![](\"\/images\/merlefest_06\/setup.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThough the day started out cold, rainy and disorganized, by the time we got to Merlefest, it was clear, sunny and perfect. We had a great campsite (four sites, actually) on a little hill by the river. Sure, we were, again, camping on the grounds of the Wilkesboro waste water treatment plant, but that didn't bring us down -<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After setup was finished, Mrs Cleek donned rabbit ears, to show her approval.
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\nSo, after a little warm-up (no alcohol allowed at the festival itself), we headed over for the first day's activities. First up, Feufollet, a (young) Cajun band:<\/p>\n
They were good, though the sound was a little off. All of their lyrics were in French, of course. It's hard not to like Cajun music, IMO. And these guys delivered. Good way to start out.<\/p>\n
Then, a little Doc Watson action:<\/p>\n
This was a tribute set to Bill Young, a local businessman who helped get Merlefest off the ground back when it started - this year was the 19th year. They did a set of bluegrass standards. Doc can still play better than most, and his voice, while not as strong as it was forty years ago is still smooth and sweet.<\/p>\n
And then, after a trip back to the campsite to eat and put on some warm clothes, the main act of the night, John Prine:<\/p>\n
He played a great set of oldies, including a few stellar choices from his first album: \"Paradise\", \"Angel From Montgomery\" and an amazing \"Sam Stone\". He's such a great songwriter. And while I don't think he's maintained that same level of brilliance in the intervening 30 years, his sense of humor and ability to tell a good story in a short song are both still sharp. One of his newest songs, \"Some Humans Ain't Human\" contains some pretty harsh words about George Bush and his Iraq war; they got a roar of approval from the audience, which surprised me - given the fact that bluegrass is a pretty static form of music these days (like blues and be-bop), you'd think bluegrass fans would be pretty conservative. But, they aren't, at least not in that way. And, well, this was John Prine, after all - the guy who wrote \"Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore\", way back in 1971. Maybe there were a few people sitting out there watching, that cold<\/em> Thursday night in the moutains, who didn't know much about him - but there couldn't have been many.<\/p>\n
About halfway through his set, a spectacular meteor flew over the treeline in back of the stage, it got a big round of applause, too.<\/p>\n
More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Though the day started out cold, rainy and disorganized, by the time we got to Merlefest, it was clear, sunny and perfect. We had a great campsite (four sites, actually) on a little hill by the river. Sure, we were, again, camping on the grounds of the Wilkesboro waste water treatment plant, but that didn't […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-merlefest-06","category-shows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}