I'm already packing for my yearly trek to my favorite - The Fox Valley Folk Festial in Geneva Illinois, on an island in the middle of the Fox River. This will be my 23rd year there - would have been the 24th consecutive year if the fest hadn't been flooded out under three feet of water last year.

My first time there, a fresh NIU grad student, I volunteered to help, having been an active volunteer at home. I joke that my Master's degree ought to have been in textiles AND folk music, because I learned so much, was introduced to the music of so many wonderful people and started precious friendships on that island. I've got vivid memories of Art Thieme swapping tall tales and odd instruments with Dan Kedding... getting to know Lou & Peter Berryman & beading back stage with Louie...Watching the Cooper & Nelson lineup change from trio to duo to trio and so on, get better each year...how wonderful it was to hear Peter Bellamy, and how very sad it was that to get his back catalog from him, he was selling duped tapes he made himself... John Robets and Tony Barrand...an English Music Hall workshop with Heather Woods, John Roberts & David Jones that had Claudia Schmidt in tears of laughter, and inspired to write poetry from that experience... dozens of jam sesions... after festival song sessions... Families and bikers, dog walkers and the casual path hiker finding folk music for perhaps the first time...

Ok, those are MY precious memories - but you must picture a truly lovely site, the penultimate summer weekend of Labor Day, a hefty line up of Chicago-area locals who are heavy hitters musically, midwestern folk stars, and international names now and then, great food, great facilities, beautifully managed, well organized volunteers. As a small festival, I think it would be hard to beat. Fox Valley Home page

I do love Old Songs, and severly miss not being able to go most of the last decade, but Fox Valley and it's densely packed small size has my heart, always.

Joanne in Cleveland