Bratwurst, Schell’s Beer, guys in leather shorts with tubas and accordions all around. So, we must be in Minnesota then. Ya, U Betcha. Heritagefest in New Ulm, to be exact.
They swear they don’t eat, drink and party like this the rest of the year. It’s obviously true, or else the crops would never get planted, and certainly not harvested, and they’d all be too large to get through the barn door. Certain members of the group became larger here.
It’s our second year here at New Ulm’s Heritagefest, just down the road from where my mother lived as a child and I spent a lot of summers with my grandparents and Aunts and cousins. There are a lot of folks of German descent, Bavarians to be more precise, around Southern Minnesota. (My Danish half, my Dad’s side of the family, is from around the flatlands up near St. Cloud and Becker, north of the Twin Cities.) New Ulm is the center of the heavily German southern part of the state, and a huge percentage of this small city’s population is of German extraction.
We’re here for the wrap up weekend of their two-week festival. We’re the odd band, a role we often play at festivals (we’re been the strange band at blues festivals, norteno festivals, Highland festivals, countless Irish festivals and a bunch of other gatherings. Playing the mainstage in the 2000-seat Rosen tent we are sandwiched between oompah bands, some local - some from Germany and surrounding areas of Europe, a civic mens chorus.
The first day, Friday, the afternoon show (3 pm) is mainly retirees who are bused in; they don’t seem to know quite what to make of us while we’re playing, but they’re generous with the applause when each song is over. We’ve got Darcie Deaville, the sixth Molly (she’s a well-known Austin fiddler and singer-songwriter and has toured with us before, and played on “Only A Story) and she seems to be a favorite with the crowd. When Darcie rips into a solo, it seems to light them up. Me, too. You give Darcie eight bars and she’ll give you a fireworks show every time, with a beginning, middle and a scorching finale.
The evening show Friday are a bit looser, with some of that Schell’s flowing freely.
We were a bit loose ourselves, having not played with Darcie for a few months, since an April East Coast tour. And Danny wasn’t on that round at all, so he’d never worked with her. It made for some interesting moments, which mostly worked out quite well. Nancy stood in the middle and dished out the solos between Danny, on her right, and Darcie and Kevin, on her left. By the second set in the evening, it seemed normal. The only place we were getting jammed up was on “Who Needs You,” a highly arranged original of Darcie’s, and that gave me fits - but we toughed it out and the crowd didn’t seem to notice the clams. It was good for some moments of terror back in the “engine room.”
Tom and Kim Schmidtz put us up at their home for the weekend. After driving 1600 miles to get there and putting in three long sets, we weren’t much fun as company the first night. A couple of us hung out with them and some friends of theirs at the fire pit in their side yard for a while, and then just passed out and slept in.
The second day was a record crowd for the Heritagefest, and we played to a jammed tent. They didn’t want to leave when we closed the show at midnight, our third show of the day. The long sets, the equivalent of doing two or three normal shows a day, put some demands on our song choices. We didn’t want to repeat the same tunes three times a day for three days, so Nancy was digging deep. We did a few songs the new guys (Danny and Marx) hadn’t done before, or not since we did that St. Patrick’s week run in Reno four months ago. Besides Darcie’s “Who Needs You” we did her “Fiddle Playing Girl” and Kevin pulled out “Kalinda,” a Cajun standard that we tore up, and “Punados del Oro,” a Mexican polka stomp (we know via Ponty Bone) that we haven’t done in a while. It was a workout, though made easier than it could have been because we didn’t have to move our gear after every show Saturday.
We went back to Tom and Kim’s and hung out at the fire pit a bit more earnestly this night. Somebody is always sticking a beer in your hand here.
Next morning, we got up (despite an apparent increase in gravity) and made it over to Rhonda and Kim’s (our hosts from last year) house out in the country for a brunch. After two days of brats, we were ready for something else. They put on a great spread for us. I could still remember that meal from last year and wasn’t sure it could live up to my memory. It did. Trouble was, none of us felt like playing after that. But, we had three sets to go.
