To borrow a metaphor from the Merry Pranksters by way of the Deadhead community, a proper festival is a kind of acid test; an inherently chaotic event that the attendee must figure out how to deal with both in the moment and after the fact. In the moment, the experience is a tangled mess of missed opportunities, frustrations, joy, and transcendent moments. What we are able to focus on in that moment and after the fact largely shapes the experience that we have. As any deadhead will tell you though, past performance does not indicate future success. Just because you passed the last acid test, doesn’t mean you won’t fail the next one.
On its surface Floydfest is a five day music festival that is held on a mountain top about 30 minutes south of the town of Floyd in south western Virginia. The festival has been an annual affair for 20 years, minus the obvious issues in 2020. My first experience with the festival was as a volunteer in (I think) 2009, but I’ve been attending regularly since 2011. There are elements of camping festivals that I enjoy and elements of them that I don’t enjoy. Since I started attending them in the mid 90’s I’ve worked to develop a variety of tricks to minimize the hassle so I’m more likely to focus on the good. This is still a work in progress.
Wednesday – Load In
My experience with Floydfest 2021 begins in the early afternoon on Wednesday. The process of getting on and off the site is an annual challenge that seems to impact most folks. In my mind the challenge has morphed into a demarcation line delimiting the real world from the festival. The struggle to get your camp site set up, then becomes the cost of entry for the experience that awaits. Once the threshold had been crossed I wondered off to grab some lunch and ended up at the beer garden stage, one of the two stages that are running on Wednesday.
As a side note, I would seriously like to suggest that the Inner Arbor Trust look into setting up a beer garden in Symphony Woods. Nothing elaborate; a couple food trucks, some pop up tents for our local breweries, a wooden stage. Something smaller and more intimate then the Chrysalis stage off in the trees and shade. Just an idea.
My first band of the weekend, and in fact the first live music I’ve seen since before the pandemic, was the string band Into The Fog from Raleigh, NC. The band’s style is in line with the modern take on string band music that we’ve seen over the last decade or so with the rise of folks like Greensky Bluegrass and Yonder Mountain String Band. Mixing some nice traditional songs, like Jack-A-Roe and Sitting On Top Of The World, with original numbers. The band was obviously having the time of their life playing and the enthusiasm was infectious. In the middle of their set one of the members thanked their mom for dragging him to the festival 10 years early when he was a kid. He admitted that that weekend he promised himself that he’d play the festival one day and he was over joyed to have fulfilled that promise to himself. Needless to say this confession was met with cheers from the crowd before the band got back down to business.
After Into The Fog’s set it finally hit me how much the load in had taken out of me. I headed back to the camp site for a nap which then evolved into a low key evening. It’s important to pace yourself at events like this and there was no one playing on Wednesday that I couldn’t see again later in the weekend.
Thursday – Finding my mountain legs
While a festival on a mountain top has a number of benefits, from great views to a near constant light breeze, it also has challenges. Flat campsites are basically nonexistent. Placing a chair in a way where it sits flat becomes an art form. Even walking and dancing on perpetually uneven terrain can be something you have to get used to. It’s part of the process of climatizing to the experience, learning to lean into the environment instead of fighting it. With the festival proper getting a late state on Thursday, this is a perfect chance to reacquire your mountain legs and reacquaint yourself with the festival site.
The music for me started after lunch on Thursday with Mason Via and Hot Trail Mix. Mason is a guitarist and songwriter from North Carolina who also happens to be the newest member of Old Crow Medicine Show. Hot Trail Mix is in a similar vein to OCMS with that old school mountain country string band music. I’m not sure what the status of Hot Trail Mix is now that Mason is in OCMS, but I’m hoping he and the rest of the band are able to keep it going. It was a wonderful way to start the day off.
After Mason’s set it was time to head over to the other side of the venue to see Abby Bryant and the Echoes on the Hill Holler stage. Every year Floydfest holds a competition where they book a group of small up and coming bands and have them play at different times through out the festival. The audience then votes on which band they like the best and the winner and runner up get prize packages and the chance to come back the next year. Abby Bryant was the winner of the 2019 competition. For some reason in my head I had her pegged as a post-Janis kind of outfit; a rock band with a powerful female vocalist similar to something like The Broadcast. What I got though was something more soulful and funkier, especially when they invited a guest sax player to join them (note to the band: make the sax player permanent). Hopefully they drop a proper album soon (Spotify only has three singles) because I’m really interested in spending some time with this band and getting to know them.
Festival tip: Talk to the people around you and ask them who they’ve seen that they liked. A random conversation over lunch lead me to checking out Bandits On The Run from NYC. The group is a three piece indie folk outfit with a “quirky” line up (cello, accordion, and the guitarist plays a suit case drum). This kind of thing can very quickly move into kitsch or twee territory, but they kept it on track with solid song writing and great three part harmonies. Another group that I need to spend some more time with. Thankfully, they have a couple of releases on Spotify for me to work through.
One day I’m going to see Devon Gilfillian on a stage that doesn’t have a sun beating down on it and this will be a good day. I first saw Devon at FF a couple of years ago at the Hill Holler stage. The set gave me a mild case of heat stroke that took me out of commission for the rest of the day, but was totally worth it. This year he’d graduated to the main stage. If I’d been smart I would have headed back to the seat I’d set up near the soundboard and enjoyed the set with a nice breeze. Devon’s brand of soul and R&B pulls you in close to the stage though and I wasn’t fighting it. Unfortunately this meant I had to bail part way through when I realized I was getting over heated again, but the little I got was totally worth it.
