Floyd Ahoy

I remember leaving my apartment at JMU for the final time this past July. I forgot a cooler of food inside, had to drive back to the apartment to find the man I'd given the key too, and then resumed my journey back down to Floyd, Virginia for their annual "Floyd Fest."

An obscure town that has an extremely popular music festival was the low down tip I'd gotten from one of the bartenders I used to work with back at school earlier in the year.

Another friend of mine told me the people of Floyd ate a lot of exotic fish, like squid, and one could therefore classify them as the hippie type.  The second thing I discovered was that the town itself had only a single traffic light.

You have to drive through the intersection with that traffic light in order to reach the backwoods of the festival, which was just under thirty minutes outside the town square. It’s pretty anti-climatic when you reach the stoplight, just another normal set of red, green and yellow blinkers.

When you ask locals about the traffic light they just brush it off and say, “Yeaup, that’s our town.” After experiencing all that the festival had to offer, the traffic light becomes merely a trivial fact.

The scatterbrain poem below captures a larger part of the festival and the many people/places/things I came in contact with throughout the duration. Enjoy.

Departing Floyd and the infamous light

Single Traffic Light Autumn Gypsy Baby

Hammer pants and tight white lace

Grab the melodica and join the band

Low thin brow, star shaped tone

Groove your bones with that banjo

A wooden spoon and a pink lagoon

Churning Chinese dreads & dragon snacks.

Purple rays painted parakeets that day

While Tahoe scooped redwood snow

Recycled moonshine love screamed, “You don’t Know!”

I told em’ if you’re in it you got to let her know.

But Sydney dreamed of mud-dripped men

Selling mustached aprons and green vacations

Hairs for strings and nails for pluckin’

Wild horses beat for songs worth sufferin’

Plaid buttons proved that raindrops drift,

Two spheres that burned the black out quick

A heated pig paced the dusty grey

And spoke in a tongs of marmalade

15 more through the rear bus door

Frayed overhauls and nothing more

The rain went dry and the earth made waves

And crust beneath the moon gave way

But the river flows and those mountains rise

And the Aussie chants, “til the day we die!”

Here’s a clip I took of John Butler during the first song of his solo set at Floyd Fest. It’s apparent you watch at least the first few minutes to catch his “Milkshake” rendition.