Four Part Harmony

Well hello again friends and neighbors.
We’re back and recovering from our exhaustingly fun weekend out at Pendarvis Farm for the 2007 KBOO Pickathon.
We missed last year, which was the first year Scott and Sherry hosted it out at their farm.
It was really an astonishing transformation of the place from the quiet little farm, but it seemed to work out great and go off without a hitch.
They had at least 4 or 5 different stages with music from about 10:00 am to 3 or 4 am.

We had initially just planned on heading out Saturday morning, but sort of impulsively decided to just throw our stuff together Friday night after work and go.
We got packed up and rolled into the camping area just before dusk.
Finding a suitable camping situation almost bested us, but in the end we ran into some friendly folks who totally rearranged their campsite to accommodate our two tents and car.
We knew they had to be friendly when we spied the FMR stickers on the back of their car.
They turned out to be super friendly folks, and its always nice to start off a festival by meeting some new friends, so thanks Jeff and Jennifer!

I saw some great music Friday night after Nicki and Anna went to bed.
Main stage square dance with the Tallboys was fun, but my dancing partners were both in bed…
Erin McKeown and her band put on a rocking set in the barn. Her drummer impressed me to no end.
Alela Diane, a Portland musician I wasn’t very familiar with before the festival. I saw her play a late set with her dad around 1 or 2 am. I ended up seeing parts of her other two performances throughout the weekend, and really enjoyed her songs and her singing.
Also, the Two Man Gentleman Band, from NYC I believe. They played pretty late, but put on a really entertaining short set of tunes, despite the fact that some guy kept tossing handfuls of straw at them whilst they played.
I stayed up too late, and suffered a bit for it in the morning, but that’s ok.

Saturday, Maya and Tricia met us and we checked out some of the music happening on the main stage.

Here’s a picture of Nicki, Maya, and Tricia (hereafter “the girls”).

Anna and I went down for a much needed nap kind of early, and the girls caught the Wood brothers playing a set in the barn. I later managed to see part of their set on the main stage, which was sounding really good. The really cool thing, though, is that Oliver Wood (the guitar player) plays a mid-60′s Guild T-100D which is the same guitar that I play (mine’s a ’65), and which I don’t really see around that often. So there ya go.

Lot’s of fun all day Saturday…so much fun in fact that we didn’t really get around to taking many pictures. As usual, Maya took some great ones. She got a really sweet picture of Nicki riding a unicycle (will definitely post this later), and some great ones of Anna being her usual goofy self.

A couple more photos though, from Saturday evening:

Dale Watson and band on the Main Stage. Great set, rocked the place.

Langhorne Slim and his band the War Eagles. Later night set in the barn. Nicki and Tricia attended this show. I saw them earlier in the day on the main stage, and was very impressed. Really high energy band, and surprisingly captivating songs.

Caleb Klauder and Martha Scanlan, putting on a workshop/show Sunday morning. This was really good. I also saw Caleb later in the afternoon with David Pugh (Jackstraw) and David Long, putting on a bluegrass mandolin workshop…Quite possibly my new favorite all around musician in Portland.

This isn’t even half of the music we saw, much less half the music that occurred throughout the weekend…other highlights…Flat Mtn Girls Sunday morning gospel set in the woods, Jackstraw afternoon set in the woods, morning “music together” classes with Anna (lots o’ fun), the breakmen, horse feathers (great, very unique Portland band), chatham county line…etc, etc, etc…

And here’s Anna with a big leaf on her head.
It’s her birthday tomorrow! I better get some sleep.