Tag Archives: MJ’s blog

Basically, short snippets of how Mary Jane Farmer got into and remained in the music business.

7. Heading home was hard

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Mary Jane Farmer and Gail Barbee

Mary Jane Farmer and Gail Barbee

I wrote this for the newspaper with which I worked for 14 years, in Sherman. Wrote it in September 2004. It could have been written yesterday, as the feelings I wrote then were exactly what I felt on my recent weekend at Kerrville Folk Festival.

The color of the day was tie-dye; people stood in the road talking and no one honked at them; and handshakes were extinct, replaced by hugs.

It was the Kerrville Wine & Music Festival. I went down there Friday, felt a warm chill as I passed under the “Welcome Home” sign, and set up tent. Welcome home, Mary Jane.

Kevin Welch, even if he’d been the only performer, would have been worth the trip. When he concluded with his “Til I’m Too Old To Die Young,” I cried from the intensity of the lyrics. Written when his daughter was born, the now-teenager sang with him on the chorus. I didn’t get a chance to ask her what that must have felt like.

There were kids’ concerts, a musical church hour, songwriters’ showcases, wine seminars, (which I missed, being a non-drinker), bike ride, and yoga.

And rain. But not until Monday, when it was over. I have a wet tent to put up

Nancylee and Dorothy

Nancylee Kennedy and Dorothy Hammond

in the yard to let dry, and about half the Hill Country in my back seat, in the form of mud pies. Actually, by Kerrville standards, that 1-inch ranch was just a slight mist.

But it wasn’t all about that. It was about getting back to friends — many from as far as 30 years ago, dining with others in Kerrville, and meeting new people who became more friends. It was about being kind to one another, respectful of each person, no matter what differences there are, and about honesty.

It was about family. Like I said, some of these friends I hadn’t seen in lo-these many years. Yet, ol’ home turned into yesterday, then into today, and it was like we’ve never been apart.

It was really hard to head back home, but I did. And it’s OK. I’m back in Lois Lane mode. The other side of that “Welcome Home” sign reminders departers “It can be like this always.”

Like the overhead flocks of birds heading south for the winter, I’ll return in the spring.

‘nuf said.

5. My first volunteer job

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Bob Gibson, Mary Jane Farmer and Pedro Gutierrez

Bob Gibson, Mary Jane Farmer and Pedro Gutierrez

Like I said earlier, it was a boyfriend who turned me on to the Kerrville Festivals. He was in the New Folk contest in 1975, didn’t win, but fell in love with the festivals. He and I broke up between then and 1975 Fall Festival Time. We were still talking, but when I told him I was going to the festival, he flipped out. The festival was HIS, he said, and how dare I take it from him. Well, glad I stood up to that guy, much as I cared for him… it opened new doors for me that still haven’t been shut.

The night before opening the gates, Rod Kennedy had all us volunteers sitting inside the theater area, where he went over the rules and introduced the group leaders. Then, he said something like, “Oh, by the way, we need someone to go pick up a performer at the San Antonio Airport. Any volunteers?” I turned around (I always sit on the front row, having been a Methodist all my life) and looked around and was amazed that no one raised a hand. So I did. Raised it high. And that marked my beginning of involvement. I met that star, then went back and forth over the festival time and met and transported several others. High/hog heaven for me. I worked transportation from then until Rod asked me to become his staff coordinator in 1980.

My last trip as a transportation volunteer was later, a year or so after I left the festival staff, 1991, I believe it was, maybe 1992. Rod has asked Bob Gibson, who through the years had become a great friend and ‘long-distance sponsor’ for me. Bob had been stricken down with progressive supernuclear palsy, and was wheelchair-bound. By that point, the PSP had rendered him unable to play his guitar or sing, among other debilitating affects of this devastating disorder. My job was to go get him every day, take him to the festival and around the grounds and take him back to his hotel every night. I felt honored.

Danielle and her best-fest friend, Susan Rhodes

Danielle and her best-fest friend, Susan Roads

The last night, as Bob and I drove back to town, my granddaughter, Danielle, was with us. I was raising her then, and she loved the festivals at the very tender age of 2 and 3 years, and before those years and afterwards. She sat in the back seat, singing, still excited from the great night of music and ignoring me and Bob completely. Bob turned and asked Danielle if it was all right if he sang along with her. She smiled, those dimples showing that she’d be glad for him to.

