Greasy Fun at Suwannee Roots Revival ’21

It was a strange and unusual cacophony of light-hearted whimsy and deep-seated perversion. At times wonderfully transcendent and at others, viscous debauchery of the seventh level. Bre the reckless hillbilly, whose dancing eyes couldn’t hide the genuine glee she savored in the loss of the crocheted phallus suggested the best way to avoid confusion in terms of aggressive courting was to just wait for “enthusiastic consent”. The math checked out and the Kamp Happiness band of carnival freaks was ready for another run of Greasy Fun at Suwannee Roots Revival ’21. Welcome to the petri dish. Remember not to leave the keys in your golf cart.

Lucy and Bucket were once again heading south leaving Pop’s Farm and Rooster Walk in the rear view mirror. The Summer Mountain Festival Lyme Disease Tour was over and all guilty parties had lost weight, respect and brain cells. For six months they’d been “living” at camping festivals across Ol Dominion and managed to discover some fresh smells in West Virginia, Illinois and Arkansas. As plan-A was still in effect they steered for the lower latitudes and the Suwannee Roots Revival happening at the Spirit of Suwannee Music Park. The weather had been ideal as they left the mountains and by the time they showed up in Live Oak it remained ultimately perfect. They had been successful in their attempt to shift with the sun as it naturally rolled south for the winter. They listened to Jerry rip off “Goin’ down the road feelin’ bad” as they eased through the paper mill, low-country of south Georgia.

This is where it all started. Nineteen years ago they came to their first festival here in Live Oak. It was usually about the third weekend in October and Alabama was always playing Tennessee. Back in those days the squad would hunker around an outdoor television in the loop, watch football, play bluegrass and dip their fingers in pot butter. This festival has always been the alpha. They were the first to pick up the wranglers as a media outlet back when they sold mining equipment and fresh pastries in the wook wranglers mercantile. Est.1884) and somewhere along the long black train they’d been assimilated by Kamp Happiness and it’s band of convicted predators. Roots has always been deep in family. This is all the way down.

Shredders such as Sam Bush, The Infamous Stringdusters, Jim Lauderdale, Nikki Talley, Leftover Salmon and many more represented some of the best ever to call Suwannee a home and a real return to the blasting furnace style line-ups that have always been associated with this party. The vendors, the food and the service at the park lived up to it’s stellar reputation. Lucy was thrilled to see the amphitheater stage again filled with dancing, hammocks and hula-hoops reminding her of how the spot would always hold most of the significant musical memories of her life.

High rope swings, low expectations and stolen golf carts

Baitbucket had learned in his travels that while one could start a Club Car with a pocket knife an EZ-Go usually required a key. He would just stand by the cart and wait for another EZ-Go to come by and ask to use their key. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Moonshine’s golf cart keys were in the ignition so he and Kristin distracted Shannon with a box of whippets and “borrowed” it to fetch a piece of plywood for their mural that would never happen. The squawking, screeching sound that emitted from Moonshine upon the EZ-Gos return was a hopeless yelp that could be heard all the way to the horse stalls and beyond. Witnesses would recall it as a mournful wail and difficult to forget. That paired with the fact that Blancito had stolen his air horn made the entire scene slightly sad and embarrassing.

Jesse (828 trash) had fashioned some kind of amazing contraption using sandbags and ropes which few had ever witnessed. After supporting the rigging from multiple trees and branches he turned it into a giant swing. Leaping off and cracking Moonshine’s golf cart roof he could be seen gliding through the entire camp like some kind of spun monkey. High science indeed. Is that your beard that smells like tears and regret?

Devil’s advocate: Lucy did well understand what it was to be scared of thieves in golf carts. Earlier that month she’d finally been given one as a staff employee in Virginia, which was unusual, and watched in horror as a crazed thug drove away in the stolen vehicle. Terrifying to be sure. So she well understood the brutal aspects of life that could turn otherwise reasonable men into completely unhinged bitches. She also had no cooler and was using Moonshine’s to keep her PBRs cold so making concessions is not the same as selling out.

