Got the GO SARA Rig set up by mid-afternoon on Wednesday alongside the industrial-size dumpster on Shady Grove Lane. Volunteers were setting up the kitchen and the tiny stage for performances during dining hours in the Canteen, beginning with lunch. The impromptu performance space has been notched up every year since your tenure as gal Friday for nephew Robert, the Festival Director.
For example, this year, our friend Louis Ledford was programming the performances on the Canteen stage for the entire Jamboree ‘23 — every meal except breakfast. We sat at one of the picnic tables in the Canteen to catch up while a young volunteer was wiping down the tablecloth next to us. I told Louis I was writing these letters to you.
He told me when Robert needed someone to cover his promise of taking you to the Mavis Staples concert that week. Louis agreed, and Robert dropped off your medications in a plastic pill organizer. You, dearest Sara, never made it to the show. Louis remembers you were admitted to hospice and died five days later. “And I was left with Sara’s meds in her plastic organizer,” he told me. Perhaps it will be jest for a song one day.
Thursday.
Nephew Robert leads off Jamboree ‘23 with the first performance at 4 o’clock, a feature he started only a handful of years ago; remember Sis? Now, it seems to be a 23-year tradition. I’m using a GoPro camera these days. It’s the one adventure people attach to their helmets.
My GoPro is on a tripod in front of me while seated in my new camper chair in front of the sound booth. Brother Peter is sitting on my left, and that’s Donna’s Straw hat in the lefthand corner of the frame.
In a grand serendipitous moment, I found the footage of Robert’s set taken by the woman in the red dress using her phone. It was on Facebook: Sarah (with an ‘h’) posted her clip publicly so I could add it to my movie as a close-up with the bonus of superior audio! Don’t you love it?
Yes, there was a theme song this year (which inspired the title). Robert developed it throughout the festival, beginning with this audience, and, as you can hear in the clip, people loved it from the beginning. By Friday night’s closing rendition of the theme song, the audience members improvised hand gestures to go with the words “The Sea / through the Breeze / in the Trees.”
At 7p., I finally witnessed Dean Luce playing guitar and singing with his Artful Dodgers band. They are the featured band of the Corner Pub in Bow, population 230 souls. Dean is called “Mr. Stage” in the program because he has led the crew, installing and striking the stages in all of their configurations through the years.
Remember how exciting it was when the stage floor broke during the ending of Saturday’s final performance around aught 9? Tradition had become by that time for all who performed that day to come up on stage. Our brother Pete was included, but the music never stopped, nor was the mini-collapse noticeable in my video of the performance, but everybody knew Dean after that show. He gave a strong, focused performance of his songs and Corner Pub's popular covers. I was impressed.
Caitlin Jemma was up next, and you would have loved her, Sis. “A little bit country-blues, she describes herself, and she gave it full throttle, backed up with two guitars, drums, and one bare-chested horn player in his bathrobe. Cailin’s band is called the “Goodness.” And it was good.
Plus, it was a good warm-up for the artist most people were waiting for, Alpha Yaya Diallo. Best I refer to the program for a description:
“His band Fatal recorded for Peter Gabriel’s Real World label and toured extensively, performing across Europe and at the prestigious WOMAD Festival. In 1991, he immigrated to Canada and settled in rainy Southeastern BC.” MORE
The electricity generated by bodies dancing to the African rhythms was inescapably infectious.
As mentioned, Robert leads the day’s closing celebration by asking all the performers to come up on the stage. And together, they led the fully charged audience in learning the Jamboree ‘23 Theme Song — it was fantastic; you would’ve loved it, Dearest Sara.
Friday.
The day is a blur following the Songswap Workshop at 10. Three singers/songwriters gather to share their work and a small audience, maybe two dozen souls. I wondered about the many reasons for being here as I studied their faces. I wanted to see more of Caitlin Jemma; I was not disappointed. The horn-man sat beside me in his bathrobe; I complimented him on last night’s performance. A young woman who sings her songs while playing accordion, calling herself “Dandelion,” sat next to Caitlin, then next to her was a singer/songwriter from New Orleans, Sam Doores.
I don’t remember talking about workshops with you, Sis, except for the three women from Canada who asked me to take down my YouTube clip where I mixed their stage performance with the workshop; I'm sure we talked about their hotness. Unlike you, I don’t play music. Yet, I enjoy meeting the performers behind their performances. I may not play music, but I have performed with my experimental theater work, so I appreciate the body jitters of performing. It seems I respond to music through the body, less in the mind — I may not remember any of the words, but I loved the experience, and Caitlin gave me a one-arm hug.
Staying on the subject of workshops, the only afternoon performance that caught my attention was Linda Allen —
“Bellingham Folksinger & Songwriter, Song Collector and keeper of the flame of songs of social importance …” reads the program.
