Part of the reason that I haven’t been blogging much is that when I’m not working or writing or playing music I’m outside of internet service. For instance July 15th through July 19th I was at Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in Oak Hill, New York.

Grey Fox is like the Woodstock of Bluegrass. You drive for 8 hours to camp in a field for five days listening to music, playing music, talking about music, writing music—basically you just live, breath, and eat music and don’t get any sleep. It’s awesome. Kind of like visiting an alternate universe where the biggest point of contention is whether or not drums should be allowed on stage and the only crimes are littering, public intoxication, and smoking weed (Not that I did any of those things…okay I might have littered a little bit, but it was a strong breeze and I didn’t feel like getting out of my chair).

Anyway, without some form of structure this blog post will just sort of deteriorate into a mess of gobbledygook about bass solos and daydreams, so I’m going to count down my Top Five Favorites of Grey Fox 2015.

5. Unplugging:

As stated above, there wasn’t any internet at Grey Fox (well actually there was because they provide limited wifi, but I chose not to partake). It was awesome to have nearly a full week of no work emails, no calls, no texts, no Facebook (I know, how did I ever survive, right?), no TV. The downside of that is no IMDB, which for those of you who don’t know, is my favorite website. I spend way too much time on IMDB. I know way too much about movies and TV that I really don’t need to know. But, my IMDB withdrawal aside, it was great. There’s a certain amount of anxiety that I ascribe to the internet. I spend way too much time thinking about whether I might have new emails, or notifications on Facebook. Has somebody subscribed to my blog (which you should by the way)? Are there any new likes on my page (you should also like my Facebook page while you’re at it and check out the Miners Creek page too)? I didn’t have to worry about any of that while I was at Grey Fox and it was awesome. There are some days when I just want to pack my bass and my dog and a few changes of underwear in my car and hit the road and spend my life going from festival to festival only checking email once a week at little roadside diners.

4. Open Mic:

We arrived at the festival on Wednesday, a day before the music actually started, so that we could claim our encampment. A lot of people do this. In fact, we were among the more reasonable early birds, rolling in at around noon. There are some people who arrive at the gates at something like 2 in the morning. Actually, there are some people who come a week ahead of time and they’ve created their own little mini festival/picking party called the Fox Hole. People love Grey Fox so much that it’s reproduced. But anyway, I’ve gotten away from what I was going to say. While there may not be acts up on the big stage on Wednesday, there is an open mic at the dance tent. We (that’s Mom, Dad, and I, also known as the Miners Creek Trio) signed up and as we were warming up, waiting for the acts to start, a fiddler walked up to us while we were playing one of Mom’s original songs (This Goose Ain’t Layin’ No More). He stood and listened for a verse and then he started playing with us and it sounded awesome. We don’t have a fiddler in the band (If you know a Bluegrass fiddler looking to play for little or no pay let us know) and so it was really special getting to hear that addition to our sound. And then, later on while we were still warming up, our friend Jesse walked past. Now, Jesse was a founding member of the band and our mandolin player. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the time to play with us much, but he knew the song we were going to play and so when we went to perform the open mic we ended up with a full five piece band plus Jesse’s little daughter dancing. It was awesome. Probably the biggest audience we’ve ever played for, definitely the most encouraging. They clapped for every break, they cheered the long drawn our harmony at the end. It was fabulous. But the best part was that as we were getting off the stage a woman runs up to us and said “Oh my god, you’re Miners Creek!” It turns out she was one of the DJs from WERU’s Bronzewound (Thursdays 8-10pm on 89.9 FM). We’re going to be playing on WERU’s Wicked Good Music Hour on August 22nd  from 4 pm-5 pm and so WERU has been playing some of our songs. It’s hard to describe the feeling of accomplishment that comes with realizing that people appreciate your art. It’s more than just pride. It’s like you’ve reached a level of understanding with them. Like you’ve shown them a bit of your soul and they’ve said, “I get you and I like you”. It’s connection on the deepest level and it’s amazing.

