Mountain Fair '08 - Friday

Another July and another Mountain Fair in the books.

For those that don't know, the Carbondale Mountain Fair is a rocking good arts and music festival put on by the Carbondale Council for Arts and Humanities the last full weekend of every July. Three days of music, crafts and fun games like womens wood splitting. There is men's wood splitting as well, but there is just something more fun about watching women wield a maul.

So, here we are at the 37th Mt. Fair, geared up and ready to rock. The fair opened with the traditional drum circle, Ryan Camp's favorite event, but not really my thing. Once the hippies had their drumming good time, the Tibetan monks took the stage. They blessed the Fair and did that crazy Tibetan monk chant which sounds like a diggery-do, or however you spell those crazy Aussie instruments.

Friday night's at the Fair usually sees a smaller crowd, but it is mostly locals, so it is like the big Carbondale reunion / raging party / kettle corn eatin' good time. Once the monk's had done their thing, the evening kicked off with local high school BoB (Battle of the Bands) winner, Slightly White. They may be young, but they rocked! The '70s are back bad hair and all. These kids just ripped it up. Allowing the high school kids to take the big stage is a relatively new thing for a prime slot on the big stage, but I'm diggin' it. The last two high school bands have just killed it. Last year, Common House did an awesome War Pigs that had the crowd rockin'.

Cerronato kicks off an awesome weekend of good music.

After the band ended came the socializing and traditional scoping of the food vendors, planning your meals for the weekend. All the usual suspects there. There were Hendrickses and Devilbises and Britt's aplenty. Most of these folks have set up an EasyUp and staked out a based camp for the weekend. I live right across the street and my Mountain Fair job is backstage bar manager. I don't really need a basecamp, so I cruise around and visit folks.

At 7:00 Cerronato took the stage and busted out with the Texas Latino beats. They were the Friday night closer since there are no lights in the park, so the crowd was ready to dance. A quick first set and a little breather in the backstage and Cerronato took the stage ready to go. By this time, the crowd was packed in in front of the stage and waiting. The latin beats started pumpin' and the crowd started moving and it was on.

Once the band ended the uninitiated trickled out of the park and headed for some bar to try to post up at a table and let the mayhem ensue, but those in the know figure out some way to get backstage. I'll let you in on a little secret; there is a backstage at the Fair and it totally rocks. You don't notice the backstage because the Bedouin style tent is not very obtrusive. If you know what you are looking for, you see it, if not, you don't. It is kinda like the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter.

The first thing that you notice about backstage is how large the space is. The next thing you notice is that the floor is all old oriental rugs. There are couches everywhere, a dressing room, a swamp cooler and, of course, a bar. This is my area. My job is to make sure that the backstage bar is manned from 2 until we are done for the day and that the beer keeps flowing. The post Fair party used to go much later, but C'dale was just slightly cooler back then. So now it goes for a few hours, 'til, say, 10:30, and then everyone heads downtown or to one of the hundreds of parties going on all over town.

We opted for the former and went to see our friends band, Trunk play at Aubrey's house. Aub is doing a little addition to the house, adding a garage, big bed room and bathroom above the garage and a deck above that with the most awesome Mount Sopris view, so it was an ideal place to load a couple hundred people into. It was pretty quiet when we got there, but that didn't last long. Trunk rocked it and the crowd piled in. Once the bottle of bourbon went around a couple of times, it was time for me to go. I think I made it to around midnight. Damn, I'm getting old.

Next: A woman with a maul, a hippy with a hose, and a handle of Jagermeister.