Thursday, April 24, 2003

I awake at around 4:00 AM and get out of bed to read.  The temperature has fallen into the mid-thirties and it’s chilly inside our trailer.  Not knowing whether our gas heater will work on the twelve volt system, I sit under one of Irene’s afghans and read.  After a while I crawl back into bed and fall into a fitful sleep.  At 6:30 I wake up again and get out of bed, turn on the heater, and make coffee.  Everything works fine, except that the fire alarm goes off when the heater starts to blow.  I wave a towel at it and it stops beeping.  At 7:00 I fire up the generator and try to run the toaster.  The generator’s circuit breaker blows.  It turns out we must be careful not to run too many heating appliances.  The micro-wave won’t be available at all, nor will the air conditioner, which we seldom use anyway.  We could watch TV, but Irene won’t let me set up the satellite dish.  Probably a good decision.  We’re beginning to settle into this only slightly different approach to living in our rig.  We listen to NPR news on the radio as I write and Irene putters.  The festival will officially get under way this afternoon, so we have plenty of time to get organized, meet other people on the lot, and maybe even do some shopping and hear some musicians jamming about the campus.

At around 2:30 we head down to the main campus.  We decide to do the major portion of our Merlefest shopping before the big crowds arrive.  The Gift Shop is open.  We buy T-shirts with a picture of Doc Watson on the front and a list of the acts on the back.  Irene buys a denim jacket.  We buy the festival DVD as well as a couple of CDs.  Hats and a small stuffed bear for Anna complete this portion of the buying.  We walk over to the craft area where the displays are relatively limited a pretty high quality.  We walk through the tent, leave, and then return to purchase a lovely, small cherry burl bowl.  Its primitive look and low luster finish give it a somewhat rough look distinguishing it from larger and fancier pieces we have seen.  Next we walk into the Merlefest Mall, a long tent filled with CDs, tapes, and DVDs of present and past Merlefest participants.  We realize we could spend hundreds of dollars just buying one CD of even the performers we especially like.  We will need to exercise a good deal of care in selecting music we want to take with us.  I urge Irene to stop me when I want to buy a banjo, an instrument I have always wanted to learn to play.  Since the cost between $300 and thousands of dollars, this won’t be too difficult for her.  We do buy chances at a raffle benefiting the community college.  A big win would bring us a $4200 banjo or even a sponsor’s ticket to next year’s event, including a week at the local Hampton Inn.

It’s nearly 3:30, so we move into the Watson Stage area to take our seats.  We will hardly leave these seats for the next eight hours.  By some stroke of luck, and the expenditure of an extra $50.00 last fall when we bought our tickets, we’ve managed seats right in the center in the twentieth row.  We’re amazed such seats were available.  Probably, because we ordered our tickets on the first day available to new attendees, we got seats a previous person had not renewed.  A slightly chubby bearded man leads an aged blind man onto the stage.  With the arrival of Richard and Doc Watson, the Merlefest has begun.

Blind since early childhood, Arthel “Doc” Watson has been a revered name in folk music and bluegrass for over fifty years.  He first came to some prominence at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, benefiting from the folk revival of the 1960’s   Through the late sixties until 1985, Doc Watson toured and recorded with his son, Merle.  Along the way they won several Grammies and generated a strong following.  Doc is known as one of the finest flat top guitar pickers ever.  In 1985 Merle was killed in a quirky tractor accident which occurred after he hurt himself using a circular saw and took to his tractor to find medical help.  On a steep side-hill, the tractor turned over, falling on top of Merle and killing him instantly.  Shortly thereafter, the Dean at Wilkes Community College met with Doc Watson the propose a benefit concert.  The first concert, which took place on the bed of a hay wagon has grown into an annual festival of American music drawing 85,000 spectators, vendors, and volunteers to this small North Carolina town each year during the last weekend of April.  Doc and his grandson, Richard, play a couple of songs.  Doc’s picking is fast and clear, his voice strong.  To the applause of the still small audience, they walk off the stage to be replaced by the first event, a tribute to one of the Merlefest founders featuring a local bluegrass band playing acoustic instruments. 

