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hillarygayleSo we went to Wakarusa 2013. TL;DR version: it rained a lot, I really hate mud, the music was awesome as usual, & I think next time I want to stay in a hotel. Also: photos.
FIRST! Some definitions for your reading enjoyment:
FestyKid: This is a young person, usually not yet 21. I'm pretty sure they've never held a real job. Their parents probably bought their ticket. They were completely unprepared to camp comfortably under normal circumstances, much less the hellacious weather circumstances we got. They did a lot of drugs, and most gave me the impression they were not there for the music so much as the party atmosphere (& the ability to openly use drugs without legal repercussion); they probably had no idea who Widespread Panic & Umphrey's McGee were, and were mainly spotted at the EDM sets like Baauer & anything else playing at the Satellite Stage. Not all young people at Waka were FestyKids.
Wook (short for wookie): This is a shady type person at a festival. Unkempt & filthy, but that's pretty much the rest of us this year, too. These are the people who come rummaging through the campsites when everyone else is gone. You don't put a lock on your tent, because they'll just cut your tent open.
Ragestick: a decorated stick of any size that you can hold above a festy crowd so your group can find you. Can't find the Creeches? Just look for the staff of Asclepius made out of electrowire. :) Okay so I didn't make one, but if I did it would be that. They are as diverse & individual as people at festivals, & each one says something about the person who made it.
Thursday:
We sat in the security line for AGES. From 1400 arrival, to 2030 when we began setting up our camp. This was mostly because of the weather; we kept having wind/rain intermittently, and any time it threatened to get thunderstormy, the Powers that Were would shut down the festival main venue. Each time that happened, security shut down & stop letting people in. I felt this was a silly tactic; we could've at least been getting to our campsites. I was very glad we'd stopped at the I-40 travel center & filled up the tank.
At one point a wook (everyone was calling him Will) with tattoos on his face & all over his scalp fell asleep between the 2 cars directly in front of me & to the left. This was weird but okay until the cars started to move (finally) at about 1800, and we needed to drive around him. Dressed in camo green as he was, someone was going to run over his inebriated, high-as-a-kite arse. Cadillac Guy poured a bottle of water over his face, which woke him up. I got out of my car, walked over & sternal rubbed the hell out of him until he sat up (he was seriously wasted). Then finally Ford Dude (next to me on the left) got out & yelled at him & unceremoniously hauled him to his feet, from where he floated off as high people are wont to do.
Security line was my first introduction to how many people were at this Waka who did not know how to drive in mud. If there is a mud hole in front of you, you drive all the way through it until you come out on the other side with all 4 wheels. Many people did not know that. They were letting the car in front of them make it through, then trying to pull up right behind them--effectively pulling up & parking IN the giant mud hole. Just a protip: don't do that. They all had to be pushed out. Bryan & I made it through the most incredible mud holes in the line, simply by virtue of my mud-driving experience. Hello, growing up on a farm!
It was also my first taste of how internet connection & phone service was going to be in general. During our security wait at Riverside campground, we alternated between 1 bar of signal with Edge network and no service at all. Westwoods, Main, & the Main Venue were better, since they're at the top of the mountain, but not by much. Also: Mulberry Mountain Ranch is in the middle of the Ozark National Forest, so there isn't much infrastructure to go around. The few cell towers that are out there are overloaded very quickly. Wakarusa actually DOUBLES the population of Franklin County.
After setting up the tent in the rain, Bryan insisted we go into the festival venue itself. I wanted to straight up go to sleep, but Bryan knew I was going to feel entirely ripped off if I missed out on one entire day of music because of the security line hold up. He was right. So we went in, and that's where we discovered that Bryan couldn't walk 2 steps in the mud without his Sanuks being sucked right off his feet. At one point he made like the rest of the hippies & just went barefoot! We sat in some ENO hammocks (I really think I want one, btw) and listened to STS9 out on the main stage. They really did rock out, so even though I was soaked to the skin, feeling nasty & cold & muggy in my raincoat & my skirt so wet you could WRING WATER FROM IT, I was happy about the music. They really killed it.
Uncle A texted me with a tornado warning for a town called Huntsville, which was relatively close to us on the north side. They shut down main venue & we all slogged back to the campsite. My text log from this night says "miserable, wet, regretful". I was upset, tired, hungry & soaked & I was regretting my decision to come to Waka at all.
Friday
Was in only a marginally better mood on Friday morning. It started off with someone playing some surreal recording of instrumental sounds (I hesitate to call it music) with some guy doing pseudo-political, New Age conspiracy theory spoken word stuff over it. It was LOUD, and finally we got the guy to turn it off. Seriously, we can't have that crap at 5am...we're trying to sleep!
We boarded the shuttle to Ozark ($5 per person, not bad) and set off to find Bryan some mud boots. The Ozark Wal-Mart had already been completely cleaned out of mud boots. (I should have INSISTED on some at the Clarksville Wal-Mart but I am always so afraid of being seen as a nag, even when I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am right.) We got Bryan a $20 pair of Brahma work boots that laced up slightly past the ankle, and some heavy duty work socks. They worked very well for the rest of the festival, & I did NOT say "I told you so."
