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The Oklahoma Renaissance Faire opened to fine Scottish weather in 2004, the kind most Yanks call unfortunate. Rain had started Friday evening with severe thunderstorm watches and even a few warnings for some places other than Muskogee, and had settled into intermittent drizzle the following morning, which continued all day with a few more brief spasms of greater intensity. The temperature stayed in the 60s with north winds creating chill. I wore the warmest garb I've got, the maroon Italian noble gown, and wrapped a white acrylic shawl that looks like it might could have been medieval around my neck. An umbrella with a psychedelic polka dot pattern that definitely crossed the line into modernity also accompanied it.

Not too many patrons other than hardcore were there at 10am in the rain. As you enter the faire you walk in from the parking lot thru a castle gate with towers into a long narrow courtyard with fences on both sides, a ticket selling tent in the middle, a few other tent canopies, and a stage at the rear by the entrance and ticket takers. It was small enough to make it seem crowded with not really very many people, and almost everyone in there was in garb. The cast members there probably outnumbered the patrons. Walking thru I had to dodge people practicing shticks with each other, and there was a bedlam of voices all around. It seemed that chaos was the intention of the management for these fifteen minutes before the pregate scenario. Three musical acts were to be playing not more than about ten yards from each other, along with Gypsies dancing and Commedia Sans Arte scurrying thru. I had to run a blockade of Valorie's outstretched arms to make it thru to the ticket booth. But there weren't too many musicians with their instruments out that first day.

The price of a single day ticket was $11.95, and a season ticket was 24.95, unless you first bought a day ticket, then took them up on the offer they had on a sign you'd see when you were leaving to upgrade to a season pass for 11.95 more (totaling 23.90 with a day ticket). But I naturally didn't find out about this until after I had come in at the beginning of the day and innocently bought a season pass. They gave me a single piece of cardboard to preserve and protect as a person at the gate with a paper puncher filled it with more holes.

The pregate show started at 10:15, and this year they followed a script, rather than the completely winging it that I saw back in 2002. But the script seemed more like a framework by the fourth time I saw them do it. Their exact wordings varied, and they started cracking new jokes that I hadn't heard before. Sometimes I would see the actors cracking up with laughter as they too first heard them. John Auld was his usual haughty King Henry VIII, and his wife at this faire was Margaret, played by Lisa Pronovost whom I had seen last fall at Kansas City as a Flirtatious Swashbuckling Bandit. The scenario started with both of their majesties apparently missing, but suddenly showing up to surprise the victims of their jokes.

The weather chased a lot of acts under roofs and effectively canceled some others, but for me it was mostly a day of warm fuzzies being greeted by an increasing number of old friends. Valorie's hug was followed soon after by one from Christine and other greetings from Commedia Sans Arte. His Majesty stopped me by the side of the street and looked me in the eyes as he said, "I am glad to see you here this day". Lady Nancy was there with her hammered dulcimer, and Karen Troeh was there as a common musician (not royalty this time) with her lap harp, and I told her I had brought mine, and she said maybe we can play together. There were other familiar faces from KCRF and Oklahoma faires past who greeted me, which I still can't overcome the dyslexia I have with people's names to remember enough to mention.

I found Wendy frantically looking for the other members of Minstrosity in the pregate pandemonium, then found all of them shortly after opening playing under the BAT (big ass tent) by the Castle instead of in their scheduled place. During the same morning pandemonium Sunday I was listening to them close up and asked them if they had been practicing. Josie said they had been keeping it up every Thursday, and I told them they had succeeded. They have made a quantum leap in the togetherness of their sound and especially their choral singing. Later that day the BAT featured a lot of other musical acts not in their scheduled places.

Shortly afterward I went into Great Hall where Bruce the Bruce and his lady, Rowan Golightly, along with another lady on flutes that I met for the first time that day, Beth, were appearing for the first time as Queen's Gambit. The Hall is very echoey and fills very quickly with crowd noise, so I wasn't able to appreciate all of it. But their voices went together very well amid the din.

I then went around checking out the stores and such, and found there had been some new construction in the shire since last year. There is now a pirate ship stage, with very high sides to its hull, higher than a man is tall, separated from the audience by a moat with a dock bridging over to it. They have put a canopy over the chessboard, with open wood lattice work that lets the sun thru to cast op art patterns over the actors beneath it, and they surrounded two thirds of it with grassy berms to sit on and watch. In one place the grass continues up onto the roof of a covered porch beneath.

There is a new stage in the boardwalk complex thru the trees, Hidden Grove, that provides perhaps the best environment free of outside noises for hearing music, a small trapezoidal amphitheater with its back to the jousting fields and most of the other noise, completely surrounded by rustling trees that provide a gentle white noise background, and few other booths or activities nearby. However the roof has just boards butted together, with no shingles or other roofing, so that under it in the rain you got more drops on you than standing outside.

