2013 Good Beer Festival in pictures and text

I’ll charitably call it a race run on a sloppy track, but let’s just say the weather conditions kept most but the diehards away from this year’s Good Beer Festival – despite the welcoming sign from my favorite brewery.

Once I get to the upcoming Weekend of Local Rock feature you’ll better see what I mean, but for the most part Saturday’s proceedings were endured in a steady light drizzle. It’s unfortunate because there were some neat new features this weekend, like the Local Beer Garden.

Several local breweries secured a small corner for their pouring stations or a place to enjoy the product.

Another corner had a unique feature which many enjoyed and employed.

Me? I was just doing what I was told (for once.)

(Yes, I can be a smartass at times. But if you can’t have a little fun in life, why bother?)

Aside from the chalkboard, I took those shots before the event even began Saturday. Meanwhile, the volunteer pourers were receiving their final instructions.

It was only when I walked over to the ribbon cutting that the sprinkles began, literally minutes before the GBF was opened.

Among those participating were Wicomico Recreation Chairman Allen Brown (holding microphone), who actually wielded the scissors, and fellow Commission member April Jackson to his left. Elected officials flanking Brown in the background from left to right were County Council members Bob Culver, Gail Bartkovich, and Stevie Prettyman, with Delegate Addie Eckradt at the far right. Aside from a brief walkaround, though, I don’t think the elected officials stuck around.

At least I had the little sampling glass they gave out. The slips of paper served two purposes: a sticker for the event you could wear and a ballot for the Taster’s Choice Awards.

It wasn’t a complete surprise that local favorite Evolution Craft Brewing Company was knocked out of its three-time defending Taster’s Choice champion perch by the Tall Tales Brewing Company – after all, Tall Tales was the lead event sponsor. But newcomer Fin City Brewing Company from Ocean City finished third. All this was announced just before closing on Sunday.

So you could tell Saturday’s rain had its effect on the crowd. This shot was taken about 1:30, looking down the food court.

Did I say food? Yes, they had plenty of food to go with the beer, for the most part conveniently lined up along the fence line. I had some good pulled pork sliders, North Carolina style.

Yet a strange thing happened: by 4:30 there were a LOT of hungry folks despite the persistent mist. I wondered where they all came from!

As it turns out – and I was floored by this – they had 1,700 at Saturday’s event. No, it’s nowhere near record territory but for the conditions of the day I was impressed.

The crowd – and a week’s worth of rainy conditions – was already beginning to take a toll on the grassy meadow the GBF is held on.

So when I arrived Sunday morning, and found a nice puddle had collected on the roof of our tent, it was no surprise to find some no-go zones. The tape was removed before the event formally opened.

One thing I’ve noticed about the Sunday crowd (as opposed to the Saturday gathering) is that it’s somewhat smaller and many of them partake in the other amusements scattered about the grounds. Always popular on Sunday is this tent with the big screen televisions.

Others played cornhole, although this group had a different idea of the rules.

Luckily, I think she missed – didn’t need an Orlando Brown incident at the GBF.

Meanwhile, this little game can be maddeningly addictive. I keep coming thisclose to hooking it.

Sunday also brought the home brewers out, with their own contest and enclave.

I don’t recall who won, but it was with a fruit-based home brew. It’s worth pointing out that, in the spirit of the Halloween season, a number of breweries had pumpkin-based beer. There was also one concoction featuring Old Bay I didn’t try and the 16 Mile Killer Tiller Brown Ale, which I did. That stuff BURNED all the way down. I’ll stick with the Blues’ Golden Ale (which, sadly, wasn’t on tap there), thanks.

It’s also a more intimate gathering. My guess is that attendance was about 1,000. You’ll notice in my 1:30 shot that it’s cloudy but the rain held off all day.

I know I’ve discussed the more humorous signage at the Autumn Wine Festival and Pork in the Park, and the brewers are beginning to catch up.

And if you wanted to flaunt your drunken humor I’m sure these guys had the shirt for you.

But perhaps most emblematic of the rollicking, fun-loving spirit of the Good Beer Festival were these young ladies who happened to be next door to us. (No, not the guys in the kilts.)

Where else could you do this?