Some people were super rude & put their stuff in other people's seats on the ride back. e_e Not impressed. Very impressed with the guy who got 2 bags of mulch, stacked them in his OWN seat, & he & his seat mate just sat on his mulch. :)
We got back to camp, regrouped with Bryan's new boots, & walked into the main venue with backpack chairs. I heard several people say "Oh look at those chairs. THAT'S the way to do it." and similar statements. Made it through security with minimal hassle. We got a slice of pepperoni covered with parmesan, red pepper & jalapeños from I <3 Spicy Pie, and then a Nutella & banana crepe. Found a bit of untrampled grass in the very back of the Revival Tent & sat down JUST in time for Of Monsters & Men!
My Friday Festival Look: low ponytail on the side, behind my ear. Huge straw hat was actually to keep the RAIN out of my face, not the sun.
I'm really feeling like OM&M should've played the main stage. It was utterly packed. They are just as good live as they are in their recordings, for sure. The trumpet player is spot-on, & the 2 vocalists were very strong. I got all 3 songs I really wanted: Mountain Sound (really, how you NOT gonna play that when you're at a venue like Waka?), Little Talks (their first single), and --this is the one I was not expecting to get-- King & Lionheart! I love that song! They have a very "fantasy" feel to their music. They will certainly be my music when I am on an epic quest, riding from Rohan to Gondor to warn them of an impending attack. :)
This was part of a Neverending Story costume group!
Mutemath was next, & all I really wrote about them is that they're an acquired taste...and that I felt like I was probably acquiring it! I've since looked them up on iTunes; I like their newer stuff better than their older. They've gotten more mature as a band, & their recent stuff has a much wider variety of influences.
In between Mutemath & Ozomatli, we discovered there was a phone charging station that was free! I asked how it worked, & they said the organizers of festivals, conferences, etc, contract the company. He said they (meaning the people working the booth, i think) weren't paid for being there, but they did get to come to the festival. Most of the folks running the booth did look like the festy type, so I imagine it's a fair trade. They DID lose my gasket from my Lifeproof case, though. That was irritating. They used adapters instead of actual iPhone 5 cables, and the adapters are too large to fit through the openings on Otterboxes or Lifeproof cases. They probably should've told me that & let me get the case off myself, however, because whoever took my phone out thought you had to remove the headphone gasket (i.e. the thing that makes it waterproof). I did not get it back. I left them my information, but I don't expect to hear back from them. I DID have an extra in the car, however, so I've still got one I can use for work.
Mine & Bryan's dirty feet in the Revival Tent on Friday.
Then...OZOMATLI! This is another one of the bands I came for. They did NOT disappoint. There was a pronounced party atmosphere at this show, even more so than usual for a festival. One of my favorite notes about this show was the couple in front of us: a man & a woman. Looked right about my parents' age, which stood out among the demographic of Waka this year. They had been sitting in lawn chairs right in front of us throughout OM&M, just hanging out together like Bryan & I do. Sharing drinks, people watching, just chilling in general. Then, when Ozomatli took the stage, they stood up. From the first notes of that show to the last notes, that couple TORE IT UP. They danced the entire time! It was so great! Ozo is the best kind of festival band. The audience would've bounced the whole time, except the ground was too soft. One guy was rocking out with a hat that looked to be made of a waterfowl decoy. All the ENO hammocks that people had hung around the tent perimeter were swinging, people singing along, dancing in the mud. It was this festival's defining musical point for me.
If Ozomatli didn't have the tent packed enough, the 2nd STS9 set of the weekend did. It was NUTS in there. It was so full I was starting to get a little weirded out; too close, too many people. I was disappointed, but with as crazy as it was getting in there & with the threat of more bad weather, we decided to cut & run before the crowd did. It was too late. Just as we left the tent, we heard a lady from the stage say that the STS9 gig had been canceled due to imminent weather, and that everyone needed to go back to their campsites because a thunderstorm was about to drop like the bass in a Baauer song.
And we had our LED glowsticks/flashlights all ready to rage, too. :(
I have got to hand it to them; they canceled at exactly the right moment. People were pissed off because damn, it was STS9. Still, we got back into camp just in time.
It was slow going, given the darkness, the mud & the number of Wakafarians trying to get back to camps. It took us about 45 minutes to get back to camp (even taking a Festi-cab!) and it was already very windy. Getting undressed for the tent was an ordeal with all the mud (I was trying to keep the tent as clean as I could, as a mud-free haven of rest), then figuring how to get our shoes into the tent without getting anything muddy (we ended up using the shoe box from Bryan's new boots as storage). Just as we got into our sleeping bags, hell broke loose. Very strong wind gusts & heavy, driving rain. Constant lightning & rolling roars of thunder that can only be produced by the mountains. We could hear water running in the trench around the tent. I was listening to my weather radio, and I got 2 wonderful Twitter people to text me with what our weather radar looked like (thanks, wintersweet!). We heard tents blow down, EZ-ups take flight, people run for their cars. Bryan was supremely unconcerned (he could be Buddhist, with his "what will be, will be" attitude), but I did not sleep the entire night. I told him he could lay there all he wanted, but the minute I heard either hail or debris hit the tent, we were OUT OF THERE. The storms subsided at about 5am, and I got to sleep. INSIDE my sleeping bag this time, because it was COLD.
