Music on the Mountaintop

It's Friday night at Music on the Mountaintop, in the shadow of Grandfather Mountain, ten miles from Boone, North Carolina. Sheltered from an incessant light drizzle under the soundboard canopy, I stand enthralled song after song to the music of Railroad Earth. This six-man Bluegrass group delivers tight, harmonically-dense, rhythmically-vibrant, Phil-Spectre-Wall-Of-Sound Newgrass. The best group I'd never heard of. The last time I encountered them was at the annual Harmony Festival, a three-day celebration of music, art, ecology, healthy living and spirituality held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. SLR set up an Eco Village right in the thick of it, within earshot of the main stage. While I had previously volunteered with them at the Rejuvenation Festival the month before in Santa Cruz, this would be my first time living with the Roadshow. Five days and four nights later I was hooked.

One of the big draws for me was their love of music – Old, New, Borrowed and Blues. SockHop, PunkPop, ShockRock. (Say that three times fast! ) Almost every SLR volunteer sings and plays at least one musical instrument. Between our collective memory we seem to know every piece of music ever burned, magnetized or digitized onto vinyl, tape, or CD. If breaking into song is a penance, not a word, phrase or off-the-cuff reference goes unpunished. Parodies are a way of life. The first order of business before any setup or breakdown is plugging in a sound system and hooking up one of the numerous iPhones, iPods or Macbooks that litter our work space. The Seven Dwarfs were on to something back there in '37. Whistling while you work works. Even the most mundane or repetitive task is elevated In the presence of song.


It's now late Sunday night, we're locked and loaded, ready for departure tomorrow morning. We have the campground to ourselves and with the able assistance of Nick, I cooked our last dinner here - quinoa with locally-grown Patty Pan and Yellow Crookneck squash, Yellow onions, Shitake mushrooms, Red peppers and basil. Meanwhile, Bridgette prepared a fruit salad for breakfast – kiwi, Carolina-grown White peaches and Gala apples, oranges, hand-picked mint and lemon juice. After having foraged for firewood, several others expertly started a fire, around which we ate. 
 
With guitar, banjo, mandolin, djembe, and jar harp in hand, we take turns leading tunes, our voices resonating and rising to meet a starry, moonless sky. Kelsey, who has been insularly practicing a song several weeks running, has taken the guitar I've handed her. Smoke and sparks usher forth from the fire. When she begins to pick out a few chords, everyone quiets. She has a beautiful Gaellic voice and the song she sings from the 1970s is fragile and heartrending. It's an existential moment and when I look above the ridge of Grandfather Mountain The Big Dipper is decanting a spirit, one even I can imbibe. My heart runneth over.