Bluegrass WInter Blues

Anybody who doesn't know about bluegrass festivals and the interesting behaviors and events that occur at festivals is a cultural moron who needs immediate remediation. Hear that, Hollywood? Get my drift, Wall Street?

So I am sitting here achy and happy on a Monday morning after our 6th annual WinterFest, skipping school for a much-needed rub-down and adjustment, which I will do after I unload the car, burdened as it is with the detritus of a weekend's worth of stealth bluegrass. The Lost Ramblers and 20 other bands invaded every eatery and bar worth talking about, in addition to coming together at the BPO Elks here in bucholic East Stroudsburg, Pa. for two days worth of stellar music and non-stop laughing.

That's the one of the hallmarks of a good festival---sore cheeks from laughing too much. I'll tell my therapist to concentrate on them to begin with. Anyhow, all went smoothly at what a few folks are beginning to call "The Lost Rambler's Festival," which it kinda is and kinda isn't.

First off all, the Festival itself was the idea of Mary Herman, once of Stained Grass Window. When she first saw the Elks building she was as blown away as anyone at the vaulted ceilings, the capacious meeting hall with its valence lighting and turn of the century plush furnishings, and most of all the helpfulness of the Elks, who it turns out were closet bluegrassers all along, all except for that cheap bastard that has been coming to our concerts for seven years and has never paid a nickle to us. He knows who he is; he just doens't know that minions are putting curses on him every day. May his ears fall off.

Anywat, Mary was sitting there with her beau Mark and she said, " This would be a great place to have a WinterFest."

And I, scholarly investigator that I am, said," What's that?"

"It's a festival you have, only in the Winter," Mary said, speaking slowly and enunciating carefully.

We wondered together exactly how that would work. Six years later, I think we are starting to get the drift. You have to start with a good hotel, since camping out in February is not optimal. Then you need about a bazillion dollars to pay the bands, which you get by asking the bands to come around once a month and play for free.

Which they all do.

That was the first hard part of explaining the idea to the nice folks at the Elks. Let's see...everybody comes to hear the bands and they give you money. Well, that's pretty common practice out there in the world. Oh--and the bands pay to play, too. Well, it sounds nuts, but it works, because a true bluegrasser can't go more than about a week before he* starts wandering around with a vacant look of distress** about him.

And sitting with my good friend and bluegrass buddy Fred, we were talking about how there is at least one funny thing that happens at a festival. I was personally involved with at least two of them. One thing was that I left the Elks at around 8 to secure a parking space for the Paisleys and the Lundys and Donnie, too, although I think I spelled his name wrong back in one of my previous posts and I will be looking that up as soon as I can get to it, exhaustive research being the hallmark of
the bluegrass scholar.

Anyhow, some idiot with plates from "that other state" had his or her (sorry) big ass SUV parked in the bus slot, so I dropped Fred off to let him freshen up for the Bandomonium, got some help from the GrillBillies in locating alternate parking, and was ready to run into the hotel and start setting up the sound when Pat Brown met me coming back into the hotel.

"Get ready to get hollered at," she said. "Some woman tripped out by your car and she's screaming her head off at you."

Now I was in an unloading zone, which I guess is okay even if you are loaded, as long as you are unloading, as I was. Come to think of it, being loaded might be a prerequisite if one wishes to unload, but of course I wasn't quick enough to explain that to her just then. And considering what she was all about, I'm fairly sure she wouldn't have been interested in conjugations or even conjucals or however you spell that other word that means screwing.

Sure enough, here she came, a woman with a cane and that most unfortunate accent, wanting to know "WHo the F**** put that car there and F*** I want to talk to F**** that ignorant f***bastard etc etc etc."

So I said, "Ma'am I am the thoughtless person who placed this van here, and you are so correct, it was incredibly rude of me to leave this van here and take more than a New York Minute to unload it, and I apologize. I don't know what I was thinking."


By now the lads from Southern Grass were coming off the bus and into the hotel, and they all lined up and watched this woman screaming at me. I avoided looking at her because I was thinking, "Man, she might be like that Greek chick with the snakes for hair that turns you to stone," and so I proceeded to avoid looking at her and started to get into the van to get moving on the sound system, and the lads were all laughing at the chick, because there was no freakin' way the van had anything to do with her "fall", and they tell me spit was flying out of her mouth and she was doing the whole "Springer" bit for us.

Quite a show. I think the whole cane thing was prolly a fake, too, because she was swinging that sucker around like Joe DiMaggio and not seeming to have any trouble standing. I seriously think if she had connected, I would be writing this with a slightly different editorial tone, rather than the condescending and arrogent one I setttled on for today's message.

Anyway, I'm not one to judge her, bless her heart. Also lucky for her heehe.

Well, she was standing there spitting and swearing and swinging, and seeing it had absolutely no effect on any of us. Hell, this was nothing: we watched some guy in a porta-potty get blown down a hill during some rough weather at Kline's Grove back in the 70's, bouncing through a couple campsites before it fetched up against a big and suddenly stinky tent. So some poser with a cane didn't strike us as so unusual.

So she finally screamed at me, "Yeah, well I think you are half in F***** bag." (She liked that word. She used it all the time.)

And I said, "No, ma'am. I'm all the way in the bag. The good news is, you're not in here with me."

We all almost peed ourselves on that one, it was so rich. We were laughing and being all polite, and I guess it just put her right off her feed. Sure enough, that polite stuff actually shut her up for a moment, long enough for me to park the van practice the art of not being seen.

Of course the next day the band boys were all busting on me like crazy, except Donnie's brother, whose name I forget, since I was in a bag by myself during much of the whole experience. He said he saw the whole thing from her "fall" to my compelling exit scene, and so if you are out there reading this, "Ms. New York Cane Faker", all I can say is: "Bless your soul."

Oh---and "Happy Birthday" too!

*APA style dictates that one never use "he", "his" or "him" to refer generically to humans. I am ignoring that rule for several reasons. First, it is stylistically problematic. You get so many "he and/or she" thingumies going on you can't read the freakin' sentence. Then there is the general paucity of women bluegrass pickers, or bluegrass women pickers, or picking bluegrass women, or whatever you're apposed to call them. Whatever moniker you want to hang on those beautiful creaures, bless their hearts, they are outnumbered by males by a good five or six to one ratio. Finally, I ignore it here to annoy the APA types that like that PC crap. If some chick writer wants to use "she", "her" and her's" instead, let 'er fly. I can take it.

**Teacher said to Tommy, "Use the word distress in a sentence." So Tommy said," Hey teacher...distess makes yer butt look fat."