Loose Leaf Notes

Righteous – Meeting the standards of what is right and just; morally right. ~ The American Heritage Dictionary

 
I wore an assortment of hats, caps, and visors throughout the 4th annual Floyd Fest weekend to keep from being sunburned and from getting WET. We seemed to get all variety of weather over the 3 day world music weekend. The Blue Ridge Parkway, where the festival is held, is notorious for fog, and so, there’s good reason that Floyd Fest is sometimes affectionately called “Fog Fest.”

 
Emerging from her tour bus and onto the timber-framed stage at 6 p.m. Sunday evening, Ani DiFranco closed the show with what was said to be her last performance before taking a year off. I heard that she has tendonitis, and with the way she drives her guitar, I’m not surprised.

 
I saw Ani play in Greensboro, N.C., nearly 10 years ago. I liked and respected her as a poet, musician, and activist then, but I had forgotten just how much she inspires me. At one point, during her song that starts…. Our Father, who art in the penthouse… and ends with… and whoever’s in charge up there, had better take the elevator down, and put more than change in our cup…or else we…are coming…up, I gasped and turned to my husband, saying, “she’s killing me.” It was a verbal attempt to communicate how sweetly deep her words were getting into me.

 
She played for an hour before saying to the crowd, “Oh shit, here we go, huh?” in reference to the rain that was soon to downpour, eliciting this from Ani, “What have we here? Whoooo!” And after describing the crowd as a light sculpture of changing colors that she was enjoying, she said, with a playful laugh, “And now you’re fixin to get wet… which would be very sexy.”

 
Yes, the rain seemed to make the crowd of fans (the ones who stayed, which were most of us) only more wildly free-spirited than they already were…dancing barefoot in the mud, singing along with all the words, raising arms up in solidarity, sharing umbrellas, and smiling knowingly at each other.

 
Ani tells it like it is. She’s petite but her stage presence is big and I haven’t been so impressed with songwriting/poetry since the early days of Joni Mitchell. “Joni Mitchell revolutionized,” I turned to my husband and said, while she was changing guitars.

 
Ani’s life work is sharing her talent, not only to entertain but to raise consciousness. The political, environmental, and unrepressed love themes in Ani’s songs are not only right on, they are also reminiscent of women who came before her, those who put themselves on the line during the suffragette movement of the late 1800s in order to promote women’s rights.

 
Her independent record label isn’t called “Righteous Babe” for nothing.

 
For a good overall description of the Floyd Fest scene, visit “A tech monk speaks,” and Blue Ridge Muse has some excellent photos of the event.