After the first show at the Rosen Tent, we had to get straight over to the dance tent (Eidelweiss?) for a set there, and then back to Rosen for another in the early evening. The crowds were huge again Sunday and we had people asking if we were coming back.
Sometimes these festivals aren’t the best things careerwise. We don’t fit into any genre, at least not neatly, so we never know if we’re going to hit it off with a crowd coming to a genre festival expecting to hear a particular kind of music done in a traditional way. But, it usually works for us. I suspect it has something to do with there being nothing to compare us to. It’s like that bumper sticker: “Get in, sit down and hold on.” Sometimes we ruffle a few feathers at the Celtic fests, but usually even there the crowd quickly accepts that we do our own music and that we don’t seem capable of coloring inside the lines. It’s worked that way here for two years. We get a few funny looks when Marx and I start laying a Louisiana groove under an accordion piece, but there’s no sense fighting it. Except for a couple of Celtic things, the rhythm section is usually in Memphis or further south.
The festival recording sales tent sold out of our latest CD, “Only A Story,” so I guess we went over well enough. We heard a bunch of promises from folks who said they see us when we stopped in Minnesota in August, first at Lee’s Liquor Lounge in Minneapolis and then at the Blue Moon in Kasota.
We recuperated for two days at Scott and Sandi’s in Kasota; they spoil us rotten every time we come through. Sandi is Steve’s sister. This time we delivered her brother, instead of just infesting her house and emptying the cupboards. Then we headed off to another of our summer celebration stops, Foote Lagoon in Loveland, Colorado.
To make a long story short, we had a great crowd (largest ever) at Foote Lagoon before heading down to New Mexico for a couple of shows on the way home. The new band went over great at Foote Lagoon. The weather was beautiful, we met up with a bunch of old friends. So what’s not to like?
One of the oddest, but coolest, regular shows for us is Gordon’s Cds and Tapes in Los Alamos, NM. Now, you’re probably say, “I thought that place burned down.” Well, almost. They did have a horrible forest fire which damned near took out the town earlier this year. But, Gordon’s parking lot didn’t burn down and that’s where we play. No kidding. Strange deal, to say the least. Russ, a music fan (one of those old time record store guys who really knows his shit) puts on a summer concert series in the parking lot of this little strip mall where his little shop is located in Los Alamos. No cover charge. People just show up and park their butts in lawn chairs in front of the stage in the parking lot. Nice portable stage. Nice PA. Fine house engineer. Somehow, this works for Russ. He’s brought in Dave Alvin (I needn’t say more) and Tom Russell, Ramblin’ Jack, a whole bunch of fine singers, songwriters and players. Walmart be damned, he’s selling Cds and tapes and keeping the doors open. The walls of Gordon’s is sagging from autographed photos of top notch performers who’ve worked the asphalt lot outside this little store. Every town and city in the country should be so lucky as to have a Russ Gordon.
Last stop was in Farmington, NM. Bill Diers, another of the good guys who does music promotion against all odds, got shafted when the regular venue for our shows there backed out at the last minute. Bill, not wanting to screw the band (now what kind of attitude is that for a business mogul?) hustled his butt off and got with Louie the sound guru to put us into a casino just outside town. Let’s just say, we appreciated having a paying gig, a hot meal and nice rooms before that long drive home.
Hate to sound like Larry King here, but it has occured to me that when this is over, in addition to the playing, I’d miss all the people who seem to enjoy our music so much; there are people who we see only every year or two, but they’re like long lost friends every thime we get around to where they live. It’s not like I don’t think about them in between visits, but I have a hard time remembering the degree to which they enjoy the noise we make. It makes the “22 hours in between*” a lot more tolerable.
*That refers to the roughly 22 hours in between shows, the time when we’re hauling butt down the highway, eating crap food and getting stopped by the cops for no reason and hoping the damned rattling van doesn’t breakdown, etc.
dan s