Harmony Festival
San Francisco, city of fog and overlooks. The Embarcadero. Coyt Tower. The 60s. All I have to do is go to Golden Gate Park and look at the cypress and eucalyptus tress and I can get an acid flash back. Those were the days…
I have a few days off before I get going again. Actually, I had a few days off. I’m heading out tomorrow for Ukiah and the famous Raven John’s Ukiah House Concert. Last time I was there I found a dying black widow spider on the front porch. Dying of natural causes probably. I had forgotten how beautiful they are. And sinister too, I suppose, considering their toxicity. Which, by the way, is one of the best arguments against Intelligent Design. The strength of the neurotoxins that a black widow spider has in its body is completely beyond anything it would ever need. God is an over builder I suppose…
Anyway, last weekend was the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa. And I have to give grateful thanks to Kym Trippsmith for hounding those folks for the last couple of years to finally get me on the bill. It’s a pretty cool event but suffers from what one regular described as an “identity crisis.” Is it a music festival? A new age technology convention? A healing arts gathering? Well, I guess it was all three. And that’s fine. My only complaint was that it seemed to be trying to put as much as possible into as limited a space as they could. Way too much going on too close together. It went like this…
I had a great set on Saturday morning on the main stage. Great gear, good engineers, everything perfect. Doug Green, from up in Humboldt, was the emcee. I had 45 minutes and it was all filmed by 5-camera shoot. Real high-end stuff. Then we just wandered around for a while, trying to stay out of the sun and drinking a lot of water. Checking out the booths. One of them was selling kitchen gear that’s made from recycled chopsticks. Very cool. Anyway, Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! was scheduled to do a short thing on the main stage and then an extended talk in one of the buildings. We’ve known each other for a number of years and I always like seeing her. She’s one of my heroes. So I stood by the stage ramp and caught her eye when she was done. Only time for a quick hello – she was being whisked off to the hall for her longer talk. I headed that was too.
Amy can always bring things down to the ground. And that’s a great talent. Without criticizing anybody’s communal behavior she can lead the discussion to the more serious issues of the day and lead us all to understanding that there are social powers that we have access to. And that’s what she did, to a standing ovation. Then people lined up to get their books signed – part of her visit was a book tour. I figured the only way I’d get to say hello would be to get in line so that’s what I did. Twice I was asked by “handlers” if I had a book to sign and I said no. Finally I got up there and we had a little chat. She asked if I was singing so she could see me and I said yes, at 7:45 in the Earthdance Dome. She said she would try to make it. And she did.
Now, the Earthdance Dome is geodesic construction that serves as a perfect sound funnel to capture all of the extraneous outside noises – including the massive bleed form the main stage – and focus it directly onto the performance spot. It was an accidental masterpiece. I know it wasn’t done on purpose. But if you wanted to it would have taken ages of experimental designs and configurations to come up with such a perfect sound lens. So there I am, trying to keep on track with whatever song I’m singing in spite of the overwhelming drum beats and bass throbs that wallow around me. And in comes Amy Goodman. Of course, when you sit in the audience its not that bad – because this was a sound focus, a lens that channeled it all to the performer spot, leaving the audience fairly well out of the loop. It was a form of torture, so to speak. She stayed for a while and then had to go and I carried on and nobody noticed much except that I screwed up a couple of verses. Wouldn’t you?
The next day, Sunday, I played at the Dome again. This time I figured I’d make some changes. I sat down. I had the monitors arranged so that they came at me from an angle. I had them turned up read loud. I hyper focused. This time everything went fine – no screw-ups, I kept all the songs on course. But I got a headache because of the monitor volume and – because nobody could really hear what was going on from outside the dome, it all being saturated in cacophonic ambiance, hardly anybody came in. Oh well. Joanne Rand was there – great to see her. Julia Butterfly showed up outside but didn’t come in.
So we wandered off into the falling dusk and spent the rest of the evening randomly sampling. You might want to check it out next year. They had some pretty good acts. Taj Mahal was there. Amy Goodman. Rickie Lee Jones. Brian (!) Wilson. And, of course, all the healing techno alternatives. Thanks Harmony, thanks Kym. Maybe see you next year….
