Hands down, the Eisteddfod in Massachusetts in the many years it was run by my friend Howard Glasser. Howard's warmth, generosity and modest set the tone for the festival, year after year. I think I performed there in six different years. Not only was the music wonderful, but ballads and song were unusually respected there. Not that there weren't instrumentalists, too, but Howard was more of a song man, and the line-up of performers reflected that. The performers mostly did music from the British Isles. I was one the token Americans...

Second place would go to the North Country Folk Festival in Ironwood, Michigan. It was a folk festival with authentic folks. Ironwood is on the upper penninsula of Michigan and there are many different European ethnic groups that settled there. The Firday night dance featured traditional music and dance from seven or eight different countries, with the dancers and musicians in traditional costumes. In the whole weekend that I was there, I not only didn't recognize what I was eating, but I couldn't even pronounce it. It was all traditional food cooked my local residents. They had someone making a canoe, and a group of lumberjacks built a log cabin from the groun up, in three days. Talk about traditions!

Jerry