McDowell Mountain Music Festival

One of my bookclub pals, Ann, told us about the second annual McDowell Mountain Music Festival a while ago. Her company puts it on and the proceeds go to charity. The event is two days of music on an outside stage at Westworld and it sounded like it was right up our alley. When she asked if any of us wanted to volunteer to work the beer booth with her, I was in and Paula was, too. (Note: Sugar Daddy told me I should put a disclaimer in at some point that Paula and I are not life partners, not that there's anything wrong with that, because we do a lot of stuff together but, well, you know how you people think.)

I headed out of the house on Saturday afternoon to meet Paula at her office so we could drive to the fest together. I had to hit the Sugar Daddy ATM on my way out for $60 (see, he is sometimes nice to me) then I got lost...I can never remember to drive that little extra bit on the frontage road to get to Bell Rd. Sigh. We got to the parking lot and nabbed a great spot by transferring our lesson from NASCAR weekend: ignore what the parking attendant tells you and just drive wherever you want.

Big Head Todd and the Monsters were playing when we got there. There were quite a few people on the grass in front of the stage on blankets and in lawn chairs and everyone looked like they were having a good time. We hooked up with Ann, Anne and Keri (our volunteer group) and meandered over to the beer booth.

Our shift started at 7 so we were just taking it all in for a little bit. The line was really long and I have to admit it looked chaotic. The volunteer coordinator, Dale, gave us the quick speech on how to run the registers (Paula and I took those jobs) and then we were in along with our lone guy on the team. It was fast and furious for the first 1 1/2 hours as Bruce Hornsby was performing and we all got a little beer soaked. The action slowed down after that and I think we sold about $4,000 in beer and wine in 4 hours.

I have to say - it's quite interesting to be on the other side of the bar for a change. I certainly recognized our kindred souls among our patrons. We had a lot of repeat customers who chatted with us and I think they could have been easily converted to Parrot Heads. Keri (think petite, cute and bubbly) got hit on several times and one guy was especially skeevy. Anne pretended to be her girlfriend to get the guy to back off but I'm not sure how well that worked since he told them he was bi (like that was going to help his case?).

We had a great time though I don't think Sugar Daddy believes me that I didn't have a single alcoholic beverage the entire time (liquor laws don't permit).

Here's an excerpt from Dale's thank you email:

And finally, Ann. She got four of her friends to join her and staff a tent on the hardest to fill slot of 7-11 on Saturday.When they showed up to relieve Andrews Electrical on the North tent they looked scared shitless watching the mad house of order taking and pouring. I thought for sure a few of them would run away crying. I came back an hour later to find Coyote Ugly !!... Hooting, Hollering and Laughing, thank god they couldn't drink behind the bar. Thank you Ladies.

Kinda sounds just like us, don't it?