The weather’s finally getting… better. It’s not perfect. There have been a couple of days of perfect, but they’ve been few and far between and in truth the days of perfect have generally been more “mornings” or “evenings” of perfect – but man, when the weather’s gotten it right, it’s gotten it RIGHT.
Now, if only there was a practical way of having not just a flash mob, but a whole flash outdoor festival. The Takoma Park Folk Festival managed to take advantage of the weather best, what with the sunshine and mid-seventies and breezy temperatures et al. As we’d run up to the TPFF all I heard was from people who generally didn’t go because of how hot it was… well, I arranged for THAT to be taken care of…
Nothing says heavy metal like a good disco ball. Above – Dethlehem rocking Metal Quest at the Ottobar in Baltimore, MD. They dress up as their Dungeons and Dragons characters and reenact their adventures in song. Absolutely awesome.
Last Sunday was a little crazy, but well worth it. All of the build up and stress and frustration that lead up to the TPFF melted away with a relatively flawless day. With the exception of one of the bands having to call me at 12.30am the night before / morning of the festival, canceling due to a family emergency, everything went according to plan. I did my best to get the bands there early to fill the gap, but since the Afro-funk band ran characteristically late for their early slot, we ended up riding the schedule exactly as initially planned and got through the rest of the day mostly without incident.
Like I said – I’d been kind of integral with the Takoma Park Folk Festival this year. This is the stage I had most to do with – the No-Longer-On-The-Field Stage. The positives of the changes we made this year were IMMEDIATELY obvious – usually the first band on the Field Stage is kind of screwed and plays to maybe a dozen people at most. Above, you can see that Buck Stone and the Bucktones have no such issue. 
My brother, his wife and my nephew came out to the festival. Much mirth ensued. 
My brother actually, was busy being less charming. I don’t remember what I said but I’m almost SURE this was undeserved! 
Other Rob w a shirt I made for him! (nope, take no credit for the artwork) 
In the spirit of all-inclusiveness there were sign interpreters for most of the stages. Some were awesomely expressive. 
Politics is always an undercurrent at any Takoma Park event and the Folk Festival was no different. Above, my friend Ira getting his Obama on… there was a gutsy little Romney tent that was largely ignored by the left-leaning locals, but you got the impression it was just sort of there for look of even-handedness.
Excepting the rain runoff from the storms the night before and the moment when a bunch of water swept down off the Seventh Heaven tent and poured down on me and my guitar and excepting the fact that an internal ribbon cable died on the 7th Heaven mixer and left our sound guys scrambling to mix us with the computers and gain knobs as ALL of their faders died…
The bands were great. The bands I booked were mostly great (there was one or two maybe that I’d give a pass on in the future or recommend that other stages skip), the experiments that were new this year (stage check-in AT THE STAGE and the not-so-fieldness of the Field Stage) were very successful and in general I was pretty damn blown away by the festival as a whole. We’ve played a LOT of festivals at this point, and I’ve gotten my hands dirty helping to run a couple as well, and I think I can say that the Takoma Park Folk Festival is way up there in the way of awesome one-day festivals.
I booked all the good stuff! Here’s Kristen’s other band 50 Man Machine performing on the 7th Heaven Stage at the Takoma Park Folk Festival. They were kind of an absolutely danceable hit! 
Primitivity performing at the Takoma Park Folk Festival in Takoma Park, MD. They HAD been booked for 7th Heaven – I swiped them for my stage because I’m a swiper. 
Shannon Bishop, the local professional hula hooper, shows off her leggy self while taking a break from dancing in front of the stage.
ilyAIMY rocked 7th Heaven. It was hard NOT to since we were turned up kind of crazy-loud (back to those fader issues) like our sound guy was running a rock concert under our little folk tent. Maybe he was taking cues from my Dethlehem t-shirt – the night before Kristen and I had headed to the Ottobar in Baltimore and rocked out at Metal Quest (a collection of metal bands doing a fund-raiser for retired comic book artists) mostly to see Dethlehem (a heavy metal band that dresses up as their Dungeons and Dragons characters and sings songs about their campaigns) and I’d worn my Parkington Sisters t-shirt to THEIR show – I figured it was only fair play to then wear my new metal shirt to the folk festival…
Got around to seeing Rowan’s other band too! Tinsmith rocking out on the Grove Stage at the Takoma Park Folk Festival. 
Art Isaacs and Charlie Pilzer running sound at the Seventh Heaven stage.
In any case, the night before I’d gone to see a really, really loud metal show… and I STILL thought we a) rocked and b) were really, really loud.
Getting to the Takoma Park Folk Festival at 10.45am to help with any last-minute Field Stage organizational issues and then running from stage to stage to stage to catch the artists that I wanted to see was great, but pretty exhausting. And that was just the beginning of the day – the moment I was done on stage with ilyAIMY I shoved my friends Amy and Ray in my Saturn and raced over to Capital City Cheesecake to set up for and run my open mic.
Surprisingly, I started on time, ran on time and even finished on time with an absolutely killer list of performers including our delicious featured artist, Tiffany Thompson. Gosh. She was great. And, exhausted, I finally packed up my gear, slowly loaded everything into my Saturn and turned the key to go home – at which point absolutely nothing happened.
ilyAIMY performing at the Takoma Park Folk Festival on September 9th, 2012. Probably within 20 minutes of this photograph I’d packed Ray and Amy and all of my soundgear back into my Saturn and was busily racing back towards Capital City Cheesecake to run my open mic.
I must admit, I just about cried. I was SO tired and SO ready to come home, and the engine didn’t grind, the lights didn’t come on, it was the most anticlimactic NON-response of any broken down vehicle I’d ever had and I didn’t even know what to do. Frank Cassel (the banjo player) stuck around for a bit as we tried to jump it(unsuccessfully) and I made a couple of phone calls. He’d even offered to drive me home, but I got in touch with Chris Colvin and gotten a couch to crash on for the night instead.
However in the time it took for Chris to get home from his gig, Rowan had spotted my Facebook status and offered to come out and fool with my car – he made it out about twenty minutes later and used a little magical brush to clear the corrosion off my battery leads and got my steed up and running in about five minutes.
Shit. I forgot to buy his drinks last week!
Juels Bland. 
The Dreamscapes Project!! 
DeJohn! 