The Salisbury Roller Girls aren’t a new group and they’re regulars at Third Friday. But I found out that they have Old Bay as one sponsor and they were using the arm wrestling as a fundraiser along with shirt sales and such. It takes money to get the rinks, hire the refs, and travel around the region playing teams like the New Jersey Hellrazors or Black Rose Rotten Cherries.

So why was our humble group of Republicans there? Because the Democrats weren’t!

Among my Sunday volunteers was County Council candidate Muir Boda, who’s in the center between Greg Belcher and Shawn Jester.

Shawn is also in this shot with District 38C hopeful Mary Beth Carozza, who stopped by with the signs and magnets you see in the above picture. And remember that name of Shawn Jester; I think you’ll be reading it in the future here.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my volunteers: not just Shawn, Muir, and Greg, but Phil, Bob, and Bunky as well. It made for an enjoyable weekend – and wasn’t that the point? Giving out literature, meeting Republicans who urged us to keep up the fight, and recruiting new potential Wicomico County Republican Club members is great, but the idea is to be in the community and enjoy being there.

We will see you next weekend at the Autumn Wine Festival, but you’ll be able to relive the bands which played as an installment of Weekend of Local Rock over the weekend.

Weekend of local rock volume 50

Wow! The big five-oh for one of my favorite posts to write!

On Monday I gave you the lowdown on the Good Beer Festival in an overall sense but as promised I get into the bands today.

I suppose I should start with this so you know in what order the photos will appear.

There were a total of 12 performers at the Good Beer Festival and it was a showcase of many different types of music, not just straight-ahead rock.

First up was Blake Haley, who has played this event before.

Blake is a talented guy who I wish would put one of his old bands together. The thing I like about him is that he’s not afraid to put out some of his original stuff, even though I may well have been the only one who knew it (particularly the songs from his Pirate Radio days.) He found a way to make his time entertaining.

On the other stage, Chris English and his band got things started with some blues.

Chris is another veteran of the local festival stage, but when I noticed his son playing bass I realized I’d seen him somewhere before. Sure enough, when I pulled out my Boats to Tangier CD he indeed played bass for that group which has occasionally graced my website.

The doubly acoustic Ginger Band played a lot of old favorites, featuring dueling harmonies.

But the next band on the main stage had to win the contest for most creative name by a mile. Meet Sticky Long Fingers and the Rusted Butter.

They played a mix of covers and a few songs from the CD they just released called “Squash.”

I know they gained at least one fan while I was there, since my friend Jackie kept sneaking off to hear them play (not to mention one of them stopped by our booth afterward.) Truly they have a unique sound with so many players, and perhaps diversity of politics, too.

Wrapping up the bar stage on Saturday was the Saltwater String Band, who played a mix of tunes as well. Unfortunately, where I was situated I didn’t get to hear the bar stage as well as I could the main stage.

I did get to have a listen to the final band of the day, the Parkington Sisters.

Like last year’s Saturday closing act, Honor By August, the Good Beer Festival booked a more regionally-known band. In the case of the Parkington Sisters, this show came after a few days opening for a fellow New England-based band called Dispatch in venues such as Radio City Music Hall and DAR Constitution Hall. So perhaps it looked funny on their schedule doing a beer festival afterward, but they jumped at the chance.

Certainly with instrumentation like this, they were one of the more unusual acts but they kept a good portion of those who came until the end.

One highlight near the end was local musician Nate Clendenen joining them on stage for a unique version of “Ring of Fire,” the old Johnny Cash hit which has been remade several times.

Sadly, my Sunday thoughts are a little more limited because I really didn’t get to stay and hear some of the acts.

But I can tell you Kevin Poole has a purty guitar.

It was hard to miss the bagpipe intro Interesting Monsters played.

Of the twelve bands featured last weekend, they alone will do the doubleheader of playing at the Autumn Wine Festival, too. They’re on stage tomorrow at 2.

The final acoustic act of the GBF was Clayton Moore.

The one thing I can’t figure out about Biscuits and Gravy is whether the horn section is the biscuits or the gravy. But they utilized it in every song.

It seems like the GBF follows a pattern of sorts – they normally place acoustic acts on the smaller bar stage and also have the larger bands go second on the main stage. They simply flip-flopped the more eclectic acts, closing with one on Saturday and opening with one on Sunday – vice versa for the blues players.

That seemed to be the trend until The Hot Meals took the bar stage and got down. No acoustic act this.

