I had been looking for a folk festival to go to with my oldest boy. He had been needing some serious dad/son time for most of the summer. He'd been bored and lonely as most of his friends are gone during the day. So I did a search and found a couple of festivals toward the end of summer. I had been wanting him to see what his old man does for fun so the combination of a folk festival and a songwriter's contest was just too good. He could see some good music and see his dad perform.
I frequently forget how insightful my oldest boy can be because he spends so much time acting like such a goof but I think that the conversations with my son were the high point of the trip for me. A lot of it was about card games and various 'mons (digi and poke). We did have a fairly lengthy talk about war. He, like so many folks, worry about the idea of a war and had a lot of questions. I hope that I answered them in a way that was both truthful and soothing.
As you get north of Minneapolis the landscape changes fairly abruptly. It goes from the serenely settled look of Iowa and southern Minnesota to a much wilder look. J had told us that we should stay out of the forest (the boy has watched Harry Potter about a 100 times now) and I think he would have had a very bad time if he had gone. I found myself watching this thick bank of trees as I drove by. There are occasional openings for rivers and roads but mostly the trees filled the line of sight completely.
We got there about 20 minutes before I was supposed to go onstage for my 2 songs of fame. Mahtowa is a small town about half an hour south of Duluth right on Highway 61. It reminds me of so many small towns but for some reason the entire area made me think of a flattened out West Virginia. It has some of the same sort of wildness to it.
The folks running the show (Jim and a fellow who's name I can't think of at the moment) were testing out the sound system and finishing setting up. I'm first up. I do one funny song and one serious and get a good response from the few folks who are there. One of the judges laughs out loud during the first song and the other two look a little grim.
We hang around for awhile and watch some of the other songwriters and it becomes apparent that folks around here take their songwriting VERY seriously. The high point for me are two songs by this guy named Kurt. His songs are quiet, still and very lovely. They are much more than the usual 3 chord stuff that you usually hear. I really want a tape of his songs. The low point is a fellow who is apparently a local hero of sorts who just shamelessly rips off John Prine. He just grafts on new words to Prine's chords, melody and phrasing. The odd thing is that I had listened to that very song on the way up.
The day goes along and I see folks of all levels of performing skill. But the one thing is they are ALL good songwriters. It's amazing to see that many folks and not one of them are really at all bad (cept the one ripoff guy and his other song was real good).
So the winners are two folks I hadn't seen, one basic country/pop singer and the grand prize went to a fellow who wrote this wonderfully eerie song about a local UFO legend.
We end up in some burger joint and continue our babbling.
We go back to the show and watch for a bit but we are both fading quickly. About 8:30 we climb into our tent and lay down. But we're not done and we play a card game for awhile till we realize that we could keep playing the same game for hours and we're just too tired.
Sometime a couple hours later I hear folks come in to unload the equipment from the show but I am too groggy to get out and help. A few hours after that
Sometime very early I wake up and rouse
The drive home is even nicer than the drive up since
All in all one of the best weekends I have had in years. We get home exhausted but smiling.