GRF 2024, an Overcast Sunday

There were some glimpses of the sun over the weekend, and at times on the last day it seemed it might clear up.  But though we got no rain and thunderstorms on Sunday, it never really got sunny.  And that's fine, we've spent enough time at the GRF in the heat.

Left the crowd at the hotel at about the same time and again there was no line when we got to the Fairgrounds at about 11:15 and snagged a great place by the soundboard at the Main Stage.  I'm not sure if they sold out or not.  The Fairgrounds can definitely hold a lot of people and they'd left a huge area for standing room in front of the Main Stage, which I never saw entirely full.  I never felt hemmed in by people, as I had the last few years at the GCC, and that's a good thing.

As mentioned, the 2024 Festival lineup was not that compelling, and Sunday may have been the worst.  Up first was another bad choice, and I started with Mon Rovîa at the Back Porch.  He played some quiet original songs and accompanied himself on a beautiful tenor guitar, which was almost as small as a ukelele.  His name is a tribute to the biggest city in his native country, Liberia, and he interspersed songs with harrowing tales of civil war in Liberia.

I wandered over to the Deans Beans stage where Katy Kirby was leading her band through some of her surprisingly good original songs.  One line of hers I loved was, "If the bears set a table for me, one of these days I'll have to sit down to eat."  Her bass player had a very pretty-sounding violin bass.

Time for Margo Cilker, a young country musician I was really looking forward to hearing, and she was on the Main Stage.  I went right up front and, though it never got that crowded up there for an early Sunday set, there were several very dedicated fans, as well as the Taylors.  And I really enjoyed her set!  Margo did not have a crackerjack band, she and they were all very mellow and I was reminded of seeing Zoe Muth, another laid-back Westerner, at the GRF several years ago.  Margo writes some great songs and has a killer presentation.

Her songs really sneak up on you, and the words pile up and pile up until she's almost rapping, though still with a Western accent.  At one time in her song about Tehachapi she was singing about traveling in the Southwest and she suddenly threw in a line from Lowell George's Willin' and her band played a bar of the chorus.  In another song she was singing the rote country line about, "If I was a preacher," and she suddenly sang, "I'd tell you how to vote, who to believe, and who to fuck."  On of her traveling songs has a shout-out to Singing Beach in Manchester-By-the-Sea MA.  Later in her set she switched from electric guitar to a classic, deep, Western acoustic that was as big as a bathtub and had a huge pickguard.  Again, I loved this set.

Wow, the GRF was almost over, but still a few things to see.  Sarah and I wandered down to the Deans Beans Stage for Dobet Gnahoré, who is an energetic traditional African singer.  She had a great electric guitarist, also a bass and drums, and she sang and played congas.  The most amazing thing about her set was the number of beads (bones? teeth?) she was wearing.  She had them strung in her hair, huge earrings, a choker and two other necklaces, armbands, bracelets, rings, fingernails, and two belts!

Almost time to leave, but got one last plate of beans, rice, and guacamole from La Veracruzana, and listened to a few tunes from Josiah and the Bonnevilles, who is a solo artist with a very strong right hand, an infectious harmonica, and some driving songs.

OK, that's it.  We considered seeing another set from Margo Cilker, who was just starting up over at the Back Porch or staying for the traditional Ukrainian folk of DakhaBrakha, but we were ready to head on back.  It had been another surprisingly fun time at GRF, even with the weather, and we'd seen and heard some stuff we loved.  Time to save our energy for next year!

GRF 2024, a Rainy Saturday

Our room at the Rose had two queen beds and was more comfortable than it might have been, but my bed kind of listed so much I had to lie diagonally, and the air conditioner just had two settings, on and off.  So it wasn't the best night's sleep, but who cares, we were soon up and hanging out with our friends on the veranda, eating weird stuff and drinking tea, coffee, and fruit juice.  As I say, my spreadsheet was praised and we planned for another busy day at the Festival.  Highly anticipated were the Wonder Women of Country and Mdou Moctar, and kind of dreaded were Fleet Foxes ... that was about right as it turned out.

Sarah and I took off before anyone else at about 10:45, there was no line when we got up to the Fairgrounds, and we got a spot on the Main Stage not quite as good as Friday's but still excellent.  More touring of the vendors, and then it was kind of a toss-up whether to start on the Deans Beans Stage or the Back Porch, since I'd rated both acts as "maybe."

Off to the Back Porch first for Love Crumbs, and I really liked them for a few songs.  They have two women singers up front and they sang well together, the hippie on bass took a lead, the nerd on piano had another good lead, and then the biker on lead guitar ripped off another one.  But by the time they started a fourth song I got bored and left.  All their songs were about bad sex and/or bad lovers.