The band is depicted as a rock/funk band and I would wholeheartedly agree. You could definitely get that vibe from their bar stage, unlike the acoustic acts.

And as I mentioned, it was blues which closed the festival with Tom Larsen and his band.

I believe they have played at least one of the three main festivals Wicomico County has each year since their inception. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like I see Tom Larsen a lot in this setting, and it’s no wonder – beer drinking and pork eating tend to work well with blues and rock.

The guy certainly was doing some marketing as well.

With as much marketing as I saw from some of these bands, maybe I should take my book out there. But then I suppose we wouldn’t be a non-profit anymore, so you’ll have to buy it here on my for-profit site. (ahem)

Overall, I would say this was a decent Good Beer Festival insofar as music goes but they have had better. One thing that was missing was a good, straight-ahead rock band; you know, the old-fashioned strap on the guitars, bring out the drums, and just play something catchy type. Last year’s event featured the aforementioned Honor By August and for my money the 2010 lineup still hasn’t been beat.

But it was a chance for (mostly) local musicians to play before an audience generally larger than you’ll find in the local bar or coffeehouse and you can’t blame them for saying yes. And with this year’s success, maybe they need to consider adding an off-site Friday night party, perhaps at Heron Ponds.

Programming note: there may or may not be a WLR with the Autumn Wine Festival since many of the bands don’t fit the genre. We’ll see.

Good Beer Festival 2012 in pictures and text

While I’ve heard conflicting tales about attendance – I had heard 2,900 people came on Saturday while this news report claimed 4,000 – somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 people attended last weekend’s Good Beer Festival at Pemberton Park.

You can judge attendance for yourself, as I took several crowd shots over the weekend. The first group are from Saturday and were taken at 1:30 and 2:30 on Saturday. (Bear in mind the festival opened at 12:30.)

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. I knew it would be a good day when I saw the lengthy line outside the ribbon cutting ceremony Saturday afternoon.

Allen Brown of Wicomico Parks and Recreation, the sponsor of the event, was holding the scissors. He was flanked by (left to right) Wicomico County Administrator Wayne Strasburg, State Senator Jim Mathias, and County Council members Stevie Prettyman, Sheree Sample-Hughes, Matt Holloway, Gail Bartkovich, and Bob Culver. Yet I noticed none of them stuck around very long, at least those I recognized.

Obviously the idea of the Good Beer Festival is to sample the brews of many different vendors, with my personal favorite being the 16 Mile brewery from Delaware.

Others, however, favored the hometown Evolution Brewery or national brands like Samuel Adams, Blue Moon, or Sierra Nevada. In all there were over 70 breweries represented.

But there was more to do than drink beer. There were games to play, like cornhole or the difficult contest shown below.

That’s my hand, by the way. Needless to say, I don’t have a knack for hooking that ring on the target.

On Sunday, the tent holding the big-screen TVs was crowded as the Ravens and Cowboys did battle.

You could even slow down and take a tour of the Pemberton house with guides in period costume like this woman.

Needless to say, there was also music – but I’m saving that for a future post.

There were also special one-day events. Saturday’s chili cookoff was a big draw, particularly considering the fall-like temperatures.

That same space was used on Sunday for a home brewer competition, which included this up-and-coming brewer from Delmar. That went better with the more summerlike weather featured on Sunday, with a high in the mid-70s.

I also ran across vendors which sold varied wares, mainly catering to a beer-drinking crowd like this apparel seller.

But this year there was a little something different. I spoke to the people working at this tent Sunday morning as I was getting reset and they said they were quite busy Saturday. No count on how many didn’t pass the test, though.

They probably didn’t have as much business Sunday, though. It was a far less crowded day, as the next series of photos taken at 2:00, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, and 5:30 attest.

One benefit of the smaller Sunday crowd: a chance for some to bring out their furry friends like this little guy.

So why was I there the whole time? It’s because I coordinate the presence of the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee and help staff the tent. It looked a little spartan this year to begin with considering there are only three candidates running, and the absolute raid on our Romney items Saturday left me without much to give out Sunday (when I took the tent photo.)

I know my blogging friend Jackie Wellfonder also posted her thoughts on the event, but I wanted to add my two cents in as well.

