From: wsanders@ffeine (Wiley Sanders)
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk
Subject: How I spent my Labor Day Vacation - Fall 92 Strawberry Report
Date: 10 Sep 1992 17:19:15 GMT
Organization: S.M.C.C. C.M.D. P.E.S. Support Services
Distribution: world
Reply-To: wsanders@ffeine.corp.sun.com (Wiley Sanders)
NNTP-Posting-Host: ffeine.corp.sun.com

I thought I'd share my Fall 92 Strawberry Music Festival experience
with the Net. For those who don't know, Strawberry is California's
answer to Kerrville and Newport, although the scope is limited more to
traditional music rather than singer-songwriters. It's held twice
per year at Memorial and Labor Day weekends near Yosemite National
park.

                      HOW I SPENT MY LABOR DAY VACATION
                              by Wiley Sanders,
                        Future Country Beat Superstar

o Strawberry is getting more crowded. We arrived about noon Thursday to
find our usual camping spot usurped by a group that waited in line
overnight Wednesday and staked out a huge area, threw up only five
tents, and were obnoxious about it. :-(  Many hundreds of cars arrived
Wednesday and camped in line overnight.

o Fall Strawberry Sensation: The return of Greg Brown, sexy, romantic,
nostalgic songwriting; virtuostic guitar on an electro-acoustic thing
that looked like a Stratocaster but had a hollow body and acoustic
bridge. A five-minute standing ovation. Greg's songs are beautiful but
they're too hard for me to play right now. We made a feeble attempt to
learn "Iowa Waltz" and "Rooty Toot Toot for the Moon" from Rise Up
Singing but the simple arrangements don't do Greg's rich guitar
arrangements justice.

o Best-sounding band: Red Clay Ramblers. If I had a band it would sound
like this.

o Everybody's Favorite Texans Dept: Once again, the Texans made a good
impression. Jimmie Dale Gilmore brought the same energy to Sunday
afternoon's dance set that Marcia Ball accomplished last Fall. Kevin
Welch opened for Jimmie Dale. 

o "What did you think of Junior Brown?" The HAT alone is worth the
price of admission.

o New song title: "E.T. is Up in Heaven with his Finger on the
Switch".  Junior Brown's set left everyone dazed and confused Saturday
night - his sound,  straight off Fort Worth's Jacksboro Highway, is a
little too hard core North-Central-Texas honk-tonkish for Strawberrians.
Many of Junior's songs are Tubb covers, or at least sound exactly like Tubb
covers. Then, Sunday night, Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers (Hot
Rize's alter ego) were in the midst of "My Baby Loves Me (in Her Own
Peculiar Way)", another Tubb cover that Junior Brown had played the
previous night, and - boink - out goes the power! The whole area was
dark, and it stayed out. Ace Trailblazer steel guitarist Waldo Otto let
the audience in spelling cheers - "P O T A T O E", "T O M A T O E", "B
R O C C O L I ... E!" well, you had to be there - and after Tim O'Brien
and the rest of Hot Rize reemerged with Darryl Anger and Tony Trishka
they bravely attempted to finish a REAL acoustic jam. Despite
connecting the monitor amps to an RV generator, and the illumination of
the stage by hundreds of flashlights from the audience, the set was cut
a few numbers short.

Those are the highlights. Some of us went to breakfast the next morning
at the Evergreen Lodge up the road, and shared the dining room with Tim
O'Brien, Kevin Welch, and _____(?) Bourne of the Tannahill Weavers. A
passerby asked me if I was Tony Trishka. I'll be famous Real Soon Now!

-w



--
"True love is learning to love your lover's obsessions,
or at least being able to say '...oh...that's nice...'"
                                                        -Greg Brown