Bob and Danielle sang “The ABC Song” the last few miles of the trip back to the hotel. A few months later, Bob told me that was the last song he ever sang.

Oh, and did I mention?  It was Bob Gibson, if memory serves me right, that I picked up on that first trip to the San Antonio Airport.

4. Surprise honor brings more memories

TileOn a recent visit to Quiet Valley Ranch, I got to stay in my old cabin, which is now called and used for the green room. It was like old home week, even with the changes and improvements in the 10×20 foot building.

One day, I went in to clean a bit in the new women’s shower facilities — Two showers, handicapped size, and three toilet stalls. Plus five lavatories. Such elegance I never expected to see at QVR!

While washing up the shower walls, I saw the tile, shown here in the photo, and it brought me to tears. After so many years, someone still cared that I had been there! You cannot imagine how incredible that made me feel.

Showering during those years in my cabin on Quiet Valley Ranch was a challenge in the winter time.

The only shower was inside the backstage bathrooms, which also had the only flush toilets on the ranch… remember, the flush toilets, along with the free beer, was why I got into volunteering there in the first place.

My cabin had undergone a major overhaul after the 1980 KFF. First, my home consisted of four sets of bunk beds and seven other staff members slept in there, too, during the festival. After it all ended, Dan and Ann Greenlee, Lee Green and others held a work weekend and before it was all over, I had a cabin with insulation, electricity, a bed frame on the west end raised up high enough off the floor to give me more storage, a closet, a below-the-counter refrigerator topped with a 3-burner stove top (propane gas) for cooking, and shelves on the east end. But no plumbing.

My cabin, now the green room.

My cabin, now the green room.

I didn’t care. I was, after all, a field hippie at heart, and a grateful one for all the improvements to “Mary Jane’s Place.”

Through those summers on the ranch, that nearly-outdoor shower in the women’s side was a nice daily relief. And being able to go to work in cut-offs and T-shirts was a bonus… of course, I’ve lived in T-shirts ever since then, barely dress up more than that.

As the winter arrived that first winter, and every winter after that, it got more touchy, wanting to shower in the near-outdoors. There was hot water, good! I had some thick plastic sandals to wear back and forth, good! But when temperatures reached 50 degrees. No good! Forget the 30-degree days — showerless!

To make it workable, I bought a used sleeping bag, really cheap at a goodwill-type store, hung it on a separate shower curtain at the step-up opening to the bathroom with its two toilets and one shower. The hot water from the shower basically heated up the entire little room, at least enough that I could get in, get wet, get out, get dressed.

I got through the winters there with that configuration, and was proud of my ingenuity!

Oh, and by the way, at first I thought I wanted to know who cared enough to hand make the tile in my honor. But now, I think I’d rather think it was anybody and everybody. So, if you know who crafted that, please don’t tell me!

.

 

3. Friends of Bill W at Kerrville

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Imagine 50-100 ex-drunks and druggies sitting around together here. It works, sometimes just barely, but it works!

Imagine 50-100 ex-drunks and ex-druggies sitting around together here, getting along and sharing experience, strength, and hope. 

That first festival came around after I had seven months of sobriety under my belt. In those seven months between October 1980 and May 1981, I had become very used to getting in-town help from my 12-step friends, nightly and sometimes during the day as well. The prospect of going 5 or 6 days without a 12-step meeting scared me, somehow. And I told Rod Kennedy, producer and boss, that.

His response was simple and quick. He got into the solution instantly, saying, “Why not start having meetings here, during the festival?”

He suggested the shady area behind the festival office, which would also have made them behind outhouses in the same area. Convenient, as sometimes some necessities come upon us during meetings.

By then, there were volunteers coming onto the ranch, getting it ready for the upcoming Folk Festival. I asked some of them to paint signs, “Friends of Bill W. 1 p.m. daily behind office,” signs. They did, and posted them at the Kerrtry Store (sort of like a 7-11 only not as glamorous), and elsewhere around the grounds. Other volunteers sawed up tree trucks and placed them in a sort of conversation circle beneath the trees, then nailed on 2×6 to make benches.

A sign was put up backstage and Rod announced the meeting nightly during the festival.

There were five people at the first meeting. Five people in recovery from drugs or alcohol, who took solace in meeting each other and knowing they would have a face to find or a hug or handshake to help them through what could be tough times ahead.

That was May 1981, regardless of what the well-intentioned, wood-burned sign says out there now. “Serenity Square, Est. 1983.”  Uh-uh… 1981.

