Felicia Dale and I will be playing at the big Maritime Concert on Saturday afternoon -- always a good crowd (close to the beer) -- but then, we too will head to the Juan de Fuca Festival in Port Angeles.
It's true Folklife has grown a bit too large to handle now -- there's a corporate mindset that was not there in the past. 30 years ago it was a mind blowing event - the very best I had ever seen --loads of great music, and they also showed real appreciation of the musicians -- hosted a big Saturday night party with free beer & food, had a huge artist hospitality center running throughout the festival with, again, free beer and food, provided free parking for participants, and had rain stages set aside for when it rained (it's known to do that in Seattle now and again). Pretty much all of those things are gone now AND they now take a percentage of artist CD sales! It's enough to make a folkie ask, "Why am I playing here for free?" Oh yes -- it's because of the great audiences!
The craft people and food vendors all walk away from the weekend with thousands and thousands of dollars from those audiences that we musicians attract.

William Pint, Seattle