She had a handsome head of white hair, sitting in a chair with her guitar, alone, on the big stage for an hour-long set! I made a plan to videotape her workshop the following day.
Waiting in one of the longest lines ever for dinner in the Canteen, this veteran volunteer was amazed and struck speechless; so, he took a shot of his waiting companions, Donna and Rosemary, both with beautiful smiles, blue shirts, and readers of Letters to Sara.
In the evening, I sat with Robert’s three high school chums, who still enjoyed getting together after 30 years, and who were his quests at Jamboree ‘23. I’m most familiar with Shaun, a Prof. of German these days, teaching out of state, and has a family of two youngsters, one of each gender, plus their mother, who were all in attendance. Another chum, Adrian, I worked with designing my book “J. S. White, Our First Architect,” for which you were a contributing Publisher. And I was introduced to Steve (a high-end lawyer in Seattle, I learned later) as I settled into my chair alongside his wife. She passed me the bottle of whiskey … and I can’t remember her name.
The evening was warm; even as the sun was setting behind the stage, we talked drank, the stars came out (some were shooting), and the music was grand.
Saturday.
I arrived early to introduce myself to Linda and ask for permission to record the workshop, which she gave enthusiastically. I set up my GoPro, ready to go at 10.
I selected the Dandelion Song because of its historical twist in Linda’s comments at the song's end. Follow this link to watch the entire workshop; it's about an hour long, but it’s fascinating to view the festival's life in the background.
I found my Campor Chair, where I had left it the day before, in time for “Songwriters in the Round” on the big stage. Robert was one, the Jamboree ‘23 headliner Peter Rowan another, and Meg & The Kindred —
“Meg's distinctive voice, songwriting style and performance captures, sometimes stuns and always includes her audiences.” From the online program.
She stole the show.
Peter Rowan, who was interested in recording one of Meg’s songs, had his own set later that afternoon. I couldn’t find my chair, so I sat in someone else’s in a row of empty chairs. Soon, the chair owner next to me sat down, looking at me, “A stranger in an empty chair.” I said to him, and we both turned to face the music.
Joined up with Donna and Rosemary for the evening shows, and Donna was beside herself with the excitement of meeting Peter Rowan backstage at Robert’s invitation. She is a long-time fan.
“Shpilkis is Seattle's slammin' Klezmer brass band bringing you old-school Yiddish grooves with tuchus-shaking energy,” quoting the program.
Klesmer music is rare at the Jamboree, especially on the big stage, but they did have the standing audience shaking their tuchuses!
I left to take care of some off-stage business. In the Deming Logging Show restrooms, men pee in a long metal trough flushed with running water dispenced through a white plastic pipe. This year, I came to appreciate the splashing resonance of my steady stream hitting the galvanized steel, yet controlled for the men wearing shorts — this year of Jamboree ‘23.
Walking back to my chair, I was stepping into the steady flow of foot traffic between the stages and the Canteen, and beyond to camping. I noted eye contact and smiles everywhere — people in festival mode — a holiday from their everyday worlds.
I couldn’t find my chair alongside Donna and Rosemary … and I couldn’t see them either in the crowded darkness, walking back and forth with my headlamp on, then off. The secret is to snap a visual memory of the group at the end of your row when you leave, which I didn’t do; then I heard Donna call out, “Warner!” And saw her standing next to my chair in the center of the long row. I didn’t mind being embarrassed, Petunia & the Vipers were hitting their marks on stage — no one was watching the old guy lost, looking for his chair. Surprising, though, how good it felt to be back in my Campor Chair and with my people.
All three of us grew tired from the long day and Petunia’s Vipers, if I may add. Nota bene: The sound system is fantastic, clear, and full, even as you walk to your campsite — wherever it is on the festival grounds — the sound stays with you. I returned my chair to the GO SARA Rig, changed into my sleeping-chamber attire, and followed the music for one last look and listen.
Robert’s closing of the festival was rousing, and its sincerity reached all the way out to us standing in the back. “It’s New Year’s Eve …” he exclaimed/singing.
We’re so proud of nephew Robert, eh, Sis?
Sunday, dawn.
I was up at first light, as they say in the movies, to break camp and head home.
Looking back, I remember you would set up a tent with sister Nan. Actually, a group of us would camp together, kind of like the picture below, all very close. We would take over a picnic table for our kitchen/dining room. Good times at the time.
You never enjoyed camping, dear Sara, as I remember … one year, you and Nan stayed at a B&B, many dark miles away, as I recall. Moving to Bellingham was the solution.
We think of you every day, dearest Sara.
If you are new to this letter, follow this link for the background of our monthly Letters to Sara; and if you enjoyed reading this letter, please share it with a friend. Thanks ~w.
Happy to learn you are still enjoying yourself and keeping in touch with your sister