Perverts and meth mouth–The night gets even darker

As always, Spacebug set her tent up directly next to the fire where Fritz passed out with his head on the corner of her bed. At some point, like a patient cheeta stalking a young gazelle, he moved in for the kill and gave her foot a long lick with his yellow, catlike tongue. She retaliated by jack-kicking him square in the mouf, sending the top row of his dentures shooting into the smoldering embers on the edge of the fire. Thinking and moving unusually quickly, Dr. Thermometer yanked them out of the coals with a pair of salad tongs but not before the scalded damage to the acrylic turned his gaping maw into the perfect picture of a Wilkesboro meth mouth.

And then there was the other long-haired hippy who reckoned himself an irresistible charcuterie board of thundering sexual machismo. As his female friend wished him farewell he gently placed his hand on her firm bottom. Both Nikita (the Russian mail order bride) and Samantha (the dirty whore with the big dick) would agree that the potential misstep of hubris should be considered when operating well inside the hula hoop without consent.

Baitbucket understood the world of the pervert. Lord knows he did. His whiskers still smelled like four day old Brie. Gitterdun Turner had always been known to swing for the fences in colorfully inappropriate ways but he was always forward and honest about the grease and accepted the reality that it usually involved getting slapped in the side of the head. His batting average was about .200 unless he played the fiddle on one leg, then it shot way up. Baitbucket had one foot on each side of the fence as he had a daughter but had also long ago joined the Dirty Old Man’s Club along with Scotty Smiles and Shrimphead. Who indeed could cast the first stone at the unwashed heathen but in the modern day how could the camp be called Happiness with all the girls getting felt up and licked? Going forward it might need to be changed to Kamp Nikita’s Dirty Sanchez Pleasure Palace, Kamp No Means Yes and Yes Means Anal or even Kamp Crocheted Phallus On Your Neck Party (diva pink of course). By the time of this printing, memos had already begun circulating the upper offices of Kamp Happiness. Research and Development would be putting their top men on it in the very near future.

Baitbucket woke up in his hammock, his mouth and pockets filled with ground glitter, loose tobacco and chemical sediment. He reached for a water bottle next to the fire which proved to be leftover moonshine, an occupational hazard in this camp always. He wasn’t ready for the liquid fire but fought to keep it down as he picked up a second bottle. The night before the VIP stage had been smoking dope out of some plastic connector on a small water bottle. It was basically a homemade water bong like that guy invented with a pen and aluminum foil back in high school. It had been haphazardly left around the fire without the tube attachment. He put the bong water to his lips and drank slowly as the precious elixir made it’s way deep into his vast array of biological systems. Fuck you Waffle. Good morning world. Here we go again.

Katie Ratchet’s Cooler of Good Intentions

As a gesture of responsible, adult consideration, she was prepared to cook a dinner for everyone. She’d planned the entire menu from the crab cake and mushroom appetizers to the stuffed corn dogs. For desert it was cream filled biscuits over the fire. The planning was detailed and meticulous. She’d also shopped for a breakfast of dirty grits and mason jar eggs. She loved her friends dearly and was ready to show it, be part of the party and help keep the wooks alive. Food=energy=chaos. This was to be a special Katie Magic experience.

Skip to…Monday morning found the cooler forgotten and alone. There had been no meals of which to speak and everyone was gaunt and nearly starving. The ice chest had been sitting in the sun for four days and its contents had devolved into a burbling yellowish-brown jelly. At times the shapeless chunks seemed to pulsate as if through heat, pressure and chemical reaction, life had somehow found a way. Katie Ratchet subsequently left the cooler with the post-party crowd as a dinner groundscore.

Lucy was forced to dig into her mushroom-potato Tasty Bites from Rooster which she found to be both exceptional and filling. For desert she had homemade crème brûlée sprinkled with milk thistle, for healthy liver function, headaches and more diarrhea.

Cleopatra and Ka’ioli, late night brutality and the pocket that “ain’t gonna hold itself”. 

Ka’ioli usually didn’t usually do drugs while the sun was still up. The scrolls of recent history had listed countless chapters of his exploits illustrating that when he lurked beyond his usual Miller Lites his actions could consistently be measured as underwhelming or whelming at best. That afternoon he’d been consuming lighter fluid aioli paired with ketamine and it wasn’t agreeing with his regularly scheduled paranoid schizophrenia already in session. He was thrown out of Keller and the Keels for screaming, “Take it off Jenny!” and he’d begun getting testy with everyone, especially Lucy. He bitch-slapped Mario for taking one of his Miller Lites without asking and after a while Lucy had just about had enough. She considered running him over in a golf cart but after the last theft, she’d just as soon go the rest of her life without hearing that cackling clucking chicken sound again. She also knew of a trail on the way to the river where it was slippery with pine needles and leaves directly next to the cliff hanging thirty feet over the limestone rocks. It would be a perfect place to end the tortuous din and send him to his great reward.

