Loose Leaf Notes

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 and events that I make a point to see.

I felt very accomplished that I made it to the annual Children’s Universe Peace Parade this year (video clip HERE).  I love the fanfare and color but rarely make it for the Saturday 12:30 celebration because it’s too early for me after being up late on Thursday and Friday.

The Oh Hellos was one of the bands I had circled in my program.  I first heard their song Hello My Old Heart at the end of a movie (can’t remember which one).  I loved it and googled it to find out who it was and then uploaded a copy to my iPhone. 

I knew them as a brother and sister act from Austin, Texas and was surprised to see how big the band was when I caught them for their 2:00 Workshop Porch performance on Saturday.  The band was even bigger at the 7:00 Hill Holler Stage show where there were a lot more enthusiastic dancing antics, but that’s another story.

I was the one that requested they do Hello My Old Heart.  You can hear the lead singer say in the above video that he promised to do it.  The tension had built because they sang it for their last number and sort of squeezed it in. Thank you to the band for doing it and to the young man that gave me his front row seat to enjoy and film it from.  He sat on the ground and sang along.

Later, when I met the siblings back stage, they couldn’t remember the movie their song was in either!  We talked about being Irish because the two began making music (which has an Irish influence) after a family visit there.  During the performance, he told another story of how the band got its name.  Something about a drunk Irish fella trying to pick up his sister, until her mother showed up and he said to her, “Oh, Hello.” He then tried to pick up the mother too!

After the Oh Hellos, I visited the Imagine Tent/ Teen Lounge that Joe runs. It was packed with festival artists for a three hour painting, stenciling and multi media workshop with 1^st generation Floydfest artist and friend Katherine Devine.  Watch a video clip HERE. 

Katherine’s daughter Isha was doing art workshops at the Children’s Universe and helping kids make costumes for the parade.

I finally met Mim (blue hair) of Mim’s Ukes in Meadows of Dan after seeing her presence on Facebook for a couple of years.  She and her helpers had two ukulele workshops going at once at in the Global Village the Imagine Tent.  Joe was in the intermediate class. Watch a clip HERE.

Somewhere in the five-day mix I have to sleep, eat and take care of myself.  I’m blessed that I live 10 miles away and so can break up my Floydfest experience into 5 or 6 hours installments, sometimes coming back and forth more than once in one day.

In between Saturday’s Floydfesting and taking care of our chickens back at home, I rested by watching the old Science Fiction movie 12 Monkeys.  It was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, about time travel and a virus that killed billions of people, leaving the upper planet inhabitable only for animals.  That was strange because when I went back to the site I went to a 1000 Mask theater performance about the corporate takeover of the world that included a funeral memorial for endangered and extinct animals. Watch a clip HERE.

It was heartbreaking so I was glad they ended the performance with prayerful song and then a dance party. See above.

I just typed Floydrest instead of Floydfest by mistake. That’s never going to happen. Things at Floydfest were just firing up for a grand Fire on the Mountain Saturday finale (blog post coming soon).  That’s Joe and Wendy from the Kind (who is doing sound in the Global Village) dancing at the 1000 Mask Theater Dance party.

Read about Floydfest Friday HERE.