Falcon Ridge deluge
While I didn’t make it to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, in Hillsdale, N.Y. this season, I had several friends who did. I’m sure the other days on the site provided plenty of good times and great music. But Sunday’s show was marred by a storm, as reported by my friend Ken Dixon, a columnist for The Connecticut Post:
“It took a one-day trip to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in Hillsdale, N.Y. – and hail stones as big as wine corks – yesterday to finally clean my toes that were dirtied a whole week earlier stomping the fields at the new Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival location in Oak Hill, a couple dozen miles south of Albany.
When we got to Falcon Ridge, just off Route 22, about 11 a.m. yesterday, people in the reception tent spoke of the downpours of the recent early morning, that left some thick muddy tire tracks and standing water that we skirted around as we headed to the Main Stage in search of our friends and relations who spent the weekend there.
They were enjoying the Gospel Wake Up Call and anticipating showers to figure in the afternoon’s weather plans. After listening to David Massengill in the Family Tent for a little while, I went back and caught Wild Asparagus perform a dependable set, including a square dance that sounded OK, even with the saxophone in attendance.
A shower came through and I hoofed it back to the car for rain gear and something that rhymes with gear that comes in a can. At 1, Tracy Grammer came on, singing an Emmy Lou Harris cover, then a David Carter tune before I stood up to head for the Workshop Stage for the Sweet Harmony that was scheduled to the performed by The Strangelings, Red Molly and the Farewell Drifters. It never happened.
The earlier shower had come up from the east, but this thing, coming over the hill from the north, was one nasty, ugly, bitter thunderstorm cell.
It sent shafts of lightning all around and the heavy rain that forced me back under the treeline just in time for the hailstones, which ranged in weight from cherry-size to wine corks. From my spot on the little hill, I watched concession tents cartwheel over their owners like poorly crafted kites. The shade arrangement staked out for the workshop’s mixing board – that impressed me as cool a few minutes earlier -broke it’s guide lines like they didn’t exist and the sound guys held the awning, now a hang glider, over the tarpaulin covering the sound board. It was an intense 20 minutes, followed by a brief let up, then more of the same, sans hail, though.
I walked back to the Main Stage and pulled a beer out of our cooler, quickly downing it and reaching for another. Damn, this would be a perfect spot for the tequila, I said, bemoaning the surviving bottle I had at home left over from Grey Fox.
The little dry creek beds at the bottom of the pastures had become roaring little brooks. There was footwear and blankets scattered everywhere. In the Merchandise tent, folks were told to go back to their cars until the lightning was over. It was 2:30 and the big food tent had also collapsed. We decided that it was probably better to drive home and create less mud than what was bound to be a quagmire for thousands of people camped on the hill. We hoped no one was hurt and that Eliza Gilkyson got to do her set.
Oh yeah, the toes. Well, walking in shindeep water pretty much cleaned the toenails of the Grey Fox dirt.”
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