Newberry 2019 - Festival Report

I honestly wasn't sure I was going to make it to the Newberry Event. Boo and I heard about it a month or so earlier at 4Peaks 2019 (See 4Peaks 2019 - Festival Report) from one of the organizers. She described it as a super small benefit festival for a woman who has MS. First, Boo had a conflict, then Hapy wouldn't stay cool... it felt like the gods were against me. But, similar to the approach we took to get to ChinookFest (See Chinook Fest 2017 - Road Report), I just kept pointing in the right direction until I got there. Today's post covers the goings on at Newberry. This post got so long, you may not be sure you'll get to the end of it, but I'm not going to cut it into multiple posts.

Landing

view out front porch of RV zone

I arrived at 7:30, which in late July is still full daylight in Oregon. The turn-in off the road was marked with a small sign and a bearded guy wearing a "security" t-shirt sitting in a camping chair. He walked over, saw the parking pass for 4Peaks a month earlier and remembered Hapy. "I searched you at 4Peaks," he said. I welcomed him to look around again, and he just smiled, refused and instead told me to leave the bus right there and walk over to the ticket booth to get my wrist bands. "Here? In the entryway?". Yep. Well, moments later another security t-shirt wearing guy arrives in a golf cart none too pleased about Hapy blocking the entry so we agreed that maybe I could roll the bus down the hill a little bit. From there, I walked over to the ticket booth, gave my name and the woman looked puzzled. "Yeah, my partner couldn't make it so we'd like to donate her ticket to whoever needs it most," I explained. That brought out big smiles from the 3 folks behind the counter; they already knew who to give it to.

I asked about my "RV parking pass" and the woman told me to find Jeremy in a golf cart. He would know what to do. Ok... pretty casual outfit we've got here. I got my festival wrist band and an over-21 band for the bars inside and walked back over to Hapy. As usual, he fired right up, and we puttered over to where I could see the RV's parked. As I rolled past the RV parking gate, Jeremy pulled up in his golf cart. I explained I didn't want to take up too much room, he smiled and we quickly agreed on a level spot (the whole property, except the entrance, is flat) along the western edge backed into a grove of trees. I was parked, pop-top up and wrestling with the canopy by 7:50. 20 minutes from pulling in the entrance to having my will-call tickets and camping set up started. So far, I'm thrilled.

Set Up

I had the canopy up and was wrestling the lot couch out of the bus when a band started firing up. I had seen the schedule, and Thursday night was not on it. I had not expected to hear anyone. Still, the "Broken Down Guitars" started up promptly at 8:30. Shortly afterwards, as I was stringing the solar lights, they popped on, indicating that it was now "dark". I enjoyed the band while setting up the sleeping area, figuring I would get everything else sorted in the morning. The rest of the set-up was fairly straight-forward. I set the kitchen next to the front passenger wheel, left- to right: coolers stacked, the cube-table (see Hapy cub-inet) in it's "standing short" configuration with the stove on top of it and the milk crates set beneath/inside, and then the regular folding-camping table. This was a nice and tight configuration where I could prep meals on the folding table, cook and have extra counter space from the top of the top cooler. In order to get food, I had to pull the top cooler off, but this arrangement, with the cold cooler on the bottom, allowed me to last 4 days in the high desert in the summer with only one purchased bag of ice.

I only used our small square rug outside the bus. The grass was green and soft, so I didn't need to protect my bare feet from sharp owie grass like we often find at 4Peaks. This left me the grey carpet to put on the floor of the bus, covering the lot couch seat-rails. I set up the LED lights, pulled out the soundbar and MP3 player for music when the stages weren't blowing and set up my new extendable flag pole (Harbor Freight), with my new custom-made 4Peaks flag.

Neighbors

I didn't know anyone when I arrived, but by the time I left, I knew quite a few people. Since the canopy did not have tapestries hanging off of it, my front porch was much more open, and welcoming. As a result, I met lots of folks just wandering by. Unlike prior festivals, my name recollection was pretty poor. 3 or 4 people stopped by just because of Hapy. One of the Friday bands (Dodgy Mountain Men) chose to park and camp across the fire lane from me because "they were called by the bus". Love it. Down at the end of the row was a local couple in a classic pickup truck camper who hosted friends over the course of the weekend. They introduced me to Zamp Solar, a local Bend company who makes 25-year warranty portable solar panels. Once the money no longer needs to go into keeping Hapy running, I'll be getting one of their panels. He had their smallest one, but they mostly camp in central Oregon. I think I would probably need the next size up since we camp where there actually are clouds.

Friday afternoon, new neighbors (Tony and Alisa) arrived from Oakridge in a minivan. They brought 4 kids with them, all between 14 and 17 years old, who set up a cluster of tents up behind the cars in the longer grass. A better mannered group of teenagers I've never seen. I found myself hanging out with this family quite a bit over the next few days, sharing food and stories. On Saturday afternoon, I took a walk with a subset of them to a swimming hole about 1/2 a mile away. Unlike most of the rivers and streams I've seen in Oregon, this water was warm like a New England lake in August. I was expecting typical mountain run-off which gives you an ice cream headache if you get in too fast or deeper than your ankles.

