Jim and I experienced something new this week-end when we traveled to Brevard, NC to attend an open-air music festival at the Brevard Music Center. We've taken picnic baskets and spread our dinner on the ground and listened to orchestras in several cities where we have lived but we've never gone to a music festival that goes on and on....
First we drove to Charlotte, NC and spent the night with one of my younger sisters (Alice) and her husband Jerry. Then Sat. morning we left Charl0tte and drove to Brevard in the NC mountains for Mountain Song Festival. They love attending bluegrass festivals in N. Wilkesboro, NC every year and thought we might enjoy going to an "indoor" festival with them.
The music center is a large covered facility with beautiful stage and lighting, but no sides on the building - it's open for the nice mountain air to flow through. The padded seats are very comfortable and the acoustics very good.
We met our granddaughter Nerissa who drove up from nearby Clemson and parted around 1 pm for us to go to the music center and find good seats for the concert. She stayed behind to study all afternoon.
I never saw so many people and so many cars, and not very many parking spaces. I am glad we went early.
The music started at 2 p.m. and different groups performed every hour. We had never heard of the any of the entertainers except for actor Steve Martin who can really play the banjo. He played with a group from Asheville, NC called the Steep Canyon Rangers. They received standing ovations and had to keep coming back for encores.
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The 2009 Mountain Song Festival kicked off Friday September 11 with a Pre-Party program featuring local favorites, Moon Shine Babies, Town Mountain and Steep Canyon Rangers. Shannon Whitworth and the Refugees, The Seldom Scene, Steep Canyon Rangers, Steve Martin and the David Grisman Quintet.
We enjoyed walking around outside the auditorium to check out the arts and crafts, as well as the food vendors. You could smell the barbecue cooking outside while the music was being made inside.
We left the festival around 6 pm to take our granddaughter and her boy friend out to dinner and later we returned to the music center to hear the last performers of the day. It was a quintet made up of these instruments: flute, mandolin, bass fiddle, drums and guitar. After listening to them for a hour, we decided we had heard enough and decided to try to find our way out of the park. It was so dark outside. We got back to our hotel and I was so tired and had breathed so much fresh mountain air, smelled so many good "smells", and listened to so much pretty music, that I hit the bed and don't remember anything else until this morning.
Watching the sea of faces filled with delight as they listened to their favoritemusic groups was a great experience. Something I will treasure for a long time. While we enjoyed this experience, I think we will settle for one concert, one group at the time. Maybe we're getting too advanced in years to sit still that long. I'm just thankful we didn't have to sit on the lawn on a blanket or folding chair like many of the people were doing. It was certainly worth the extra money to have a ticket for the inside cushioned chairs!
By the way, I observed that the crowd was mostly over 50, including a lot of gray hair or bald heads, and people with canes to help them get around. Maybe this was the grown-up Woodstock crowd??
