Living Rootless: lupus

Showing posts with label lupus. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Lupus, Missouri: The Chili Fest, Part 4: The Music

The Harvest Season, Lupus Chili Fest, Lupus, Missouri 2013

I'm saved!

Sometimes when you listen to music, live especially, it pushes against you like an ocean wave or like a force of air, where you feel exhilarated and breathless at the same time, where your head actually falls back a little from the strength of the sound coming at you.

This is what it felt like in the Lupus Garage when The Harvest Season played, as the band's flow rolled up and back in small waves, then pounded the shore in a rush against the beach.

If they had been calling to people at the back of the church to come to Jesus, why, I might have been tempted to do just that.

Sadly, this experience isn't replicated in the recorded version of their music, so, well, you just had to be there. Glad I was.

I'm so happy!

This is what an audience member cried out at one point while Todd Day Waits and Pigpen got down.

And everybody laughed, because it was true.

I cannot imagine the band ever hearing a more appreciative audience than it did on that night in the dusty ol' Lupus Garage.

Member George (new?), on the fiddle and with back-up vocal, adds a dimension to the band that's not on the recordings I've heard.

Below is a sample of who performed at the Lupus Chili Fest 2013. Have a listen:

Hooten Hallers

The Kay Brothers

The Flood Brothers

Dubb Nubb

John Galbraith

The Harvest Season

Don Nails and the Broke Ass Band

The Woodsmiths

Anna Soulstice

Ruth Acuff

Dave & Dyno and the Roadkill Orchestra

Cindy Woolf

Boone Howlers

Mark Bilyeu

Violet Vonder Haar

A slideshow of the Lupus Chili Fest 2013 below:

#30

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Lupus, Missouri: The Chili Fest, Part 3: Before You Die

Lupus, Missouri. Lupus Chili Fest 2013.

Not long before the Lupus Chili Fest on October 19, I saw a list of Places You Must Visit Before You Die. Can't find the exact source, but there are many of these kinds of lists, and most of the usual suspects were on this recent one, too, now lost - the Taj Mahal, Grand Canyon, etc. ....

I'd say: Add the Lupus Chili Fest to one's life list of things to see before one dies.

You can't substitute big-time music events for this and get the same experience. The Lupus Chili Fest is all about small scale with big sound. Heck, the town doesn't even really advertise the event; it's mostly about tradition and word of mouth.

Lupus, Missouri. Lupus Chili Fest 2013.

It's a festival where one of the music venues is in a garage where the musicians and the chairs are set up admidst typical garage stuff that has just been pushed out of the way a little bit to make space.

Where every person jammed into the garage is hopping or tapping or swaying, where the band members break into pleased grins because of the enthusiasm of their audience. Where, at one point, a guy in the audience calls out after a particularly terrific riff, I'm so happy!

Where the main stage has a bonfire in front of it and a barn with multi-colored vines behind it, and where the train roars by every so often about 500 yards away.

Where people camp along the river in tiny tents or RVs. Or in their cars.

Lupus, Missouri. Lupus Chili Fest 2013.

And where volunteers serve up homemade chili made with donated beef and other goods.

Lupus, Missouri. Lupus Chili Fest 2013.

It should be on everyone's bucket list.