August 1997. Yow, it's been a great summer. August is winding down and the temperature has fallen off from the peaks of July, but our festival season isn't quite over yet!
I titled this Front Lines report "Hebron and P-Valleys", but the year has been so busy that no simple title could do it justice. We started the year with a new band member; we hit the ground running and we haven't paused for much ever since. First of all, we wish to acknowledge our debt to Paul Trianosky who tided us over the New Year and into the spring. We knew from the beginning that his day-job would ultimately require too much attention and that his participation in Southern Rail could be only temporary. We're sorry he had to depart, but there was no other way he (and we) could have worked it.
With Paul T's departure, we introduced our new permanent mandolin player and vocalist, Bob Sachs. Bob is a native of northern Virginia, lived for some years in Colorado, and now resides way down south. With the addition of Bob this year and Paul Muller last fall, we now have three sons of Virginia in Southern Rail, plus founding-member Sharon, originally from Quebec. Both Bob and Paul can really sing as well as pick, so if you haven't heard us lately, then you haven't heard us!
Location: Hebron Pines Campground. We'd never played this festival before, mostly for scheduling reasons. We finally made it up there! Had a great time, but the weather was cold and rainy. Bob said it was the the farthest north he'd ever been!
Location: Mineral Springs Campground. We held a raffle. Tickets were free and the prize was an autographed can of signature Spam. The raffle was a success! So was the festival. Great weather, great music.
Location: Belknap Mill. Belknap is an old mill, the earliest standing building representing the architecture of the early Industrial Revolution. This show was part of a series run the historical society that maintains the mill. It was a great outdoor concert, at least until the sky opened up. In the time duration of just one song the sky turned from blue to black and it started raining. With the help of audience members we threw all the PA gear into the car, then moved into the mill to finish the concert acoustically. It was a great show, great fun. There we were, all dripping wet, crammed into the mill with a few hundred people, playing music while the sky outside flashed and crashed and poured oceans of water!
Location: Smith Meeting House. The Smith Meeting House is an old town hall, restored and maintained by a local historical society with funds provided in part by a bluegrass festival. We had heard of this festival before, but scheduling difficulties had prevented us from playing there. The problem is that it conflicts with Peaceful Valley, a festival we have played every year since 1987. For this year we were scheduled into Peaceful Valley for Sunday only, so on Saturday we played here (finally). What a great festival it was too! Good-size crowd, mostly local folk who prefered not to travel the 6+ hours to Shinhopple, NY. The only problem was, it was COLD! The calendar said July but the thermometer said October. Plus, it was perched up on a hill where the northwest wind could make it presence felt. Well, New England weather has always had a mind of its own, I suppose. We enjoyed the festival very much, especially the chance to visit with friends we don't see too often. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay late because the road to Shinhopple beckoned.
We have this nifty computer program that finds driving routes from one place to another. It had come up with a route from central New Hampshire to central New York by crossing southern New Hampshire and Vermont on state routes only, with no interstates until Albany, NY. According to the program's predictions, this route was 60 miles shorter and 45 minutes faster than the route we would have taken. In the "old days", such routes were the only way to drive from one city to another. Today, however, you never know what local traffic will be like. So it was with some trepidation that we decided to follow the computer's directions. Surprise! Surprise! We made into Walton, NY late at night and within 15 minutes of the computer's prediction.
Peaceful Valley was quite a "happening" event this year. Unfortunately it was saddened by the passing away of Arnold Banker, the patriarch of the Banker family and the festival's founder. However, Arnold's wife and sons did an admirable job pulling off this year's festival and the turnout was terrific. So was the music.
How many of you readers know what "Pemi" really stands for? You'd know if you've ever attended the Pemi Bluegrass Festival (or hiked in the White Mountains). Pemi is short for Pemigewasset, a river running out of the valley east of Franconia Ridge, southward into New Hampshire. Of course, everyone in New England just refers to it as "the Pemi". In fact, the Pemi runs through the Branch Brook Campground where the festival is held, so the name is quite appropriate.
If you've read our past Front Lines reports, you'll know that last year it rained cats and dogs one afternoon. And the previous year it rained cats and dogs all weekend. Well, not this year. This year's weather saw a return to the beautiful early-fall-like days the festival had seen in the past. As usual, the attendance was up from last year, and everyone had a great time! Of course, by this time in the summer the details all start to blur together in my own mind...
One final note: A few weeks ago we played a show at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. One noteworthy feature of their shows is the stage, essentially an open area equipped with large fountains for water-and-light shows. These aren't little lawn-sprinkler-sized fountains, though; they're big powerful monsters capable of blowing masses of water nearly 100 ft in the air. And the stage has six of them (if I remember correctly). Of course, during music shows the fountains are supposed to be off. Unfortuantely, these fountains are controlled by an automatic timer system, which means a human doesn't necessarily get involved in their operation except to turn the whole system on or off occasionally. Which means someone is supposed to disengage the whole system when a band starts setting up for performance. Well, you can guess what I'm about to describe...
We'd been doing soundcheck for about half an hour when the water curtain across the front of the stage turned on, raising a pretty wall of water about six feet high but threatening no one and no thing. Apparently, this feature is sometimes used as a "stage curtain" before some shows, so the stage-hands helping us out figured someone must have been back in the control house fiddling with it. Then about 30 seconds later the two large fountains behind us went "whoooosh" and soared to their full height! So there we were, with the mics and monitor speakers all set up, and Sharon's bass fiddle and stage amp plugged in at the center of the stage, and instrument cases and other gear scattered randomly around, and us wondering what was happening. At this point, one of the stage-hands yelled "Get off the stage NOW!!" A second later two more fountains started billowing. I grabbed Sharon's bass, yanked the cables off, and headed for the wings. Fortunately a dry path still existed between where we stood and where we needed to be to stay dry. Someone back in the audio-control room had already lunged for the fountain controls, so before any damage was done, everything began to shut down. So after maybe 30 seconds of, shall we say, intense excitement, the stage was more or less back to normal, except that most of its floor surface had to be swept dry.
Once normalcy was restored, the stage crew explained what happened (as if we really needed an explanation). Apparently someone had forgotten to disengage the automatic timer. When the first water curtain had turned one, no one questioned it except to wonder why it was running higher than they usually ran it for that purpose. When the big fountains started, they knew right away what the trouble was. Fortunately, the big fountains were programmed for a staggered start-up sequence, which is why we had a few seconds to escape the deluge. This had apparently happened once before, so we had the privilege of their experience and their quick reaction. Ah, nobody ever said playing music was supposed to be serene.
We're off to Thomas Point Beach in a few days. See you there.