Winding Down the Summer, Pickin' in the Pasture and Thomas Point Beach

MAINE IS THE PLACE TO BE ON LABOR DAY WEEKEND!!!

mmmmm....Maine...lobstah!!!

As the end of August draws near I find myself looking forward to the last days of summer with the advent of fall just around the bend. A few of my very favorite gatherings of bluegrass folks happen at this time every year and this season promises to be especially memorable. I am definitely in the mood for lobster - fresh off the boat - and plenty of it!

Though it doesn't look like I'll have a chance to go this year, one of the brightest spots on my festival season is always Pickin' in the Pasture ("PIP"), held on a working sheep farm in Lodi, NY.

The Alexanders make everyone welcome, and there's such a down-home feel, maybe because the stage is literally their back porch! Performers and staff are fed in the Alexanders' kitchen, and their living room is the "green room" where everyone tunes and works out their set list.

Walk around the relatively flat grounds, especially following the conclusion of the stage show each night, and you're bound to find some excellent, traditional bluegrass jam sessions and meet a bunch of friendly people. A couple years back some enterprising Amish folks set up a wonderful stand just spilling over with luscious vegetables and artery-clogging home-baked goods (I suppose if you eat both offerings you'll be okay). Last year the Amish were having a barn-building or school-building and had to forego the produce stand. But that was a high point of the festival the year they were there. Even if they're not set up,if you stand by the little road that brings you to the festival it won't be long till you'll see an Amish buggy or two going about their business in this rich agrarian area. Lodi is located in the Finger Lakes region of New York state, not far from Ithaca, and very close to Seneca Lake. Check it out!

The lineup at PIP is always superb, that is, if you like your bluegrass on the traditional end of the spectrum (and you know I do). It's going to be hard to give PIP a miss this year, but I have a good excuse...I'm headed to the 30th-- and final -- Thomas Point Beach bluegrass festival near Brunswick, Maine.
If you go to many festivals you probably have a favorite and I have to say that, all things considered, Thomas Point Beach is mine. So it's with a partially heavy heart that I head out there later this week to make some memories with friends, eat as much lobster as I can choke down (and that's a lot), maybe get to sail out to Cundy's Harbor for a lobster roll, pick a whole bunch with all my pals, and hear a whole lot of great music there by the white sandy beach of Thomas Point. Some of the featured performers are the Old Time Bluegrass Singers, White Mountain Bluegrass, Country Ham, the Tennessee Mafia Jugband (featuring Leroy Troy, one of my faves), Rhonda Vincent, the Gibson Brothers, Claire Lynch, Doyle Lawson, Marty Stuart, Ricky Skaggs, the Del McCoury Band, and the Grascals.

Perhaps you've heard me go on at length about how I love this festival and that festival and I mean every word I say. It's just that when I write down all the factors that make a festival GREAT, Thomas Point Beach always rises to the top. One big factor is that it is a full-service campground with all the things you'd expect at a top-notch campground. There's plenty of shade (not in the concert area, but a "Maine" tent is provided for those who want/need shade - it's located fairly far back from the stage) in the camping areas, lots of activities - and a great sandy beach for the kids (and the not-so-kids, too); lots and lots of jamming (this is the best jamming festival I've ever attended anywhere) - day and night -- and a very good lineup on stage.

One really wonderful thing Pati and her staff have got figured out is that you don't need 8 trillion bands onstage every day from 9 am until 3 am resulting in

tired festival-goers, being too tired to stay up to jam, and a grouchy sound crew. No, about 12 hours of music are offered per day - roughly from 10 or 11am until 10 or 11 pm. Plenty!

A delightful setting for a great event...this is the view from the door of my tent!

After the stage show stops some of the hired bands come out and jam with the folks - yep, bring along your instrument and play along if you like. Many folks do! Or you can just stand around, listen and grin. Suit yourself.

A bunch of my friends never even go to the stage. It's an annual friends' reunion, out there on the point not far from the beach. We start rolling in nearly a week before the festival even starts. It's fun to watch the campsite build from nothing to what feels like a big, friendly town. I don't camp in the middle of everyone, but prefer a quieter, shadier place out under the trees on the edge of the water. I'm still just a short walk from all the hubbub, but I need my quiet times.

(Not to be missed - the kids put their hearts into their main stage set every year.)

So most of the girls (women) in my gang sort of hang around and laugh and cook things and just have a good time while most of the guys scratch their um bellies and pick day and night. Pretty good stuff. Some of the young kids get interested in the music and sidle up and listen and pretty soon they're handed an instrument and given some instruction. This is where the passion begins to burn!

Well, most of you have been to bluegrass festivals before so I'm not telling you anything new. But if you've never been to a festival - or you want to attend the one that I rank #1 in the country, get yourself up to Thomas Point Beach in Brunswick, Maine for their very last hurrah this August 28-31 and tell 'em MaryE sent ya. You won't regret it - I promise.

See you at Thomas Point Beach (and hope you make it to Pickin' in the Pasture, too!)

