Saturday, May 1, 2010

Folk and frybread

This year's Tucson Folk Festival experience was very different from the last one. Nothing about the festival changed. Just my approach to it.

Last year I cleared the entire weekend and saw as many of my favorite musicians as I could. Fun, but exhausting. This year I decided to relax a little.

The one must-see was Robyn Landis, because she's not from Tucson. If I didn't catch her, it might be another year before I got to hear her live again. So, an hour before her performance, I parked about a mile away from the festival (no point fighting people for parking spaces on such a nice day) and ambled in the direction of the festival (taking in an antique car show along the way).

Once on the grounds, I saw a couple of people I knew. ("Are you playing?" "Nah, not this time.") I met Ron the Drummer at Old Town Artisans maybe ten minutes before Robyn went on, and we listened to her together. Then I meandered around to where other people were playing.

I didn't carry a program. I didn't get the names of the groups I heard. I went into one of the vendor tents to say hi to the guy who peddles funky batik clothes and has sold me many shirts over the years. I walked up to a booth where people were handing out flyers for the legalization of marijuana. I signed up for their mailing list. At one point I bought some frybread and ate it while I listened.

Eventually I meandered back to the car, stopping at a couple of bookstores along the way.

I missed a few people I would have liked to see. My hope is that I'll be able to get to their shows individually. In the meantime, I'm glad I took it easy. Sometimes it's nice to just let the experience wash over you.

2 comments:

Searching for Answers said...

Nice. That's the same approach I took this year.
I missed Robyn but I did catch the winner of the songwriting contest. I think his name is Wil Edwards.
Either way, there was a guy named Wil on the Plaza stage that was really, really, really good. That's really x3.
Good.

cinderkeys said...

I didn't catch him. At least I don't think so. But I'll try to remember the name in case he's there next year. :)