Music Festival Camping Trip
I'm back from the music festival camping trip and it was so great, I've got so much to say about it!
We went up to the place last Wednesday, about an hour drive away and setup was only mildly painful as setting up tents often is, but no biggie. Then we had a couple of days before the festival started on Friday to just chill, though Unfortunately I had to spend Thursday morning taking our Doggo (Kit) to the vet to get some anti inflammatory drugs because her arthritis started to play up. She was fin and happy once we got this sorted and love the outdoors with all new smalls and whatnot.
Once things got under way with the music Wife and I fell in love with a singer in the first group (who was most certainly very non-binary) they were just so dang cute.
We learned to play tin whistle together, learned a simple little tune. This is really nice because Wife really felt like she lost connection with music a little bit, not playing or singing very much lately, but she had a good play and sing and said she's wanting to make an effort to get more of that in her (and our) lives.
Speaking of singing, one of the events is a Shanty singing hour, and if participants want to lead a shanty they can, so I decided to to one, specifically one called "Leave her Johnny" and it was really lovely, the rest of the folks singing made such lovely harmonies and were really locked into my rhythm (which doesn't always happen.) I really felt good about my leading performance and I guess I was right because for the rest of the festival people were coming over to me to say hi and that they particularly enjoyed my singing which is just.... so sweet and I really appreciate it because I honestly felt like I'd lost a lot of my old singing skills, given I only sing by myself for maybe a half hour every other week, compared to when I used to spend hours with multiple choirs in a single week. Also I was looking very cute and femme at that point but sang with my baritone range where I'm most comfy which felt very good, I am working on my upper range from time to time, but I'm also happy being a feminine baritone :TransStride:
The final act on the Saturday, day two of three, I got to see last year at the same time but wife had gone to sleep already, but this time she managed to stay up late and she said my raving about how good they were was 100% on point, they are a modern trad act, really high energy, awesome tunes, songs to sing along to and they use _some_ digital effects that really up the ante but are still recognizable as acoustic instruments. With having to manage my fatigue I can't really dance too much, but still grooving out in my chair holding hands with Wife goes hard lemme tell ya!
On Sunday I went to a instrumental session for learning tunes, sort of a training wheels version slowed down a bit for folks getting to grips with their instrument (as I very much still am with the Concertina) and they played a couple tunes I already knew which was super lovely. The guys who teach there are always talking about interesting tidbits of info about certain ways of playing instruments and figuring out what liberties you can take without the fabric of the tune falling apart.
Honestly the worst part of the whole weekend was packing up today in the midday sun, again a little frustrating at times especially since we were both pretty tired, but we got there in the end and organizing everything in the next few days is gonna be easier that past camping trips since we organized some things better, but we're always trying new things on trips and learning lessons for future one, rare though they may be.
So yeah, overall I rate this trip a hearty and enthusiastic double thumbs up and Wife and Doggo agree as far as I can tell. Now enjoying being in front of a screen again since I've barely used my phone (I only had to charge it once for the whole trip). I feel really motivated to make more time for music (energy permitting as always) and I'm excited to maybe sing with my wife some more (we met in a choir but don't sing together much rn, but maybe