I should have written this last night when I got home from the festival with my head still just thrumming to the music. Maybe someday I'll be able to piece this all together in some kind of order, but now it's still just snatches...
Rory Block is stuck in my head as some kind of Delta Blues Banshee -- a real mystical, scary force of nature. A woman not to be trifled with.
Same for Mindy Smith, only different. Impossibly slight with her shoe-polish black hair and cigarettes, rolling up the windows in the front of her black SUV while her guitar and mandolin backup squatted in the gravel behind the open hatchback, scratching sharpie setlists. And when did mandolin players start looking like that? Like... I don't know. Punk rock stars? (Is there such a thing?)
Chris Smither - the Irish wolfhound of the bunch - towering, rangy - his hand totally engulfs yours in a handshake. Be careful not to knock off his fingerpicks... Sitting back-to a picnic table, tuning his guitar dressed in Johnny Cash black.
Then I'm sitting cross-legged at the top of the stairs, back of the stage, looking right under the hi-hat at the drummers of the day: Inner Visions Reggae, Braddigan's funk-acoustic-rock, The Samples with their own brand of it - "Feel us shaking" they sing, and you can - the whole stage is shaking and I'm overwhelmed with the power and precision of it all - even when the Samples drummer has knocked his gong cymbal right over and the sound crew has to rush to get it back up and in play.
And Nashville! Nashville incarnate in the form of Johnny Hiland and his manager - that old-school kind of manager excitement that money just can't buy holding on to this new-school, blind kid from Maine goes down to Nashville and sets the town on fire with his guitar playing kind of fairytale story and Johnny's on stage and he's got the two halves of the crowd clapping against each other and his manager gives me a wink and a pat on the shoulder and then I've got to track down Winifred Horan from Solas so I can tell her what a big fan I am and that we listen to their albums all the time at home and when she's done playing and I've handed her a copy of my CD to listen to on the bus she gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and says to say hi to my family...
And it was 8:45 before anyone even mentioned bug dope (except for Mick McAuley who insisted that the buggers were sweet on him and that his allergies would provide a robust reaction should he be neglectful) and the tide came in and the sun did shine and the clouds provided the only little bit of shade we needed...
Maybe there was more to it than that, I don't remember right now, but I sure did have a hard time sleeping last night.
