So between Saturday and Sunday I saw: Dar Williams, Janis Ian, Josh Ritter, Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, a great huge conglomeration of Guthries and Seegers and Reagons and Ungars and who knows what-all else, Tao Seeger Band, Suzanne Vega, Indigo Girls, and Red Horse (Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka, and Eliza Gilkyson).
As
Ditto Pete Seeger: he is 92 years old, and we wanted to see Pete. And now we have. If I'd gotten fixated on what exactly he was singing, or how many songs, it would have been easy to get disappointed. Instead--hey, look, Pete Seeger. He can only really sing one song at a go these days, but his style of shouting out the line for everybody before we're all supposed to sing it served him well in this context, made it less obvious that he had been fairly weak and winded at the end of the song he did sing. It moved the focus from what he couldn't do to what he could, and that was really lovely. Also I am greatly fond of Tao Rodriguez Seeger, not least because I am a sucker for people who adore their grandpas. For some reason. He did a version of "Well May the World Go" that made me extremely happy and also made me want to hire a steel drum player to follow Tao around for when he needs one.
Other things I think should exist: Josh Ritter should always have an ASL interpreter at his concerts, and that ASL interpreter should never have been briefed in advance. Because this poor woman's face. It was better than
I wish the Indigo Girls had been more political--it was Clearwater, for the love of, um, Pete, not a random folk festival--they clearly trust their own fans more than random folk festival fans with their political stuff, and I get that, but Lord knows everyone else was going political there, and I like the Indigo Girls' political stuff much better than most other people's. And I wish the sound balance had been better for Red Horse--we left partway through the set because the sound from another stage was so overwhelming that we couldn't parse what Red Horse was doing very well. Finally, I wish Sarah Lee and Johnny had not decided to do a stint as a fake band on a sitcom--okay, they didn't literally, but that's what they sounded like. Dad said, when I was telling him this on the phone, "Sounded like parodies of themselves, huh?", and I said yes, but I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with that until a few days later, and it was that they didn't even sound like parodies of themselves, they sounded like parodies of someone else. Someone with far less musical background than I know they have.
But on the whole we had a good time, and it had the most Mrissable festival food I've ever had. Such tasty plantains. So many veggie options for when I have been out in the hot sun and do not want to even smell meat. So very good. Wish I had some of those plantains for lunch today, even without the hot sun. Ah well. They don't really travel.