i’ve heard tell of music festivals and look forward to going to one someday! ha just kidding. i just wanted to write a little thing about
music festivals, it being that time of the year and so forth.

first off, one of the cool things about going to a music festival is you get to just focus on music, for several days at a whack. it’s nice to spend a few days listening to, and making music. from a performer aspect the schedule alternates between clubs and festivals, and the clubs are more of a one nighter trip so there’s travel every day. it’s nice when you get to stay in one place a couple days.

another cool thing is seeing this whole family of musicians that i strangely only see at festivals. considering thirty or forty years of elapsed time you get to see folks’ kids, and see them grow up and all that. they go from being grubby booger-encrusted kids pawing over the backstage catering, to grubby booger-encrusted adults sucking up all the backstage beer. but nonetheless it is interesting to see. haha.

the “secret music.” this is really my favorite part. see, there’s all this stuff that artists jam and play around on when no audience is there. it’s a really cool repertoire. that’s the funnest bit for me the jamming.

another cool feature of the music festival bag is getting to see new things with a soft ticket. in other words you can gamble on music you haven’t seen yet, it doesn’t cost anything extra to go and see an artist’s set on a side stage. i’m always on the lookout for something good music wise. sometimes you can stumble across the coolest stuff. it gives me a chance in my own work to have some folks hear my music without having to commit to a hard ticket until they get ready.

the first festival i ever went to was the glen rose bluegrass festival down in texas. there was so much to learn from all the musicians and bands that came there, a wonderful experience. about 1973-4. i got to see a lot of the great bluegrass bands play there.

as i write this i’m getting ready to go play the san fransico jazz fest next week with my good friend david grisman, then the string summit comes up outside portland, we done been out to delfest and so forth. a buncha cool stuff. anyways, hope to see you out there, it’s nice to get away from the doom.