Aloha!

Hawaii,,, here we are! Finally. Up at 6 am on Monday morning to catch our flight from SLC to Denver, and from there to Kahului on Mauai (Hawaii) in about 8 hours. Fortunately, all was on time, all smooth, got our luggage and a decent rental car, a bit smaller than our SUV, a Hyunday Elanthra, which is just fine considering gas prices here ($ 3,50 Gallon). Above a picture of our flight over the Rockies and from Kahului Airport.


Well, first impressions (pics above taken at the airport),,, landscape-wise a mixture of Florida, California (Hwy. 1) and Crete (Greece). Palms and bougainvilla, parakeets and (surprise!) free-ranging chickens (first animals we saw at the airport rental car parking lot was a hen with five hatchlings). We landed about 20 min. earlier as scheduled, but it took quite a bit of time to claim our luggage. Had to take a shuttle to Alamo and got a choice of equally looking Hyundai Elanthras. Checked out a couple and took the least-scratched car with the lowest mileage (2,000). The drive to Lahaina, though slow-going, took us only about 40 minutes, sun slowly going down, a huge cruise-ship laying at anchor on the ocean.

Arrived to our hotel, the Plantation Inn in Lahaina (pics below) before dark, checked in, and, the hotel out (o.k., though not spectacular considering rates), unpacked and walked out again to the local Kohola Brewing Company. We were sort of the only ones on the dark streets (besides bikes without lights), it seems like everybody else is driving. And, everybody else goes to (overprized?) restaurants instead of brewpubs where no food is served. Checked out the local Food Market on the way back,,, well, not too much local produce besides pineapples, papayas, expensive coffee and wine, therefore, we skipped a real dinner. Proably will go on a fruit diet on Hawaii considering prices.

Well,,, Hawaii on first view: a rucked, wrinkled rolling landscape in green and brown shades, with palms and live oaks (?), beaches and beautiful ocean views. Also, it seems very touristic on first view, lots of elderly (loaded?) people around. And, it's warm, pleasantly warm, about 80 deg. F. in the evening.

Farewell to Elko

Sunday. Snow. We had to leave our home for five days, the Red Lion Casino Hotel in Elko (pic, building on the right),and, were a bit anxious because of the snow, but it turned out harmless. A little slush on the passes over the Pequop Mountains (almost 7,000 ft./2,300 m high), but great cloud pictures and the sagebrush nicely powered with snow. Beautiful wide open landscape. There is one point before West Wendover/NV where you should be able to see the curvature of the earth with your naked eye. We covered the distance of about 230 mi/270 km in about 3,5 hours driving time and checked into our Microtel - not a bad chain, and rather affordable - closeby SLC Airport at about 3 pm.

After a little break we went out again, assuming there will be some Super Bowl activities going on in one of the pubs not too far away, but not so. Like last year, when we stayed in nearby Ogden/Utah during Super Bowl and were horribly disapointed. No cheering, no fans, no atmosphere. Same here now. Eight people including us in Westside Tavern (Wasatch Brewing Co.), a rather small TV screen and,,, silence. Well,,, we got us a beer and chicken wings. At least the beer was good, and, to our surprise, we weren't even asked, as usual in Utah, to order food with the beer. Back in the motel early, watching to game on TV with a can of beer on the nightstand. Seems like Utah is not into football at all,,, Twice is enough,have to choose a better place to watch football next year!

Right now can't even imagine how it'll be to be on Hawaii (Maui) tomorrow at the same time. At least about 20 deg. C (40 deg F) difference to expect, compared to the beginning of our trip, when we had 18 deg. F (-8 C), even more!

Happy End with snow

Besides poetry the festival is a lot about music, Western music of different styles, having nothing to do with the soft-washed, hyped-up country music we mostly hear. On our last day, we started off with the fantastic "3hattrio" from Utah - boy, these guys were fantastic again! Besides "old-timer" Hal Cannon (banjo, guitar, vocals), this young violinist, 20 year-old Eli Wrankle (pic below), and good-looking Rastafarian Greg Istock, who plays acoustic bass and foot percussion and has a Caribbean music background (and reminded us of Hans Söllner), were really top-notch!









We had more music (and poetry) in the evening, in the last show in the auditorium with David Stamey, Waddie Mitchell, Rod Nelson (who's tie is on the picture) and Gary McMahan:


We guess all shows were sold out, not only in the smaller venue in the Folklife Center downtown, but also in the large auditorium with 900+ seats. The last two nights different ticketed evening shows, 2-3 in the auditorium, one after the other, and 1 or 2 in the G3 Bar Theater took place. We chose one each evening. All day, again, there were panels offerred with different artists at the same time. Visitation had grown on the weekend and lines sometimes were long to get into presentations or concerts.

For one of the youngest artists at the NCPG - Brigit Reedy (18) from Montana - it was her 16th NCPG! She was performing at age 2, yodelling in the bar. We knew Amy Hale Auker and Gail Steiger (pic below) from the ranch tour, the couple from Prescott/Arizona was performing together in one show, she telling stories, he playing the guitar:

Our last presentation this day was an interesting lecture about the cowboy artist C.M. Russell from Montana, held by Randy Rieman:

Well, the festival is over now. We enjoyed our last evening show and, as if the weather would be sad, too, it started to rain hard in the evening, turning into snow. It’s been a fantastic event and we are already thinking about returning next year.

