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.