Joker’s Wakarusa Report: Day One
Our pal The Joker from the Coventry Music blog has made his way to Arkansas to cover this weekend’s Wakarusa for HT. He’ll be sending reports each day – on both the scene and the music – and hopefully we’ll get some photos from longtime HT contributor John Schulze who is also on the scene. Here’s The Joker’s report on the first day of the festival…
To start this trip a few friends and I flew from Denver to Tulsa and rented a car to make the trip from Tulsa to Mulberry Mountain for Wakarusa. As we were waiting to board our planes I got a couple of stories from friends who had run into some bad luck on the way there – the Basics Fund Bus got pulled over in Hayes, KS after a State Trooper stopped to question the driver and noticed a stray nugget at his feet. Oops. They were “detained” for several hours while the Troopers ripped apart the bus, but they were eventually allowed to continue on to Wakarusa.
My group got to the festival grounds and finished setting up camp about 8pm. We started a little late in the evening as compared to most of the festivalgoers. The first taste of music I caught was after sundown – Robert Randolph. Robert Randolph always puts on a danceable show, but his setlists lack variety. Randolph brought up Ivan Neville for a strong version of Papa Was A Rolling Stone, but other than that it was a high energy yet standard show.
Next up was Railroad Earth in the Revival Tent. Railroad started off by ripping through jammy, psychedelic versions of Cold Water and Birds of America. The crowd in the tent was so into it and Tim Carbone’s fiddle seemed to breathe new life into an audience who was happy the sun had gone away and could dance under the lights. I was into Railroad Earth’s set and wish I could seen all of it. Since they play again today, and I had a Disco Ball on my head once again, I left early to head to see what madness Bisco would bring.
READ ON for more about Neil’s experience on Day 1 of Wakarusa…