At ten 'til five, Rhonda Vincent and the Rage are introduced.  Vincent is a very attractive, hard edged country singer backed by a strong band.  Their music, featuring a fine fiddler, a strong banjo, and Vincent's quality mandolin playing and good country voice provides a strong lead-in to the evening.  They shamelessly hawk their new CD, as do all the bands, and present a varied and interesting program.  On finishing they emphasize that they will be available in the Mall tent to shake hands, give pictures, and sign albums.  Later I mosey over to the tent and they’re still there posing, shaking, and signing. 

The main stage is a a very high tech affair with huge banks of speakers, a very sophisticated television setup featuring at least four cameras, and a huge TV screen giving folks sitting behind the reserved seat area a view of the proceedings.  To the side is a small log cabin where smaller acts perform while the main stage is being prepared for the next act.  These small stages give individuals or small groups an opportunity to do fifteen or twenty minutes between the headliners – a good idea because it means there is almost no stop  On this first day of Merlefest, only these two stages are in action.  Later on there will be simultaneous music at a dozen stages as well as a number of venues where informal jamming can take place.  Too much for us, but we’ll get more than our fill of good music.

Wayback, a California group, is introduced next.  This group is described as blending “everything from folk to cowboy jazz to bluegrass, old-time, Tin Pan Alley, swing, country and western, Celtoid, and rhumba, not to mention their eccentric original material.”  Their leader exudes ironic California cool, putting down hecklers calling for songs and security staff walking across the grounds.  They feature a lightning fast lead guitar player who does wonderful call and response playing with their equally exciting mandolin/fiddle player.  This group moves from a lovely a-capella whaling ballad to screaming rock sounds.  All their instruments are wired acoustic, as are most of the instruments featured at Merlefest.  Their performance is riveting.  Maybe we’ll buy one of their CD’s

 Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys come out next.  “Dr.” (who knows?) Ralph Stanley has been known to gospel and traditional country music people for about fifty years, but has only become well known nationally since he sang the dirgelike “O Death” in the surprise George Clooney hit “O Brother, Where Art Though” a Coen brothers film.  Stanley sang in the forties and fifties with his brother, who, sadly, died.  Thereafter, he has traveled singing his high lonesome tenor and playing a traditional banjo.  I had heard him interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”  He seemed to find it difficult to say much, and the interview sounded like torture for Gross.  As Stanley is  introduced, he comes on stage dressed in a black suit wearing a white cowboy hat.  He introduces the other members of his group as they play solo’s and sing songs in which they are featured.  Occasionally he chimes in on a chorus, otherwise he stands stolidly in the center, not moving or performing much.  He shows a little salt as he introduces the bass player, with whom he has traveled for thirty years, as having been laid eighteen times and drunk 62 times during their tour.  Jim Lauderdale is introduced as a guest.  Stanley and Lauderdale have performed together on a Grammy winning album.  The highlight of their bit is a song called “She’s Looking at Me” in which three singers, including Stanley’s son Ralph Stanley II, vie for the attention of a girl in the audience.  Stanley sings “O Death” a capella as well as a couple of lovely and haunting gospel songs.  I am a little disappointed.  Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, singing traditional harmonies on acoustic instruments seem pallid between the excitement and energy of the groups surrounding them.

The feature act for the evening, Asleep at the Wheel, comes on next, after an interlude on the Cabin Stage by the lead banjoist John McEuen from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.  Asleep at the Wheel is a driving country swing band led by six foot seven inch Ray Benson and features a fiddle duo, electric piano, steel guitar/saxophone, and a great drummer.  This is the first all electric band in what has been largely an acoustic event.  Benson’s deep bass voice and fast electric guitar picking mesmerize the crowd as they play western swing standards from the thirties and Texas rock to Townes Van Zandt ballads.  The air gets colder as their playing gets hotter.  The crowd is wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags, but their enthusiasm never flags, even though we’ve been sitting and listening for over six hours.  They finish with  a rousing set of Texas oriented songs.  We leave, despite the fact that there’s still one more act on the evening’s agenda.  We walk up the hill to the RV lot, knowing there’s still lots more to see and hear.