Merlefest: Final Notes. Blue Tarps Are Noisy When Folded and Jumped On.

My Merlefest notes have disappeared with my itouch. I've offered my eight year old $15 to find it, but alas, the itouch remains AWOL.

My Merlefest experience ended on Saturday night with performances by Sam Bush and Lyle Lovett. Sam Bush did his own performance, and then joined Lyle Lovett's band on the mandolin. Both performances were terrific. I would love to describe them more in detail, but as I've said, my notes are gone.

I do recall that the only time I cried during Merlefest was during Lyle Lovett's concert. My friend Rachel is a huge Lyle Lovett fan but she's also stoic, so she didn't cry. And here I will teach you a little about Merlefest culture. I was sitting in my lawn chair weeping during a sad Lyle Lovett song, while the family sitting in front of us deconstructed their seating area.  With quite a bit of commotion they folded up the blankets, tarps and chairs, and loaded them together with several coolers and a small child, into a wagon. Then they proceeded to walk around their seating area with a flashlight, looking for anything they may have missed. Finally they rolled the whole kit and caboodle out of the festival.

Lovett moved onto his next emotion laden song of love and woe and a group of people in their sixties began to fold up the 400 square yards of tarps they had laid out first thing in the morning. These were blue raffia garden tarps, so the folding made noise.  But what really made noise was a man in a Tilly hat and Bermuda shorts jumping up and down on the folded tarp to push the air out. Lyle Lovett is still singing. I am no longer weeping, rather laughing.

By the time Lovett finished, most of the people on the lawn had left. We walked all the way up to the fence keeping us out of the reserved seating to hear his encore.