Saturday
At first I was cranky because of the drips & condensation in our tent. Before I had my coffee, I wrote that I was "beyond disappointed" & "I am no longer a music festie fan if it means camping". I know myself well, though, because I also wrote that I reserve the right to change my mind. Especially for the right lineup. The fact remains, though, that if a hotel & shuttle is an option? I'll probably take it.
After the coffee, my optimism returned...or at least my resilience. Other people had tents down, rain flys blown away, EZ-ups torn & broken. Furniture was missing, the entire contents of tents were soaked, laid out on car hoods to dry. For novice campers, we did EXTREMELY well (I had chosen a good spot on our little piece of land, I had angled the tent so a natural trench ran around it, and I had driven in the tent spikes & the rain fly spikes and THEN put giant rocks on top of them). Even that morning I realized I'd see this as "what I am capable of" and feel less disappointment. I do. I may not LIKE doing this sort of thing, but I'm telling you, I will be EXTREMELY useful should we ever have an apocalypse.
Festival Fashion Day 2: DMB hat with wildly colored earrings & hair divided into a low ponytail on either side. More sun today. Had lots of fun with the eyeliner & I got a ton of compliments!
Lunch was chicken-on-a-stick, & while we stood in a beer tent to eat it, a person came by holding a roll of Woodchuck Cider stickers! I commented, & he gave each of us a sticker. I mentioned that I was a huge fan, and then he gave us chapsticks. When I discussed my favorites (802 is my main standby, with Summer cider my favorite seasonal, but Pumpkin as my favorite reserve), he goes "Wow, you ARE a fan!" and started digging in his backpack. He gave me a SHIRT! I have a Woodchuck cider shirt!
We thought about dinking around at the vendors on the Midway for a while, but the mud was horrendous. It made walking miserable; like trying to stroll through ankle deep peanut butter. I feel bad for the vendors this year; I very much doubt they did as much business this year as in previous. We didn't buy ANYTHING from the vendors, though we talked about wanting an ENO hammock. We eventually ordered one from Amazon, & it will certainly go with us to any future festivals (I'm lookin' at you, Yonder Mountain Harvest!).
On our way back from the Midway into the Revival area, we passed the water. There was no line, so I rinsed off my feet, socks & all. It felt FABULOUS in the hot, humid air.
Giant chair in the Revival Village.
Revival tent between sets
This is Dezzie. Waka doesn't allow animals except for service animals, but it's evidently super easy to get your critter certified as a service animal. Do I think Dezzie was a legit service animal? No. Was she well-trained & extremely well-behaved? Absolutely yes. Was she rocking out in her wings & shades? Also yes. :)
In the Revival Tent that afternoon:
Making Movies: Tejano style rhythms. It was great for chilling out in the shade. Tapped my foot the whole time.
Charging station still didn't have my Lifeproof gasket, so I left them with my info. It's a great idea for a stand, and I plan on giving lots of feedback to Waka for it.
The bar in the Revival Tent informed me I can win a Woodchuck cider hat if I drink the most cider that day! I laughingly informed them I'd NOT be winning that hat, since I couldn't see myself drinking any more than 3 ciders, tops, but that it was a fun idea.
Bombino: A rock band from the Tuareg community of North Africa. Heavily instrumental & extremely rhythmic with minimal vocals, none in English. My synaesthesia was extremely pronounced this day, and a lot of my notes are based on it. I wrote that the bass in Bombino felt heavy, in a good way. Powerful. This is a must-download for me.
It was during Bombino that I had my idea for ragestick portraits! Given the individuality & creativity of these things, I decided to do portraits of people with their art!
One of my 2 favorite pics. They're such an adorable couple!
John Lennon, his frat boy, and their airplane. :)
I was disappointed this guy didn't know who was on his flag. I did inform him, and he was super excited about Ganesh's role as remover of obstacles & patron of new endeavors. Seemed appropriate for a weekend so fraught with potential obstacles.
I let people pose themselves. I LOVED this guy's action pose.
My favorite, hands down. :) HE IS SO ADORABLE WITH HIS FAIRY BEAR I JUST WANT TO SMOOSH HIM.
I had to look this guy up. It's Kevin Durant, a basketball player. Also, this couple had on sequined capes!
Also there was a guy in front of us with an ENO hammock. He was the "chill out & listen" type as well, so we got along great. Told him I'd watch his hammock while he was gone. Some FestyKids™ came along & totally sat in his hammock. In a roundabout way, I asked if they knew him, & they didn't. I made it a point to state that he was coming back but they just sat there in it! He was chill about it when he got back. Booted them out nicely, but I was just boggled that it seemed okay to them to just randomly sit in a total stranger's hammock. At least they didn't get their muddy feet in it!