Hurried over to the Deans Beans Stage for Prewn, whom I'd classed as "moody, reverb-y folk rock" in my spreadsheet.  And I loved them!  This is a small band fronted by Izzy Hagerup with a guitar, bass, and drums, and not too many people were there.  They were doing an innovative, goth song about ticks as I walked up, how they dig into your flesh without you knowing and poison your blood.  What's not to like?  Their guitarist sometimes made a spooky drone sound on his electric with a bow, and all of their songs degenerated into feedback jams.  I love this stuff!

It was starting to rain lightly and Izzy said, "Oh no, here it comes again!"  The humidity, the wind, and the approaching electricity made her long and unkempt hair frizz up, and the lights lit this like a purple halo.  That was a great visual, or maybe that was the gummy kicking in.  But suddenly the heavens really opened and I realized I'd better make a dash for the raincoat I'd left over at the Main Stage.  By the time I got there I was absolutely soaked from head to foot, and they were calling again for everyone to shelter from the lightning.

So, back in the car again with the cooler of beer.  Sarah joined me and this time we were there for a long time while the skies just dumped water on us.  Our car was soon sitting in a mid-shin-high lake.  Some of our friends had left the hotel, but were stuck halfway into the parking lot and then were told by the volunteers to just wait there.  They eventually broke into a nearby port-a-potty though.

Eventually the Festival re-opened, and we'd missed Willi Carlisle, though Tommy Prine and Trousdale apparently did abbreviated acoustic sets under cover, which we missed too.  And this was another day that really didn't qualify as a hot summer day, though it was long.  It wasn't cold, but the temperature never took off, I was chilly for the rest of the day from being sopping wet and kept my raincoat on and zipped, and our feet were beyond soaked and developing blisters from our sandals.

OK, time to get some food (the delays and the shortage of food vendors meant long lines most of the time), and then I went right over to the Back Porch Stage for what was the act of the weekend, as far as I was concerned, the Wonder Women of Country.  This is an authentic super-group of Brennan Leigh, Kelly Willis, and Melissa Carper and they sure had me riveted in place for their whole set.  Brennan is a fantastic songwriter and played a crackling lead guitar, Kelly has one of the purest country voices I've ever heard and played backup on her acoustic, and Melissa twisted the doghouse bass into knots while wearing her emotions on her sleeve with her cracked voice.

They swapped leads and alternated some originals by the band members with classic country.  Brennan sang Carole With an E and Fly Ya To Hawaii, Kelly did Another Broken Heart and A Thousand Ways.  And they closed with Melissa singing I Have Met My Love Today from John Prine's last record.  During one song she sang, my mind was trying to classify her (this was the first time I'd seen her), and it came to me in a flash: Melissa Carper is the Butch Hancock of the band, Kelly Willis is the Joe Ely, and Brennan Leigh is the Jimmie Dale.  OK, none of my friends knew what I was talking about when I told them that, but it's the truth.

Whoah, I could have listened to them for hours, but they took off after getting as thundering an ovation as I heard at the Back Porch all weekend, and then it was time for me to take off, back to the Main Stage where Bonny Light Horseman had already started.  I considered going up front, but stayed back at our seats on the now-almost-hot day.  I want to like this band better than I do, I consider Anaïs Mitchell a world-class talent as a songwriter, and a genius singer.  They do English folk, which I love.  And Josh Kaufman can play the kind of surprising and eclectic stuff I really like (he played a weird steel banjo-guitar on one song).  But while Eric D. Johnson has his moments and sings well with Anaïs, he's often a liability, they shouldn't let Kaufman sing, and their arrangements are too quiet, non-catchy, and not always there.  For instance, they did an excellent song about a mandolin, but did not have a mandolin in the band, which was problematic.  I should mention that they had an excellent bass player in Cameron Ralston, and a good drummer.

OK now, *back* to the Back Porch Stage for Willi Carlisle, who's earlier set had been rained out.  He's a large, unclassifiable, dynamic, multi-instrumentalist Arkansan, who will keep you guessing from one song to another.  In the half-set of his that I saw he played guitar, banjo, bones, accordion, harmonica, fiddle (on an offbeat cover of Richard Thompson's Beeswing), and hambone of course.  He had a large crowd, he's a very entertaining force of nature.

But ... it was past time for me to get something for dinner and I wanted to see Joy Oladokun, who's an immensely talented young musician who reminds me of a young Tracy Chapman.  She played some songs with a small band and some solo on her acoustic guitar.  There were no instrumental flashes, just her singing her hypnotic songs, sampling her guitar, and staring into the sky, or alternately talking directly to the audience.  She dissembled too much and called herself nothing more than a "queer Kermit" when she did a sunny, Sesame Street-like song.  Hopefully, she'll be around for a long time.

