Out in Greenfield, Mass, you’ll see a lot of that: green. And fields. And this July, sitting in one of those green fields and adding a bit more color, will be the Green River Festival.
Starting in 1986 as a hot air balloon festival, the Green River Festival has grown into the weekend-long fiesta, featuring local food and crafts, and treating you to national musical talent if you can make it this year.
And don’t worry, they haven’t gotten rid of the balloons.
This festival has played host to folk, blues, Americana, and whatever-else acts like Koko Taylor, Fountains of Wayne, CAKE, and Calexico, and the lineup for this year looks just as awesome. I mean, Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody Guthrie (the guy who casually wrote “This Land Is Your Land” and a bunch of other tunes that have influenced American folk and blues legends ever since, no big deal) and an artist in his own right, along with some other Guthries, will be performing in celebration of Woody’s 100th birthday. If that doesn’t make American folk geeks salivate, then I honestly don’t know what does.
Some spectacular acts will be coming together to serenade you while you dance, eat, check out circus performers, play with wax (they say it’s for the kids, but unless there’s a strictly-enforced age cutoff, I’m going to be all over that wax hand station), take a hot air balloon ride, or just sit around and get in touch with the part of yourself that always knew that the banjo was badass.
This guy gets it.
The lineups for both days of the festival are bubbling over with great artists, some new recruits and some veterans, but all of which promise to show you a damn good time.
On Saturday, you can head back to the St. Louis your grandfather probably knew (and probably didn’t want to leave) with Pokey Lafarge and the South City Three,
and groove to the Mexo-Americana style of Boston’s own David Wax Museum, which features some of the best, and most likely only, donkey jawbone playing you’ll ever hear.
Then on Sunday, the Rhode Island-based duo Brown Bird touch down with a sound that near perfectly personifies this festival’s eclecticness…
The genre-bending, insanely infectious Rubblebucket will also take the stage on Sunday.
And if none of this appeals you, it’s sponsored in part by Yankee Candle, and come on, who doesn’t love Yankee Candles?
GREEN RIVER FESTIVAL
THU 7.14.12 & FRI 7.15.12
GREENFIELD COMMUNITY COLLEGE
ONE COLLEGE DRIVE
GREENFIELD, MA
GREENRIVERFESTIVAL.COM
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