Loose Leaf Notes

The Phoenix at Floydfest / Shadow Shot Sunday / More photos of Floydfest HERE.

1. You don’t need to rub two sticks together to start a fire at Floydfest. There were fired-up performances, fire dancers, fireworks and the ritual performance lighting of an 18 foot wooden phoenix at this year’s 14th festival, rightly named Fire on the Mountain.  See some photos HERE. 2. You know it’s Floydfest weekend when […]

Our World Tuesday  /  Wordless Wednesday

Grace Potter fired up the crowd singing Fire on the Mountain and Burning Down the House late Saturday night.  While she was doing that (and singing Rod Stewart’s Do You Think I’m Sexy disco style HERE), the giant wooden Phoenix in the main field was getting ready to be lit-up in a ritual performance of letting go […]

It’s a five day festival.  You’d think that would be enough, but there’s so much happening, sometimes simultaneously, that I just have to trust that I’ll be in the right place at the right time. I like to be surprised, but I also check out the music ahead of time and pick a few bands […]

A “Where’s Waldo” sea of heads bobbed for Keller Williams, the one man jam band whose quirky lyrics sometimes reminds me of Prine. Watch them bob here. I learned to film a video clip with one hand while drinking a beer in the other while watching The Midatlantics play.  They really worked hard for their […]

It’s year 14 and the theme is Fire on the Mountain.  One of the first things I noticed on my walk through the main field was this giant wooden phoenix.  It’s scheduled to be set on fire after headliner Grace Potter plays Saturday night and after festival-goers write what they want to let go of […]

1. Imagine if you had to measure your height against an amusement park ride chart to see if you were tall enough to read THIS poem. 2. A flea takes off from my runway desk / How do I know it’s not working for Delta / with little flea passengers buckled up inside / booked for […]

“You’re not old enough to be in that poem” I told my poet friend Ron who wrote the self-appraised line “52 year-old meat, hairy, leaning on my last leg” Then I remembered the Turnpike Cars under the Roller Coaster at Paragon Park “You’re not big enough to go on that ride” I was told the […]

But they’re really wild tiger lilies. They’re the exotic-looking native species that Peter Pan’s Neverland princess was named after, a bloom that rarely, but occasionally, shows up in my yard like an alien, a trillium or a lady slipper. These past couple of weeks, I’ve been following flowers like a groupie follows a rock star. Like […]

Shadow Shot Sunday

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on July 16, 2015 Every Saturday night through the months of April and May regional bands competed at the Phoenix, a new music venue in Roanoke owned by Floydfest founders Kris Hodges and Erika Johnson. The fan-voted Battle of the Bands was designed to foster the regional […]