She considered all of the variables. Ka’ioli was known to have a shy sphincter and his PTSD wouldn’t let him drive on the interstate. Lucy contemplated how this information could be used. She attempted to soften him up with some groundscored DMT but he’d ingested too much fluoride as a child and his pineal gland had become calcified and useless. There would have to be another way.

Lucy was growing more uncomfortable. In increasingly furtive moves Ka’ioli had begun using his outstretched arm to measure the distance between their heads. Lucy recognized this meant she should be ready for a roundhouse kick at any time. Herself a practicing Buddhist, she wasn’t allowed to engage in physical altercations but called out to her sponsor Sunnie Ray who promptly arrived, tackled Ka’ioli and seared his earlobe with a lit cigarette. Give yourself an A+ after all girl.

In a separate altercation, Baitbucket decided to approach it in the way of the ancients. The old way. He would sweep the leg and shove a shank in Ka’ioli’s eye hole. That would teach the bastard once and for all not to screw with the forces of fate. At some point during the tussle he realized he’d made a moderate mistake and hadn’t counted on Ka’ioli’s idiot strength. After getting the better of him Ka’ioli had Baitbucket wearing her Saturday Cleopatra mop wig on Friday and, in a display of ownership and power learned at Falkenburg Road Jail, had her grip onto his unfurled back pocket as they strolled lazily through the festival.

The drama continued and at about four in the afternoon the whole scene had begun to whither into a cruel and stagnant puddle. Crowther failed to notice the tree stump as he backed away from the fire, collapsing onto the corner of Bill’s fire wood trailer. He’d sheared his sixth and seventh lumbar nerves sending the Kamp Happiness rangers into motion who immediately went to work on the laceration with butter and crotch whiskey. Baitbucket fetched a crate of Jevinate for the feeding tube. “Don’t worry. Although it tastes like shit, it will also give you more raging diarrhea.” Although injured Crowther was able to muster his remaining strength and show up at Jeff’s cottage for the late night “group masturbation” clinic featuring Xavier, Justin and Shawn. Looking forward to Cornucopia Festival.

Speaking of diarrhea. Steve Little had always been known as great forger. Since his time conducting Black Ops out of Lybia, he’d been able to create flawless reproductions of passports, birth certificates, Advance Open Water dive cards, just about anything. But his Pietà had to be the be the “Artist” lanyard creation from Roots Revival. Cut out words scotch taped to pink loose leaf paper, it was a work of vision and obvious labor of love. Whether it’s the presence of greatness or the infinite hours of practice that go into a master’s work, the quality is hard to deny. For inquiries and concession donations contact the Suwannee County Stockade Monday through Friday.

Thanks to Katie Waffle for working so hard behind the lens. Most of the photographs here belong to her. And if you get a chance, check out one of her famous, small mountain gin and tonic supremes. Thanks to Dreamspider Publicity and Events for allowing us to see the silliness way up close. Maybe too close. Thanks to Jeff at Roadtrip Mojo for slugging down all of our peppered sangria and banana schnapps. You told me to tell you when you’re acting that way…Well you are. And in the words of Lord Chamberlain of Essex, “Bitch better have my money.”

Baitbucket stared out over Tampa bay from a front porch in Oldsmar. He was finishing up this article and the weather was still 82 degrees with a light breeze coming out of the west. He was waiting for the call that said he would be staff at Hulaween and a step toward sustainability and legitimacy. Regardless, he would rest for a few days, like a vampire that buries himself to regenerate and then would return to Suwannee where he’d been ejected only a few days earlier while beginning construction on the Kamp Happiness installation. His camp had been violated and his Summer Camp “Restricted Access” sign stolen by animals. So there’s that. He hoped and expected this return to the park would be marked by a loving openness and relentless, savage energy.

Keep up with Kamp Ha-Penis as we head to Hulaween for a relaxing weekend of good rest, camping and responsible adult fun…                                  namaste y’all.