French Broad River Festival
French Broad River Festival – Hot Springs, NC (May 2 – May 4)
It’s been about 2 weeks but I’ll do my best to recount a fantastic weekend. A fellow coworker organized a trip to the French Broad River Festival for a weekend of music, camping, and white-water rafting. Being the music fanatic and festival enthusiast, I was an easy sell, a good bit of the rest of the group was sold on the white water rafting and camping. I’d been looking forward to this weekend for quite a while. I needed such a respite, a nice getaway “back home” to the mountains with good music and ensuing jam sessions.
Wednesday night I picked up whatever camping essentials I didn’t have from last year’s Wanee festival – tent, cooler, and some other stuff; loaded my IPod chock full of bluegrass and jam music since I was the only one in the group that would have such music and then went to bed way too late. My roommate and I left Raleigh at about 10AM to meet 4 other friends (all coworkers) at a friend’s house near Durham, loaded up the truck with firewood and headed 40 West – Destination: Hot Springs.
After stopping at an outdoors store in Durham, at a Wendy’s in Morganton (my teenage residence), and the long ride through the meandering roads west of Asheville, we were greeted by swarms of insects and a guy working the entrance of the campgrounds who was quite slow. Arrived at our campsite, staked out a large enough area for 8-10 or so tents and set up shop – putting up tents, Cornhole games, and cracked open some cold ones. The campground was pretty much vacant, as the music didn’t start until Friday afternoon. The day consisted of me playing acoustic guitar and mandolin, some heavy drinking, 2 on 2 cornhole. Our campsite was next to the river and very close to the main stage, prime location.
That night we heard a band set up shop on the mainstage…to my pleasant surprise it was Sol Driven Train. I went to school with the drummer back in Morganton and knew the band from seeing them a few times and when they crashed at my place when I lived in Richmond. It was pretty much an acoustic nearly unamplified enjoyable set. Songs I remember them playing were Will The Circle Be Unbroken and Wayside (Back In Time) which I knew from Chris Thile’s How to Grow a Woman From the Ground CD – originally by David Rawlings & Gilian Welch. Sol Driven was joined by an incredible banjo player who impressed the band and everyone in the audience.
After the acoustic set, I headed back to the campsite, the 6 of us took swigs from a bottle of champagne and proceeded to drink a ton of beer and stuff. By night’s end, we were all pretty much toasted – somehow GNR’s Appetite From Destruction was played in its entirety and I was transported back to drunken nights at East Village when we would scream the lyrics of Nighttrain. Yup obviously I was quite toasted.
Friday’s Lineup
2:00-3:30 Jesse James and the Junkman’s Daughter
4:00-5:30 Sol Driven Train
6:00-7:30 The Trainwrecks
8:00-9:30 Snake Oil Medicine Show
10:00-12:00 Larry Keel and Natural Bridge
The rest of the crew began rolling in around 2 PM or so. I got about 4 or so other people to check out Sol Driven Train with me that afternoon – songs I remember are Circle Song, Ballad of Bologne, Carolina, The Cave. The same banjo player from the night before sat in for most of Sol Driven’s set, again fantastic player but had no idea who this guy was.
The one other musician out of our group arrived during Sol Driven’s set, we got to jam a bit during setbreaks between the bands – we were pretty close to the stage so it was tough to play while a band was playing. I’d seen Snake Oil Medicine Show back in college, though they didn’t really do anything for me, so I opted to not see them…Larry Keel on the other hand, I caught at the Lincoln Theatre opening for Sam Bush years ago, no way I’m missing him.
By the time Larry Keel and Natural Bridge came out, I’m sure we all had downed quite a few. It was dark and Larry was ripping it up as to be expected and turns out his banjo player was the same guy that had played with Sol Driven Train. Though I don’t remember any of Larry’s songs, I’d say it was my favorite set of the weekend. During the show someone gave us beer koozies that said “I went down on the French Broad.”
After Larry Keel and Natural Bridge, we all headed down the hill back to the campsite to sit by the fire which was right next to the river. Barry threw in his “500 Miles” Ipod playlist – which is a CD a friend of his made of old country tunes they listened to on their trip down to Daytona (500 miles). It’s a playlist that I’ve heard repeatedly even before that night. I was encouraged to dance with this girl that I’d been hanging with all night…which turned into me hanging out with her the rest of the night. Everyone except for the 2 of us went to bed…the strangest part of the trip had to have come when while we were “hanging out” someone walked right up to us and then turned around, this is at 2 or 3 AM – after being weirded out a bit we just hung out by the river (yeah I sorta stepped in the river unexpectedly). It was just one of those nights with the stars in the clear sky by the river.
We had to get up a bit early Saturday to go on our white water rafting trip – it was my first time white water rafting so I was pretty excited. It was cloudy and a bit chilly that morning. We all had to put on jackets it was so cold after our stop for lunch – which included a side splitting session of myself and others making fun of my cold nips through my shirt at my expense, but it was too funny so I didn’t care. After lunch, we hit 2 class 4 rapids, the most intense moment was after getting stuck on some rocks (river was quite low) we went down a Class 4, nearly flipped over and I would have fallen out hadn’t the guide reeled me back in.
Saturday Lineup
12:00-1:30 Pierce Edens and Dirty Work
2:00-3:00 Big City Sunrise
4:00-5:30 The Screaming J’s
6:00-7:30 Suttree
8:00-9:30 Blueground Undergrass
10:00-12:00 Acoustic Syndicate
I caught some of the bands on Saturday and did some jammin’ with Tripp but only caught the entire sets from Blueground Undergrass & Acoustic Syndicate. Before Blueground’s set, Rev. Jeff Mosier (banjo player from Blueground Undergrass) was at the campsite down by the river next to us talking to our neighbors. It was my first Blueground show, and I was looking forward to it. Great band, great pedal steel player, great band…and it’s always a treat catching any sort of alumnus from Aquarium Rescue Unit. They played Faces from their newest record and covered the Garcia/Hunter song Black Muddy Water.
Local bluegrass/newgrass band Acoustic Syndicate was the headliner for the weekend…catching them at a campout is a bit reminsicent of high school when we would go to Green Acres in Rutherfordton and catch Acoustic play there (also caught Sam Bush once).
I remember missing the first song from Acoustic (which I did recognize) but don’t recall. They played a highly energetic set that got the crowd into a frenzy. Songs I recall they did in no particular order are No Better Place, Brown Mountain Lights, 2 Who Covers – Squeezebox & Baba O’Riley, No Woman No Cry, North Country Girl (Dylan’s Girl From North Country with a different refrain).
After Acoustic Syndicate, Tripp and I jammed for most of the night until 4 or so in the morning. Some of the songs we played that night and the weekend that I recall include:
Duo Jam
Change
No Rain
No Woman No Cry
Girl From North Country (Sam Bush version)
Sublime (What I Got, Santeria)
He’s Gone (B-vox)
Sympathy For The Devil (B-vox)
Dig A Pony
I Shot The Sheriff
A Conspiracy
Hey Hey What Can I Do
Tangerine
Midnight Rider
Wagon Wheel
Manic Depression
Pigs
Time
http://www.frenchbroadriverfestival.com/
Tags: Acoustic Syndicate, Blueground Undergrass, French Broad River Festival, Larry Keel and Natural Bridge, Sol Driven Train, whitewater rafting
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