I spent most of the day not looking at any schedule and just letting my whim or my intuition guide me, and came upon many high moments of many people's acts. Their was a moderate amount of patrons who came in spite of the rain, but by about 4 o'clock much of them and the energy in general were leaving, and I left early.

As bad as the weather was on Saturday, so was the weather on Sunday good. It dawned sunny, and spent most of the day in the 70s with light breezes. Saturday I had found an overlay in a Celtic plaid of green and purple on a sale rack, and wore it this day.

I had been conversing with Bruce the Bruce by email the week before the faire about the possibility of my performing on the harp, and he said I could play at the maypole the times he was there. On that first rainy day I didn't even bring my harp out of the van. I had asked him whom to ask to get the official policy on patrons performing, and he told me to contact Karen Cunningham, the "Artist Coordinator", so right after the gates opened Sunday I set out for the business offices in the castle to seek her, where Bruce had directed me the previous day. When I had gone into the Great Hall, I happened to see the man in a yellow jester hat that I had seen in the pregate show and other places about the shire yesterday.

I asked him where I could find Karen Cunningham's office, and he had me follow him thru some doors and into a front office that had had a rear one, where he asked if "Mama" was there. (Bruce had told me that I could also ask for "Mother Superior"). She wasn't in, so I told this man what I was wanting to ask about, and he said, "I can tell you myself, we love to have people come and perform." He said he was the director of something or other that went by too suddenly for me to remember, and I got his stage name (Will Somers), and asked if I could blame him if anybody else asked, and he said yes. Jeremy Caviness's performance as Will Somers the jester was one that stood out to me thru all the days. He was often found standing behind the King being the de facto master of ceremonies for what was going on before His Majesty. I wish I were 30 years younger so I could learn to dance the way he can. I am very envious of his high stepping jig.

Bruce had told me in those emailings that I should find a way to put a strap or something or other on my harp so I could play it standing up, bit I hadn't been able to figure a way. I had folding chair that was easy to carry, and I took it to the pole that first Sunday. Bruce showed me a tent behind another building nearby where I was able to leave my case for an hour or so while I was playing. I had about a half hour before the start of the dances, so I unloaded all and walked around a bit.

There was a small stage with tucked back into a row of shops with straw bales for an audience, that went mostly unused by any scheduled acts (Burn's Stage). It was as a result mostly free for any up and comers to get up on and try putting on a show, and upon that stage I saw a man and his wife playing together - and the man had a (probably) 26 string harp that he was wearing on a guitar strap. He had a knob for the strap up by the top of the body on the right (as you hold it) and another on the outside corner of the bottom on the left. The strap came over his shoulder and then under his left arm. The exact way the harp wound up sitting on him it I didn't find totally satisfactory, the sound hole in back was mostly covered by his body - but he showed me the basic possibility.

His wife had a little harp with an octave and a half of strings and no levers that she played, along with an assortment of flutes. The little harp was also on a strap. I talked with the two after they finished playing, and they introduced themselves as Llewellyn and Toinette. They weren't yet a band that had contracts to perform; they were playing for free and using Burn's Stage to get their act together in front of what audiences they could find.

I went on and tried to play my own harp at the maypole sitting on my chair, and it was indeed a gluteal dolence. The other musicians wanted to be able to walk around as the dances progressed, and I was always having to pick up and move. Bruce showed me the Schaller Snap-Locks that he had on his own guitar and strap, and told me a place in Tulsa where I could find them.

After the dances were over, I walked over to a new pub called, appropriately for her, the Golden Harp, where Karen Troeh was playing. It had a small counter at one end, and a long gallery open to one side, with a long bench all along the back and then around the corner at the other end, making a nice nook for performers to sit. We attempted to play together, but her harp was too out of tune with mine for us to make it work. She promised she would have tuned it to standard the next time.

I took my harp out to the van and three o'clock found me at the Hidden Grove where I walked in on the end of Queen's Gambit's set, where I was able to hear them much better as they moved their audience so much with "Letters from Kilkenny that they didn't applaud, and we all knew that was good. Then I stayed for the whole show of Tullamore, who put on a set of tight rhythms and lush vocal harmonies. Then I beheld Pub Sing at the BAT, where all the picnic tables therein were full of seated people and it was sometimes hard to hear the performers because of the crowd noise, but the rowdy ambience made me not really care.

(to be continued)

-Butterfly Bill

"Greetings, milady...or is it milord?...or..um...."
"So did you lose the bet?"..."No, I won it, he bet me I wouldn't"
Ren Geek with pewter computer imputer
Solarus Juvenilius Pastritis of Sarcastica. He who Grouches
   while Biting the Wax Tadpole.
"possunt vincere nothi solum si facetias tuas a te tollunt"

more faire reviews like this one are at
   http://members.isp.com/farfallabill@isp.com/RbStories.htm#renfair
some of my computer music can be heard at
   http://music.download.com/butterflybill
my Live Journal page is
   http://www.livejournal.com/users/butterflybill/
(take out my appendix to reply by e-mail)

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