press
clipping
Towson
Times
Aug. 15, 2001
COVER STORY
Festival shines through the rain
Downpour can't keep fans from Oregon Ridge show
By GEOFFREY HIMES
Above the canvas bandshell at
Oregon Ridge Park last Saturday, one could
see the mean-looking bank of clouds rolling in from the east across Hunt
Valley.
These clouds were darker and burlier
than the light-gray overcast sky
that had allowed the Grassroots Music and Arts Festival to get started on
time at 11:30 a.m. With a set by Baltimore's All Mighty Senators.
By the time the darker clouds had
arrived in force above the park in
Cockeysville at 1 p.m., the second band, Lake Trout, had already been
playing
20 minutes.
The musicians didn't stop as the drops
started falling; they merely
hunched beneath the bandshell and maintained their techno-improv-rock for
another half hour.
Meanwhile the stage crew hurriedly
threw blue tarps over the PA speakers.
By 1:30, it was raining in earnest and
all music stopped for an hour.
The musicians had it easy; they simply
retreated to their touring buses
or dressing rooms, but the sizable crowd, estimated at 3,000, gathered on
the
grassy hillside required more ingenuity.
The well-prepared reached into
backpacks for ponchos and umbrellas of
every color. The less prepared improvised by turning garbage bags into
impromptu raincoats.
The young and restless reveled in the
summer downpour, dancing barefoot
on the soggy grass.
By 2:30 the rain had subsided to a
drizzle, and it remained that way --
with intermittent pauses and showers -- for the rest of the day. The
producers resumed the show, with slightly shorter sets than planned.
The Word -- the roots-rock supergroup
of organist John Medeski, Sacred
Steel guitarist Robert Randolph and the blues trio, the North Mississippi
All
Stars -- went on at 2:30.
The Word was followed by the
bluegrass-jazz combo, the David Grisman
Quintet; the bluegrass-rock band, the Sam Bush Quartet; the New Orleans
funk
band Galactic; and the jazz-rock trio Medeski, Martin & Wood.
This last act went on after sunset, but
hundreds of listeners remained on
the dark, drenched hillside.
One young man wore an orange Frisbee as
a hat and a black garbage bag as
a vest as he danced in the rain. One young woman in shorts danced in a mud
hole with the cinnamon-colored mud splashing up to her knees.
Both wore immense grins.
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