2009 Americana Festival Highlights

I’m finally caught up on sleep now that the festival is behind us, but we still have some clean up around the winery before we’ll be ready for Memorial Day Weekend.  One of my goals was to share some photos of the festival with you all.  I took sooooo many that I want to share, but tried to pick out just a few of the highlights for this post.  It’s still gonna be picture intensive though, so grab a glass of wine while you wait for all these to download!

The first series of photos are of the concerts the last few evenings.  You’ve seen a few from the Thursday night DVD shoot already, so here are the concerts from the rest of the weekend.

Josh Williams and Tyler Grant played a short opening set before the DVD shoot on Thursday, then came back on Friday night for an hour-long set.  WOW!  I posted a video here of a great guitar pickin’ piece these two put together.

Then Robin Kessinger and David Grier took the stage to finish out the evening with more amazing music.  No filming was allowed, so you’ll have to take my word for the fact that putting these two together was a real thrill!

Friday night brought in lots of rain and I just want to thank everyone that was stuck in the muddy parking lot for all your patience and good spirits in the face of a challenging situation!  Fortunately, on Saturday the sun came out and a cool breeze began to dry things out a bit.

Saturday night Will Maring heated up the crowd with her rich vocals while Robert Bowlin played the guitar.

After Will & Robert played there was a short intermission and then Tim May, Dan Miller, and Brad Davis finished out the evening with an inventive blend of bluegrass, blues, finger picking and vocals.  They revved everyone up and after the concert a dozen or more concert-goers went out by the campfires and picked several tunes until the wee hours of the morning.  I’m such a lightweight – I had to quit the campfire at 2am!

Finally Sunday brought a bittersweet feeling to everyone.  We had a blast together and no one wanted to leave quite yet.  Fortunately, more great concerts were in store for us!

The Grass Pack from St. Louis played a lively set on Sunday evening.  They even invited a couple festival friends to join them up on stage.  Last year, Jessie & Leslie were engaged here at Peaceful Bend, and they are planning a wedding this summer.  I’m not sure if the memory of playing with The Grass Pack will top last year’s memories, but this performance was a highlight for me in any case!

And for the final performance of the 2009 festival, The Jalan Crossland Band came up and played.  If you haven’t seen these guys, go check out their touring schedule and be sure to hit a gig near you if at all possible.  They are so entertaining, talented, and interesting!

The drummer, Andy, introduced everyone to  his homemade “Whackadoo’ – a first for many of us.

During the daytime lots of neat things were going on around the wine garden too.  I’ll work on posting up my favorite portrait shots on my personal blog, but I did want to show some of the scenes from different workshops, jam sessions, and other highlights during the festival.

Josh & Tyler led a workshop on Friday morning.

Saturday morning Robin & Will led a slow jam workshop that everyone thoroughly enjoyed!

See waaaaay down by the campfire?  Yep, that’s Maggie and Pepe relaxing to the slow jam on Saturday morning!

Bill Startz, founder of Simple Folk Productions and this festival, is shown here enjoying Brad Davis & Tim May’s workshop on Saturday afternoon.

Impromptu jam sessions popped up all the time.  You couldn’t walk around the property without being serenaded by guitars, fiddles, bass and lovely voices most of the weekend!

Our neighbor Rob helped keep the campfires burning all weekend long.  He also makes a mean banana pudding.  You might not guess that about him from this picture, but he does!

During the slow times those of us who were not music makers talked and played games.  Colleen Burt learned one of my favorite games called Farkle.  We ended up playing three games over the whole weekend, and Colleen won two of the games!  We crowned her the 2009 Americana Festival Farkle Queen during Sunday’s intermission.

The Grass Pack went on a short float trip Sunday morning before their concert.

Friday was Derek’s birthday, so Terry and Karen presented him with cake during intermission.  As it turned out, Derek doesn’t like cake, so he kindly shared with the rest of the festival attendees!

Jude pretty much stayed in one place.  Here she is moaning ‘why did I eat so many ribs Thursday night?!?’

We had a few babies running around this year.  Bob the chef’s family came in from all over the U.S. for a little family reunion.  I love this picture of Bob’s mom, sister and nephew!

And the last photo I have to share with you today is Robin Kessinger with a bass during one of Sunday’s jam sessions.  Thanks again to all the performers, attendees, friends, employees, and family that helped to make the fourth annual Americana Festival such a special experience.  We can’t wait to see you all next year!