Some of the beer gardens sold “lite fare,” while others had food trucks — the hottest trend in gourmet eating these days — parked nearby, most of them hawking Mexican cuisine. Other food vendors offered everything from “traditional” fair food like corn dogs, funnel cakes and fried Oreos to Southern-style barbecue and Jamaican specialties like curry goat. And of course, restaurants all along Main Street had their doors flung wide in welcome and their porches overflowing with folks dining al fresco.
Many other vendors offered such fair swag as straw hats and colorful woven wristbands, toy bows and arrows, marionettes, fragrant soaps and lotions, kids’ books, clothes both vintage and new and all manner of costume jewelry, made from clay or beads, semiprecious stones or metals. The entire line of products at one booth, from a company called Alien Eyes, depicted space aliens. You could get your skin tattooed with henna, your hair fancily braided or your portrait sketched. A wide variety of not-for-profit community organizations also had booths or tables, including UlsterCorps, Track the Trestle, the March of Dimes, the Irish Cultural Center, the Albany Vegan Network and many more.
Music, of course, has always been the main raison d’etre of the Rosendale Street Festival, and it was available in myriad forms wherever one strolled. In front of the TRANSnDANCEnDRUM storefront was a canopy shading a bewildering array of drums, ranging from shiny factory-made models to wood-and-clay djembes to brightly painted, repurposed drywall compound cans and a sign inviting anyone to join the Interactive Drum Circle. From a distance the complex rhythmic mix that arose from the spot suggested a sophisticated jam by trained percussionists, but surprisingly, not one of the kids playing the drums when this correspondent passed by appeared to be in the double digits in age.
One avid listener was “definitely enjoying” her very first Rosendale Street Festival: two-month-old Annabelle Lettow, daughter of Connie and Kevin Lettow of Saugerties. “She was bopping, listening to the drum circle,” said Kevin with a proud fatherly grin. “We got her picture with the roller derby girls,” the Mid-Hudson Misfits. “She’s a future roller derby girl — and a future drummer, too!”
A ragtag group of drummers accompanied the Rosendale Improvement Association Brass Band and Social Club as it paraded from stage to stage up Main Street to signal the closing hours of the 2013 festival. With a voice reminiscent of Stevie Wonder, rocker Joey Eppard was drawing what looked like the biggest crowd of listeners at the centrally located Firehouse Stage, while the Spectacular Average Band was playing Workingman’s Dead-style electrified Americana down near the Rondout at the Creekside Stage. The Dragons, fronted by naturalist Spider Barbour, turned over the Mountain Stage to the festival’s closing act: the bottom-heavy, blues-inflected rock of Voodelic, who dedicated a song to festival founder “Uncle Willy” Guldy.
This correspondent’s favorite new musical discovery, hands-down, was the Passero World Music Ensemble, performing at the Café Stage. The group’s style was ostensibly Latin jazz, but an electric violinist kept sneaking subversive Celtic fiddle riffs into a tune by the Buena Vista Social Club: Think Santana-meets-Fairport Convention. It worked beautifully, and I’ll be looking out for opportunities to catch this band again in the future.
What that means, on a micro level, is that the Rosendale Street Festival is still accomplishing its 35-year-old mission: to give exposure to great local bands and cultivate appreciative new audiences for them. As the organizers like to say, “It’s all about the music.” And music is always more fun shared with everyone. Barring a major natural disaster, the festival will surely be back next July; so let’s all drum ourselves into a trance state and visualize slightly cooler weather next time around!
