The Summer Mountain Festival Lyme Disease Tour

Molly and Lila had found their way back to the high country of Virginia and the prolonged pleasure that came with its perfect summers. Once again in the womb of the Shawsvegas Mafia they’d been tasked with following the pulse of the summer festival circuit through the mountains of Clayopheus III The Ludicrous and those of his ilk. It’s the land of ticks and cicadas. Welcome to the The Summer Mountain Festival Lyme Disease Tour “21. Don’t overthink it.

Other than a few moderate wrinkles the road was mostly going as planned. It was an ambitious plan but the Oldsmowagon was still moving forward even if all the warning lights looked like the dashboard of a space shuttle. Lila mused that if her body came with warning lights, they would certainly be blinking. But they were moving too fast and loose to get bogged down in classic themes such as caution and responsibility. It had already been a Florida spring festival season straight from the forgotten pages of the lost scrolls. Kamp Happiness had represented at Maddox Ranch Medicine Show, Spring Fling, Suwannee Rising, Orange Blossom Jamboree and lord knows the stink from Fool’s Engagement wasn’t going to come off for some time. Molly was pretty sure somewhere in there she lost third grade.

They ended up in south Florida ready to get real jobs for a change. The coffers were empty and all the music equipment was still in Boone. Where would they land? Whether bartenders, tour guides or flesh merchants, it really didn’t matter. To Lucy it all sounded pretty crappy. It looked like they were really ready to go straight, work fifty hours a week for a $600 room in someone else’s place and still be broke. While that sounded like solid thinking for a change Fort Myers just wasn’t ready to cooperate and after a balmy and extended spring it was finally starting to get warm in the tropics. Sleeping on the couch of the last angry cellist and admitted toad killer, Lucy was getting antsy and not interested in a real job anyway. She would soon be turning fifty and and as she saw it, her hardest days of hustling for the man were behind her.

As the wells were drying up on Fort Myers Beach the hard truth remained that the very next weekend they had two media tickets to Mountain Music Festival in New River George, WV and that was impossible to ignore. Sometimes the pulp just writes itself. It seemed prudent to load Big Betty into the passenger seat of the Oldsmowagon and set off in search of Appalachian adventure with Brood X.. The weather would be reasonable in the mountains this time of year and eventually they were hoping to get seasonal in the right direction.

Bell’s Palsy is no excuse for bad behavior.

After the Mountain Music Festival in West Virginia, which could only be described as an O-ring blow out, they headed straight down 311 to Field and Furrow Farms in New Castle, VA with its the lightning bugs and frog ponds high in the Appalachian Mountains. Their organic vegetable gardens and mobile chicken coop would offer safe haven and a place to paint rocks while they licked their wounds. Lucy’s mother, who’d been concerned with her ability to shower on the road would be fascinated to find that now they were working strictly with creek baths and hippy shampoo.

On the banks of Craig’s Creek, New Castle is a a rural hamlet on the Virginia-West Virginia border. With three cops (one trooper, one county and one city) two restaurants and zero bars, save for the Moose Lodge ten miles away which Bucket was seriously considering joining, they figured it was a good place to lay low. Lucy was still sipping off Emmitt’s Gummy Bear moonshine and had managed to procure a little Virginia weed, which was supposedly going to be legal in that state as of July 1st but supplies were ever dwindling and rationing had become necessary.

Summer is the season to build stages, clear brush and drink rum. Bri the hillbilly princess, drove the party down to Spirit Haven where they helped build the new main stage at Front Porch Fest. Molly was under the impression that a little volunteer time would get her in the line-up the following year. They were both very excited to see Katie’s Butthole and its potential was obvious. People were still working at Floydfest almost every weekend, getting ready for that party later in the month. It was all coming together. The summer festival season in Virginia is interactive and completely time consuming. Molly couldn’t understand how people could have real jobs and live the summer festival season. Virginia is for thugs. Like a freight train of stinking funky fun steaming straight into the middle of the brain hole. Splooshness.

Their next stop on the tour was to be Red Wing Roots Festival. They hadn’t been picked up for media so they weren’t yet sure how they were going to get in. It had been a while since either had to pay for a festival ticket and as usual neither of them had any money. But how now brown cow? Tamiami’s solution had always been to wear a tool belt and carry a clipboard and of course neither of them were above crawling in through the woods but these were serious times, festivals needed all the help they could get and Lila really didn’t have the energy for those kinds of childish shenanigans. Besides she still had scars on her leg from sneaking into Lockn’.

Were they going to have to volunteer? Like common street thugs? Ye screaming Gods it might end up like Hulaween and fighting off diarrhea Monday morning while sifting through soggy trash bins for aluminum cans. This time it would have to be better. “Oh don’t worry” they said, “You’ll both get to work under the Pickle.” Whatever the hell that meant. Molly had been in desperate foxholes with creatures like him before and knew better than to trust the words of a deranged man-beast. In the long run, everything was going to be lemon squeezy. Unlike many, Lucy was able to work effectively and comfortably within the framework of the traditional acid high. Promoters often provided her with a daily ration just to keep her at an “even-keel”.

Follow Molly, Lila and the wranglers as they drive the Kamp Happiness conestoga wagon broke and blind through the Virginia mountains in search of epic adventure; music and fun. Red Wing Roots awaits, with Floydfest just around the corner. And next month it doesn’t get any easier. Summer Camp and Mi Kulture straight into Backwoods. Oh the humanity. Molly’s advice, “Skip the job interview and spend the day at Cascades Fall Trailhead.”

Check out the Backwoods at Mulberry Mountain  preview article and revisit the inane gibberish of Mountain Music Festival. Lyme disease is no excuse for bad behavior.

“Walk before they make you run”, Keith Richards