A Rookie's Story (continued)

So, whether I happened to be living in Nashville at the time or not, I'd hear about the great times that people were having down there, and what a songwriter mecca it was. For the performers, aspirants, and the lovers of the diverse genre called folk, it was a chance to camp out with your friends, see a bunch of good shows, and then play music all night back at camp. Heaven, basically. But the amazing thing was that it went on for 18 days. People seemed to look forward to it all year.

Figured it was time this year to go check it out, and do a Kerrville issue of Puremusic. I was not prepared for how good it was going to be, how much fun I was going to have, or how it was going to actually change my life. The festival schedule ran from 5/24 through 6/11. I knew that I had to move to a new house in Nashville on June 1st, and that you had to get there early to nail a good campsite, so I booked flights and got a ticket from 5/22 through 5/30. (Actually, Vaughn Hafner was kind enough to comp me a pass for the time I had, based on the fact that I wanted to write about the festival in Puremusic.)

I emailed our friend Jerry Rutledge, he's the big daddy at Camp Nashville, which was definitely where I wanted to be, if there was room. Jerry goes down to do work weekends before the festival begins and gets there as early as he has to in order to reserve one of the few shady areas of the ranch, because it gets hotter than Hades down there. Jerry wrote back, said come on down, let's see what we can work out.     continue

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