The Scene

Pigs on the Wing at sunset

The RV camping zone was directly behind the stages, and the load-in / load-out zone for the bands. As a result, we would enter the music zone through the stage entrance, and rubbed elbows with the artists along the way. This created a level of intimacy that can't really be explained. For example, I got to talking with the drummer from Dead Horses, who played at 10AM on Sunday to find out they are on tour from Milwaukee, WI. I was a little stunned that even the 10AM Sunday band was a national touring act. You need to recognize that this was/is an incredibly small festival. I estimate there were maybe 200 people there at the peak with probably an overall weekend total of 300 between the coming and going.

Since this was held as a benefit, there were a few anomalies. For example, a long section of tables were set in the middle of the vendor area where there was a weekend-long silent auction. All of the items in the auction were donated by the vendors in exchange for the right to vend, rather than being charged a fee. This created an environment where there were LOTS of vendors, each with only a 10x10 space. This more egalitarian approach created a very different vibe. I hadn't realized how hard some folks drove for sales until Newberry where no one was really working that hard. There were some beautiful things, of course, but, seriously, the vendors almost seemed to prefer hanging out and talking about stuff instead of trying to sell anything. For example, there was a woman selling tie-dyes who talked to me about her ice technique for making the dye lines crispy and only indicated merchandise to illustrate the point.

There were 2 stages, with the stage entrance in between. Like most events, while one stage was performing, the other was breaking down and setting up. Once a performance finished, the new stage would quickly set sound levels and then there would be announcements. Every time. The announcements usually ran a similar format: thank the last performer, mention the silent auction, perhaps have a 50/50 raffle and then introduce the next performer. The 50/50 raffle was interesting. Every time I saw a ticket get pulled, it was for someone different, of course, but each time the winner would donate their winnings to the benefit. The last one, on Sunday, was for something like $2700US. That's pretty humbling, and showed where this festival's goers had their priorities. Maybe every winner didn't donate, but all of the tickets I saw called did.

Music

Tal with dancing little girl

Jeez, this has gotten long and I haven't even talked about the music yet. Well, since the RV zone was directly behind the stages, you would think the sound was bad, so I spent time either not really hearing the music, or I was in the venue. Nope. The sound was actually incredibly clear on the front porch. I took notes on every band, and will try to see some of them again. So... here's the band reviews, in the order of appearance:

Broken Down Guitars - really good. very strong female vocal. Ended a 90 minute set with 2 Jefferson Airplane songs. Such a gutsy move, but she completely nailed it.

Friday
Newberry Family Band - okay bar band
Pete Kartsounes- voice sounded like Jorma
J Brothers - okay.  opened with a Doors cover; played Gregg Allman tunes. keyboard-driven, but vocals were really overdone
Rad Trads - lots of sound for 5 guys on the small stage but loud enough to drown out the RV generator across the way. middle-of-the-road horn-infused rock, but good at that.
Dodgy Mountain Men - banjo-less bluegrass, but add a harmonica. As the band finished, 3 deer ran past the edge of the campZone and settled down in a cluster of trees maybe 50 meters away from Hapy.
Indubious - took forever to set up. drone-y bass and keyboard with high energy drums and vocals. hard to pin down their genre but I was distracted by watching the deer.
Pigs on the Wing - wow. 20 minute version of Echoes. Incredible sound-match with improvisation. Main male vocalist shouted out his voice somehow, but the female vocal on "Great Gig in the Sky" brought tears. Literally. Their performance made all of the travel difficulties worthwhile. This group was simply incredible; I will go out of my way to see them again.

Saturday
Natty Red - from the name I expected reggae, but got something like the Tree Frogs: rump-shaking hippie shuffle beat that could have used a more pre-funk'd crowd.

Pigs on the Wing again

Mission Blues - tight guitar-focused blues band with a strong drummer. Did BBKing and "I'm Going Down". Easy to listen to, especially from the front porch with a little home-made Kahlua in my coffee.
Pat Simmons, Jr - had a prom slow-dance or KINK-artist vibe. Kinda plain. Harmless, but meh.
Idle Poets - straight forward rock to start with, but then drifted into some 70's lounge stuff. Kinda odd. I missed 1/2 the set to hike to the swimming hole.
Vokab Kompany - very cool. horn infused modern dance/rap with live musicians and a rap artist. The kids next door loved them so much they got merch.
Belly Dancers - I think this was a local troupe. It was interesting.
Tal Wilkenfeld - beautiful voice and amazing bass work but had issues with the sound at first. Then, she changed basses between most songs and had to re-tune each time so the set wasn't very cohesive. She was really good though and would definitely see again... indoors where there aren't temperature changes messing with her tune. She pulled kids up on stage to dance with her, and her presence on stage was simply awesome. She would sing a nice song and appear all 'fitting into the female mold' and then do something harder and get face to face with the guitarist and head-bang all that curly hair while just going for it on that bass. Really so much fun to be part of; she was awesome.

Sunday
Dead Horses - traditional (old skool) country with beautiful harmonies from a simple 3-piece.
Eric Leadbetter - heavy rock approaching metal. Great vocals, drums. Should have gotten a Saturday spot, IMHO.
Lounge on Fire - horn supported guitar-heavy funk.. ish. Really groovin; they would hit a pocket and just ride it. Left the festival before they finished, but not because of them.. I was concerned about my drive home.

Well, that's it for the festival report. Next, I'll post about the drive home. Yes, I split the drives into 2 because, well, there were adventures both ways. Thanks, as always, for following along-