Sunday, July 14, 2013

The Festival Is Off and Running

 

Chas, one of the owners and who recently passed away, coined the term “Skin to the Wind. The festival has been an annual and popular event. Chas requested that a party be held instead of a funeral when he died. So this year’s Festival is honoring his request and his life.

Wednesday’s start was a little slow but RVs streamed in the late afternoon as well guests for the hotel rooms. This year’s festival’s attendance surpassed the previous years as many are making a special effort to celebrate Chas’s life.

The Festival kicked-off on Wednesday with a concert featuring TR Ritchie who was a close friend of Chas.

TR Ritchie goes from a busking at Pike Street Market to kicking it at Kerrville, Napa and Walnut Valley, this unreconstructed folkie sounds like the folk music we'd have been listening to all along. Ritchie writes plays and sings with heart and conviction and an innocence that you wouldn't expect from someone that's been around a few rough and competitive blocks. A dreamer with at least seven toes on the ground, Ritchie is a very solid link on a very solid folkie chain that somehow manages to command your attention without demanding it.

TR Ritchie
TR Ritchie

Both Raija and I have been kept busy helping out. The large crowd has meant extra effort to keep the pools and hot tub clean. Both of us start preparing for the patio lunch bar at 10:30. The lunch bar opens at 11:30 and closes at 1:30. Cleanup takes another 45 minutes or so. Strider keeps us company at the lunch bar. Two-K, (born in 2000) and Strider luck out in sharing hot dogs, turkey burgers and hamburgers that gets a little too well done on the grill.

Concerts and dancing occupy the evenings so we have been kept busy these past four days. Today is the last day of the festival so hopefully this week I will be able to catch up on the blog.

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