Celtophilia

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My love of Renaissance Festivals goes back a LONG way. To high school, or maybe even middle school, going out to the old Georgia Renaissance Festival when it was still at the old site. (Which I still say was far prettier than the current site, for the record.) A few years ago, we started going in garb, and I found that wearing a costume REALLY made the experience grand. If you’ve never done it, do. The characters interact with you differently, the locals are friendlier, and it’s much easier to get yourself into the right frame of mind to enjoy the experience. Lastly, Renaissance Festivals are a GREAT place to find bands playing Celtic music. When I accepted my new job in St. Louis a few months ago, one of the first things I did was look up the St. Louis Renaissance Faire, to see when their season starts and ends. What I found was that, while the Faire here is in the spring, they make use of the site in September to put on the St. Louis Pirate Festival! I immediately marked it on our calendar as something we needed to see. When I saw on the Bounding Main email newsletter that they would be performing the final weekend of the Festival, the deal was sealed.
There’s something else I should tell you about my experience with Renaissance Festivals in general. If I go, expect something to go insanely wrong with the weather. It will be scorching hot, freezing cold, raining, or some mixture of the above. This experience was no different. The day began with torrential downpours, which we avoided by showing up a bit late, and was cut short by thunderstorms, which we avoided by running for the exits with all due haste and jumping in just before the heavens opened up and poured forth.
The first thing I notice about any Faire site, other than the parking situation, is the site itself. St. Louis has a beautiful one. Almost the entire village is set in a wooded grove, and it feels VERY secluded. If the weather were any cooler, the grounds might get uncomfortable with so little sunshine to be had, but it was perfect for the sort of day we had yesterday.
Now, nothing is ever perfect, and things can always be improved, so I will share my two basic critiques with the experience I had yesterday before I move on to talking about the music. First, and this was partly due to the rain I’m sure, but there were several shops or booths with no attendants, or closed. This lends a sort of abandoned feel to the place which is impossible to ignore. The second thing I have to say, and I won’t call them out by name, but one of the stage acts we saw was simply awful. AWFUL. A-W-F-U-L. I’ll never get those thirty minutes of my life back. Now, enough of that, because the rest of the day more than made up for it.
The first bit of music we saw for the day was a fun bunch of bellydancing/drumming/fiddling/guitar strumming pirates, called the Chuvani Bellydance Troupe. I thoroughly enjoyed the mix of songs they performed and danced to, including traditional percussion with finger cymbals, gypsy fiddle/guitar, and one song that just completely broke the mold, but worked great to get the audience involved in the show. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a website to link to for them. If anyone knows of a current one, let me know. I would love to hear more of their music.
After we wandered away from the bellydancers, we happened across the incomparable funny-songs group 3 Pints Gone finishing up a set with a crowd-rousing tune about, what else, beer! After they cleared the stage, on came another favorite on the Renaissance Festival circuit, Queen’s Gambit, who performed a fantastic set of Irish tunes, including “Foggy Dew”, “Rocky Road to Dublin,” and, while Julie and I were sharing a cup of Woodchuck cider, “Johnny Jump Up.” I had never had the pleasure of seeing Queen’s Gambit perform before, but I hope that they will be back in the future, because I really enjoyed the performance. Doing her part to promote Celtophilia for the day, Julie went over and introduced herself to the band and collected a business card (ahem… I mean, writ of somethingorotherpiratey that looked an awful lot like a business card) while I wrangled the kiddies.

Finally, we made our way down to the Rogue’s Wharf stage for what promised to be the highlight of my day, Bounding Main! If you’ve been around Celtophilia a while, you’ll know that we simply adore Bounding Main around here. If you need proof, just see our glowing review of Going Overboard. Bounding Main, for those of you who don’t know, is an awesome a capella act who do sea shanties and musical ballads, with a bit of self-deprecating comedy and cheesy pirate jokes thrown in for spice. I’m convinced there’s no such thing as a bad Bounding Main set, and so naturally the one we saw was wonderful. One of the things I love about seeing a group on stage is watching how they handle situations when things go off on a tangent, and these guys are pros at turning every situation to their advantage. What to do when your pitch pipe decides to run off and hide in the depths and folds of your costume? Don’t panic… just dig, then realize that you didn’t need the pitch pipe anyway. Yes, it’s these little moments that make me love you.
After Bounding Main wrapped up, we had intended to run grab some food, then get back for the last set of the day, but while we were eating, the aforementioned thunder and lightning began, and so sadly we quitted the field and headed back for Manchester. While we’re a hearty and rain-loving group who will happily splash through the mud and sit on a wet bench to see our favorites perform, we draw the line at risk of electrocution.

In all, it was a good day out at St. Louis Pirate Festival, and hopefully by next year all of our garb will be out of storage! Huge thanks to Bounding Main for letting us stowaway on their ship, like proper pirates.

***Edit: My apologies for not including in this post to both Tullamore and Shillelagh Law, whose sets I had intended to see, but the rain-shortened day prevented it.***

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Live Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.