It's past noon on Saturday, and hundreds of roots music fans have spent a mosquito-riddled, sleepless night in Oregon farm country for the Pickathon Music Festival. They have traveled here along rivers and across state lines, past the Franz bread outlet ("80 percent off!") and a yellow, squarish building labeled Tommy's Too ("Dancers!"). They have wolfed down plates of fried zucchini and hummus, and they have convinced their toddlers that something called Toddler Camp, down by the barns, is super cool. These fans are now stepping past hula hoops and piles of horse shit, and they look ready for a small reward.
The small reward goes by the name of Crooked Still.
Cries go up. "Damn, look, Honey!" Five of the Northeast's hottest folk-bluegrass players have found mics on the main stage -- it looks like a white paper crane -- and they're humming through a sound check. Banjo plucks rain down from a wiry man with a loose afro. Grins fly back and forth. There's a charged pause. And now, they're off, wading straight into a cover of "Wading Deep Waters," by Bertha Tolliver.
Rich, nimble thrumming from bassist Corey DiMario sets up Greg Liszt on banjo, doe-eyed Brittany Haas on fiddle, and lead vocalist Aoife O'Donovan, decked in a purple dress. Cellist Tristan Clarridge, a new addition to the band along with Haas, rounds out the Crooked ensemble.
This is "the most important folk group to emerge from Boston since the early 60's," says the Boston Globe, which rates Crooked's stage presence as "more than impressive" and "positively stirring." Melophobe would tend to agree, especially when it comes to a little tune off Crooked's 2008 release, "Still Crooked."
"Did you sleep well? / Did you sleep fine? / Did you sleep much at all? / All night I heard two voices from out here in the hall. / The first was lonesome but the second was clear. / The first was familiar as the second drew near."
The lyrics in "Did You Sleep Well?" flow from blonde-haired O'Donovan like a rap riff whispered in brogue. The sound shifts her thin, pasty legs and oversized shades into a ghostly visage, making the listener want to smile, weep and kick up heels -- something a red-skirted fan near the front row wastes no time in doing.
Later, just before Crooked's third performance, inside Pendarvis Farm's packed Gallery Barn, band and fans seem to be wearing a little thin. Couples sigh and wince, sharing a cold cement floor with kayakers, farm hands, even a British blogger. As the sound check drags on, banjoist Liszt grabs a mic.
"Are you guys going to dance?"
"Yeah!" says the crowd, suddenly awake.
"Good, good. That's our mission when we see a crowd in the fetal position on the floor."
The mood lifts, and with urging from O'Donovan ("Pick it up!") the band kicks into "Lula Gal" and other numbers off "Hop High," their 2004 debut. Liszt's smile feels infectious --it widens with the tempo of his picking -- and Haas' fiddle bow begins bleeding wisps of horsehair. She powers on, gaze unwavering, and the crowd rallies.
Like most of the folk rock, bluegrass, and honky-tonk acts comprising this tenth-annual Pickathon, Crooked has chosen to forgo big percussion. Instead of drum-driven anthems, they craft the kind of harrowing, lilting ballads that tell of an orphan girl bound to meet her parents at God's table, and of a little girl named Sadie shot dead by a .44.
After the Gallery Barn performance, outside a long row of portable toilets smelling of cannabis, Joy Wieting of Portland sizes up the day's music. An overnight camper, Wieting has tasted most of the festival, and she points to Haas' fiddle as a top treat. "I'd call it a driven fiddle," she says. "That’s my favorite thing I've heard. That and the Tramping Turtles."
Oh yes, Trampled by Turtles: five mostly-bearded men from Duluth, Minnesota with springboard energy of the kind equaled only by another all-male Pickathon act, the Hackensaw Boys of Charlottesville, Virginia.
First, the Turtles: sitting on chairs spread late Saturday in a long arc across the main stage, these magicians deliver a potion they dub "thrashgrass." Tim Saxhaug, on bass, looks like a college lineman. Dave Carroll, on banjo, plays so fast he busts a string (an event that artists man enough for Pickathon must overcome with grace, speed and unperturbed vocal harmony). Red-bearded Erik Berry lays into his mandolin with the fervor and striped overalls of a locomotive captain. Ryan Young, on fiddle, breaks a heavy sweat. And the bobbing knees and blurring guitar of Dave Simonett invite high-pitched calls for Trouble (also the name of the Turtles' 2007 release).
Now to those other Boys. If the Turtles cause trouble, the Hackensaw Boys stir up a sort of instrumental pandemonium. Named for the "hack" and "saw" motions of the mandolin and the fiddle, respectively, this band of six also incorporates the banjo, the guitar, the bass, and a contraption made of tin that hangs off the neck of Justin Patrick Neuhardt, known as Salvage. The Boys have toured with the likes of Cake and Modest Mouse, and their album titles, dating back to 2000, read like American koans: "Get Some"; "Keep It Simple"; "Give It Back"; "Love What You Do"; and last year, "Look Out."
East of the Mississippi, nicknames abound: Salvage is joined by Spits, Plang Tang, Mahlon, Baby J., and a fiddler called Four. He's the one to watch, with rippling hair, wailing strings, and a crazy eye that wanders high into the pointed sailcloths ballooning over the stage, clear back to a stand of fir. Lilting ballads? This crew would just as soon play golf. The Boys play twice as hard as anyone on the Pickathon roster. Whirling skirts and slapping thighs now pepper the crowd. There is general glee.
As the sun dips and the Boys and the Turtles wind down their sets, Shawna Zierdt of Santa Cruz, California watches daughter Nora poke at the sleeping heads of two lovebirds sprawled on a blanket.
"Look at her! Sorry, I've got this two-year-old to watch." Melophobe nods. What about them Turtles?
"I like them," she says. "I'm really into that edgy bluegrass, fusion bluegrass, you might call it." Zierdt grew up not far from Pendarvis Farm, listening to country on a cattle ranch. For the past two nights, her family has pitched a tent among the fir trees.
"This year it's not quite as rocking," she says. "There was this one lady last year: she did amazing things with a washboard."
Much as mothers like Zierdt love supporting Pickathon's music, budgets feel pinched this year, and a weekend pass costs over $100. Instead of downloading songs or buying CDs at the festival's booths, Zierdt says she'll get her bluegrass fix over the coming months by way of streaming jukeboxes, like Pandora Radio.
"I made my own music with my daughter this morning, down at the barn," she adds, smiling.
This kind of happy energy is what sustains Crooked Still fiddler Brittany Haas through four performances in two days, with more gigs waiting farther down Interstate 5. "It's like speed tourism," she tells melophobe, but "seeing people mouth words to our songs is pretty cool. That's a new feeling!"
And a good one, we imagine.