From Homer to Cowboy Poetry

The highlight of Friday was the first panel in the morning: "Poetry over the Years" with two young, promising talents: Vogue Robinson - an Afroamerican poetry slammer, improv artist and poetry teacher - and Joshua Dugat - a highly intellectual young guy who seems to have studied everything from Homer and Shakespeare to cowboy poetry and recited by heart. They were in good company with one of the old-hands in the business: John Dofflemyer, a Californian full-time rancher of about 70 years, who never left his birthplace (and has ancestors in Bavaria - as we got to know from him). These completely different guys had an interesting conversation about what poetry is, how it originates, how it should be presented, etc.


Besides that, we had a good mixture of poetry and music. We listened to Matt Robertson (left pic) and to Tish Hinojosa from San Antonio/TX with her band, presenting Techano music - quite another style of music! Also, we got to know Ryan & Hoss Fritz, a father-son-duo.

For a change, we mixed in some "Open Mic", too (below). Everybody can register in the morning for these presentations, hobby musicians and poets of all kinds.

We got a chance to see Waddie Mitchell again, a local rancher, who was crucial for the founding of the NCPG and one of the favs of the public. The room was packed and the presentation perfect. Waddie seems to be one of few artists, who nowadays also performs nationally. Most of the artists have a bread-and-butter job, mostly they are ranchers, cowboys/ranch-hands, rodeo cowboys, wranglers or horse breeders/trainers and just perform (and write) on the side, as a passion.

We noticed that in Elko mainly three geographical groups are represented: one from the Northern Rocky Mountain States (Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Dakotas) plus Colorado and Utah, one from Nevada and California, one from Arizona/New Mexico, and, smaller groups from Canada (Alberta) and Texas with a little Alabama and Florida mixed in. The unusual thing with this festival is that the general public - advanced in age, we lowered the average age statistics - intermingles with the artists and vice-versa. The artists are attending performances of their colleagues, there is no competition at all, no prizes to win, but enormous camaraderie and friendship among them. And, they are easily approachable, modest and polite, always willing to talk and to sign books.

Here a couple of pics from the evening show: Ned LeDoux (son of the famous country musician Chris), Corb Lund and "word-wrangler" Paul Zarzyski's fancy cowboy tie:

Wrangling with words and walking in boots - Cowboy Poetry

It was a fantastic, though very long Thursday! We left the hotel before 9 am and got back at 10 pm. We spent most of the day in the Conference/Convention Center (pic above), where a full schedule of performances was offered. The day began with the grandiose opening - called Key Note Address - presented by Hal Cannon (pic below), the founding director of the WFC, in the large auditorium. The NCPG celebrates its 35th birthday this year, and, therefore they had arranged for a surprise performance of the local highschool band.


Afterwards, we attended several poetry panels, taking place in different smaller rooms at the same time. Full schedule, always hard to decide where to go to. We didn't even think about lunch, getting enough "nutrition" for the soul and the brain. Usually a panel consists of three or four poets who take turns in presenting their poems or stories. There are some music presentations and workshops, too, and some individual shows, but mostly it's group performances ("panels") under a certain motto, about 45-90 min. long. The poets were so interesting to listen to and all of them so different - in style (old-style cowboy poetry, poetry-slam-like, poetic, funny, ernest, essayistic,,,) and focus, in age - from about 15 to over 90 -, old-hands and newcomers, cowboys and -girls, black and white, Indian and Mexican,,, Just a couple of pictures of some of the poets we experienced, names from left to right, top to bottom:
1. panel with Shadd Piehl, Sareena Murnane, Maria Lisa Eastman, Colt Blake
2. John Dofflemyer
3. Dick Gibford
4. panel with Mary Flitner, Vess Quinlan, Diane Peavey
5. Amy Steiger
6. Olivia Romo



In the evening we drove the short distance into downtown Elko (pics) to the Western Folklife Center, the core of the NCPG, for two evening shows in their theater, adjacent to the famous G3Bar:

The first show we attended, was terrific and, again, so truly refreshing and diverse: a Californian singer-songwriter-guitarist (Mike Beck), Paul Zarzyski (a not-too-young anymore fantastic poetry-slammer, "juggling with words and steering with his knees" and famous for his cowboy ties), Rob & Halladay Quist (father: traditional, daughter: modern with a superb voice and great musical skills) and - the grand finale!: 3hattrio with Hal Cannon (the charismatic founding director of the Western Folklife Center), who presented "American Desert Music" with two other fantastic musicians - a completely surprising new style of Western music! Keep this group in mind!



The second show was mostly funny, with Sourdough Slim (cowboy comedy/entertainment), Rodney Nelson from North Dakota (a cowboy poet with a great sense of humor) and Henry Real Bird, a Crow Indian, who is an old hand at the NCPG, impressive stage presence, and always rather serious, emotional and accusatory.