Wow! What a great musical experience! And no one had the same experience! From only having been to Newport, as my one and only festival experience, I expected plenty of time to kick back in the grass and enjoy the day in between sets. But, there was so much that all of us wanted to see, that we had very little rest time. Ceecee and I laughed when we met up in New York and saw that we had both printed out our schedules that Susan posted, and had little matching yellow-highlighted-bits of the acts we wanted to see! If you wanted to catch everyone, you really had to keep track of who was on when. It was certainly worth the effort, however, and if you could ignore the huge clouds of billowing dirt, it was a beautiful day!

Great Big Sea did basically the same set as the night before, and it was just as fantastic and full of energy (great acoustics in Doc Marten's tent - I was pleasantly surprised). We bounced and danced around, and met up with some other Fruheads who hadn't been at Port Chester.

Fruvous was on after Sinead Lohan, who was good - woman and guitar, nice songs, and she looked like Nicole Kidman with hair extensions :) As her crowd cleared out, it seemed like a steady influx of folks for Fruvous. Up front was a pretty Fruhead crowd - lots of folks from the night before, and others. We were held back by a fence (same at the other tents), which seemed incongruous at this mellow place, but we were told that the night before folks had been body surfing and gotten dumped into that area. It was a jamming set full of standards, but very well executed (once the techs fixed the funky mike - it was fuzzing and scratching for the first couple of songs - ugh!). No set list, but off the top of my head: River Valley, Get in the Car, Michigan Militia, Johnny Saucep'n, Boss, KoS, GEH, Authors (?not sure?), a few others. But it was short. A great way/time/place to see them, however short it was. Afterwards they signed CD's at HMV and Marcus stamped cards for about a half an hour, and then we all went our respective ways. Suzanne Vega was great to see - I've always thought she was okay, but am now seriously considering buying something. I hear Christy Moore was outrageous, as much for the crowd as for the energy of the performance - sorry I missed it. Van Morrison didn't live up to my hopes, but my hopes were pretty unreasonable. I did get to hear Moondance under a beautiful moon and stars, and at least Natalie Merchant had had the gumption to sing "Into the Mystic" in her set!

Ahh, another pretty darned perfect Fruvous (etc..) weekend! Gotta go soak those aching muscles now...

Zard

Thanks to Lisa Goldberg for these:
• Mike raises his hands to heaven
• The boys do the autograph thing
• The crowd at Fleadh

Some other tidbits from the performance include:

• Feel free to help contribute to this section!