A Pilgrim and a Stranger

A few years ago while serv­ing in Ameri­Corps, my friend Benji and I tried to explain Mer­leFest to one of our fel­low Corpses. After fail­ing for sev­eral days to con­vey the sig­nif­i­cance of the event, we found a metaphor that felt right: Mer­leFest was a pil­grim­age that we felt com­pelled to make to cel­e­brate music. Our friend con­tin­ued to be baf­fled by our zeal for what, as far as she could tell, was just another music fes­ti­val out in Appalachia.

photo credit: ridersinblack1970

I grew up with Mer­leFest in my back yard. I remem­ber some­one sneak­ing me across the river onto the grounds years before the crowds swelled to 80,000. I saw Doc Wat­son play there before they built a stage with his name on it, and long before that stage bore a Holly Farms, Tyson, or Lowe’s logo. Fes­ti­val per­form­ers came to my high school to play for an after­noon assem­bly and the fac­ulty seemed sur­prised when the stu­dents (me not included) took to the gym floor to dance.

One of the many rev­e­la­tions I had when I went to col­lege was that my back­yard music fes­ti­val was an inter­na­tion­ally renowned phe­nom­e­non. In many ways I had lived in a very small bub­ble up to that point. As far as I knew, blue­grass was just what music sounded like in my home­town, a lit­tle twangy just like the way we talked. And like most every­thing about home, my mom hated it and my dad loved it.

On this one score, I sided with Dad. I was raised on blue­grass and coun­try music, most likely to my mother’s cha­grin. I can’t remem­ber not know­ing the words to “Rocky Top” and “I Walk the Line,” and I have it on good author­ity that as a child I may have attempted to dance with my aunt on Sat­ur­day nights when my grand­par­ents took me up into the moun­tains in their camper. This last is as baf­fling to me as it will be to any­one who knows me now. It must have been back before the drum­mer in my head grew so loud and off­beat as to ren­der all other attempts at syn­co­pa­tion futile.

Then, as now, I’m no good in a crowd. It’s one of the first things peo­ple ask me when they learn how much I love Mer­leFest: how do I han­dle the crowd? To this I offer two responses.

First, the fes­ti­val hap­pens at Wilkes Com­mu­nity Col­lege, with 14 dif­fer­ent stages on a sprawl­ing cam­pus. And I’ve grown up with the fes­ti­val, so I’ve been able to learn the ninja short­cuts and tricks, includ­ing how to bypass most of the early morn­ing crush for good lawn posi­tion, and how never, ever, ever, to attend if Dolly Par­ton is play­ing on a Fri­day night.

Sec­ond, I wasn’t kid­ding when I called my annual visit to Mer­leFest a pil­grim­age. It’s always felt like some­thing impor­tant for my soul, or what­ever you want to call the warm, gooey parts of me you can’t prod with cor­po­real instru­ments. The truth is, when I sit on a blan­ket those spring­time evenings sur­rounded by thou­sands of peo­ple who’ve come together for music, I am at peace. Get­ting to and from my blan­ket might always be a chal­lenge, but once I’ve made it onto my lit­tle oasis, I float there in rev­er­ence for those sim­ple vibra­tions of strings we’ve all come to hear. It’s as close as I get to church.

Even though the fes­ti­val has become rather a com­mod­ity, and priced itself well out of my bud­get, I still go when I can. So when Dad called this year to offer me a free pass, I didn’t turn it down.

It’s been a long time since I spent a week­end with just my father. When I visit, he’s often out fish­ing or hunt­ing, or oth­er­wise engaged with his fam­ily, friends, and com­mu­nity in ways that I envy and admire. It was a treat to spend that Sat­ur­day and Sun­day with him.

Nei­ther of us talk much. When I was a kid it always struck me as pecu­liar how Dad and his broth­ers could stand around the yard, hardly speak­ing, for hours at a time. There were a few hard years when it felt like all of his infre­quent con­ver­sa­tions with me came as warn­ings or crit­i­cisms, when my objec­tive became to ren­der myself unnote­wor­thy enough to escape what­ever well-meaning advice was on offer. These days I seem to have inher­ited more of that from him, and I think I under­stand his silences bet­ter for it.

I am dis­tant enough from the place I grew up, now, to be curi­ous about it, and Dad is full of sto­ries. So I heard all the local drama on the way to the fes­ti­val, and all the lat­est fish­ing sto­ries on the way back. On the fes­ti­val grounds, I watched him stop to catch up with an old friend every few hours, then ask me if I remem­bered them. More often than I want to admit, I don’t recall. Dad is so much a part of the town, and every­thing in it is so clearly dear to him, it feels like I’m let­ting him down every time I have to be reminded of some­one I knew twenty years ago and haven’t seen in a decade. I can only hope to be so well remembered.

He asked about my old friends, both from high school and in Asheville. He seemed wor­ried that I don’t see enough of them now that I live so far from them. This is a man who just got his first e-mail address this year, and who any­way has never lived as closely with writ­ten words as I have. It’s easy to shrug off his con­cerns as those of a dif­fer­ent age, but the dis­quiet in his voice makes me want to reas­sure him. He knows me well enough, though, to know how few new friends I have made in my newly adopted home.

On Sun­day morn­ing Mer­leFest turns to gospel music by the river. I have long joked that if the church of my youth sounded like Ali­son Krauss, or Gillian Welch, or Eddie from Ohio, then attempts at indoc­tri­na­tion might have taken. My father used to drive me to church, drop me off in the park­ing lot, and drive back home. But the man I sat beside last week­end, lis­ten­ing to Doc Wat­son tear up talk­ing about his own sal­va­tion, has become qui­etly devout. I don’t know when or why, but I am grate­ful to him for not push­ing that on me. It still wouldn’t take.

I think we both enjoyed our­selves at Mer­leFest. I sup­pose it’s inescapable, the feel­ing that you’re still a child in the pres­ence of your par­ents. Though mine have always let me find my own way, the more I look back the more I see that their coun­sel has been both gen­tle and wise. I hope they know I was lis­ten­ing. I still am.