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 A Production of The Folk Life ( Inc. 1976)
John McLaughlin and Jamie Downs, Editors



 



Festival Sandwich, Pt I: Knowlton Riverfest 2003. Friday night.


And Knowlton was already in progress when we got there, with a terrific funk band ruling the stage. I got Melanie Thile, my mentor when I did a show over at 'NTI for a few months, up to step a few, her lanky galoot of a husband actually up too - after just one beer - and the floor was crowded in no time. The sax player took off his long white coat in the heat, put a towel over his head, and just kept on playing, blowing everybody away.Then this crazy Russian rock-and-roll band, The Red Elvises, got rolling. (We’d got to talking behind the stage between sets, and decided they should be called Oleg 1, Oleg 2, Oleg 3, Oleg 4, and their girl-friend would be Olga.) Very funny set, starting with "lounge music" that got droller and dirtier the longer Oleg 4, burly lead singer in zebra-striped pants, dragged it out), and then into a furious rock-and-roll set with lyrics about being born in Chernobyl. Oleg 2, red-blonde dye job and smirk, twanging on a gigantic red balalaika-like thing that towered over everyone, and Oleg 1, in beaver hat and dark glasses, tipping his keyboard over so it stood on one end and he knelt to play it, framed the stage during their Genesis homage. Then everybody raced over to join Oleg 3 - Olga's seven-foot tall boyfriend (she says she believes in product, not process - one of their songs is "Sex in Paradise" - stupid bluebirds flying along, munching on butterflies, all mimed, audience joining in, roaring out "Sex in Paradise!!" - "Without the pelvic motion, thees song is worthless!"), four Olegs on one drum kit, standing up on chairs, amps etc to help Oleg 3, folded behind the kit, do his "drum solo"). Whew. That kind of act. (Yeah, they actually have other names they use onstage, but this helped me keep them straight. Olga is actually a long-legged cynical American beauty who said she liked my joke, so I should tell it over and over, great straight-woman - "So ah dae! Ah dae!" She bestowed a sweet smile on me, I blissed out, Oleg 3 came towering over - think tree in Tolkien movie - "You talking to my woman, leetle man?" We all fell out.
The Red Elvises
Mel dances with Red Elvises
Railroad Earth

Anyway, I told you that to tell you this: last act of the evening (they give everybody two hours apiece, can you believe this festival?): Introduced by Randy Bluegrass, gorgeous blonde DJ from 'NTI - it's got transmission from Brooklyn to Allentown - Now Sugar Hill recording artists, local boys made good, bluegrass jam-band that's tighter than a bug and loose as a goose both, would you welcome please - "Railroad Earth!”

Right into a couple of fast jams, ex-WNTI DJ and friend, on fiddle, Tim Carbone, leading the band, conducting and pointing with his bow. Then all of them cozying up to the mikes for a sweetly-entuned, "Won't You Come and Sing for Me?" And off into another half a dozen extended jams and medleys, traditional tunes bent beyond reason, the tapers up near the soundboard, their jaws on the deck watching their needles flip over for two fiery hours - damn, this is fun! Usual Grateful Dead dervishes all around, everybody in under the big tent, whirling happily along. Jerry may be gone, but his spirit lives on. (The Sugar Hill CD doesn't catch this live jam thing as much as does the self-produced Black Bear Sessions which I heard a couple of weeks ago on a friend's home stereo - he's a Volvo mechanic, old friend of one of the guys in the band who gave it to him). So Tim handed me a copy, and Black Bear Sessions will accompany us to Philly, and then blister the soundboard on "Roots & Wings," you bet your sweet bippy.

OK, I gotta get ready for Philly’s Saturday festival-carnival - four separate workshop stages going all day, Alison Brown Quartet and Mary Chapin-Carpenter in the afternoon concert, and then the pit tonight, Beausoleil doing the Cajun Two-Step, Eddie from Ohio wailing about "Stupid American," no doubt, and the ever-regal Odetta. Who you think will close the night? Such problems we should only have all our lives. Thanks for the morning coffee. On the road again.... John

Go To Philly - Saturday