Spoonfed Tribe: Heavily instrumental with significant brass (a trumpet & sax) and THREE percussionists! Regular kit, some instruments I didn't recognize, & hand/bongo drums. My notes from this point say that Revival Tent was a great choice! :D Their sax player was doing some seriously unorthodox things; I didn't know a sax could make those sounds, and I'm a Jeff Coffin fan! He makes noises all the time that I don't think are real! Again with the synaesthesia, because during one song I noted the tenor sax felt like a huge, slow, aquatic creature: powerful, but benevolent. They had very unexpected chord progressions as well. They definitely made a new fan in me.
At the end of their set, I went for something to eat. In the Revival Village I found the stir-fry guys who always sell this thing called a Jerry Roll. I investigated. It is a veggie egg roll about the size of both my fists put together. They poked a hole in it and squirted a bunch of their tahini sauce into it, and then asked if I wanted hot sauce. She was holding a bottle of Sriracha hot sauce so OF COURSE I DID, and it got injected into the roll the same way. This behemoth only cost $6. My notes say it was 2 things: intensely spicy deliciousness...and hard to eat without wearing a lot of it. It was spicy & messy as hell and it was AMAZING.
Red Baraat: My first note: A TUBA! Promising already! It was. During one of the first few songs the frontman taught us punjabi dance moves, like the shrug with your hands in the air, twisting light bulbs, & hip shaking. I downloaded their most recent album when I got home because wow. I LOVED this show. They were easily as high energy as Ozomatli, just less well known among the festie scene (Ozomatli has been together, playing festivals, for 18 years). They started out to a small, quiet crowd who progressively got louder. The music & the energy drew people in, and by the end, the Revival Tent was full & it was JUMPING.
This group RAGED with their stick during Red Baraat. That moon twirled & bobbed & rocked out.
The Pac-man group was considerate with their sticks. They propped them near the soundstage so they didn't impede anyone's view. I made them get them out & pose, but they didn't seem to mind. :)
SAVOY: I had researched Savoy. It was not the Norweigian rock band I had researched; instead it was a dubstep DJ. Not too bad really, but I wasn't looking for a rave at that moment. Back to camp.
Sunday: We woke up & it was off to home. Bryan had a meeting at Bay on Monday & he certainly couldn't go in either pair of shoes he had...or really any of the clothing he had for that matter. We had to get home, and I missed Ganon. I was gonna drive & get him on Monday.
It took us 3 attempts at the Lower Westwoods Mud Crater hill, but I managed without ever having to be pushed. A guy camped next to us (in my mind he's The Professor because he was older & wearing a college department t-shirt) watched. I told him "Well, you can either applaud for me because I'm a badass, or laugh because I'm a dumbass, because i'm about to take on this hill!" I attempted twice & had to rock back past the ruts of cars that had tried to go before me (and had to be towed out). On the third try I slid around like you wouldn't believe, but I had plotted my course well away from anyone's tents or things, and I kept my foot on the gas. When I felt Leeloo crest the top of the hill & catch the gravel, I whooped and did a dance. The Professor applauded.
We stopped again at the I-40 Travel Center. They have breakfast 24/7, so we got breakfast! Bryan had a delicious biscuit sandwich, but I went all out & got this...pile of stuff. It was biscuits, topped with hashbrowns, topped with eggs, topped with gravy, topped with sausage, topped with shredded cheese. IT WAS INCREDIBLE. So were their grits; we ordered a second bowl of grits because Bryan wound up eating a LOT of mine. :)
We met 2 guys who offered to buy our bracelets. I really didn't want to, because I keep mine. Bryan absolutely would've sold his if we could've figured out how to get them off without messing them up, but I pressed on to find out why they wanted them. Turns out we were able to help them WITHOUT fraud! They were 2 food vendors from Oklahoma who wanted to check out Waka & make sure it would be worth it to bring their vending business over. They quizzed us about what kind of food offerings there were. Anything hand held, lots of stuff deep fried. No, the dessert variety was NOT good; in fact, other than the King of Pops popsicle guy & the Crepe Lady, there was NOTHING desserty. The variety was certainly not up to the level of something like Bonnaroo, & the Waka population would certainly support more vendors. He told us what he does: "Indian tacos". Well, the name struck me as problematic (unless he's Native American, which is statistically likely given the part of Oklahoma he's from), but y'all. He sells tacos made on fry bread. I WOULD EAT THE HELL OUT OF THAT. Also he does dessert fry breads, which are fry breads folded & filled with custard or pudding or whatever. That would've been an EXTREMELY welcome thing. I told him all this, & he thanked me for saving them about $60 each on day passes...which they would've had to scam by buying bracelets off of patrons leaving like we were, because day passes had been sold out for a week.
The coolest thing that happened at the I-40 Travel Center, though, was the WINE. They had 4 bottles of Weiderkehr sangria, which is one of my all-time favorite Arkansas wines. o_O BUT IT WAS SUNDAY. While waiting sadly in line with my diet Dr. Pepper for the road, I noticed the guy in front of me buying 2 cans of some sort of malt liquor. I blinked. Arkansas has blue laws. I asked the lady at the register if I could buy alcohol in spite of it being Sunday. She said yes, because the county we were in has the wineries! Specifically because of the wineries, something was different about the blue laws in that particular county. I bought all 4 bottles of that sangria. I should've bought some red muscadine & maybe a Mount Bethel merlot while I was it it. :D
And then we drove home. We showered & scrubbed off the top layer of our skin, & passed out cold. :) The end.
