After San Francisco, I flew home to MD and spent a few weeks hanging out with the rents. I had a lovely time at home, and got to see a lot of friends that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. It was a really nice way to decompress and relax after so much moving, although it was still quite busy since I had a lot of work to do, a lot of pieces of my life to start putting back in order, and a lot of people I wanted to see before I left.

Then I flew down to North Wilkesboro, North Carolina (via Charlotte) to be picked up by my grandparents so I could visit them for a few days. Had a great time as usual but the timing worked out to be especially amazing for two reasons. My aunt Monte came down at the same time as well so I got to spend some quality time with her. And the dates I came overlapped with Merlefest. It’s a big acoustic festival that just happens to take place at the local community college just near my grandparents’ house. It’s a pretty big festival and they bring in pretty big names. This year the headliners were Taj Mahal, Little Feat, Steve Martin, Zak Brown, Sam Bush, Elvis Costello and bunch of other bands. My Granny’s sister donates a bunch of money and gets the patron package every year which gets you backstage passes, free meals, and lets you sit ON THE MAIN STAGE for any show you want as long as you sign up a couple hours before. It’s pretty ridiculous. I only got to go for the first 2 days but had a great time and saw some excellent music. My favorite band of the weekend was The Belleville Outfit, a quality folksy rock band from Austin, Texas. They were all excellent musicians and had a very good stage presence and energy while performing. The lead singer had a great voice that was pretty different from the norm (and was a total babe). They rocked the dance tent pretty hard, although they couldn’t quite get everyone dancing. After them was a crazy polka band called the Brave Combo that started their set with a polka lesson to make sure everyone would dance. They played a pretty wide range of styles, all with a polka twist and clearly had their set down. Their bio mentioned that they were once featured on the Simpsons (the oktoberfest episode) so the whole time I was just imagining them in simpson-form playing. I would love to hire them for some kind of event but I really just don’t know what type of event calls for a wild polka dance party. I saw a few other decent bluegrass bands and some good simple folk music and it really got me thinking that I want to pick up the mandolin. I started a while back but never continued. I love bluegrass but there’s not much room for drums.