We had a location which was sort of out of the way. The photo of the Pemberton house was taken from in front of my tent, so you can tell we were off to the side of the main traffic flow where I took my crowd pictures. Nevertheless, enough people found us over the weekend that we ran out of Romney signs and Romney/Harris signs. (Maybe Dan Bongino needs some Romney/Bongino signs since people were happy to have the Romney/Harris combos even if they wanted just Mitt.)

I spoke to people from Wisconsin, New Jersey, New York, Maine, and even Ohio while sitting in our little tent. While they assessed his chances of success differently, they all wanted to end this four-year national economic nightmare. Even shunted off to the side, we reached a lot of potential voters the Democrats may have missed because they weren’t there. Maybe they feel the wine (or is it whine?) crowd will be more to their liking because they will be present this coming weekend, as will we – I got my package in the mail today.

But as the sun set on Sunday – a pretty sunset at that – we found that the Good Beer Festival seems to have established itself as more or less equal to its older cousin, the Autumn Wine Festival; an event which will celebrate its tenth year at Pemberton this coming weekend. The GBF has grown quite a bit in the three years of its existence, and may soon have the pleasant problem of selecting from more local and national breweries than it has space to accommodate.

One conversation I struck up regarded the merits of the Good Beer Festival vs. Pork in the Park. While I still think Pork in the Park is the better festival overall, the GBF is closing in on a strong second place. And at a strategic time in the election calendar, it’s a resource candidates can use to establish themselves with a unique demographic. Shrewd Republicans who want to get a jump start on 2014 would be wise to make time next October and come see us. We’ll be there.

While I’m at the Autumn Wine Festival, you can review the bands which played this weekend as I’ll devote a new Weekend of Local Rock post to the twelve performers playing the GBF.

A friend needs a hand again (and so do I)

You may recall that last week Melody Scalley of AFP Virginia was looking for people to do door-to-door campaigning in the Hampton Roads area. Well, the same rules apply for this weekend and the two locations I cited from last week are still in play.

But this weekend (and next) I’m looking for a few good men and women, too. If you are planning on going to the Good Beer Festival this weekend or Autumn Wine Festival next weekend, I’m looking for conservative volunteers to staff our presence there. Most of the time you just need to smile, be friendly, and engage those who come looking for campaign information by pointing them in the RIGHT direction. It’s really not hard.

My biggest need this weekend is for people later on Saturday afternoon (after 4 or so) and all day Sunday. The Good Beer Festival runs from 12:30 to 6 on both Saturday and Sunday, and we’ll have a tent, table, and a couple chairs. Being a week out, I haven’t seen my signup sheet at headquarters recently but at last check this trend seems to also hold true for the Autumn Wine Festival. (Don’t quote me on this, but I’ve heard a rumor that a certain statewide candidate popular with area conservatives will be at the Autumn Wine Festival to campaign.)

You can drop me an e-mail: ttownjotes (at) yahoo (dot) com if interested. Or if you wish to help Melody out, her number is (703) 258-4200.

WCRC meeting – October 2011

I suppose we were lucky he didn’t have a lot more to say.

The idea behind having Delegate Charles Otto of District 38A as this month’s guest speaker was for him to give us a rundown of the recently-completed Special Session, and once we went through the regular business of the Lord’s Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, welcoming of guests, Treasurer’s Report, and a moment of silence for departed County Council members Ken Matthews and Bob Caldwell, it was time for Otto to speak.

After noting that one year ago we were in the midst of a heated campaign and thanking us for the opportunity to serve, Otto termed the Special Session a “success” – if only because they stuck solely to redistricting questions and didn’t make any attempts to raise taxes.

He then showed those assembled a number of the new maps, drawing snickers from some but getting the obvious comparison of District 3 to a Rorschach inkblot test. Yet that configuration received more than the requisite 85 votes (a 3/5 majority) for passage as an emergency bill, so pending any court action these are now Maryland’s Congressional districts. One piece of good news: “Andy Harris can stay in office as long as he wants to,” Otto said.

Continue reading “WCRC meeting – October 2011”

A few programming notes

I have some interesting items to discuss this week, but they’re not quite ready to go yet. It was an atypical evening in this household, so we had dinner late. Meanwhile, I went through exactly 200 ballots cast in our Wicomico County Republican Party Straw Poll over the last two weekends at both the Good Beer Festival and Autumn Wine Festival. Later this week I’ll tell you who the winners were and some other surprises as well.