While I left Devon’s set early, in the end it wasn’t enough. The key to passing the acid test of a music festival is listening to your body and not pushing it further then its ready to go. After grabbing some dinner it was obvious to me that I was done. I decided to bail on seeing the Old Crow Medicine Show headliner set and instead headed back to the camp site and took it easy.
Friday – Slipping into the grove
There’s a sense of calm and excitement that falls over you when you’re in sync with the festival. You’ve oriented yourself to your surroundings and have slipped into a state of mind where you’re fully ready to accept what happens on its own terms. Friday was the day when it all lined up for me. As a result it’s also the day where my notes start having gaps in them. This was also my exploration day. With no “must see” groups outside the headliner, this was the day to wonder around and check out names I’d heard but never listened to or names I’d never even heard of. As a result comments here are limited since I’m still digesting what these folks are doing, but these are the artists I made note of to check out later.
Friday’s music began with singer songwriter Bailey Bigger from Memphis, TN. I have to confess that singer songwriters rarely wow me out of the gate. I typically have to spend some time with their songs before they start to open up to me. That said, I always love starting a day off this way and Bailey impressed me enough that I made a note to check her stuff out when I got home.
Festival tip: If you don’t have a stage to be at, wonder around and see where you end up. After Bailey’s set I wondered around the field some checking out a few groups before looking for some shade at the Throwdown tent and coming across Short and Company from KY doing that kind of soulful bluesy kind of rock thing.
After Short and Company I headed back to the mainstage for one of those names that I’ve heard before, but haven’t had a chance to check out yet, Rebekah Todd and the Odyssey. What I got was a delightful set of soulful songs that left me really curious about what this woman is doing and what her forthcoming album is going to sound like.
My intention after this set had been to catch a panel discussion that included Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew and then see Free Union, a band who I had briefly caught on Thursday and was curious about. Instead for some reason I decided to grab some dinner which lead to watching a set by the Mama Said String Band. I do need to keep an eye out for Free Union in the future, but overall I’m not complaining.
After dinner it was time to change into some warmer clothes and head out for Friday night’s headliner, Turkuaz with Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew recreating the classic Talking Heads album Remain In Light. I’m not sure what to add here. They did exactly what they promised and it was as amazing as you’d expect.
Saturday/Sunday – The rain gods demand tribute
A rule of Floydfest. It is not a matter of if it will rain, it is a matter of how much and when. If your lucky you get a light rain at 3AM while you’re in your tent and it doesn’t impact you. If you’re very unlucky you get 16 hours of heavy rain. (ironically, that was one of my favorite Floydfests. By the time the rain let up there was a strong sense of comradery among those of us who stuck it out.)
Saturday’s music began with Restless Leg String Band in the beer garden tent. To be honest, I don’t remember much from this set, but listening to a string band in a beer garden is never a bad thing.
I then braved the main stage sun again for songwriter Katie Pruitt, this time being smart and opting for my seat instead of the stage. Katie’s been getting a lot of attention recently for her album Expectations and it is well deserved. I included her single Look the Other Way on one of the WWJRD playlists.
After Katie finished I grabbed a quick dinner and headed back to the beer garden stage. The idea was to catch L Shaped Lot and The Broadcast. I’d really enjoyed seeing L Shaped Lot at my first Floydfest and was kind of surprised to see they were still going strong so was looking forward to catching up with them. The Broadcast is a group that I’ve listened to on Spotify (they actually have a track on the next WWJRD) and was really interested in finally seeing them live. So this was all set to be a nice late afternoon/early evening before catching the headliner that night.
And this is where the acid test reminds you that you are not the one in control.
The rain started shortly after L Shaped Lot started up. A light rain/drizzle, it wasn’t much of an issue. I was sitting in my chair with my umbrella pulled low. We even had a fun experience when a low hanging cloud enveloped the mountain top. When the cloud wondered off the rain came in harder. Then the wind picked up. When the rain started coming in sideways and my umbrella wasn’t helping anymore I abandoned my chair for better cover. All and all the rain wasn’t that bad. It came in hard, but it also left fairly quickly. As it started to lighten up I headed back into the beer garden to grab my chair and then headed back to the camp site to see if there were any issues.
As I got near my site I could see I had an issue. The rain had created a dimple in the EZUP that I use as cover for my tent. The water in the dimple had weighed the cover down which created a bigger dimple, which weighed the cover down even more, rinse repeat. There was now probably about 2 gallons of water laying against the top of my tent waiting to pop like a water balloon. With some help from passing folks I was able to clear the water from the roof (drenching myself in the process). I quickly changed into some dry clothes and then surveyed the situation. The EZUP was toast. The frame was bent and the cover was stretched so bad it was leaking. A quick check of the weather on my phone let me know that I was clear for the rest of the night, but there was a chance of more rain on Sunday.
My original plan had been to leave the festival on Monday morning so I could see Molly Tuttle and Brent Cobb, but if we got serious rain on Sunday again I was toast. In the end I decided to not risk it. I packed up most of my stuff and moved it to my car. Sunday morning I got up, packed the rest of my stuff up and left. Ironically, the Sunday load out was the easiest load out I’ve ever had. Even my tent, which I typically have to wrestle back into its bag seemed to take pity on me after the previous night and packed up easily. By 10:30 I was pulling on to the Blue Ridge Parkway and heading home.
Aftermath
A good festival is controlled chaos. You check your expectations at the gate and you try to figure out how to survive what it gives you while you’re in the middle of it. And when you get home you try to make sense of what just happened. There were times that weekend where I wondered if it was time for me to take a break from my annual pilgrimage to the mountain. Separated from it by a week now I’m not so sure. The mountain is home. The people are family. The music is life.