July 29 2007: Every Folk Player In The Known Universe – Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Dodd Farm, Hillsdale NY
Day three. Jesus Christ. What was I thinking coming to this thing? I woke up with the worst hangover I’ve experienced in quite a while, and still exhausted, but the temperature in the tent had more in common with saunas than with traditional-type sleeping quarters. So I spread my boxer-clad ass out in some shade and fell asleep. At which time the earth continued to spin and move relative to the sun’s fixed position and as such when I awoke I was no longer in the shade.
Hours later I managed to find the Workshop Stage to catch Shindell and Kaplansky sing a really nice duet of “Good Year for the Roses.” And then saw each of them play solo sets on the Main Stage, along with sets by the Neilds and Arlo Guthrie. At which point I was finally feeling alright, but at which point the weekend was over and we drove home and I turned the air conditioning up as high as it could go.
Song Highlight Of The Day: Not sure. It was hot, I felt like shit, and nothing really stuck out. But “Good Year for the Roses” was really really really nice.
July 28 2007: Every Folk Player In The Known Universe – Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Dodd Farm, Hillsdale NY
Started out the day with the The Grass Is Blue Song Swap at the Workshop Stage, at which Red Molly the Rowan Brothers and the Lovell Sisters all played mostly bluegrass tunes. I don’t remember much of the music that got played cause I was mostly focused on one of the women in Red Molly and the red dress/red goulashes/brown hair/pretty face/nice slide playing combo she had going on.
From there went to the Main Stage to see Tracy Grammar and Jim Henry play a great set, highlighted probably by “Crocodile Man,” followed by another Song Swap Thing, which the folk folks really seem to dig. This one had Red Molly (yay!), Pat Wictor and Ellis. Followed by a set by Mary Gauthier, who played the most amazing song about a hobo who died and how nobody rides rails anymore and how that’s kind of sad. And from there we all headed over to the Songwriting Process Song Swap at the Workshop Stage, where Dar Willianms, John Gorka, Mary Gauthier and Ellis all played some more. And we stayed there to hear the Just Gimme Some Truth Song Swap, at which the Strangelings, Shindell, Kaplansky, Kellogg, Gauthier, Grammar, Henry, Wenz, Terry Kitchen, and the Strangelings all sat around playing. And Gauthier played a couple songs for the third (third!) time that weekend (“Mercy Now” and “Wheel Inside the Wheel”), and Sweeney and I were rolling the proverbial fuck out of our eyes over this, but then “Wheel Inside the Wheel” turned into this unbelievable rock number with the full band and everyone playing along and Gauthier rasping the words out and Jim Henry playing the best guitar I saw played all weekend. It was amazing. The 18-to-20ish looking girl we were sharing a tarp with (people use tarps here instead of blankets, cause god hates folk festivals as evidenced by the insane amount of rain that falls on them) covered her ears for a couple minutes (cause rock music has to be loud) and then finally gave up and left.
Then back to the main stage for Gandalf Murphy and His Slambovian Circus of Dave Gilmore’s Wet Dreams, who are everything their moniker implies. But I was aware of this previously, so I skipped most of their set to get some ice, cause beer doesn’t keep itself cool in middle-level-of-hell type oppressive heat. And then Dar Williams came out and played and was reportedly intoxicated and did a few tunes I knew (“The Christians and the Pagans” and “When I was a Boy”) and then I retired to the cooler. Which soon ran dry so I turned to the bourbon. Which did not run dry, but it’s a shame it didn’t. And it’s even more of a shame that the red dress/red golashes/brown hair/good slide playing Red Molly girl didn’t exactly respond to my 2am advances as I had hoped she would.
Song Highlight Of The Day: the third run through of “Wheel Inside the Wheel,” as described above.
July 27 2007: Every Folk Player In The Known Universe – Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Dodd Farm, Hillsdale NY
So I’ve been hearing Adam and Sarai talk this festival up for years, and I had a long weekend at my disposal, and I was able to get a ticket on the cheap, and I like camping and folk music so I figured I’d give the folk scene a try. It was interesting.
Adam and Sarai picked me up and we got to the farm around noon and started out by watching a whole bunch of people play two songs, each, on the Main Stage, in this order: Heather Waters, Derek Aramburu, Ryan Fitzsimmons, Zoe Mulford, Edie Carey. They were all competent. Fitzsimmons was more than competent, he’s friends with Sweeney, and was later told that I look like the guy. How about that.
We then, because we had already set up the tents and meanwhile enjoyed a couple of common-sense-dampening beers apiece and there was no other music going on, decided to brave the Beatles Forever free-for-all Song Swap at the Workshop Stage. Which was not as bad as it it could have been, save the big “Let it Be” singalong that Kaplansky led at the end. But Tracy Grammar and Jim Henry sang a really nice “Two of Us” (after which Tracy blew a little kiss to Jim and it was really sweet), and Richard Shindell decided (and we were grateful that he was in fact) too cool to play a Beatles tune and instead played a really nice song that he said was sort of a ten-years-later “She’s Leaving Home” story. Other folks who played were Marshall Crenshaw, the Strangelings, the Rowan Brothers, the Neilds, the Dust Poets, Annie Wenz, and Stephen Kellogg with His Sixers.
