Jammin’ on the Eno

Oh what Fun I had at the Festival for the Eno! I went for several lovely hours on the 4th and then again all day yesterday (Sadly forgetting my camera… My birthday is soon upon me and clearly age is catching up with me!). Except for about an hour spent there with Dan’s mom and Mike on Wednesday, I could not interest any of my local friends into going so I had a little artist’s date and took it all in by myself. I’m sure glad I did!

The festival is in a wonderful park full of trees with the Eno River flowing through it. There are permanent buildings that are part of the park, houses and barns that are very nicely kept up with gardens and exhibits inside. In addition, each year five beautiful wooden stages with tin roofs and lovely silk-screened or painted backdrops are built by volunteers in various parts of the park. The well over 50 different bands and solo performers range from gospel to country to folk to bluegrass to indie rock. Many are local but there were also groups from as far away as Alaska. There are dancers as well and performances and activities just for the kids.

There are also dozens of different artists and craftspersons displaying and selling their work as well as organizations (mostly of an environmental bent) promoting their services and agendas. And there’s food! Along with the expected cotton candy, lemonade and turkey drumstick stands there are also some unexpected choices like curry, empanadas and crepes. And of course the ubiquitous siren song of the funnel cake… I barely escaped alive.

Logistically the festival is a wonder. Free parking is provided off site and comfy charter buses truck people to and from the festival grounds. Trash is all kept to a bare minimum and sorted aggressively by an army of volunteers so that everything that can possibly be recycled or biodegraded (even the forks from their food vendors are biodegradable!) is kept out of a landfill. Also, there is almost No trash on the fair grounds. It’s amazing.

But the big attraction for me was the music… This was not a collection of garage bands performing covers. Of course there was a wide range of talent but the vast majority of the performers I heard were very good indeed and most performing original material. Now I admit I am a sucker for folk music so I was definitely the right audience for this event. What amazed me though was how often I would go to one stage thinking I would love a certain group, get bored and hear something that would pull me Pied Piper like to another stage where I would absolutely fall in love with a band I had never thought I’d be interested in.

Of course with so many choices there was always the fear that I would miss something wonderful elsewhere and I probably did. Sacrifices did indeed have to be made but I caught as much as I possibly could, especially the best of the local musicians. There has always been quite the music scene in the Triangle and I wanted to expose myself to as much of it as possible.

The following were my very favorites. As you can see they are all over the map stylistically:

Big Fat Gap: Bluegrass just the way I like it. Good solid vocals and smoking solos. Fiddles! Banjos! Mandolins! Guitars! String Basses! And they look like they are having a really good time. Obviously all very talented.

Jonathan Byrd: Singer-songwriter with a heavily country sound influenced by a number of traditional folk styles. I think there’s a quite politically satirical subtext to a number of his songs but the words fly by so fast… Dan has even put his stamp of approval on the CD I brought home This is the New That. Favorite song title ever: “Jesus was a Bootlegger.”

The Never: This indie rock group has just put out their first album Antarctica which is a “storybook record.” It comes with a picture book including text and illustrations by one of the band members. I thought they were a little uneven at the festival but I was impressed by the fact that they had four typical young rockers backed up by the mandolin player from Big Fat Gap and a frumpy tuba and flute player. And the drummer dropped his sticks at one point to play a flute duet. You don’t see that much! I was also intrigued by the CD book so I picked up a copy. I’m quite taken with it and commend the band for trying something so ambitious! The story is sweet if far fetched and the illustrations are very well done. Unfortunately the text is in a loosely rhyming form that I found jarring and at times trite. The music though is right up my alley. It’s quirky and atmospheric with high production quality, good vocals and lots of fun instruments thrown in like mandolin, fiddle and saw.

John McCutcheon: “When pressed for the perfect example of a modern folk musician, it’s John McCutcheon’s name that comes to mind.” Sing Out! Magazine, Winter 2000 John McCutcheon has been a professional folk musician longer than I’ve been alive, which we all know is a very lengthy time indeed! Where other solo performers had trouble competing with the heat and background noise he had us eating out of the palm of his hand. A consummate storyteller and multi-talented performer, he has a wonderful voice as well as amazing skills on the banjo, guitar, hammer dulcimer, auto harp and keyboard. Plus 30 albums of wonderful material from which to draw. I only bought five.

For me the quintessential experience of the festival was sitting in the shade, watching the dragon and damselflies glisten the dusty air and the sun spangle the leaves above me while singing harmony to John McCutcheon’s “This Land is Your Land.” There were toddlers playing in front of the stage and I imagined myself as a toddler at just such an event right at the beginning of John McCutcheon’s career, 30 odd years ago. My mom in her waist length braid and paisley dress and my dad in his long seventies beard and plaid bell bottoms sitting in the shade singing that very same song as I played happily in the grass…