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-

4Peaks 2019 - Music Report

What's this? I know, I usually just have 2 posts about something interesting, so what's with this third post? Well, we tried to focus more on the music this year, so here is an entire post dedicated to it. Consider the layout of the festival grounds first. The camp zone is uphill, but also downwind of both stages, which point at the camp zone. So, when the wind is right, or very light, the sound carries directly into the camp zone. So, as you walk around, visiting friends, play games or check out the vendors, the music is there. This makes it easier to not be in-person at the stage for a performer, which is why we usually don't see much in-person. This year we saw more, and focused more on the music, but still didn't see nearly as much as we thought we would.

Lineup
Before we left home, I did some homework on the bands. Some previous years I had done that, but it has been a while since I had. With that homework came a pecking order or list of bands I wanted to see with one or 2 each day that I really wanted to see (marked with an asterisk). The list follows, with opinions following. The main stage only operates on Friday and Saturday, and interestingly, most of the bands I wanted to see were on the small side stage anyway. So, that small group who appeared on the main stage are noted.

Thursday

Time	Artist	Notes
8:00	*Lil Smokies	A blend of more bluegrass than Americana. They were good though, and it was a strong start to the music side of the festival
10:00	movie @TheJunction: UP!	Boo hadn't seen "UP", so we added that to the list. But, it was way too cold to sit out in the open watching a movie. When I say cold, it dropped into the upper 30F's, so, yeah, that's too cold to sit in a lawn chair in an open field so we sat by the buses with the propane heater instead

Friday

Time	Artist	Notes
11:00	Swindler	Described as psychedelic meets funk, these guys were good, but we didn't make it all the way to the stage. 11AM was too early in the day for them, IMHO. They really could have benefited from the cover of dark and some crowd pre-funk. Our neighbor, JerseyPaul, liked them so much that he bought their CD from the merch tent as soon as they left the stage. Strong statement
1:30	Mestizo Beat	Afro-cuban beats. These guys threw it down. Lots of really good bump in what they were doing. Again, didn't make it to the stage, but the sound across the festival grounds was really really good. We walked the vendors nearest the stage for about half of their set
4:00	Polyrhythmics	more funk. more beats. more dancing. Not as strong as I had expected, but as the day gets later, the expectations rise. Right?
6:45	*Pink Talking Fish	These guys were the buzz of our festival. Everyone we talked to, we asked about Pink Talking Fish, and they were a huge hit. Boo made it to the front of the stage, but the tent was full front-to-back of dancing. Their set included a ton of Phish (including a really good, long Bathtub Gin), but very little Talking Heads. They hit a "Crosseyed and Painless" that stayed in my head for not just the rest of the festival, but for another week afterwards. That bass/percussion groove was mesmerizing. The topper? a Beastie Boys encore: Sabotage. Mind Completely Blown. We will go waaay out of our way to see these guys again. So fun.
8:15	Los Lobos (main stage)	Los Lobos was a tale of 2 bands in one long set. They played 40 minutes of traditional Mexican music (Mariachi/Ranchera) and then switched into groovy, jammy stuff. They closed with a "Not Fade Away" into "Bertha" that had us singing along. That's some fun stuff.
10:00	*Poor Man's Whiskey	It is rumored this was to be their last 4Peaks appearance, so this would be their last special / small stage performance. But, we missed it. After Pink Talking Fish and Los Lobos, we were spent. Besides, there were friends to visit, so we took the last band of the day off for some late food. We could hear them across the festival grounds though, and they hit many of our favorites from past 4Peaks visits. They are always solid as the last band of the first full day

Saturday

Time	Artist	Notes
12:15	Maddie Carpenter (main stage)	I thought Boo would like her, since she has Bonnie Raitt and other strong female vocalist influences. I was right, and I really liked her too. It may have been a big stage for her, though, as she sounded a bit nervous, especially through quiet parts of her songs. She can totally belt though, and when she got her footing, she wailed. I had expected her to appear just by herself with a guitar, but she was backed by Poor Man's Whiskey, shy the lead vocalist, so it was an unexpected treat musically as well.
1:30	The Drunken Hearts	based a review, I had added these guys to the list. We missed them because of some unexpected, unplanned performances 2 camping spots away from us. I'll explain further down
2:45	*Sonny Mandreth (main stage)	based on reviews, I got excited about Sonny. Boo and I went down to check him out. The crowd was light, being early on Saturday, but the band was great. He started with a 25-30 minute acoustic set before launching into a full electric set. The acoustic stuff was really good, but during the break between instrumentation, Boo and I drifted away to the vendors and heard the rest of the set away from the stage. Again, the sound quality across the festival grounds is really good, so we could hear it all, but we just weren't as focused.
4:15	Sister Sparrow	I added this band for the lead singer's vocals, and she delivered. The band seemed completely designed around showcasing her singing, which is a minus. The solos were brief and just "okay", and there didn't appear to be a genre; they ranged from soul to gospel through R-and-B and blues. Had the group played like a group, the lack of style wouldn't have been such a thing. From the outside, the set was odd, but her voice is amazing.
5:15	Poor Man's Whiskey (main stage)	We tried listening to Poor Man's Whiskey through the radio simulcast. The radio fidelity was fantastic, but the delay from the stage flowing up the hill to the camp zone fought with the timing of the simulcast, creating an awful echo. It made the radio not viable for us. They were great, as they always are, but we were not "in the house" for their set, listening instead from GratefulEd's loft or by The Junction
6:45	Andy Frasco	I added Andy based on rumors. I had heard of Andy, and JerseyPaul raved about them ahead of their show. We chose to grab vendor-food and catch them in-venue. In terms of raw energy, Andy wins the 4Peaks prize. He was jumping all over the place, and whipping the crowd into a frenzy. He closed his set in his apparently-typical way: pseudo-bar mitzvah chair dance to "hora to Hava Nagila" which I thought was a little trite. It was a great show until he jumped the shark that way
8:00	Wood Brothers (main stage)	I had heard good things about the Wood Brothers, and they totally delivered. For only 3 musicians, we were very impressed for the breadth and complexity of what they were producing. Their sound was the most pure from distance, as compared to everyone else we heard from afar. I don't know if it was the reduced wind or what, but we could stand in The Junction and hear them absolutely perfectly. Every note crystal clear. And so good.
10:00	Billy Strings	based on review, we were going to go see Billy Strings. We chose to stay local, and visit with friends, thinking we could listen on the simulcast. Turns out, the simulcast ends when the main stage shuts down, so we missed them. Unlike some other bands playing on the small stage, they did not carry across the festival grounds, so we didn't hear much. Since the wind had died down, we should have been able to hear; we just couldn't. Our friends had conflicting feedback. JerseyPaul said they were "ok but lacking that special something". Another new friend, Jay, said they were "amazing, simply amazing". Further proof that beauty is in the eye, or ear, of the beholder

