Poor Old Shine in the Round, Falcon Ridge Folk Festival
Some of the best music at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival is far from the official stages. Here’s Poor Old Shine, performing on the grass next to the food tents, Aug. 3, 2013.
The band’s site: http://pooroldshine.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PoorOldShine
Falcon Ridge: http://www.falconridgefolk.com
Here’s an excerpt from my 1999 New York Times article on what makes this festival so special:
Our Towns; Woodstock Not in Name, But in Spirit
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: July 25, 1999
They traveled from Portland, Ore., and Hartwood, Va., from Cambridge, England, and Davis, Calif., to erect a rainbow quilt of dome tents, tarps and tepees across Bob Brennan’s 260-acre farm here on the western fringe of the Berkshires.
Their minds were set on music, to the exclusion of everything else. Jody Pierce, 50, an antiques dealer from Rochester, only just learned of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane crash from a visitor Thursday night. He had been camped under a lofty oak since last weekend, building shower stalls and stages in return for a free festival pass.
”That’s really quite a shock,” Mr. Pierce said, scratching his sunburned chin.
Music was in the air all around the farm, but this was no Woodstock ’99.
For nine years and counting, this farm, which long ago stopped producing milk, has been producing music one weekend each summer with the arrival of the Falcoln Ridge Folk Festival. But this is a far gentler brand of music than that being blasted from five-story-high speakers at the defunct air base in Rome, N.Y.
This weekend, the farm becomes a temporary folk city, raising the population of Hillsdale from 1,500 to close to 15,000.
Many of the people arriving for the three-day festival attended the original Woodstock rock fest that was having its 30-year anniversary this weekend. But an informal survey of several dozen campers turned up no one who regretted skipping the extravaganza 100 miles to the west.
In almost every respect, Falcon Ridge ’99 appeared to be the antithesis of Woodstock ’99. Commercial tie-ins were limited to promotions like the Hillsdale Fire Company’s $6 pancake breakfast Sunday morning. The $65 three-day pass was less than half of Woodstock’s.
The main music stage here does not look like a space station. Its two skinny towers of speakers are intentionally quiet so the hundreds of amateur singers and pickers swapping songs around campfires on the ridge above the main field can play without the scheduled performers interfering.
Instead of a mosh pit, it has a folk dance stage, where several hundred people would soon be shuffling feet to the fiddles of bands called Wild Asparagus and Big Hoedown.
About 2,000 people come just for the country dancing, and many treat the event like a marathon, said Anne Saunders, one of the festival’s producers. ”They only leave the dance floor to carbo load or make a potty trip,” she said….
Read the rest here: http://j.mp/revkinfalcon99
More of my music-relaed videos on YouTube: http://j.mp.revmusic