Saturday morning greeted us with sunshine like a fist. Oh. and my brother. He and Del had decided to make the 4 hour drive and pop in to surprise us. Our banner did us well by allowing him to find us, though I’m still shocked that he did. I had an alarm set to go off at 10am in any case, but I think we got up closer to 9 simply to avoid being cooked in our tent. We joined Lindsey for a bagel breakfast (another Rouse tradition) and met a good number of our fellow Newfolk Finalists. We played Deep in the AM and weren’t at all sure what people made of us.
There was barely a trace of the night’s rain except for INSIDE people’s tents. Over breakfast I stared out over a vista of dome tents that danced in a manner suspiciously similar to that of mating tortoises. watching a hump rise in the distance, wiggle in the air, and then come down again. then another rise someplace else as ITS owner tries to pour water out of its interior.
All in all, I was pretty relaxed as the competition actually got under weigh – right up till “combatant” (MC Steve Gillette’s word, not mine) number 4. We were number 6, and suddenly I got really nervous. Probably one of our biggest audiences ever, and I was really worried that we weren’t going to be folk enough for the crowd that I’d been watching. It wasn’t about winning or losing anymore (the caliber of performer was unanimously spectacular – I’d lose to any of these guys GLADLY! That caliber was obvious from the outset with Mike Morris opening up the day with a jaw-dropping performance – he was one of my favourites, and I was really disappointed that he didn’t pull a “winner” slot) it was about. being liked, I suppose. I was so nervous I was turned over to a massage therapist that they kept behind the stage just for that purpose. Then, after nearly walking out on stage before I was supposed to (Heather grabbed me at the last moment) we went out on stage at the Threadgill Theatre at the Kerrville Folk Festival.
The shock of playing to such a beautifully attentive audience is all the more alarming because I remember that I USED to play to audiences like that. When I first performed LooseN at the Jahva House, everyone got the jokes in it, people Loved the lines about “ripping off”. Here was another audience who was listening closely enough, and identifying with the song enough to applaud the notion that I wouldn’t kiss and tell, but that I’d stand and sing. It’s going to be hard going back to bars n shit after Saturday’s audience.