Sarah was there for her set too, and we did the smart thing of leaving her set a little early and I took our chairs back to the car.  We knew there was only a slim chance we'd stick around for the Fleet Foxes set, and we didn't want to repeat the mess we'd found ourselves in yesterday, where we couldn't locate our chairs in the crowd!

Ack, it was then time to hurry down to the Deans Beans Stage for the incredible Mdou Moctar.  I have never seen anyone play guitar like that, be it Derek Trucks, Molly Tuttle, Stanley Jordan, or whomever.  Moctar is a lefty and played a gray Strat, accompanied by the best bass player of the Festival, a rhythm guitarist who's arm almost fell off he was strumming so fast, and the best drummer of the Festival.  But Moctar is phenomenal and you couldn't take your eyes off him!  I couldn't believe that he could be so fast and dexterous without a pick, with just his fingers and his thumb, which he used most often.  And seeing his other hand work the fretboard was like watching someone from outer space, it was so unreal.  He played African blues/jazz, but it was beyond description.  I don't know what else to say about him, you need to listen to this guy!  All of my friends gushed about him, he's incredible.

Whew, that was quite an experience.  I texted Sarah and we met up at the actual Deans Beans coffee truck, where she was buying a cup for the next morning.  Fleet Foxes had started the last set on the Main Stage and we stuck around for a few songs.  My synopsis of them had been, "atmospheric prog-rock by relatively overrated veteran band," and that's what it was.  We liked what we heard but the other guys told us that after we left they went downhill.  Oh well.

OK, back to the hotel and soon everyone showed up, we all went out to the picnic tables, got the party lights lit, brought out the snacks and a few adult beverages, and talked and talked in the finally dry and almost chilly night.  Everyone had experienced the wet and cold I did that day, it's a good thing I had my shoes and socks and my sweatshirt!

GRF 2024, a Rainy Friday

We missed the Green River Festival last year (DeadCo claimed priority), and so were psyched to make up for it on the weekend of June 21-23 in 2024.  As referenced in previous posts, the Festival has gotten more and more popular, out-grown the site we loved at the Greenfield CC, dropped its charming hot-air balloon feature, and was ultimately sold from Signature Sounds to a Western MA concert production firm.

After all these changes, we hoped for a better-organized Festival and a great lineup.  But the lineup they announced was packed with acts I'd never heard of, and sadly featured a couple of tired veteran bands (Cake and Fleet Foxes) and a journeyman folk singer (Gregory Alan Isakov) as headliners.  Not a good lineup, but I determined to make the best of it, did some research, wrote down notes and grades in a spreadsheet and sent it to our friends for their edification, and felt I was pretty prepared.

Dave had to skip this year (he sat with the cats instead and we gave his ticket to Aldo), but Sarah and I prepared the usual stuff and then hit the road for Greenfield, on a beautiful late morning on the first full day of Summer, that had some dire rain/thunderstorm forecasts for the afternoon.  Most of the nation had been suffering through a heat wave, and the forecast was also dire on that score, predicting humid 90s even out in Greenfield.  What else is new for the GRF though?

We stopped at The People's Pint in downtown Greenfield for lunch.  I had an excellent plate of blackened shrimp tacos with beans and rice, and a couple of their beers.  Then out to Shelburne Falls to check in at the Red Rose.  We'd been texting with our friends all along, and they were right behind us, checking in themselves when we left for the 3:00 gates open.

As anticipated, the new owners have made a few changes to the Festival, with mixed outcomes.  A problem with the Franklin County Fairgrounds setup the last few years has been sound leakage between the stages.  They addressed this by moving the Main Stage a bit left and the second stage (Deans Beans) way farther back.  They eliminated the Green House Stage to allow for a more expansive Deans Beans setup, and lined up the food vendors so they'd form a consistent sound block.  They also changed the schedule so that big acts at the Main Stage did not step on quieter acts at the other stages.  These changes were successful.

One key thing that they did not change was excellent sound engineering.  This has always been a strength of the Festival and, though they had greatly shrunk the "low chairs" area that we favored and moved the Main Stage soundboard farther back, the sound at all three stages I was at was as good as ever.  I did not hear inadvertent feedback or dropped channels even once all weekend, and you could tell by the artists' reaction during their soundchecks that they were very pleased with the technical crews.  The two big stages had large VIP sections (which didn't have good sightlines), but very few VIPs.