During the Autumn Wine Festival I also spoke at some length with Laura Mitchell, who’s trying to do the nearly impossible – at least in recent city history. More on that tomorrow.

Of course there’s a Special Session this week to consider Governor’s latest redistricting map, which, to put it oh-so-bluntly, may be the most gerrymandered piece of shit I’ve ever seen. Just look at the Second and Third Districts, which obviously are connected through bodies of water. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see some other noxious stuff come out of that Special Session.

Unfortunately, one thing I have to miss is the protest in Annapolis on Tuesday, which should be a hoot. So I’ll hope that some of my blogging cohorts will get some coverage both in Lawyers Mall and behind the scenes.

Meanwhile, I have a post to do to wrap up the Autumn Wine Festival as well as a Weekend of local rock post of the same. But I also have a really busy week of work coming up and a little R-and-R this weekend, so there’s a lot of ground to cover in a short time frame. You’ll have to read fast.

Weekend of local rock volume 42

One thing about the Good Beer Festival is that they also have good music. On Monday I reviewed the event as a whole, now it’s time to talk about the music. Here’s a handy-dandy guide to what’s coming up:

One admission I had to make: with a couple exceptions, I couldn’t stay and hear every musical act. For the most part, acts on the bar stage were lost in the crowd noise but I could hear those playing on the main stage pretty well.

Continue reading “Weekend of local rock volume 42”

2011 Good Beer Festival in pictures and text

Fair warning: this post is heavy on the pictures, as I have 27 loaded up and ready to go. Here’s the first:

Of course, there’s much, much more after the jump.

Continue reading “2011 Good Beer Festival in pictures and text”

Bonds, beer, and other items of local interest

I don’t use them too often, but I am on the e-mail distribution list for press releases from Wicomico County. Jim Fineran was a busy guy today since I received two, and I thought both deserved a little bit of comment.

The first one I’ll ponder is “County Scores High Marks From Wall Street’s Annual Evaluation.” One bragging point generally made by County Executive Rick Pollitt is that the bond firms love our county because they believe it’s run on sound financial footing. Of course, it’s a good thing they believe this because otherwise we’d be paying interest out the wazoo once the bill for county capital projects comes due.

And Pollitt states this again here, with a little slap at Joe Ollinger in the process.

During the recent campaign, my challenger stated that the county’s strong fiscal grades from Wall Street were a result of the Revenue Cap. However, the agencies have made it clear that our success has actually come in spite of the Revenue Cap. The following is from Moody’s Report:

RECENTLY HEALTHY FINANCIAL OPERATIONS MAY BE CONSTRAINED BY TAX REVENUE LIMITATIONS

Wicomico County has maintained a healthy financial position during recent years despite the impact of property tax revenue constraints, supported by proactive management and conservative fiscal policies and practices. (Emphasis in original.)

Yes, the election is over and Rick is back to his complaining about the revenue cap. Tell Moody’s that they don’t get a vote on changing this and it’s doubtful the five or six GOP members of County Council (depending on the election’s final outcome) are going to see it any other way. Certainly one tug-of-war likely to result next year as the budget is discussed will be whether to make up for the shortage that Pollitt voluntarily took this year when he opted not to raise the property tax rate to the constant yield rate.

Anyone with half a brain realizes that running a county and performing legitimate functions of county government costs money – the question is and will continue to be just how much can those of us living in the county afford to give when the other branches of government ask for an increasing share and costs for everything else (like gasoline and groceries) continue to add up?

Pretty soon we won’t be able to afford beer or wine, which brings me to my second press release.

Even though it’s generally after the fact, I talk about the Autumn Wine Festival and made sure to mention its baby brother the Good Beer Festival quite a bit this year, too. Obviously the group I’m associated with uses the events for political purposes given their calendar date in the midst of campaign season but I’d like to see both thrive for other reasons as well.

So I was pleased to actually see some attendance and financial numbers from each this year, for the first time in my memory. And my guesses were actually pretty good on attendance.