Sunday

Time	Artist	Notes
12:30	Scott Law	We've been trying to catch one of his shows since the Black Sheep Family Reunion when he appeared with Ducky Pig. BUT, we missed him again. We could hear some from the small stage, and when we went down, we were able to hear about half of his set as we approached through the vendors, but arrived too late to catch any of the magic. We'll get to seeing him one of these days
2:30	Rising Appalachia	I had heard rumors of their sweet harmonies, and they delivered. There are few things as sweet on the ears as intertwined female vocals in a bluegrass / Americana / folk genre. We listened while we broke camp, and it was a perfect end to a music-intensive weekend

The Junction
Unlike last year, there were performances at The Junction this year. The GoWesty folks have added a musical pod-cast to their array of offerings (see here). So, when you combine the 4Peaks interest for pop-up performances with this new pod-cast thing and then put the GoWesty folks at the Junction where the pop-up performances are desired, there's a musical storm brewing. And it stormed. There were at least 3 separate performances that we caught. In each case, the crowd was fewer than 20 people and the whole thing was located 2 buses down from us in a little performance area the GoWesty folks formed with 3 Vanagons.

Maxwell Friedman and CJ Neary
2 kids who each sat in with various bands over the course of the festival (Maxwell with Matador, and others and CJ with Los Lobos) set up as the first podcast. There were about 15 of us watching them set up and play through 4 or 5 songs. I learned after they finished that Maxwell is just turning 15, heading into his Sophomore year of high school which means that when he sat in with Karl Denson's Tiny Universe 2 years ago, he was 13 heading into 8th grade. CJ Neary may well be that old now.

Maddie Carpenter
Unlike her time on the big stage, Maddie seemed right at home standing on the lawn in front of a row of Vanagons, singing with a 4-piece backing band. Since her vocals were not amplified, some of her vocals were hard to hear from 20 feet away, but when she powered up, it carried very well. I don't know 100% who the backing band was, but I think it was Poor Man's Whiskey again. They were tight, and pulled CJ up for a song.

Unknown
There was a great 4 or 5-piece band that we didn't catch the name of. They didn't play any of the stages, but they got on the pod-cast. They had a mandolin player with a big voice and a harmony singer on a guitar who sounded so good together. Of the unscheduled, unexpected performances, I liked these guys the most, and stayed for their entire set, costing me the time to see the Drunken Hearts on the side stage.

The Drunken Hearts in a Late Night Pop-up
Saturday night, after the side stage closed up, we were visiting with friends. Boo and I wanted to stretch our legs and see the cold dark night sky so we wandered off from our camp zone. Across the fire lane, we were talking to NewTrailerRussell, and we heard about a pop-up show. "By the 4 flags" around 1:AM. Well.. it was practically 1:AM already, so we wandered towards where we knew there were 4 flags flying on one pole, and sure enough, tucked in behind 3 layers of tents there was a 10x10 with a band cranking. We worked our way to the front (Jerry's side) of the small crowd of about 40 people and caught 3 long jam-songs by the Drunken Hearts. They were great, and I was sorry that I had to make the choice between some random pop-up show and them on the small stage, but grateful that I ended up seeing both. Best of all, this set was one of their choosing for themselves, not for whatever audience they thought they were playing for.

That's it for the music review. Overall, the music was great. There is always a strong representation of bluegrass at 4Peaks, but this year it felt like the organizers were really trying to get more groove or funk happening. We liked it and we'll be back next year. I think doing the homework ahead of time gave us the means to make informed decisions about the bands, and gave us stronger reasons to get to the stages. I think I'll do that homework more as well.