Thomas Point Beach Bluegrass Festival (part 1)

My friends and I had an incomparably wonderful time last week at the 29th Thomas Point Beach (TPB) Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick, Maine. That festival just keeps getting better and better. Don't know what the 30th TPB holds in store, but it'll be a dandy! Okay, if I'm going to talk about a pet peeve it would simply be that it's a darned shame that such a great time has to come to an end! Visit http://www.thomaspointbeach.com/

It was a week of picture-perfect days with very fresh and pleasant daytime temperatures and plenty of sunshine. One day was overcast and a little cooler and we had a teensy bit of rain but no problem. The nights were mostly kind of cool (in the 50s I think) but I only had to wear gloves one night, and that's because I'm a weeny. You can be sure no proper DownEaster donned anything resembling gloves. Matter of fact they were probably down at their beach in bikinis when I was wearing 4 layers of clothing and gloves on Sunday night!

My buddy Darwin Davidson was there and graciously invited my sister and I to accompany him and some friends (among them Myron of Myron's Yakitori - remember him? He's now selling his great sauces in Hannafords and other supermarkets) on a little cruise on the "Beagle" a few miles over to Cundy's Harbor where we partook of an excellent lobster dinner for a mere $13.95....this fresh off the boat! YUMMMMY. The eatery there (I think it's called Moore's) is picturesque and they've taken the time to make it Maine-y while adding lots of pretty flowers...but most of all the lobster!!! I ate there twice, though the first time I "merely" went by car with some pals. The dining area is right up there on a deck overlooking the harbor and you get to see the lobster boats come in; one even had a mascot golden retriever aboard (or did that dog pull the pots for them?) We had a leisurely cruise while passing through the "no wake" zone (I think I live there sometimes) but went directly to warp speed when we were safely out on the more open channel....I think I'm about 2 years younger now. Anyway we passed a very happy 2 or 3 hours motoring to Cundy's Harbor, eating a big fresh lobster then motoring back in time to hear some great bluegrass music.

All my gang from (mostly) New England were there camping out in the center of the grassy area out on the point near the sandy beach, not far from the osprey nest. They always camp there in a series of tents, tarps, pop-ups and so forth. This gang included the Bowdens, the Mavians, the Elegants, the Cartouns, the Hendersons, Casey Henry, Dave Gandin and probably a few others I've forgotten to mention (the Frakers were camped just across an inlet from me). Each night the fire ring was ablaze and kids of all ages were making s'mores with marshmallows alight on the end of sticks and big ole crunchy graham crackers and bits of Hershey bars. Brings back all them Girl Scout memories....These days the gang includes not only us "first generation" folk but kids, grandkids...pretty soon it will be great-grandkids, though Casey and I are hanging tough in that regard . 'Course I'm old enough to be her momma.

Just down the road a few vehicles was the Greenwood compound where Eddie and Jackie, Poppy, June and Buzzy and various other family and friends held court all week long under their 30 year old striped canvas...the picking there was mighty MIGHTY fine, day and night, and the "Hi T" as they call it was held three consecutive afternoons to great amusement....I learned (again) that drinking in the daytime does NOT pay... The first afternoon I learned with a headache that I need to pace myself and I was wanting to go to bed around 6 pm; luckily I got my second wind at midnight and put in a respectably late night after all. Those blender drinks full of fruit and rum were....well, irresistable, and it is flat uplifting to sing the chorus to the Sunny Side of Life every time someone new joins the circle (somehow we managed to sing that song a bunch of times over the 3 days). In the old days of the Hi T bunch the "anthem" was sung every time a blender-ful of adult beverage was whipped to perfection. Now it's a two-blender operation. Judge John from California was solemn but kind and I was only fined twice (you pay a buck every time you curse or say something even vaguely negative about anything). I think a guy named Keith may have been most heavily fined; Carl Pagter might have been just behind him.

At the Greenwood compound on Sunday night, long after the Gibson Brothers had finished their LONG set and charmed each and every person on the grounds with their wonderful music and friendly ways, long after Pati and her staff had said their goodbyes till next year, long after "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" was sung as all the audience joined hands and frolicked around the stage area, hands clasped all in a gigantic circle, long after many of my friends had drifted off to their sleeping quarters, I was headed back to my own tent around 2 am to get some sleep when I heard this great jam going on down at....you guessed it...the Greenwoods. I wandered down there to find a large crowd gathered around Eddie and Jackie Greenwood and Eric and Leigh Gibson and their friends and band members...yikes! What a jam! With a nearly 400 mile drive coming up in just a few short hours I couldn't stay around as long as I would have liked to, but I listened to a few and then went over and laid in my tent listening to the jam for....hours (at least my eyes were resting). I was told they jammed until 4:30 \na.m. That's the kind of folks they are. I just know I floated off to sleep with the most beautiful sounds drifting on the cool night air among the pine trees.....

Pet Peeve #1: The great TPB festival drew to a close on Sunday night and Monday morning everyone was packing up and leaving. Durn. What if we all just decided to stay for another week???