A Sweet Music Festival

“Sugar Maple, isn’t that redundant?” quipped Brennan Leigh during her set with Noel McKay at the music festival we went to last weekend. It is a fitting redundancy because sweet is exactly what the Sugar Maple Music Festival at Lake Farm County Park in Madison, Wisconsin was. It was kind of like stepping back in time for us to the early years of the Green River Festival in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It started on Friday evening with four sets and continued on Saturday midafternoon with six sets. We were allowed to bring coolers of any size and there wasn’t even a cursory search as we entered. There were also a few food and beverage vendors so it was really the best of both worlds!

And we didn’t have to worry if it rained a little, which it did during Eilen Jewell’s set, because there was a large tent. We had been worried that the large tent might affect the sound since that had been the case at the tented Mississippi Stage at the Chicago Blues Festival. But the green and white tent which reminded me of the Heath Fair Music Stage Tent had open sides and the sound was great. It did leak a little so we were glad we had our rain ponchos and umbrellas which we used to shield us from the drips.

The music was wonderful, there wasn’t a set I didn’t enjoy. On Friday night Leigh and McKay treated us to awesome dual guitar picking and a mix of funny and poignant songs. The Garage Sale Song was absolutely hysterical. Hubby Jenkins, who we had only seen before when he was in the Carolina Chocolate Drops, turned out to be not only an amazing musician but very funny and conciousness raising as he spoke at a very fast tempo about the link between slavery and capitalism between songs.

In addition to Lula Wiles and Eileen Jewell who lured us to the festival we also enjoyed a lot of bluegrass! We were sad to miss the Saturday night cajun and zydeco music of Jeffry Broussard and the Creole Cowboys because they were probably the perfect closers but with a threatening thunderstorm expected we headed back to our motel happy with our ears full of music!