The Armuchee Festival, Don't Leave Your Gee-tar at Home!
By Tracy Barnwell
I should start right off by saying that I'm not a bluegrass musician although Iíve played bluegrass music in some form or another since I was a toddler--maybe even earlier but you'd have to ask someone else about that. Anyway, I remember being about five years old right in the middle of a room full of musicians, all of 'em playing like the devil. I still know a lot of those people-particularly the ones who were my parents--and they still aren't the best musicians in the world, but everyone seemed like a maestro to me then. When I was that young I spent a lot of time making the most terrible noises you've ever heard on a washboard and generally getting in everyone's way. And back then no one ever told me to stop either. I guess that's the difference between five and twenty-five. I remember a banjo player knocked a drink over on my head while he was trying to play some impossibly fast song. Thatís my first memory of music. If you'd told me then that real bluegrass groups don't have washboard players I wouldn't have believed you. I mean, the way I remember it, I was in the band.
Twenty-some years later I find myself more of a spectator of bluegrass than an active participant. I like going to festivals, I love to hear my parents play, but I find most jam sessions pretty damn intimidating. I mean, I've played the guitar eight years, and I have come to accept that I'm never going to be a Tony Rice or a Lester Flatt. I would love to play the banjo fast and furious, the way I've seen it done so many times on stage, but the truth is I'm lucky if I can play Cripple Creek at half speed without missing a few notes. So when my parents asked me to go to the Armuchee festival I was glad to tag along, but I didn't plan on playing much. I've been to a lot of festivals where jam session were mostly just professional bands practicing their sets. Sometimes I'd try to play along for a while, but after a few nasty looks from people who actually could play their instruments, I'd usually slink off to the periphery with my beat up guitar.
So Armuchee was sort of a surprise for me. I wound up playing almost all the time. Not terribly well, I admit, but still playing. People wanted me to play my crippled version of Cripple Creek, or at least they pretended to. I even got a little bit better. I'm not trying to say here either that no one at Armuchee could play worth a dang. Some people there - not to mention any names - could play the hell out of their instruments, but, refreshingly as well, some people like myself - not to mention any names - couldn't. The whole festival was a real mix of ages and talents, a mix that worked out surprisingly well. This, I think, is the real value of small festivals like Armuchee. While it was certainly a treat to hear the people who play so well on stage, it was also good to hear, for a change, people who would normally get drowned out in hard-core jam sessions. The action at Armuchee wasn't on stage but under the awnings of campers. And what happened around the campers was more than just music. There was a certain feeling the whole weekend, an atmosphere of warmth and humor that seemed unique to Armuchee. Late the second night of the festival I walked up to Ed Wade's camper to see what was going on - you could see Ed's place from about a mile away because of the giant blow-up Gumby right outside the door. A bunch of people were sitting around talking, tipped back in their lawn chairs. Ed said, "well we're just sittin' around tellin' lies." So, finding something at last that I am good at, I sat down in the circle.
Before I go for good, I should relate an old Armuchee legend: In one campsite there's a can hanging from a tree by a rope. One guy told me it'd been there ten years, another told me twenty. Of course I asked why there'd been a can there for all that time. The answer? "So no one will run into the rope." Someone else told me it was to tell the weather. "If the can's hot, then it's warm out. If there's snow on the can, then it's snowing. If the can's moving, itís windy. If the can's wet, it's raining."