FIRST! Some definitions for your reading enjoyment:
FestyKid: This is a young person, usually not yet 21. I'm pretty sure they've never held a real job. Their parents probably bought their ticket. They were completely unprepared to camp comfortably under normal circumstances, much less the hellacious weather circumstances we got. They did a lot of drugs, and most gave me the impression they were not there for the music so much as the party atmosphere (& the ability to openly use drugs without legal repercussion); they probably had no idea who Widespread Panic & Umphrey's McGee were, and were mainly spotted at the EDM sets like Baauer & anything else playing at the Satellite Stage. Not all young people at Waka were FestyKids.
Wook (short for wookie): This is a shady type person at a festival. Unkempt & filthy, but that's pretty much the rest of us this year, too. These are the people who come rummaging through the campsites when everyone else is gone. You don't put a lock on your tent, because they'll just cut your tent open.
Ragestick: a decorated stick of any size that you can hold above a festy crowd so your group can find you. Can't find the Creeches? Just look for the staff of Asclepius made out of electrowire. :) Okay so I didn't make one, but if I did it would be that. They are as diverse & individual as people at festivals, & each one says something about the person who made it.
Thursday:
We sat in the security line for AGES. From 1400 arrival, to 2030 when we began setting up our camp. This was mostly because of the weather; we kept having wind/rain intermittently, and any time it threatened to get thunderstormy, the Powers that Were would shut down the festival main venue. Each time that happened, security shut down & stop letting people in. I felt this was a silly tactic; we could've at least been getting to our campsites. I was very glad we'd stopped at the I-40 travel center & filled up the tank.
At one point a wook (everyone was calling him Will) with tattoos on his face & all over his scalp fell asleep between the 2 cars directly in front of me & to the left. This was weird but okay until the cars started to move (finally) at about 1800, and we needed to drive around him. Dressed in camo green as he was, someone was going to run over his inebriated, high-as-a-kite arse. Cadillac Guy poured a bottle of water over his face, which woke him up. I got out of my car, walked over & sternal rubbed the hell out of him until he sat up (he was seriously wasted). Then finally Ford Dude (next to me on the left) got out & yelled at him & unceremoniously hauled him to his feet, from where he floated off as high people are wont to do.
Security line was my first introduction to how many people were at this Waka who did not know how to drive in mud. If there is a mud hole in front of you, you drive all the way through it until you come out on the other side with all 4 wheels. Many people did not know that. They were letting the car in front of them make it through, then trying to pull up right behind them--effectively pulling up & parking IN the giant mud hole. Just a protip: don't do that. They all had to be pushed out. Bryan & I made it through the most incredible mud holes in the line, simply by virtue of my mud-driving experience. Hello, growing up on a farm!
It was also my first taste of how internet connection & phone service was going to be in general. During our security wait at Riverside campground, we alternated between 1 bar of signal with Edge network and no service at all. Westwoods, Main, & the Main Venue were better, since they're at the top of the mountain, but not by much. Also: Mulberry Mountain Ranch is in the middle of the Ozark National Forest, so there isn't much infrastructure to go around. The few cell towers that are out there are overloaded very quickly. Wakarusa actually DOUBLES the population of Franklin County.
After setting up the tent in the rain, Bryan insisted we go into the festival venue itself. I wanted to straight up go to sleep, but Bryan knew I was going to feel entirely ripped off if I missed out on one entire day of music because of the security line hold up. He was right. So we went in, and that's where we discovered that Bryan couldn't walk 2 steps in the mud without his Sanuks being sucked right off his feet. At one point he made like the rest of the hippies & just went barefoot! We sat in some ENO hammocks (I really think I want one, btw) and listened to STS9 out on the main stage. They really did rock out, so even though I was soaked to the skin, feeling nasty & cold & muggy in my raincoat & my skirt so wet you could WRING WATER FROM IT, I was happy about the music. They really killed it.
Uncle A texted me with a tornado warning for a town called Huntsville, which was relatively close to us on the north side. They shut down main venue & we all slogged back to the campsite. My text log from this night says "miserable, wet, regretful". I was upset, tired, hungry & soaked & I was regretting my decision to come to Waka at all.
Friday
Was in only a marginally better mood on Friday morning. It started off with someone playing some surreal recording of instrumental sounds (I hesitate to call it music) with some guy doing pseudo-political, New Age conspiracy theory spoken word stuff over it. It was LOUD, and finally we got the guy to turn it off. Seriously, we can't have that crap at 5am...we're trying to sleep!
We boarded the shuttle to Ozark ($5 per person, not bad) and set off to find Bryan some mud boots. The Ozark Wal-Mart had already been completely cleaned out of mud boots. (I should have INSISTED on some at the Clarksville Wal-Mart but I am always so afraid of being seen as a nag, even when I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am right.) We got Bryan a $20 pair of Brahma work boots that laced up slightly past the ankle, and some heavy duty work socks. They worked very well for the rest of the festival, & I did NOT say "I told you so."
