Saturday – Florida Festival Day 2

As we got so cold last night, we prepared ourselves even better for this evening, and took the quilt from the spare bed with us to the festival. The days have been beautiful, warming gently and by midday it is up into the 70’s (above20 C), but those clear skies have meant cold nights.

As we parked, Mary parked next to us and that started a good conversation with her and her friends. I wandered off to watch the Cajun workshop, but it was too crowded to join in, nice music though. Sally beetled off to watch the Irish dancing. I went to learn more about Bluegrass Jamming Etiquette from ‘Doctor Donna’, very interesting. After the session we met up with Harvey from the Briar Pickers and was able to give him the CD of the Cleveland Bays. While we were talking, Dr Donna comes up to chat to them as well, but she was not looking well and she mentioned that she needed to take a Vitamin B12 injection, could anybody administer it for her. Well that started something as I called Sally (Sally takes a daily injection of VitB12) and she came to help and by the time we had finished we were firm friends with Dr Donna and her partner, but missed the rest of the morning.

After our picnic, we went to an ‘Old Time Music’ Jam session. Now to the undiscerning eye Old Time Music (OTM) is the same as Bluegrass, but oh no. A circle is made (the same as BG), but on choosing a song everybody plays the melody, there are no instrument breaks. As bluegrass is dominated by the banjo, OTM is dominated by the fiddle, predominant key is ‘D’, as opposed to the ‘G’ of bluegrass. It also does not need a bass, and allows such instruments as dulcimer and autoharp. OTM is played for contra dances.

It was fun and much more like band sessions with The Ridings. I had a good chat with a really nice fiddler called Ellis, who was local to White Springs (Hi Walter, [I will explain to others later]) and has a horse so he takes part in the Olustee re-enactment as a cavalry man.

In wandering around various stages, we met another lovely couple called Pete and Lou. Pete plays the fiddle and is ardently an OTM man, so I was able to find out a bit more about it. It seems that bluegrass is an offshoot of OTM, starting with Bill Monroe in 1946. OTM tries to keep to original tunes from the 17^th to 19^th century.

We now had a few moments to search out Walter and Merri,( the people who had invited us to their party via a comment on the blog) as he had said that he could be found at the Beer Tent. Merri was not there, but Walter welcomed us warmly and we had a pleasant chat for a bit. It seems that he found our blog because he lives in White Springs (Hi Walter) and has linked to Google to send him an email every time his town is mentioned and as we mentioned our arrival earlier this week, he very kindly invited us to meet him.

Over dinner we again, by coincidence, sat with Gene and Deanna and got along really well. He had been working in Uganda in the 70’s, when Sally was there, so we had a time of reminiscing.

I then disappeared to the Contra dance in the evening. Had a really good time. All the dances are long ways dances with two couple sets, with one couple (the inactive couple facing, or contra to, the active couple) and they are all progressive, with you keep with your own partner. It was great fun. In the first dance I danced with a girl from Tallahassee called Vicky and we stayed as partners for the evening. She was very nice. Her boyfriend didn’t like dancing and poor Sally, who loves dancing, is not able to.

Sally (warmly wrapped in the quilt) went to the evening concert at the Amphitheatre and listened to some good music. After the dance I took Sally back to the Trailer and then returned to the festival campground for the jam sessions. It was an amazing experience, walking through the campground, pitch black, no street lights, subdued light from the tents and RV’s crammed in together, every few yards a space with the glow of a campfire, with perhaps a dozen people huddled round, singing or playing, drinking or talking. As you walk through the campground the sound perspective changes every few yards, distant singing, or close up instruments, banjo, bass, fiddle, fading and swelling as you walk through. It put me in mind of what a civil war encampment may have been like. Had a good time jamming round one of the campfires, with some of the members of Briar Pickers and others. A very good day.