By Connie Leinbach
Every year the Ocrafolk Music & Storytelling Festival aims to bring some new artists as well as many musicians who return each year.
The 25th anniversary of this event delivered, and Executive Director Dave Tweedie, who also is the fiddler for Molasses Creek, was happy with the music and the thousand-plus who attended the event on the Berkley Manor grounds the first weekend in June.
Festival goers soundly praised the performers, a continuous refrain each year.
Many of the festival musicians are adept on more than one instrument, such as Josh Goforth, who is prodigious on the fiddle, guitar and the mandolin, “which blows you away,” said Lee Shaffer of Chocowinity.
But the camaraderie among the musicians was evident.
“They’re not just good,” Shaffer said. “They’re really, really good. There’s so much talent, and they’re not competing with each other. They’re friends with each other and go to see each other play.”
Ed Stewart of Chesapeake, Virginia, saw this as he and his wife Allison, who have a house on the island, hosted two of the musicians and attended many of the concerts.
“The Saltare [Sound] kids were all over the place,” he said. “Friday night in the barn dancing to the Ocracoke Rockers; then they joined in with Beleza at 1718. The clarinetist [Louis Arques] was watching over Berto’s [Beleza] shoulder and then picked up the music. Then they were doing the hula hoops at the kids’ area at the festival.”
Luca Kevorkian of New York City, a violinist who organizes the group of classically trained musicians and has performed here for the last three years said the festival gets better every year.
“It’s the warmest reception I’ve ever received,” he said. “It’s incredible.”
Another Saltare member, violinist Elijah Wilson of NYC, also praised the warm reception for his “fiddle” playing.
And the difference between a violin and a fiddle?
“Gary says the fiddle has beer stains on it,” Wilson said about Gary Mitchell, who with his contemporary folk band Molasses Creek founded the festival in 2000.
Also getting high marks were storytellers Donald Davis and Donna Washington. This was her first time performing at Ocrafolk. Two of her amusing stories were how she tricked some young school children in order to get interested in reading and a ghost on the Outer Banks.
Mitchell would love to see more islanders attend because, “it’s a big commitment to go off island for a music festival,” he said.
Tweedie concurred, noting the logistics involved to go off island.
So, in starting an island festival, “we thought it would be good to bring high level talent here,” Mitchell said.
Many of the musicians who have performed here over the last 25 years are world-class.
Steve Lewis, the banjo player with the Jeff Little Trio, is the two-time national flat-picking guitar champion and a national banjo-playing champion.
Band leader Jeff plays the piano. Though not a typical bluegrass instrument, Little’s virtuosity on the piano is an exception.
“He was a sideman for Doc Watson,” Mitchell said. “And you don’t get anyone better playing that kind of music.”
One of the new groups, the Foreign Landers brought a delicate, Celtic-influenced sound, he said.
Then there was the Sam Fribush Organ Trio of Greensboro, who played Saturday night on the Golden Stage.
They brought a new sound of funk-rock-jazz to the festival.
“We like to have something rousing on Saturday night,” Mitchell said.
The tone softened early Sunday morning. It began with quiet, peaceful Yoga sessions by Desiree Adams and Lipbone Redding and classical music and meditation with Saltare Sounds.
Following was the traditional Gospel Sing and Songs that Matter, led by Gary Mitchell and which included discussions of how the songs performed by Reggie Harris, Jeanne and Bob Zentz, Mitchell and Louis Allen relate to our culture today.
The staff of WOVV, Ocracoke’s community radio station, interviewed several of the performers in a live broadcast. These podcasts are on the station’s website wovv.org.
The Sunday afternoon coda, the All-star Jam, which brings many of the performers on stage to jam, was cut a bit short when a thunderstorm stuck the island.