Some people were super rude & put their stuff in other people's seats on the ride back. e_e Not impressed. Very impressed with the guy who got 2 bags of mulch, stacked them in his OWN seat, & he & his seat mate just sat on his mulch. :)
We got back to camp, regrouped with Bryan's new boots, & walked into the main venue with backpack chairs. I heard several people say "Oh look at those chairs. THAT'S the way to do it." and similar statements. Made it through security with minimal hassle. We got a slice of pepperoni covered with parmesan, red pepper & jalapeños from I <3 Spicy Pie, and then a Nutella & banana crepe. Found a bit of untrampled grass in the very back of the Revival Tent & sat down JUST in time for Of Monsters & Men!
My Friday Festival Look: low ponytail on the side, behind my ear. Huge straw hat was actually to keep the RAIN out of my face, not the sun.
I'm really feeling like OM&M should've played the main stage. It was utterly packed. They are just as good live as they are in their recordings, for sure. The trumpet player is spot-on, & the 2 vocalists were very strong. I got all 3 songs I really wanted: Mountain Sound (really, how you NOT gonna play that when you're at a venue like Waka?), Little Talks (their first single), and --this is the one I was not expecting to get-- King & Lionheart! I love that song! They have a very "fantasy" feel to their music. They will certainly be my music when I am on an epic quest, riding from Rohan to Gondor to warn them of an impending attack. :)
This was part of a Neverending Story costume group!
Mutemath was next, & all I really wrote about them is that they're an acquired taste...and that I felt like I was probably acquiring it! I've since looked them up on iTunes; I like their newer stuff better than their older. They've gotten more mature as a band, & their recent stuff has a much wider variety of influences.
In between Mutemath & Ozomatli, we discovered there was a phone charging station that was free! I asked how it worked, & they said the organizers of festivals, conferences, etc, contract the company. He said they (meaning the people working the booth, i think) weren't paid for being there, but they did get to come to the festival. Most of the folks running the booth did look like the festy type, so I imagine it's a fair trade. They DID lose my gasket from my Lifeproof case, though. That was irritating. They used adapters instead of actual iPhone 5 cables, and the adapters are too large to fit through the openings on Otterboxes or Lifeproof cases. They probably should've told me that & let me get the case off myself, however, because whoever took my phone out thought you had to remove the headphone gasket (i.e. the thing that makes it waterproof). I did not get it back. I left them my information, but I don't expect to hear back from them. I DID have an extra in the car, however, so I've still got one I can use for work.
Mine & Bryan's dirty feet in the Revival Tent on Friday.
Then...OZOMATLI! This is another one of the bands I came for. They did NOT disappoint. There was a pronounced party atmosphere at this show, even more so than usual for a festival. One of my favorite notes about this show was the couple in front of us: a man & a woman. Looked right about my parents' age, which stood out among the demographic of Waka this year. They had been sitting in lawn chairs right in front of us throughout OM&M, just hanging out together like Bryan & I do. Sharing drinks, people watching, just chilling in general. Then, when Ozomatli took the stage, they stood up. From the first notes of that show to the last notes, that couple TORE IT UP. They danced the entire time! It was so great! Ozo is the best kind of festival band. The audience would've bounced the whole time, except the ground was too soft. One guy was rocking out with a hat that looked to be made of a waterfowl decoy. All the ENO hammocks that people had hung around the tent perimeter were swinging, people singing along, dancing in the mud. It was this festival's defining musical point for me.
If Ozomatli didn't have the tent packed enough, the 2nd STS9 set of the weekend did. It was NUTS in there. It was so full I was starting to get a little weirded out; too close, too many people. I was disappointed, but with as crazy as it was getting in there & with the threat of more bad weather, we decided to cut & run before the crowd did. It was too late. Just as we left the tent, we heard a lady from the stage say that the STS9 gig had been canceled due to imminent weather, and that everyone needed to go back to their campsites because a thunderstorm was about to drop like the bass in a Baauer song.
And we had our LED glowsticks/flashlights all ready to rage, too. :(
I have got to hand it to them; they canceled at exactly the right moment. People were pissed off because damn, it was STS9. Still, we got back into camp just in time.
It was slow going, given the darkness, the mud & the number of Wakafarians trying to get back to camps. It took us about 45 minutes to get back to camp (even taking a Festi-cab!) and it was already very windy. Getting undressed for the tent was an ordeal with all the mud (I was trying to keep the tent as clean as I could, as a mud-free haven of rest), then figuring how to get our shoes into the tent without getting anything muddy (we ended up using the shoe box from Bryan's new boots as storage). Just as we got into our sleeping bags, hell broke loose. Very strong wind gusts & heavy, driving rain. Constant lightning & rolling roars of thunder that can only be produced by the mountains. We could hear water running in the trench around the tent. I was listening to my weather radio, and I got 2 wonderful Twitter people to text me with what our weather radar looked like (thanks, wintersweet!). We heard tents blow down, EZ-ups take flight, people run for their cars. Bryan was supremely unconcerned (he could be Buddhist, with his "what will be, will be" attitude), but I did not sleep the entire night. I told him he could lay there all he wanted, but the minute I heard either hail or debris hit the tent, we were OUT OF THERE. The storms subsided at about 5am, and I got to sleep. INSIDE my sleeping bag this time, because it was COLD.
