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.