3. Bass Odyssey:

So, we discovered some new bands this year as well as got a chance to see some of our old favorites again. But one of my favorite new bands (new to me, that is. They’ve actually been around for a while) was Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen. They have a remarkable, clean sound. Their showmanship and control of the stage is masterful. They’re freaking great musicians, the kind who at the same time make me want to just give up because I’ll never be that good and work harder because maybe, just maybe I could be.

I watched Dirty Kitchen’s late night set up on the big stage. I’m not sure what time it was when they started, but it must have been sometime around 11 or 12 at night. The stars were out and I was leaning back in my chair, sitting on the top of a hill looking up at this little scoop of heaven while majestic music filled the valley. It was pure bliss and then they let their bass player (Dan Booth) loose. I’ve never heard such an amazing bass solo. It was transfixing. More than transfixing, it felt like a turning point in my understanding of what the bass can do. It was inspiring.

2. Tommy in the Rain:

There’s a band called the Hillbenders, there about as close as you can get to a Rock’n’Roll Bluegrass band. They’ve just released an album wherein they play the entirety of The Who’s rock opera Tommy on acoustic instruments. It’s about as epic as the Bluegrass world gets.

I have really good memories of sitting in my dad’s car listening to the original Tommy when I was maybe ten or eleven years old. Looking back that was probably too young to be introduced that subject matter, but I didn’t understand what was going on, I just thought it was awesome that my dad was sharing his favorite music with me, that we were bonding.

Bluegrass is another thing that my dad and I have bonded over, so combining Bluegrass with Tommy is like having one epic Father/Daughter Bonding Extraveganza. We were both stoked.

And then it rained. And when I say rained I mean it was not-a-cloud-in-the-sky-90-degrees-in-the-shade sunny and then heaven drained the bathtub on our heads.

It was beautiful.

At first, I rushed with the rest of my family to get under the shelter of the shade tents and stash my bag (which contained my writer’s notebook and manuscript) somewhere dry. It took me about a second to ask myself why I was hiding from the rain. I was sweaty from the sun and grimy from the sunscreen and having been camping in a field for three days. I had dead skin cells sloughing off me. I felt gross and scuzzy. So after a second of hiding under the shade tent, I turned around and walked back out into the rain.

It was glorious. The band was still playing. The rain was cool but not cold. I took my hair out of my pony tail and scrubbed my scalp with my fingernails. The rain washed away all the grossness I’d accumulated.

I wasn’t the only one who stayed out in the rain. I even inspired my mother and cousin and dad to follow me. We danced in the rain until the band was forced to stop playing because the wind was blowing the rain onto the stage and even then we kept on dancing. We applauded the thunder and whooped as the wind blew harder.

One man shouted (in jest), “What happened to Tommy?” People kept singing the songs even after the band stopped playing. One group of people in matching tie-dye t-shirts started chanting “Let them play! Let them play!” The stage manager came to the edge of the stage and shouted back, “They’ll get electrocuted!” The tie-dye folks took a moment to confer and then replied, “See you tonight! See you tonight!” because the band would be back on the dance stage later that day. And that I think was the most amazing part of that afternoon, how happy and cool people were with whatever happened. And we were happy because we were there, experiencing this once in a lifetime moment together.

1. Family:

The best part of Grey Fox is family. We meet up with my aunt and uncle and cousins and have ourselves a little family reunion. My cousin Emma and I shared a tent together. We all laughed together and danced together and shared this fabulous experience together. And I want to continue sharing this experience with as many people I can. I want my future spouse to love this place as much as I do. I want my kids to grow up running barefoot and half naked through the fields, attending bluegrass academy. My mother and aunt have both stated that they would like to be hippy grandmothers chasing kids in tie-dye diapers around the festival.

 

Thanks everyone for reading and check out Grey Fox. It’s a real blast.