Eco-Chick Does Mountain Jam

With festival season upon us, my friend, Amy, called a few weeks ago to tell me that I was going to meet her and her friends at Radio Woodstock’s Mountain Jam in Hunter, New York on the first weekend in June.

I’d already seen the lineup (with Gov’t Mule and Phil Lesh & Friends headlining) and would have gone for Michael Franti and Ozomatli alone, except that I now spend my Friday and Saturday nights squinting over IPCC reports, wondering if apocalypse is upon us or merely looming. At some point during George Bush’s tenure, I got incalculably old.

Ozomatli

Amy told me that if I didn’t meet her in New York, she was going to come to my home and kidnap me. I knew she wasn’t kidding. I met Amy ten years ago when we were both Americorps volunteers working and traveling through the Deep South for ten months. We spent the first nine months in mutual antipathy, as we worked side by side in Little Rock, Charleston, and the mountains of eastern Tennessee. I wondered why this Philly girl was so obnoxious—she never stopped singing—and she wondered (out loud) why New Englanders were so uptight. Then, I think it was on a balmy evening in July when we both went to pay our respects at Duane Allman’s grave in Macon’s Rose Hill Cemetery that Amy and I finally discovered we had more in common than we realized.

I was 19. She was 20. And during our final month in Dixie, we raised hell.

So, when she called a few weeks ago, I didn’t actually take much convincing. It seemed fitting that a show produced by guitar legend Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers and Gov’t Mule), would reunite a pair of (now old) friends. I hustled up a Prius, hosed down the cooler, and told Amy that I would meet her there, adding that I had to do some work by reporting back for Eco-Chick on the environmental vendors and the festival’s green initiatives. Now in its third year, Mountain Jam is partnering with Community Energy, which will donate wind energy credits to offset 100% of the electricity used at the show, and Rock the Earth will be on hand to educate show-goers about environmental issues.

Amy just laughed. “Uh-huh. Well, if you get to meet Michael Franti, you’re taking me with you. I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll take all my clothes off. I’ll get naked right there.”

So Mountain Jam is this weekend and tickets, as of right now, are still available. Stay tuned for Eco-Chick dispatches, and if you see me there, give me a holler. I’ll be the blue-eyed girl with the notebook and the naked friend.