The first Strawberry Music Festival was held in the town of Strawberry, California. My first wife and I were there living in a VW Van, but only for the event. Dan Crary, the guitarist’s guitarist, was one of the main headliners. I can’t remember the rest. I do remember walking in the meadow, where youth was in full bloom, and the potential for dementia was in a land far, far away. There are three Strawberries in California. One is in Marin County, a “census-designated place.” Another is in El Dorado County on US Route 50. And one is in Tuolumne County on CA Route 108. Small towns, bergs. I really can’t remember which one is the one of the first Music Festival, but I know it wasn’t in Marin County. And I don’t remember the year of that first festival. Maybe this is a good one for Doctor Bert’s Trivia Contest? Too easy? Maybe (no fair using your computer!).
After that first Strawberry, I made it to many of the other Strawberry Music Festivals. These were not held in the small town of Strawberry, but were located not far from Yosemite Valley at Camp Mather. Camp Mather mattered. Why? I like to think of it as Bluegrass Ecotopia; a balance between people, nature, and bluegrass music. It had all things good. Good stage, good audience area, good sound, good meadow, good trees, good hiking, good horseback riding, good mountain air, good swimmin’ hole, good people, and a good view at midnight of John Muir’s ghost dancing in the moonlight. This second Strawberry started out small, but then evolution had its way and some years later it turned into what I call, “Bluegrass at Disneyland” (think thousands of people, lines of cars waiting the night before to get into the festival on day one, not much space to camp after day one, and lines of fifteen people waiting at each porta-john. The culinary good news is that some fine food vendors eventually made their way to the event so that mom didn’t have to cook during the four day festival). That second, or third, or fourth (I can’t remember exactly) was really something; I just didn’t know it at the time how good it was. Memories of my nine month old daughter in the back of a VW Van, my mother and father in law’s first and last bluegrass festival (they are gone now), Tim O’Brien and Hot Rize, New Grass Revival with Sam Bush (mandolin), John Cowan (bass), Bela Fleck (banjo), and Pat Flynn (guitar). Thirty years ago was my second to last Strawberry Festival. It is firmly stuck in my mind because at the time my son was twelve years old, and he unashamedly, but unconsciously made it his quest to upset my tranquility. On the second night he didn’t come back to our campsite. I remember being up until two in the morning looking for him. I went to the swimming lake and looked for a body floating; my flashlight showed that there wasn’t one (“But how about at the bottom of the lake?” I wondered). After that I went to security and asked about him. “Oh, we have five teenage boys who we caught with a thirteen year old girl they had naked,” security informed me. God was on my side that night, because my son wasn’t one of them. I went back to our campsite and he still wasn’t there. The next few hours I managed to get about fifteen minutes sleep. The following morning about ten o’clock here he comes wandering back into our campsite. “Where were you?” I roared. “Oh,” he answered, “I met some kids and stayed at their campsite.” That episode with my first born made me think that I should have joined a monastery, taken a vow of celibacy, and never procreated (but that’s another story). Other than that, the festival was a good one, and I bought a decent fiddle. However, after that I didn’t go to another Strawberry for many years, and I held firmly to the belief that I wouldn’t go to another one unless I was hogg-tied and pulled kicking and screaming.
As fate would have it, I did go to another Strawberry, the last one for me. It was a few years ago, and the only reason I went is that I won a CBA contest and got two free tickets (thanks CBA!) I was well entrenched in “Senior City,” but somehow managed to get off the couch and made the five hour drive. I talked my first wife (49 years so far) into going with me in our non-trustworthy 1989 Van Camper that sleeps one. Day one in the early evening it sprinkled, day two it rained all day, day three it snowed, and day four was sunny. During the nights I was glad the camper bed slept only one, because on a cold, rainy, snowy night two of us in one small bed was just right to ward off hypothermia. Yes, it was another “Bluegrass at Disneyland” event, but it was a good one. No, it was a great one. No, it was a fantastic one. Why? I could tell you that it was because the headliner was Alison Krauss, but that was the second reason. The first reason is that it was, I think, the last Strawberry held at Camp Mather before the big Yosemite Fire that burned down all the trees that surrounded the meadow where the stage and live bands were. The fire that made Strawberry run down the mountain all the way to Grass Valley, CA for the following festivals. “Fire on the mountain, run boy run!” Sometimes you do something and it’s the last time you do it, and you just don’t know it at the time, but you wish you did, because you would value it more, hold it closer and dearer to your heart.
Now down from the mountain, Strawberry(s) has been held in Grass Valley, CA in the Spring, and over in Tuolumne, CA for the Fall festival for the past few years. The Spring 2017 Strawberry is again scheduled for Grass Valley at the Nevada County Fairgrounds. I won’t go, but I do plan on going to the 2017 CBA Fathers’ Day Festival, scheduled for mid-June, just after the Strawberry Festival. I’ll be on the hunt for left-over Strawberries, around three weeks old….
