldrep’s own band, Michelle Nixon from hers, and, of course, Lorraine Jordan. Waldrep welcomed the two women to join his band in singing a song from their album. This important album has completely broken the stereotype that bluegrass is a boys’ club by offering an all female band playing great bluegrass. In addition, Waldrep has three women playing in his band. Last year we saw him welcome three or four fiddlers to his stage for what turned out to be one of the most stirring renditions of “Orange Blossom Special” we have ever heard. Furthermore, Waldrep presents deeply stirring gospel music in his regular show as well as the Sunday show he presented. His rendition of “Thomas” brought tears to many eyes.

The Goldwing Express includes three sons, known as the Indians, and their blonde father. They are a group which spends most of the year performing in Branson, MO, where, I gather, they’re a pretty big hit. At bluegrass festivals, their act consists of a blend of bluegrass, gospel, and comedy emphasizing their mixed race and cultural superiority to their somewhat dazed, elderly father. They’re an act that has lots of adherents. Some bluegrass fans show up for Goldwing and then leave immediately on the end of their act. I couldn’t wait until the end.

Sunday – Sundays at bluegrass festivals are largely devoted to gospel music. This day, Mike and Mary Robinson, whose bluegrass ministry follows the sun, led their Sunday morning gospel jam. The jam is a great place for novice musicians to play, and this day they were supported by three members of Carolina Sonshine, a generous gift. Mike keeps the preaching low key, although he is quite clear about his faith and its biblical grounding and does a capable job leading the jam and the group singing.

Carolina Sonshine and the Gary Waldrep Band followed with all gospel programs followed by another performance by Goldwing Express. Roger Bass & the Hillbillies, a Florida band, played two sets. The highlight of Roger’s performance was a song he has written about his very ill wife that James King has said he will record. It belongs in company with the King classic, “She Took His Breath Away.”

Sunday’s highlight was two performances from an up and coming family band called “The Doerfel Family.” This family, consisting of nine children, eight of whom are boys, plays with enthusiasm and skill as the younger children wander around the stage. The children are killingly cute and the adolescents very good. Sister Kim has a fine bluegrass voice and plays an able fiddle. Their schedule keeps them performing largely in western New York State, near their home as well as across the border in Ontario. They’re a band worth keeping your eyes on.

Three days of bluegrass draw to a satisfying close as many of the rigs pull out, headed for home or the next festival. On a weekend in which high temperatures varied by 25 degrees, the indoor venue has proven itself. We head to Crooked River State Park in Georgia for a ten day stay before heading for out next event at Suwannee. It’s been a good weekend.