I met Jeb Puryear at the Mad Caf? last week. Singer and guitar player for Donna the Buffalo, he is also the coordinator of the Grassroots Festival, to be held at the Trumansburg Fairgrounds, July 22?25.
14850: How are decisions made about the Festival?
Puryear: It's sort of a loose organization. It's just the people who show up at meetings. I'd say there's about 10 of us that really get around and make decisions. Some decisions get made on the fly just cause you gotta make the decision right then, you can't wait around to talk it over with everyone. We have a committee that chooses the performers and listens to tapes.
14850: How did Grassroots get started?
Puryear: The first big show we did was when Jim Miller, our guitar player, decided to do the State Theatre benefit. We did that with the Horseflies and Neon Baptist and Donna the Buffalo. And we did really well, we sold out the State Theatre, which was an inspirational thing.
The other thing is that we've been going, as musicians, to music festivals for a very long time and we always wanted to have one in Ithaca. And since we'd done the AIDS benefit at the State Theatre, it seemed natural to include that and make it an AIDS benefit as well.
Of course, we were hoping to do fabulously well our first year (laughs). We got a lot of rain and we just about broke even the first year, so that was a little disappointing. But then as I talked to festival people, they said breaking even is pretty good for the first year; quite an accomplishment. Of course, if we had known that, we probably wouldn't have set ourselves up in such a position.
14850: How did you fund the festival the first year?
Puryear: Selling advertisements in the program, we got some loans from friends, tons of volunteers helped... I guess that's how we sort of slipped by with it. Every year you reach a real dry point before the ticket sales start coming in and you're trying to get done what you need to get done, and it's hard sometimes.
Like last year my mother got a settlement right at the right time from her job and she put all that into the festival and if it weren't for that we would have been hard pressed to continue on. This year we're issuing some venture certificates for a $1000 a piece, you get 7 1/2% back on your money, and it's a year loan. So we're trying to borrow money that way from some of the people in Ithaca, and that way keep us from having that lull. Because it hinders some of the advertising effortÑif we run out of money at the wrong time, it's hard to buy the print ads. We also do a lot of trades in the program for services.
14850: What does the committee look for when they're choosing performers?
Puryear: I would say that Grassroots over all is looking for an honestyÑI don't know, it's sort of weird to describe musicÑbut certain music really hits you as real and has something to offer. Basically, you've just got to like it. The first year I was involved with deciding, but the next year I didn't want to have anything to do with it because people were calling me up and saying "Hey, what's wrong with my band?" and I just don't want to be in that position, so I don't really have anything to do with it anymore. Cause I didn't get involved with this to rate all the bands in the world, I don't think that's really where it's at, so we have a committee and they figure it out.
The other thing that people should understand is that you have to create a balance in the festival, like we strive for a ...like there's a lot of rock and roll bands around here that would like to play at it, but we try not to make it too rock and roll heavy, we try to create more of an international flavor, so that's why we end up hiring certain bands, like the bands from Louisiana and stuff like that, to create a more substantial event. Some people don't see it like that.
One of the original ideas when we started the festival was to have all the bands we were friends with, like the Horseflies, us and the Heartbeats, and just do it and let it grow from there. And that maybe would have been a better idea, and then it would have started much smaller.
But the first year we had the 10,000 Maniacs, which they did cause we knew some of the people in the band and they donated their services essentially, and if it hadn't been for them, I don't think we would have survived the first year. Of course, we got a ton of rain on the day they were supposed to play.
14850: There is a really wide variety of people who play, from folk to zydeco to rock and roll. I really enjoy that variety.
Puryear: I guess there is something that people call the roots music, like reggae, zydeco, cajun, old time fiddle music, and then some of the rock and roll bands that come out of that, like the Horseflies, Donna the Buffalo, and that band Rusted Root, they're totally roots. In the future I would like to get some country bands, like I would like to get George Jones. I would like to get some different kind of people there.
To go deeper into what actually makes it a really great thing is, in my view music itselfÑany kind of artÑis a vision, some way to align yourself with what's going on around you, give you a perspective on things, just like dancing or anything. I think our culture is devoid of the yoga, the martial arts, we don't have that, it's not part of our needs in a folklore sense, like no one ever said you needed that or that it was important, so I think music or dancing, you need that to give you perspective, to ease your mind.
We're basically a yoga-less society, we don't concentrate on the spiritual aspects of things that are going on and I think that just by going to a music festival and dancing for three days, or just being anywhere for three days with a bunch of people and having a good thing going on, it really makes you feel good.
And also, as far as the AIDS benefit aspect of it, you've got to put an accepting face on that, cause not everyone can get it. Of course acceptance of the disease isn't so much of an issue anymore, it's becoming more accepted, people are figuring out what's going on with it, dropping some of the silly prejudices about it. Like the first year we did the State Theater showÑI can tell, you can feel the change in perception of what's going on.
14850: Why? Did you get any odd comments the first year?
Puryear: No, not really. You get people saying stupid stuff all the time. It's just got to be accepted, people have to learn not to be frightened about what it is. I mean it's a terribly freaky subject for one thing. People are really freaked out about death anyway, and they're also freaked out about sex, so it's like sex and deathÑwooh, forget it. It's terrible, I mean it is essentially a creepy subject, sex and death, death itself... It's really making a lot of people think about it, think about death.
14850: So do you have any special guests this year? Any headliners, so to speak?
Puryear: Essentially all the groups are great. As far as bands that have more of a reputation, NRBQ has a big reputation, and Baba Olatunji has really forwarded a lot of the African music in the statesÑvery renowned, very well-known. Essentially, everybody's excellent, and if you don't like the band you're looking at, you can go to another stage and find one you do. That's the good thing about it.
14850: That's what I like about the Grassroots, it's got that kind of feeling to it.
Puryear: You can go stage-hopping. And that's the other good thing about festivals is you'll go to see one band and you'll come away blown away by a band you never saw before. It's hard to go out and see a band you've never seen before, because chances are they're terrible, if you just pick a name out of the paper and go see a band. But you go to a festival like this, and you have a chance to see 37 bands and you'll get turned on to some stuff that you'd never thought you'd go see. People come for one band and they leave loving six other bands, so there's a lot of that going on, which is excellent.
If we had a little more money to spend on a big name performer, we'd get a lot of people coming to see the big name performer and then checking out the other bands. That was the deal the first year with the 10,000 Maniacs. It would have worked a little better if it hadn't rained all day Saturday. But it worked well, we survived and last year was a big success. And this year we're looking for it to be real big.