Saturday
At first I was cranky because of the drips & condensation in our tent. Before I had my coffee, I wrote that I was "beyond disappointed" & "I am no longer a music festie fan if it means camping". I know myself well, though, because I also wrote that I reserve the right to change my mind. Especially for the right lineup. The fact remains, though, that if a hotel & shuttle is an option? I'll probably take it.
After the coffee, my optimism returned...or at least my resilience. Other people had tents down, rain flys blown away, EZ-ups torn & broken. Furniture was missing, the entire contents of tents were soaked, laid out on car hoods to dry. For novice campers, we did EXTREMELY well (I had chosen a good spot on our little piece of land, I had angled the tent so a natural trench ran around it, and I had driven in the tent spikes & the rain fly spikes and THEN put giant rocks on top of them). Even that morning I realized I'd see this as "what I am capable of" and feel less disappointment. I do. I may not LIKE doing this sort of thing, but I'm telling you, I will be EXTREMELY useful should we ever have an apocalypse.
Festival Fashion Day 2: DMB hat with wildly colored earrings & hair divided into a low ponytail on either side. More sun today. Had lots of fun with the eyeliner & I got a ton of compliments!
Lunch was chicken-on-a-stick, & while we stood in a beer tent to eat it, a person came by holding a roll of Woodchuck Cider stickers! I commented, & he gave each of us a sticker. I mentioned that I was a huge fan, and then he gave us chapsticks. When I discussed my favorites (802 is my main standby, with Summer cider my favorite seasonal, but Pumpkin as my favorite reserve), he goes "Wow, you ARE a fan!" and started digging in his backpack. He gave me a SHIRT! I have a Woodchuck cider shirt!
We thought about dinking around at the vendors on the Midway for a while, but the mud was horrendous. It made walking miserable; like trying to stroll through ankle deep peanut butter. I feel bad for the vendors this year; I very much doubt they did as much business this year as in previous. We didn't buy ANYTHING from the vendors, though we talked about wanting an ENO hammock. We eventually ordered one from Amazon, & it will certainly go with us to any future festivals (I'm lookin' at you, Yonder Mountain Harvest!).
On our way back from the Midway into the Revival area, we passed the water. There was no line, so I rinsed off my feet, socks & all. It felt FABULOUS in the hot, humid air.
Giant chair in the Revival Village.
Revival tent between sets
This is Dezzie. Waka doesn't allow animals except for service animals, but it's evidently super easy to get your critter certified as a service animal. Do I think Dezzie was a legit service animal? No. Was she well-trained & extremely well-behaved? Absolutely yes. Was she rocking out in her wings & shades? Also yes. :)
In the Revival Tent that afternoon:
Making Movies: Tejano style rhythms. It was great for chilling out in the shade. Tapped my foot the whole time.
Charging station still didn't have my Lifeproof gasket, so I left them with my info. It's a great idea for a stand, and I plan on giving lots of feedback to Waka for it.
The bar in the Revival Tent informed me I can win a Woodchuck cider hat if I drink the most cider that day! I laughingly informed them I'd NOT be winning that hat, since I couldn't see myself drinking any more than 3 ciders, tops, but that it was a fun idea.
Bombino: A rock band from the Tuareg community of North Africa. Heavily instrumental & extremely rhythmic with minimal vocals, none in English. My synaesthesia was extremely pronounced this day, and a lot of my notes are based on it. I wrote that the bass in Bombino felt heavy, in a good way. Powerful. This is a must-download for me.
It was during Bombino that I had my idea for ragestick portraits! Given the individuality & creativity of these things, I decided to do portraits of people with their art!
One of my 2 favorite pics. They're such an adorable couple!
John Lennon, his frat boy, and their airplane. :)
I was disappointed this guy didn't know who was on his flag. I did inform him, and he was super excited about Ganesh's role as remover of obstacles & patron of new endeavors. Seemed appropriate for a weekend so fraught with potential obstacles.
I let people pose themselves. I LOVED this guy's action pose.
My favorite, hands down. :) HE IS SO ADORABLE WITH HIS FAIRY BEAR I JUST WANT TO SMOOSH HIM.
I had to look this guy up. It's Kevin Durant, a basketball player. Also, this couple had on sequined capes!
Also there was a guy in front of us with an ENO hammock. He was the "chill out & listen" type as well, so we got along great. Told him I'd watch his hammock while he was gone. Some FestyKids™ came along & totally sat in his hammock. In a roundabout way, I asked if they knew him, & they didn't. I made it a point to state that he was coming back but they just sat there in it! He was chill about it when he got back. Booted them out nicely, but I was just boggled that it seemed okay to them to just randomly sit in a total stranger's hammock. At least they didn't get their muddy feet in it!
Spoonfed Tribe: Heavily instrumental with significant brass (a trumpet & sax) and THREE percussionists! Regular kit, some instruments I didn't recognize, & hand/bongo drums. My notes from this point say that Revival Tent was a great choice! :D Their sax player was doing some seriously unorthodox things; I didn't know a sax could make those sounds, and I'm a Jeff Coffin fan! He makes noises all the time that I don't think are real! Again with the synaesthesia, because during one song I noted the tenor sax felt like a huge, slow, aquatic creature: powerful, but benevolent. They had very unexpected chord progressions as well. They definitely made a new fan in me.
