Asheville Music Jamboree: Chapter 1

My trip to Asheville, NC this past weekend for the Asheville Music Jamboree was a series of firsts for me. My first time camping at a festival (I've been to many, yet always stayed comfortably in hotels), my first concert in North Carolina (I've probably seen shows in about 20 states), my first time eating at Waffle House (driven past them on countless road trips), my first time seeing just about all of the artists that played (I've seen The Bridge and Keller Williams before), my first time eating boiled peanuts (never even heard of 'em), my first time hearing the term bluegrastafarians (heard it more than once over the weekend without any hint of irony) and my first time really getting to know people at a concert that I didn't know before I got there (shout out to our neighbors!).

It was just a few weeks ago that I decided I would be attending this festival, and the only catch was that I would have to do it camping...in a tent. You see, I have a bit of an aversion to camping at concerts. It was my ill-fated experience in Noblesville, IN for Phish's three-night run at Deer Creek in 2000 that fully turned me off to the idea. The shows themselves were great but it was the brutal sunburn on my face, the countless mosquito bites on my ankles, and the cramped, miniature, sauna-of-a-tent I "slept" in that sealed my distaste for this means of concert accommodations. It was probably around 6 AM on the third morning in that field in Indiana, while staring up at the sagging fabric of our poorly assembled red tent, which was falling to within inches of my severely sun burnt cheeks, that I vowed never to camp at another show again. That was four Bonnaroos and seven years ago.

Fast forward to Thursday night>>>Locked and loaded with my $30 tent and $20 air mattress from Target, an over-packed bag of clothes, a handy flashlight that doesn’t require batteries, a few other supplies, and a sack full of McDonald's snack wraps for my dinner, I was picked up in a pick-up truck and we were off on our journey to North Carolina. It would be nine hours of driving, a hotel stopover in Wytheville, VA, hours of Jam_ON satellite radio listening, a visit to the Handy Mart in Winchester, WV, and a liquor/beer run on Airport Road before we pulled into the gates of our home away from home, Deerfields, a 940 acre tract of unspoiled mountain wilderness in the Appalachians near Asheville, NC on Friday afternoon.



With tree-lined camping lots, two lakes that were clean enough for swimming, and two stages within mere yards of each other, this was an ideal setting for a music festival. Upon arrival, we setup our tents on what seemed like an innocent incline and unpacked our bags. We then made our way over to our first set of the concert. Playing on the second stage was Charleston, South Carolina's Sol Driven Train. With an afternoon set on Friday, offering up a great show to a fresh and clean (for the time being), receptive crowd of early arrivers, SDT introduced us to their brand of rock, reggae, and world music. Driven by acoustic/electric guitars, bass, saxophone, trombone, and a lot of drums, their songs varied distinctly in style and instrumentation. What stood out most for me was their evident attention to lyrics. I found myself paying attention as much to the words as I did to their playing. They were an unexpected treat, and even though they were the first band we saw, they continued to stand out in my mind throughout the festival.

Stay tuned for more observations from AMJAM 2007, including reviews of a reformed Acoustic Syndicate, a time-slot busting Michael Franti and Spearhead, a rain-soaked Donna The Buffalo, the third ever concert by Keller Williams and the WMD’s . . . the Wisdom tree, a runaway baby, a runaway watermelon, a massage therapist, $1 grilled cheese, a life-size Scooby Doo cutout, and a Bo Bice calendar.