North Atlantic Blues Festival
I have made it to the ripe old age of 66 without ever having been to a music festival. Actually I am not such a blues fan so I probably would not have started my music festival life with blues. We have been going to Maine for years and we have had our cottage for over three years and we just never could get to this festival. This was our lucky year and the North Atlantic Blues Festival will be an annual event and I already can’t wait until next year.
We bought tickets for the entire week end several weeks ago so we were committed to this plan. Our daughter and her husband and another friend also bought tickets. These tickets give you a wrist band so you can feel like you are on a resort or in a hospital. It is best to bring your own chair so our daughter and her husband went out and bought 4 of the most amazing chairs I have ever seen. They even have pockets and they can be carried like a back pack. Poor Larry had to use his old, not so fancy chair.
We brought our chairs in to the festival area around 6:15 on Saturday morning and placed them under a lovely tent that would give us shade for the week end. Since this is lovely Maine you can just leave your chairs for two days and no one touches them or even sits in them if you are not there. The music started at 11:00. We arrived to find our lovely waiting chairs just a few minutes before that. Music played continuously until 7:00 that night and from 11:00 am until 6:00 pm the following day. There were dozens of food booths offering everything you could imagine including, of course, lobster rolls.
Any time you felt like you needed to stretch you could walk into town and still hear the music while you checked out the cool Rockland shops.
Did I mention that the harbor was behind the stage and you could watch show off sailors wind their way through all the boats anchored to listen to the music?
I did take one little nap but mostly I listened to really great music. I still might not select blues to play in the car but it sure sounded good in that setting.
The final act was Mavis Staples and she really rocked the place. Most people ended up coming right down to the stage for her and even though we were all tired and kind of over heated we gave her back all that she gave us. All I can say is WOW.
I almost for got the pub crawl on Saturday night. The great restaurants were serving their usual fine food with blues for dessert and lots of music in the street.
I made it to midnight two nights in a row.
Next year the festival will be on July 12th and 13th and we will be there along with our chairs. Please join us.