I went to several Fox Hollow Festivals, right up to the end. Probably started in 1968 or '69, can't rightly remember. I saw lots of musicians and singers ("all those folks and not one police"), taped most of one festival on a little 5" reel-to-reel machine (should look up the tapes -- I wtill have 'em), sang till sunup many's a night in the performer campground or at the nearby campground, met just about everybody who was there, then, and still see some of 'em 'round in the "hear and now."

I rember buying a mandolin strap from Joe Z. Ryan (one of the craftspeople whose booths surrounded the flat space on the top of the hillside which formed the amphitheater), and marveled that he could do leather work and play fiddle, too (like somehow one should preclude the other?). Still have the mandolin and the strap (which means that I bought that strap in 1969, since I got my mandolin Christmas Eve, 1968.)

Once the lights went out, but the sound system stayed on, so hundreds of flashlights came out -- with all those campers, flashlights were near at hand at all times -- and illuminated Steve Gillette's singing till the lights could be relit.

Played on stage once, at a banjo workshop, to illustrate the fretless banjo (with a "Frank Proffitt"-style banjo that Alberto Vazquez had made).

Saw the "Traveling Folk Festival" from San Francisco Folk Music Club do "Can I Bring My Guitar to Heaven, Too" with fake Martin emblems made of paper taped over all the non-Martin instruments.

Sang and heard lots of songs at the Gazebo as well as the campground (the Gazebo was the "authorized" place for late-night singing; the performer campground was "off limits" to audience members, a distinction I soon learned was not strongly enforced).

Who didn't I see? Only those who weren't there. That atmosphere, that intermixing of audience and performers, the rain, the "intertanglefolkenlockenwood" outhouses with their outrageous graffiti, the rain, the year of the dust, the music, the songs, the rain.

Damn, I miss it. Gonna try to make it to "Old Songs" some day (timing, child care, and cost are the only things keeping us away).

Bob Clayton