South Florida Renaissance Festival, 1st weekend

Today was the first day of the first weekend of the 20th anniversary season of the South Florida Renaissance Festival. The weather obviously had been drizzly and rainy earlier in the morning, but when I looked outside about 8:00 this morning it hadn't been raining for a while and although it was still grey & cloudy it didn't look like it was going to rain, so because I'm working tomorrow I needed to go today if I wanted to go at all, I took the chance and left right after doing my daily 45 minute/2 mile walk for exercise. (No rain the rest of the day, and the sun actually broke through the clouds about 3ish, so I took my sweatshirt off until I needed to put it on again around 4:30-4:45.)

I actually wound up with a parking spot that was probably the easiest to find afterwards I've ever had at any event.

The faire fare for adults is $20 each day, but the season ticket--which allows you to go as many times as you want--is $50. Since I plan on going at least one day each weekend the faire is on, even taking Mom along when she's here, I went for the season pass.

Let me make one thing clear at the start--I primarily go for the music. Although I do enjoy things like acrobatics such as Jayna Lee
(she's also rather cute and has a great sense of humor), juggling and comedy such as Moonie, Broon, and Moonie & Broon together, and comedy shows like the Washing Well Wenches and the Mud Show, and musical comedy like Iris & Rose, I'm really there for the music. On weekends when I'll go both days, I'll focus on music the first day, and then try to take in a couple of the other shows the next day.

This season looks like it's going to be great for the music. There are a couple of acts I've seen before in the past, like Celtic Mayhem, and the Harper & the Minstrel, whom I like quite a bit. A couple of the local Irish dancing schools are making appearances, as are some gypsy belly dancers, and I'll try to catch them a couple of times as well. One of the traveling carillons of Cast in Bronze is there again this year, and I really like that as well. In a couple of weeks the feature guest band will be Fushu Daiko, S Florida's resident taiko band, of whom I'm a big fan.

What I'm really excited about is that I haven't actually seen three of the bands there throughout the show, and this weekend's guest/featured band, live at all but only on the Ren faire podcasts I listen to, and I've liked what I've heard of the music from each of those acts.

This is Celtic weekend, a bit early to my way of thinking (oh well--the faire ends the weekend before St Patrick's day, and that's Battle weekend).

This weekend's guest band is Albannach, who play Scottish tribal drumming with a bagpiper. I caught all four of their shows, and they were fantastic, although since they didn't introduce any of their songs you could sometimes wonder if you'd heard that one before.

I also caught some of an act from two of the other bands I've never seen before. I saw the Iron Hill Vagabonds, two brothers who perform Irish music, and liked them quite a bit. I also saw Wolgemut, who play Renaissance and earlier music from Germany, Flanders, and France. They're probably one of the more serious musical acts there this year, and they're also very good, but I have to admit that one of the best parts of hearing their music on the Ren faire podcasts is listening to the hosts try and pronounce the names of their songs.

There were a lot of very lovely women wandering around the faire, many of them in costume which made them even lovelier--I have to admit I love a gorgeous woman in a pirate costume. Belly dancers are also a popular outfit, and many of the women wearing those could actually dance as well.

Here's the kind of mashup that takes place which makes me really love the faire. Each time when Albannach were playing--the ones with the Scottish tribal drumming and the bagpiper--there were belly dancers in the audience, and they were often over on the side dancing. At one time, not only did we have the belly dancers off to one side of the area, but on the other side we had a gypsy lass, an adorable little girl in a lady bug costume, and a red-haired fairy dressed in red dancing together, with the gypsy's guy just kind of stepping along by himself. And when I saw Wolgemut, which consists of two drummers, a guy playing the dudelsack (German bagpipe), and another guy playing a double-reed instrument that kind of sounds like the chanter on bagpipes, there was a bellydancer in the audience--the guys were able to convince her to dance while they played for her. And here's the thing--because the music that Albannach and Wolgemut play are so heavy on rhythm, their music and the belly dancers actually worked very well together.

At the end of the day, I did something I've never before--I hung around for the Pub Sing. This is when most of the musicians from the different acts get together, and take turns leading and soloing, and play lots of music to sing along with. It was fantastic, in some ways the best part of the day. I have to admit that during the last song, "The parting glass", I did get a bit teary eyed, remembering people I once knew and loved and lost or just don't see anymore, and people like my family I don't see much of anymore either.

It was a wonderful day. It'll make getting through tomorrow and the rest of the work week, which really isn't all that difficult anyway, all the easier. Since I work tomorrow, I'm off three days next weekend. That means that if the weather's good I can run errands Friday and go back to the faire both Saturday and Sunday.