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| Rockbridge Mountain Music Festival, late afternoon/early evening 9/7/13 |
I’m still a newbie to oldtime music festivals, but having
just returned from my 2nd ever Rockbridge festival, I can safely say
that it is my favorite so far. There’s a
relaxed, friendly, openness to Rockbridge that makes it easy to feel welcome
there. It's never too crowded. We arrived on Thursday afternoon
and found a shady spot along the Maury River, which proved to be a
great place to camp. The weather was
absolutely perfect all three days – in the upper 70’s during the day, mid to
lower 50’s at night, and no rain.
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| View from the back screen window of our tent |
As usual, we didn’t have to look far for tunes. The people camped right around us were fun to hang out with and up for playing both old-time and a surprising amount of Irish
music, although we did also venture out from our holler along the river a
couple of times and found copacetic jams in other parts of the
campground. I certainly didn’t feel
anxious or unfulfilled at the end of each day and was very content with the
variety and quality of the music I was able to take part in. I've worked hard over the last year or two to be more comfortable in these kinds of settings and that hard work is starting to pay off.
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| Our campsite |
There was a documentary photographer there all weekend named
Chris Gibbs. He was taking a lot of pictures and video so
I’m excited to see what he comes up with.
Chris has already posted a video which was taken at our campsite on
Friday afternoon featuring Sue and “Quat” from Morgantown (clawhammer banjo and
upright bass), Josh and Melinda from Pittsburgh (guitar and fiddle) and Chris
Hale on fiddle. That’s Laura on baritone
ukulele and me in the orange hat on tenor banjo with our backs to the
camera. The tune is Johnny Don’t Get
Drunk.
Rockbridge has spoiled me for oldtime mountain music
festivals and I’m looking forward going back next year and maybe even getting
there a day or two earlier.
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