Florance Trip Report

This is an edited version of John Florance's eloquent descriptions of a first and second Winfield visit, and is used here without his permission. See the original (and more) at http://home.earthlink.net/~florance/wvf.html

Walnut Valley Festival

The 1997 Festival is over. It was only fest number 2 for this urbanite but I believe I am hooked for life. Before I talk about this year's experiences, I would like to point out that nowhere are the words "bluegrass" or "folk music" ever mentioned in the name of this festival. You'll definitely find excellent representations of both music forms but for the most part, the emphasis is on MUSIC, which means you hear just about everything.

The easiest way to explain this phenomenon is for me to just run through it as it happened. I hope to have some pictures later in the week as well as some links to interesting sites. The official Walnut Valley Festival pages are located on a server across the street from my office. It's as good of a place to start as any if you want to see a list of performers or the schedule.

Well, I had a great time! I heard most of the Winfield "Staples" such as Tom Chapin, John McCutcheon and Tom Paxton. I was also shocked to hear such diverse performers as Beppe Gambetta and Cherish the Ladies. I stayed until around midnight and finally left knowing that there was more to this than just the 13 hours of music I had sat through.

I returned in 1997 determined to experience Winfield at any price. I thought 36 hours of music should be sufficient to satisfy the ole music appetite. It was not to be so. For 1997, a few things were different for me as we approach the upcoming fest. Christine was no longer my girl friend, she had become my wife over the summer. In addition, like most married couples, right after returning from our honeymoon/vacation (is it a honeymoon if you families are their for the week?) we started on a total kitchen "gut" job. Needless to say, by mid-September, we had been sufficiently tested. The immediate implication was that my attendance to this event was now somewhat less "discretionary". No problem I thought, Christy and her friend Angie had a routine down and all I had to do was slip in with at as little disruption as possible.

Preflight

The festival starts for the girls sometime in early September when tickets are ordered. Then, a week before the festival begins an event known as the land rush takes place on Thursday. Basically, a bunch of people hang out on the road waiting for the gates to open so they can grab that perfect campsite. What makes it perfect for most people is camping by that special group of music fanatics that they have probably camped next to for the past 15 years or so. For our girls, it is simply a measurement of distance from the porta-pots. This does make it a little easier. They usually go down around 6 pm on that thursday, set up the tent and comeback the following Thursday, ready to fest out. This year there were some delays in leaving town and something about a missed exit. The bottom line was our site was occupied. A secondary site was chosen with would prove to be a bonus later.

Execute

From here the routine is Angie goes down on Thursday and sets up, Christy gets all the last-minute stuff together on Wednesday and Thursday with an arrival time about 7 PM Friday. This year a couple of thing got in the way. First, we had company on both of the nights allocated to setup. Also, the kitchen still wasn't finished and we had reason to believe that our air mattress had a leak in it. Consequently, we ended up stopping for a backup on Friday evening and didn't get to the campsite until 9:30 PM.

Arrival

Our campsite was, well, you might say, occupied. We were surrounded on all sides by a group of longtime Winfielders. The women of the group go by the name "Bucket Babes". They explained its because they sit on buckets instead of chairs. The men of this group had dug a pit directly outside of our tent and built a fire which they would maintain until the conclusion of the weekend. True hunter/gathers I'm thinking. The smoke from this fire seemed to always blow directly at our tent. I had no way of knowing that I would learn to love this fire.