I recall that the prediction made by Parks and Recreation for attendance at the Good Beer Festival was 2,000 for the weekend, but the nice weather Saturday made me sure they came pretty close to that number on just that day alone. Sure enough, the event drew 1,628 that day. I also thought the Sunday crowd was about half, and indeed Sunday drew 750. Overall, they exceeded expectations by nearly 20 percent – but still suffered a small loss financially (about $1 per person.) Hopefully, the event will get more vendors to help make up the difference because otherwise I thought it was well run – the department was “ecstatic” about its future so perhaps in October 2011 we can do it again!

As for the AWF, year 8 was great as they drew 4,651 patrons and made a profit of about $24,000, mostly on the strength of the number of vendors (ticket sales made about 1/4 of the profit.) So they are set to go after a couple tough years of weather. And given the fact the AWF is now “twice its original size” it seems the Good Beer Festival is also on track to become as successful.

One thing unaccounted for insofar as the financial numbers at the festival grounds is the impact of over 7,000 visitors. Granted, there is some percentage who are local but even if just five percent come from far enough away to merit an overnight stay that packs hundreds of hotel rooms and helps keep the restaurants and gas stations in business. Just on an anecdotal basis from working a booth I notice a lot of people come here from across the bay so even if it’s a day trip we’re bringing money to the local economy. These events do well for paying for themselves and I suspect with decent weather next year the GBF will move into the black.

Finally, I wanted to point one thing out about this ‘Third Friday’ video.

I find it interesting that this video is featured on the ‘jimiretonformayor’ Youtube channel. Is that kosher with Salisbury’s campaign finance laws? I think it’s a question worth asking so I’m going to.

Honestly, I don’t mind Jim Ireton taking the time to promote this event as part of his duties but under the auspices of a campaign Youtube site I think this could be considered an in-kind contribution by the person uploading the videos (one can ask who does that and whether that’s on city time too.) Perhaps the city of Salisbury needs its own Youtube channel which can be used for these sorts of announcements.

Since I’m the burr in the saddle to a lot of people in power, why not ask this question too?

Weekend of local rock volume 35

By the time you read this, I will be at the Autumn Wine Festival. Unfortunately, their musical lineup this year doesn’t promise to be anywhere near as good as the one at last weekend’s Good Beer Festival.

Let’s start with the program – you can’t tell the players without a program! (Assuming you can read it, of course. Otherwise I took a picture for nothing.)

This means that the first band up was alex&shiloh, who played on the small side stage near the front entrance. Thus people coming in at the beginning were treated to their music.

Unfortunately, as was the case with most of the side stage bands, I didn’t get to hear them either – remember, I was there to work at and coordinate a booth (along with drinking a little beer!)

But I could easily hear the main stage, and first onstage there Saturday was the eclectic sound of Interesting Monsters.

They certainly played with a bit of a twist, although to be honest they weren’t my cup of tea. Not to say they are bad musicians, just not my style.

More to my musical liking – but unfortunately placed on the side stage – was the Davis Holiday Band.

From what I was able to hear during my trips to get a sample splash, they were rocking some good covers. But I know Wes Davis as a talented musician anyway so this wasn’t surprising.

Returning to the main stage, it was another fine band that mixed originals and covers, The Electric Co.

They definitely have their roots in classic rock, to be sure.

A guy whose roots were in some downhome blues completed the side stage bill on Saturday. I think Dr. Greg Belcher, my partner in crime for most of the day, truly enjoyed the sounds of Chris English. He seemed to disappear for an awfully long time…

But the biggest crowds of the weekend came for Saturday’s final act, the well-known party band Love Seed Mama Jump.

Let’s put it this way – if I were in a bar and drinking, I’d hang for them. They like the classic rock found on your ’70’s FM stereo to be sure.

So that concluded the bill on Saturday, and the throngs which showed up had a veritable cornucopia to choose from. Yet it had nothing on Sunday’s lineup for variety.

It started out with songstress Nancy Micciulla; just her and her guitar.

Since she’s a semi-frequent ‘Live Lixx at Six’ guest I have heard her and I knew she could sing. It’s too bad more weren’t listening.

Next up on the main stage: the groove rock of Blackwater.

They seemed like a pretty good way to start the main stage day by giving me a jam band feel.

Back over on the side stage, they had the vocal stylings of Time Police.

What little I heard basically reminded me of a updated, much more hip version of a doowop band – one instrument but three vocalists who could do harmony or rhythm, depending on the song.

Sunday’s biggest crowd didn’t wish to wait around, as many came to see this band.

