RANDOM THOUGHTS ON FESTIVALS

Stompin’ ’76

This was the first BIG bluegrass festival. It wasn’t Watkins Glen, but the crowd was amazing.  Three days of fun and music and it only cost $12.00.  Perhaps 75,000 people were gathered on Doyle Lawson’s farm to see some of the greatest newgrass, bluegrass, rock, and blues music.  The concert was at the top of a large ridge and had a single winding road that went to the stage area.  Nobody knew how many people would show up at the festival.  Nobody expected the number of people that were all coming towards Lawson’s farm.  Due to the traffic backups, cars were being parked at the interstate over 11 miles away.  People parked and camped at the bottom of the ridge along the New River.  Many people simply parked their cars in the right lane where they sat, and packed their camping items on the backs, on wagons, however they could.  Huge areas of farmland along the road to the top of the hill were packed with all kinds of vehicles and campsites.  I drove from Knoxville to the festival with a classmate, Frank Greene and his girlfriend.  We shared a tent in one of the fields.  We also met up with Sandra Blackburn, another friend from Knoxville.

Each morning our group took their gear for the day and walked up the mountain.  The people walking almost completely clogged the only access road in or out of the festival.  Some motor cycles got through the crowd, but little else.

Walking up the single road to the festival

The big problem for the festival was that they needed to get the acts to the stage site with the road blocked.  Eventually a helicopter was found and used to shuttle the acts in and out of the festival.  Of course nobody knew anything about what was really going on.  There were all kinds of wonderful rumors about things like who might be appearing, who wasn’t going to show, that the star blotter is really good, or maybe that the narcs are in the campground.  The story goes that Bonnie Raitt refused to ride in the helicopter.  Instead she found someone with a motorcycle and commandeered it making the owner haul her up the mountain through the crowd with her guitar on her back.  Her show kicked but Saturday night.

The large stage was situated on a sloping pasture facing down the field towards wooded ravine.  Beyond the big ditch was an even larger meadow, which provided a great view of the stage.  I was up the mountain early enough each day to have a blanket about 150 feet back directly in front of the stage.  My good friend from Pennsylvania, Mike Heath, was at the festival too.  We did not see each other.  He had a great spot on the second field for both days I learned later.

Stompin ’76 crowd

 

An amazing array of bands dazzled the crowd over the two days.  David Bromberg Big Band rocked the place.  Newgrass Revival was incredible.  John Harford played with his famous Aereoplan Band.  Frank Wakefield and the Good Old Boys were amazing.  A very spiritual guy, earlier, he was in an accident and broke his hands.  He rehabbed to where he could play the mandolin again by writing a series of intricate mandolin pieces called ‘Jesus Loves His Mandolin Player’ 1 thru more than 20.  During the big show one afternoon, Wakefield stood up and played four or five of these ‘Jesus Loves His Mandolin Player’ pieces.  The crowd loved it.  Honestly, I thought Wakefield was a little on the weird side.  Everybody seemed to be there.

There were a couple of moments that have stuck with me to this day.  I vividly remember bathing in the New River and seeing thousands of naked people all across the river getting cleaned up.  It actually was a very beautiful sight.  I didn’t have soap which forced me to go up to a girl next to me to borrow her soap.  No problem.  The other was when I went to the edge of the crowd and into the woods to pee.  The woods beat the porta johns.  As I walked into the brush, if noticed off in the distance two large white mushrooms shapes bouncing up and down in the bush.  It looked like they were having fun.  I hope there wasn’t any poison in the brush.  I left them alone, but I have never forgotten.

As a result of the disturbance the event created, the county instituted laws to control outdoor music festivals. To this day the Galax Fiddler’s Convention does not publicly recognize the impact Stompin 76 had on its success since.  The truth is that the Galax Old Time Fiddlers Convention grew significantly in the number of attendees starting in 1977.  The old timers didn’t appreciate the hippies.  Many of the hippies certainly appreciated the music that the old timers played.  However they began to return each year to play the traditional music of the mountains.  I guess the former hippies are now considered old timers.

Supergrass ’77

Supergrass, or Shade Gap as we referred to it, was a really nice festival located only 90 miles from my home.  The promoter was Dick Clark, from Washington, DC.  (Not the other Dick Clark)  Somehow he found the Shade Gap PA Fireman’s Park and used it for a DC based bluegrass/newgrass camping festival.

The idea was to promote a big bluegrass festival only 2 ½ hours from Washington with great bands in a nice wooded campground.  The people living in central Pennsylvania did not know much about the festival taking place in rural PA.  I saw several acts for the first time like Red Allen, the Central Park Sheiks (think young Matt Glaser), and Boone Creek (Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas’ band).  I got to see New Grass Revival again.  Earl Scruggs Review and Norman Blake were also terrific that weekend.

I got to see Jack Tottle and his Tasty Licks.  What was interesting about that band that we would learn later was that the banjo player in the Tasty Licks was Bela Fleck.  This was the first band he toured with.  Little Jimmy Martin played at the festival with a full band.  His fiddler was a young guy from Sweden.  Throughout the festival Jimmy referred to his fiddler as his Swedish fiddle boy.  I was a bit put off by Martin’s rudeness.

During the festival, a good friend of mine, Rich Wagner, told me about this neat new young band that was camping next to him.  The band was Boone Creek.  Rich knew the band was in the show, but didn’t know anything about the leader, Ricky Skaggs or his group.  The thing about this story is that when I reminded Rich many years later about his camping friends, he did not remember it.  Maybe it wasn’t true, only my imagination.  I don’t think so.

This festival had two main stages, one in the woods and one at the dirt bike track.  The festival probably had only a couple thousand people which fit nicely in the fairgrounds.

The following year we returned to the same venue for another bluegrass festival.  Gwen and I had set up our tent ready for the weekend when a tractor trailer pulled into the festival grounds and unloaded a bunch of motorcycles.  The truck and bikes were brought by the Lancaster based biker gang, the Pagans.  A few hours later, there was a dog fight between a dog owned by a Pagan and another couple’s dog.  The end of the story is that the guy went to his campsite, got a gun and shot and killed the Pagan biker.  The bikers took over the festival.  They guarded the gate and would not let anyone in or out.  The Pennsylvania State Police were outside the campground, but did not come in.  Gwen and I decided to pack up and try to talk our way out.  We negotiated our release from the grounds by giving the Pagan, who was wider than my VW, the couple cases of beer we had brought for the festival.  We were so lucky.  

 

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