A sober couple from the town group came out every day, not for the meeting, but to bring me a home-cooked lunch. Glen drove it out, asking at the office door, “Jeet?” The first time I had to ask, “Huh?” and he smiled and slowed it down to “Did you eat?” Lillian was an incredible, old-fashioned type cook, the kind that smothered everything in gravy and lots of vine-ripened tomatoes on the side.

Signs like this are placed all around the campgrounds, backstage, and elsewhere where they can get the message out.

Signs like this are placed all around the campgrounds, backstage, and elsewhere where they can get the message out.

Once, as the 12-steppers gathered for the daily meeting, they found a performer sound asleep on a 2×6, his hands with green-painted fingernails supporting his head. He was quite surprised to be wakened like he was, and ducked out of there pretty quickly, saying he was only leaving because he was “thinking of others.”  Another time, I used the area for a “Good-bye, you-don’t-get-to-volunteer-here-any-longer” conversation with a couple of brothers who had used and gotten into a fight with each other. I stayed serene… And those two soon got clean of their drugs and joined the group at a future festival. They became good friends and essential staff volunteers.

Also, that first year, a recovering friend from Austin, Buddy, had become a great source of strength for me. I asked, he said yes. No, not to marriage, silly. He agreed to work the VIP check-in desk just outside the office door. That way, when I went coo coo from stress or even from getting so much love from so many people, someone would go get Buddy, and he’s settle me down, speaking in the language of Bill W.

One performer took the Serenity Square idea to a festival he regularly played in the Northwest, on the Pacific. Don’t know if that one is still going on or not. Would love to know. Other than that, I believe that “Friends of Bill W.” meetings at music festivals is unique to Kerrville Festivals.

Nowadays, there’s two meetings each day in Serenity Square, the first still at 1 p.m. and another when the concert is over, and multitudes more than five people at each one of them. Some newcomers, some oldtimers, some volunteers, some performers, some ticket-holders. One who attends regularly now was “in his cups” when he helped paint the signs, and wondered, he said later, just what in the Sam Hill “Friends of Bill W” was, anyway. He found out. Just took him a year or two longer.

 

2. Volunteering has its rewards

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Courtesy

Courtesy

(Not sure what I’m going to do about photos for these little blurbs, and I’m a great believer in artwork with every article. I’ll figure something out.)

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You might have guessed it — it was a musician, the man of my dreams (at the time), that got me started in it all. After divorcing and moving to El Paso, I met a musician, let’s call him B.F. for short, who was also a schoolteacher, as I was at the time. He had a great little band, all involved in the Redneck Rock/Progressive Country movement that took Texas by storm — the first incarnation of reinvention of Texas music since Bob Wills. B.F.. was also a big fan of the 60s folk musicians. At that time, I was just a big fan of not being married!

At that same time, the Chamizal National Park, one of only two national parks dedicated to the performing arts, hosted a yearly festival that included not only the new Texas music, but also Cajun, Celtic, Conjunto, blues, jazz, bluegrass, salsa. They brought it all. Tiny little glitch —they needed volunteers, thus the beginning of the El Paso Friends of Folk Music.  And the beginning of my volunteering at festivals.

Now, B.F.. was also a songwriter, and two of his songs got him into the Kerrville Festival’s New Folk Competition. I didn’t come with him that year — 1975 it was. He didn’t win it, but came back so excited about the festival in Kerrville, and with an invitation to play later at another one that year. I didn’t get left behind for that Kerrville concert.

The next year, B.F. and I were kinda on the fritz (we were on the kinda on the fritz most of the time we were together) … and I got away from El Paso by coming to Kerrville. Ticked him off, big time. It was his festival, he said. You gals know how guys can be.

Well, at the festival, which was only 5 days long then. I noticed some inconveniences… none of the public toilets flushed (I think they called them ‘crappers’), and cold-water showers were just not my thing. But, all in all, I was having fun.

Then, I developed a scorching sunburn, that kind that makes you peel all over, and someone sent me to first aid. Those volunteer paramedics, from a Gulf Coast ambulance service, showed me the joys of the free beer that volunteers got. All right! Slammin’ ‘em down was fun! Then, one of them (it’s OK if I tell this now — the statute of limitations has expired) showed me the backstage flush toilets and hot-water showers, only available to volunteers and musicians. Well, not even being able to sing a tune, it was quickly apparent I choice was to volunteer.

I did, for the very next festival, fall of 1976.