Chester River Runoff has developed an avid following in these parts by being a solid bluegrass band. Needless to say, it’s not my style but the folks who came to see them surely weren’t disappointed.

The final two bands – well, they were more my style. First was Naylor Mill to close out the side stage (conveniently, the Redskins won just before they were set to play so those who were there were there to listen.)

I actually stuck around to listen to a few songs (and record the video which I debuted last night) so let me tell you these guys are tight and – dare I say it – pop radio-friendly. I should have picked up the CD but didn’t. And the chicks dig ’em.

And most of you should know that I really, really like Lower Class Citizens.

Yes, I do want them to ‘Keep On’ playing that rock n’ roll. If you’ve ever heard them (and if you’re any sort of FNV fan here you have) it’s easy to detect their Led Zeppelin influence. Indeed, they got the Led out for a midset medley of Zeppelin tunes that got a lot of people headbanging. (I was banging my head to the originals they did.)

They provided a fitting end to a great weekend of music that the people who put the Good Beer Festival together would be hard pressed to top (although I bet I could if I tried!) But it was a lot of fun, and good tunage to drink beer to.

The Good Beer Festival in pictures and text

Maybe it wasn’t the pinnacle political event of the year, but there was a nice presence over the weekend at Pemberton Historical Park. There were a few elected officials about to kick it off, including County Executive Rick Pollitt and County Council members John Cannon and David MacLeod.

In the end, though, it was about the beer!

It was nice of 16 Mile Brewery to take the lead on that one, as one of our (more or less) local brewers. Impressively, only 5 of the 27 brewers represented came from the Delmarva area. Here is some of 16 Mile’s best work, I believe this is their Old Court Ale.

Who knows, it could be the Amber Sun too. I tried all of their stuff and liked it. So did a lot of other people, as the next three pictures show.

Respectively, the pictures were taken at 3 p.m. Saturday, 1:45 p.m. Sunday, and 4 p.m. Sunday. I was told there were 1800 tickets sold on Saturday so I’d estimate they got around 800 to 1000 Sunday. Not bad for an event where vendors were told to expect 2000 for the weekend.

One intriguing aspect of the event was a sports theme, sort of like an outdoor mancave. You had your tent with two large-screen televisions, a row for various games and contests, and this simulator.

Strangely enough, this car was absent Sunday, which left the field open for frisbee and football tossing. No big loss.

And yes, we did our political thing.

Business was pretty good on Saturday, perhaps a little slow on Sunday. Most of the interest was naturally in the Ehrlich-O’Malley race, but other politicians showed up to garner votes.

Among them was County Executive candidate Joe Ollinger, who came both days. Here he’s pictured with Greg Belcher, who was kind enough to help me staff the tent both days.

On Sunday, District 38B contender Marty Pusey stopped by with a friend.

In reality, she was only getting even for Norm Conway, who had wandered around the festival the day before. I had a picture of Seth Mitchell out garnering votes, but decided not to use it. (He looked a little angry, even though I don’t think he was completely distressed by the fact there was a Republican tent.)

There was even a political overtone to some of the vendors. Not only was the Parsonsburg Fire Department selling raffle tickets, but their members who were present were clear on where they stood.

Since the weekend was also filled with music, I have a lot more pictures for a future post. But that will come in time.

Beer!

(Updated 8:30 p.m. Saturday.)

Yep, that’s where I’ll be today…at the Good Beer Festival in Pemberton Park. I’m coordinating and helping to man the GOP tent so come out and visit. It’s a nice day and an event I’d like to see become a lot bigger and better next year.

Oh, and I might try a sample or two as well. And they have some seriously good tunes.

One prediction: hot and cold running politicians. But I’ll be there to set any wayward ones straight.

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As a report on Day 1, it wasn’t quite what I expected but it certainly was a fun event nonetheless.

The traffic at our GOP booth was slow but steady, and we gave out quite a bit of Ehrlich-related items. There was also a lot of interest in Matt Maciarello, although Seth Mitchell was there attempting to counter it.

Also out and about campaigning today were Delegate Norm Conway, District 4 Councilman David MacLeod (who participated in the ribbon cutting along with County Executive Rick Pollitt and outgoing County Councilman John Cannon), and County Executive candidate Joe Ollinger – he seemed to get a favorable reception.

We’ll see who shows up tomorrow.