I have a few days off before I get going again. Actually, I had a few days off. I’m heading out tomorrow for Ukiah and the famous Raven John’s Ukiah House Concert. Last time I was there I found a dying black widow spider on the front porch. Dying of natural causes probably. I had forgotten how beautiful they are. And sinister too, I suppose, considering their toxicity. Which, by the way, is one of the best arguments against Intelligent Design. The strength of the neurotoxins that a black widow spider has in its body is completely beyond anything it would ever need. God is an over builder I suppose…
Anyway, last weekend was the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa. And I have to give grateful thanks to Kym Trippsmith for hounding those folks for the last couple of years to finally get me on the bill. It’s a pretty cool event but suffers from what one regular described as an “identity crisis.” Is it a music festival? A new age technology convention? A healing arts gathering? Well, I guess it was all three. And that’s fine. My only complaint was that it seemed to be trying to put as much as possible into as limited a space as they could. Way too much going on too close together. It went like this…
I had a great set on Saturday morning on the main stage. Great gear, good engineers, everything perfect. Doug Green, from up in Humboldt, was the emcee. I had 45 minutes and it was all filmed by 5-camera shoot. Real high-end stuff. Then we just wandered around for a while, trying to stay out of the sun and drinking a lot of water. Checking out the booths. One of them was selling kitchen gear that’s made from recycled chopsticks. Very cool. Anyway, Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! was scheduled to do a short thing on the main stage and then an extended talk in one of the buildings. We’ve known each other for a number of years and I always like seeing her. She’s one of my heroes. So I stood by the stage ramp and caught her eye when she was done. Only time for a quick hello – she was being whisked off to the hall for her longer talk. I headed that was too.
Amy can always bring things down to the ground. And that’s a great talent. Without criticizing anybody’s communal behavior she can lead the discussion to the more serious issues of the day and lead us all to understanding that there are social powers that we have access to. And that’s what she did, to a standing ovation. Then people lined up to get their books signed – part of her visit was a book tour. I figured the only way I’d get to say hello would be to get in line so that’s what I did. Twice I was asked by “handlers” if I had a book to sign and I said no. Finally I got up there and we had a little chat. She asked if I was singing so she could see me and I said yes, at 7:45 in the Earthdance Dome. She said she would try to make it. And she did.
Now, the Earthdance Dome is geodesic construction that serves as a perfect sound funnel to capture all of the extraneous outside noises – including the massive bleed form the main stage – and focus it directly onto the performance spot. It was an accidental masterpiece. I know it wasn’t done on purpose. But if you wanted to it would have taken ages of experimental designs and configurations to come up with such a perfect sound lens. So there I am, trying to keep on track with whatever song I’m singing in spite of the overwhelming drum beats and bass throbs that wallow around me. And in comes Amy Goodman. Of course, when you sit in the audience its not that bad – because this was a sound focus, a lens that channeled it all to the performer spot, leaving the audience fairly well out of the loop. It was a form of torture, so to speak. She stayed for a while and then had to go and I carried on and nobody noticed much except that I screwed up a couple of verses. Wouldn’t you?
The next day, Sunday, I played at the Dome again. This time I figured I’d make some changes. I sat down. I had the monitors arranged so that they came at me from an angle. I had them turned up read loud. I hyper focused. This time everything went fine – no screw-ups, I kept all the songs on course. But I got a headache because of the monitor volume and – because nobody could really hear what was going on from outside the dome, it all being saturated in cacophonic ambiance, hardly anybody came in. Oh well. Joanne Rand was there – great to see her. Julia Butterfly showed up outside but didn’t come in.
So we wandered off into the falling dusk and spent the rest of the evening randomly sampling. You might want to check it out next year. They had some pretty good acts. Taj Mahal was there. Amy Goodman. Rickie Lee Jones. Brian (!) Wilson. And, of course, all the healing techno alternatives. Thanks Harmony, thanks Kym. Maybe see you next year….
posted by Jim Page at 1:28 PM
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