From there we watched Eilen Jewell (who was fabulous), Stephen Kellogg with His Afore Mentioned Sixers (who were trite and ridiculous and not horribly pleasurable for the most part), and what they call the Friday Night Song Swap, during which Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky, Mary Gauthier and Marshall Crenshaw each played a song in turn. This was interrupted by a huge fucking downpour. But, aside from causing us to miss a couple tunes, that effectively cleared the place out and when we returned post-downpour we were able to get some really nice seats up close.
Song Highlight Of The Day: a tune played by some folks a few campsites south of us at around 1am, after the festival proper had closed up shop for the night, that I would imagine is called “Blue Coyote,” but I’m just guessing that cause that’s the line repeated in the chorus. But it was really really nice.
July 14 2007: Built to Spill - Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington VT
On December 9 1999 I ponied up $10 to see Built to Spill play at the Crystal Ballroom. I'd never seen them before it was my first time at the Crystal too. And I've since caught a whole lot of shows. This was my eleventh I think, and a couple of Doug's solo shows as well. But none since leaving Portland. In fact, it had been exactly two years, one month and four days since I last saw them. Too long. Longer than I'd ever gone in the past, for sure. So I was really really excited. Ask Marie. We were a little late coming from her friend's house and I was freaking out in the car like I haven't done in a long long time. And then when we arrived with exactly enough time to buy $3 pints of Long Trail and there were maybe half the people there that would pack into the Crystal and we were able to waltz right up the front and there they were, Doug and Jim and Nelson and Netson all tuning up their guitars, and then they go right into "Liar," I just didn't know what to do with myself.
You know that Hold Steady tune that talks about certain songs getting scratched into our souls? I don't think anything could be more scratched into my soul than Built to Spill songs. Songs like "Car" and "Nowhere Nothing Fuckup" and "Made-Up Dreams" and "In the Morning" and "Velvet Waltz" and "Stab" and "Time Trap" and "Else," all of which they played. And then some of the great newer ones like "Goin' Against Your Mind" and "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss" and "Wherever You Go." Those songs.....especially "Car," which was just Doug and Nelson and was beautiful and I hadn't heard it since 2001. And especially "Made-Up Dreams," which I can't describe how it felt to mouth along "These thoughts are old let's keep it cold" and which I hadn't seen played since I saw Doug do it solo in 2002. Jesus. I love these songs so much I cannot begin to describe.
And then the set was closed with "Carry the Zero," and they came back for an encore of "Randy Described Eternity" with a ten-minute feedback jam outro, and wow. The show ended and I was ecstatic and Marie had bailed but Caitlin had arrived so Caitlin and I got a couple more beers before heading back to the campground just outside of Burlington where we were staying with Mariah, and I was happy. And I'm still singing "Randy Described Eternity" to myself, pretty much around the clock.
July 9 2007: Cat Power, Dex Romweber Duo - Pearl Street Ballroom, Northampton MA
Three things I never thought I'd see at a Cat Power show: dude wearing a Blood Sugar Sex Magik tshirt, dude wearing no shirt at all, the best performance of "Satisfaction" I've ever heard. And now that I think about it, I think it was only the second time I've ever heard anyone try "Satisfaction," cause it takes some pretty huge balls to try and cover one of the greatest rock songs ever. And the last time it was Cat Power doing it solo on an acoustic guitar, but this time it was with a great blues/soul band backing her up and it was fucking fantastic.
Really, the whole set was fantastic. And I claim this despite the fact that I don't much care for her new album, and that I didn't know 75% of the songs she played. The guitarist and the keyboardist could have made anybody sound good, and the rhythm section guys were perfect, and the sound wasn't as awful as I've gotten used to at the Pearl Street. And I wouldn't have thought that I could have ever gotten behind Chan as an instrument-less singer, as in a singer who holds the microphone in her hand and sings into it and doesn't do anything else, but she was great. It would have been pretty hard to try to stand still. I wouldn't know though, cause I didn't try.
And the openers were this guitar/drums duo, and the guitarist/singer was this tall-and-stocky-type dude, no neck, slacks and shoes and white shirt unbuttoned halfway down, big lips, big chest, big sneer, missing some teeth, playing some great old-style blues/rock. The kind of guy who comes to mind when you picture the 45-year-old preacher of a tiny little whitewashed and white-skinned church on an old dirt road somewhere in Alabama, jumping all over the place and banging on the pulpit, testifying to the faithful on a humid 110-degree sunday night, more than willing to literally beat the devil out of you if that's what it takes. I dug his style, and his playing was pretty great too.
All in all, fun times. And I ran into Eidan and she bought me a beer and I was home before midnight.
