Live Show: 7/27/97

7/27/97

Hillsdale, NY

Reviewed by: Chris O'Malley, Zard Snodgrass, Chris Traugott


The Details

Day Two of the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival:

The tents started rustling at eight in the morning. Off in the distance you could hear "ICE!!!" being scream from a roving ice truck. Sunday was a lot hazier and more humid, but fortunately the sun was blocked by an overcast sky.

After all of our morning rituals, and a quick bite, Moxy was playing at the workshop stage at 11:30, in a workshop dedicated to stories and tall tales. A bunch of artists did round-robin, telling and singing various stories. I had a ball. One of the story-tellers, who also helped organize the event, was an amazing speaker.

Fruvous did a few songs, including Marion Fruvous!! (I've never heard this live before). The workshop lasted longer than scheduled, consuming about ninety minutes of the day.

Fruvous had another workshop scheduled at 1:40, so there was another workshop in between fruvous'. I listened to some of it, but also walked around and drank a LOT of soda (it was very hot outside!!). Met up with Marcus briefly, and got to say hi to some other fruheads (Sandy, Dan, Tre, and others).

The second workshop was called "Sweet Harmony", and after a few songs by Salamander Crossing, the remaining bands did the round robin thing again. Moxy once again did a couple songs, and at the end of the workshop, all the bands joined together to sing a song dedicated to Ken Saro-Wiwa.

After this workshop, Heather, Mike, Kelly, and I decided to head home, even though Fruvous was leading in a final song for the weekend on Sunday night. It would've been nice to see it, but we had a good five hour drive ahead of us, and it was already 3:30 in the afternoon at this point.

We said our goodbyes to as many as people as we could find, and left Hillsdale by four, got into Utica by six, and I made it home to Rochester by nine.

Wow, what an amazing weekend. From a wonderully long set in Syracuse, to sing-a-longs, to bonding with two dozen fruheads, I couldn't have asked for a better time. Can't wait to do it all again...

From Zard Snodgrass:

The workshops on Sunday were fantastic. The first one was "Stories, Poems, and Tall Tales Spoken and Sung" We heard some great stories - very funny!! - by David Massengill (from east Tenn), Vance Gilbert (aka Pebbles ;)), ELH, David Roth, and of course, Fruvous. Get Chris T. to tell you some of the spoken stories - she retells a mean one! Fruvous did the Ballad of Marion Fruvous, which I had NEVER expected to hear live - what a treat!! Spiderman was enhanced by a Jim Carrey-esque photo-op from Mike - hold tight and we might get a shot of that scanned on the web page! All the bands were great - June Rich was pared down to the 2 female singers plus a drummer on what looked like a dumbek, but I'm not a drum expert - sort of bongo-ish, and they sang some funky groovin' stuff, Magpie did more traditional folk, although they heated up the audience with a jamming bluesy funk, and then ended by leading all the performers in a song about someone whose name rhymes a bit with Nigeria. They basically repeated that with a few lyrics from a poem tossed in, but it sounded great with everyone harmonizing along, and as they wound the song down to an end, Jian kept singing the lines into a mike until the others joined in for a mini-encore. The whole thing as a top off to the workshop just blew everyone away, and they all got a standing ovation! Now, I'm still fairly new to folk fests, but I'm assuming a standing ovation at a workshop is fairly rare. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was a goosebumpy sight for me!

After that, Chris and I just ran around finding folks to say goodbye to them, and managed to miss Fruvous singing with Dan Bern on the mainstage - harmony to one song, but I would have liked to have seen it. Oh, well..we did manage to pull out just as the rain started, so our timing was pretty good otherwise.

Once again, a weekend that'll be hard to top! It's so great that this just keeps on happening! And once again, thank you to all the people out there that make this such a great experience! I know lots of you, but the best part of the whole weekend was meeting people at about the rate of 1 new one an hour, and everyone was super cool! I'm so happy that you're all so NICE! and FUN! Can't wait to see you at Newport and Philly, and others! take care! - Zard

From Chris Tragoutt:

The next day, Sunday, dawned bright and warm. We had breakfast, took pictures of Fruville for posterity's sake, collapsed tents, packed cars and made plans to meet up at various workshops. Fruvous had two on Sunday, one about story telling and one on harmony. The story telling one was especially fun for me, I loved the performances by David Massengill, Vance Gilbert and David Roth, as well as Fruvous, of course. I heard my first ever "Ballad of Marion Fruvous" and a version of GMIA which brought th crowd to their feet.

The second workshop opened with Fruvous singing background to Penny Lang (spelling?). I don't remember the title, but it was from one of Penny's albums and the idea was "make room in your heart for love, truth, joy, peace" and there will be room in the world for them as well. When the song was over, Salamander Crossing came out and one of the singers commented that while she had seen audiences sing along with a band before, she had never seen an audience sing along with the *backup* harmonies, and then imitated Murray singing the vocal bass line. After a few "bow, bow, bow"s she said, "But hey, that is really cool that you all do that, and if you all want to sing along with us and make fish faces singing the bow, bow, bow harmony, that is great." I enjoyed the second workshop immensely as well, and at the end of the performance the fruvous diaspora occured once more and we went our separate ways to visit merch. tents, spend time at the mainstage, or just hang out talking. Zard and I found Marcus and chatted with him a bit about his arm, which seems to be doing better although his hand is still quite swollen. Word is that the pins come out in three weeks, followed by a cast for 3-6 weeks. All too soon it was time to go, so Zard and I made the rounds and said goodbye to as many fellow fruheads as we could find in the time remaining us. We managed to pull out of the festival grounds just as a thunderstorm broke, and made our long journey back to DC.

Thanks to laurie, craig, jason, ceecee, chris o'malley, jenn, lisa, susan, katie and friends, ofer, christie, dede, sue, dan, dan, tre, josh, andre, alison, roB, mike, kelly, heather, sandy and many, many others for making this such a memorable weekend. And of course to the fru-lads, Marcus and John. Murray said, during our Sudbury trip "First we were the reason, then the excuse, now we are just irrelevant!" Well, not exactly, but these weekend trips have come to be very special events for me largely because of the time spent with other fruheads, feeding each others' creative energy, and sharing in the joy and fellowship of music. Counting down the days until philly folk fest and looking forward to meeting more faces behind the e-mail addresses.


The Pictures

Click the description to get the pic:


Workshop #1

The Set

Workshop #2

The Set

Misc. Info

Some other tidbits from the performance include:




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