They apparently had made things not as great for food and drink vendors, and there was less variety.  They had dropped Berkshire Brewing, the excellent beer vendor who served fresh drafts (including iconic Ginger Libation), and replaced them with a couple of not-best and expensive canned beers, as well as many varieties of hard seltzer/fruit drinks.  Yuck!  There were fewer food vendors, though the best ones were still there.

Also, one of the best things about the old Festival was the program they issued for free, with advertisements from the sponsors and with well-written thumbnails of all the acts.  But there was no printed program this year.  This was a huge failure, and so my spreadsheet was a remarkable success.  Several people printed it out and it was consulted very often.  I'd given a short description of every band (examples: "four weird white guys doing simplistic, straight ahead rock," "three loud chicks singing in unison, not bad") and a grade from "yes" to "no" with several gradients in between.  I thought people would make fun of me for over-obsessing, but there was remarkable agreement with my reviews, and the guidance was vital.

So anyway, we'd gotten there a bit after 3:00 and set up left of the soundboard at the Main Stage.  We admired the "Cake" brought by our neighbors, split up to check out the craft vendors and the stinky drinks selection, and then I ended up at the Back Porch Stage for Fantastic Cat at 4:00.  This was the "straight ahead rock" of my spreadsheet, Anthony D'Amato's current band, and they were excellent!  They wore cheap suits of different colors and white bucks and were loud and greasy.  The Festival was off to a rocking start.

But suddenly it came to a stop.  Jim Olsen (Signature Sounds was still very involved with the Festival, hosting the Back Porch Stage) interrupted the band in the middle of their fourth(?) song and told us lightning was on the way, everything was on hold, and the Festival was now under a "shelter" order.  I screwed for the car and had a beer there, and soon the lightning came in and the rain poured down.  Most of our friends were still back at the hotel and I texted them to stay there.

But then it started clearing and Sarah texted me that Fantastic Cat was still playing!  The volunteers (who didn't get good guidance from the management) let me back into the Fairgrounds, and I caught a few great acoustic tunes from Fantastic Cat.  They rotated between different places in the crowd and swapped instruments, this must have been planned as a contingency and was really good.  They did some great ensemble singing and then closed with a singalong of Ricky Nelson's Garden Party.

They ended and I hurried over to the Main Stage, where Oh He Dead were closing up their abbreviated set.  They're a soul band with some nice harmonies, would have liked to see more of them.

But soon it was time to head back to the Back Porch for the latest incarnation of progressive bluegrass band Twisted Pine.  The band is still headed by Dan Bui on mandolin and Kathleen Parks on fiddle and vocals, but now has Chris Sartori on bass (and excellent whistle) and the astounding Anh Phung on flute.  This was great, eclectic stuff!  I've seen them many times before, but had never seen Phung (who was rocking a corset and lots of eye shadow).  She was a dynamo on the flute and didn't excel on every song, but was aggressive and mixed perfectly.  They had a fantastic setlist too, alternating short, spacy songs and longer, well-arranged ones intertwined with samples, some of them traditional tunes.  They opened with Bill Monroe's The One I Love Is Gone and closed with the song of the set, John Hartford's Long Hot Summer Day.

The Festival was back on schedule, and I grabbed some food at La Veracruzana and went back to the Main Stage for Lawrence.  I'd followed them early in their career and then lost touch, but they're still out on the road and did a really fun set.  They're a large, soul-pop band with two saxes and a trombone, doing songs with good hooks.  And they're headed by a brother and sister, who are so comfortable with each other their ease translates to a fun, mellow show.

It was getting late, but I really wanted to see The Nude Party back over at the Back Porch.  Most of our group was there too, and we (mostly) all voted them as the band of the day.  They're a young rock band wearing embroidered jean jackets with a very good singer up front with an acoustic guitar.  They've got a great LA-country feel to their songs, featuring an excellent steel player, a great hollow-bodied Gibson rocking the leads, a mean Telecaster playing rhythm, a drummer, and a percussionist who fills in on keys.  At times they almost channeled the Doors, especially when they turned up the reverb on the piano, which would hammer out the lead while the singer frowned at everybody.

OK, now it was really late after a long day.  Sarah and I wanted to stay for a few tunes from Cake, but it had suddenly gotten so dark we couldn't find our chairs at the Main Stage!  Finally got oriented and found them, but after a few songs we decided it was time to call it a night.  Cake was pretty good, as I say, they're veterans who know what they're doing, and they had the crowd dancing and grooving.

Got back to the Red Rose and washed the grime and suntan lotion (that hadn't been needed) off my legs and thankfully changed to shoes and socks.  Though we'd been prepared for roasting, the day had been rainy and gloomy and never got very warm.  We waited up but no one else was back yet and we were toast, so soon to sleep.