At the end of their set, I went for something to eat. In the Revival Village I found the stir-fry guys who always sell this thing called a Jerry Roll. I investigated. It is a veggie egg roll about the size of both my fists put together. They poked a hole in it and squirted a bunch of their tahini sauce into it, and then asked if I wanted hot sauce. She was holding a bottle of Sriracha hot sauce so OF COURSE I DID, and it got injected into the roll the same way. This behemoth only cost $6. My notes say it was 2 things: intensely spicy deliciousness...and hard to eat without wearing a lot of it. It was spicy & messy as hell and it was AMAZING.
Red Baraat: My first note: A TUBA! Promising already! It was. During one of the first few songs the frontman taught us punjabi dance moves, like the shrug with your hands in the air, twisting light bulbs, & hip shaking. I downloaded their most recent album when I got home because wow. I LOVED this show. They were easily as high energy as Ozomatli, just less well known among the festie scene (Ozomatli has been together, playing festivals, for 18 years). They started out to a small, quiet crowd who progressively got louder. The music & the energy drew people in, and by the end, the Revival Tent was full & it was JUMPING.
This group RAGED with their stick during Red Baraat. That moon twirled & bobbed & rocked out.
The Pac-man group was considerate with their sticks. They propped them near the soundstage so they didn't impede anyone's view. I made them get them out & pose, but they didn't seem to mind. :)
SAVOY: I had researched Savoy. It was not the Norweigian rock band I had researched; instead it was a dubstep DJ. Not too bad really, but I wasn't looking for a rave at that moment. Back to camp.
Sunday: We woke up & it was off to home. Bryan had a meeting at Bay on Monday & he certainly couldn't go in either pair of shoes he had...or really any of the clothing he had for that matter. We had to get home, and I missed Ganon. I was gonna drive & get him on Monday.
It took us 3 attempts at the Lower Westwoods Mud Crater hill, but I managed without ever having to be pushed. A guy camped next to us (in my mind he's The Professor because he was older & wearing a college department t-shirt) watched. I told him "Well, you can either applaud for me because I'm a badass, or laugh because I'm a dumbass, because i'm about to take on this hill!" I attempted twice & had to rock back past the ruts of cars that had tried to go before me (and had to be towed out). On the third try I slid around like you wouldn't believe, but I had plotted my course well away from anyone's tents or things, and I kept my foot on the gas. When I felt Leeloo crest the top of the hill & catch the gravel, I whooped and did a dance. The Professor applauded.
We stopped again at the I-40 Travel Center. They have breakfast 24/7, so we got breakfast! Bryan had a delicious biscuit sandwich, but I went all out & got this...pile of stuff. It was biscuits, topped with hashbrowns, topped with eggs, topped with gravy, topped with sausage, topped with shredded cheese. IT WAS INCREDIBLE. So were their grits; we ordered a second bowl of grits because Bryan wound up eating a LOT of mine. :)
We met 2 guys who offered to buy our bracelets. I really didn't want to, because I keep mine. Bryan absolutely would've sold his if we could've figured out how to get them off without messing them up, but I pressed on to find out why they wanted them. Turns out we were able to help them WITHOUT fraud! They were 2 food vendors from Oklahoma who wanted to check out Waka & make sure it would be worth it to bring their vending business over. They quizzed us about what kind of food offerings there were. Anything hand held, lots of stuff deep fried. No, the dessert variety was NOT good; in fact, other than the King of Pops popsicle guy & the Crepe Lady, there was NOTHING desserty. The variety was certainly not up to the level of something like Bonnaroo, & the Waka population would certainly support more vendors. He told us what he does: "Indian tacos". Well, the name struck me as problematic (unless he's Native American, which is statistically likely given the part of Oklahoma he's from), but y'all. He sells tacos made on fry bread. I WOULD EAT THE HELL OUT OF THAT. Also he does dessert fry breads, which are fry breads folded & filled with custard or pudding or whatever. That would've been an EXTREMELY welcome thing. I told him all this, & he thanked me for saving them about $60 each on day passes...which they would've had to scam by buying bracelets off of patrons leaving like we were, because day passes had been sold out for a week.
The coolest thing that happened at the I-40 Travel Center, though, was the WINE. They had 4 bottles of Weiderkehr sangria, which is one of my all-time favorite Arkansas wines. o_O BUT IT WAS SUNDAY. While waiting sadly in line with my diet Dr. Pepper for the road, I noticed the guy in front of me buying 2 cans of some sort of malt liquor. I blinked. Arkansas has blue laws. I asked the lady at the register if I could buy alcohol in spite of it being Sunday. She said yes, because the county we were in has the wineries! Specifically because of the wineries, something was different about the blue laws in that particular county. I bought all 4 bottles of that sangria. I should've bought some red muscadine & maybe a Mount Bethel merlot while I was it it. :D
And then we drove home. We showered & scrubbed off the top layer of our skin, & passed out cold. :) The end.
