Time to tune up life with festival of folk music

OFF/BEAT GLIDEWELL E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times
published February 26, 2002

There aren't many things in my life around which I would vary the schedule of a honeymoon, but the Will McLean Music Festival, March 9 and 10, at the Sertoma Campgrounds near Dade City, is one of them.

When Betty and I began making plans for this Friday's event (more about that on Friday), we were planning a trip to Ireland, and scheduled our departure date to allow us to get there in time for St. Patrick's Day but not to leave until after the McLean festival. When job changes and other economic realities forced us to delay that trip for a year, we (okay, I) made our new plans so that the honeymoon would still give us time to go.

So I'll be running back from St. Pete Beach on the morning of March 8, just to drop off my beach togs, put on my boots and head over to the campground in time for the first round of informal campfire music. I note, thankfully, that there has been enough rain this year to allow campfires. Sitting around an electric lantern and singing last year just wasn't the same

The Will McLean festival has been an integral part of my life since I first attended it 11 years ago. For me, it is just large enough to attract the acts that I want to hear and, yet, small enough that it doesn't lose the "family" that makes Florida folk events so much fun and so magical.

I have gone to festivals when I was joyous, grieving and, after a bout with cancer, scared. Between the music and the attitudes of the people, I have always come away with some or all of what I needed emotionally to face the coming year.

A few years ago, realizing that I have absolutely no musical talent, festival organizers began allowing me to act as master of ceremonies for some parts of the festival. In my single days, I was glad to do that in hopes that some attractive woman would see me later on in the evening, remember that she had seen me on stage and, I hoped, forget that what I was doing was essentially unimportant and unentertaining.

The real story is the dozens of individual entertainers and groups that will be on hand to entertain, some with national reputations, some local and some just beginning, which gives you the chance a few years later to play the "I remember when" game.

To name a few: Frank and Ann Thomas, Dennis Devine, Mary Ann DiNella, Southwind, Bob and Joline Patterson, Amy Carol Webb, the New Sand Mountain Wildcats, Clyde Walker, Simple Gifts, Chuck Hardwicke, Okefenokee Joe, Val C. Wisecracker (known in another life as Valerie Caracappa Boomslang), Jak Kelley, Whitey Markle and the Swamprooters, Jon Semmes and the Florida Friends, Ken Skeens and Lee Goldsmith, Jeanie Fitchen, and Steve Blackwell and Friends. The festival takes place at the Sertoma Youth Ranch, just outside of Dade City, which appeals to me because it gives me the option of camping (if I have more than one beer around the campfire) or driving a couple of miles home to a warm bed, which I actually did once.

The festival is put on by a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to preserving not only the music of McLean, a folk icon who died in 1990, but Florida folk music and culture in general.

Advance tickets admission for the two-day event will be $17, as opposed to $20 at the gate. Daily admission is $12 for Saturday and $10 for Sunday.

Camping hookups are available for $12 per night, and a camp site only is available for $7. Information on tickets is available at (352) 465-7208; and camping information is available at (352) 754-3082.

Just so nobody screams conflict of interest, I should disclose that the festival pays me and others for acting as master of ceremonies, but I immediately endorse the check and hand it either back to the foundation or to some worthy associated charity. This year, as last, it will probably be to the Adam Morris Outward Bound Scholarship Fund, named in honor of a bright young man who was a regular at this and other festivals with his parents, Rochelle and Norm Morris, and who drowned in a tragic accident in November 2000.

The truth is, there is no way I would allow anyone to pay me for participating in an event from which I have taken so much joy.

I'm just lucky they don't know how much, or they'd be charging me.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright