Michfest Part 6 (Let the Healing Begin)

Day 6 (8/7) Friday
When I woke up in the morning I was still hoarse, and it was already shaping up to be a busy day. There was all kind of healing happening on the land and I needed a bit myself. I started with working my crystals to help clear my throat.

Lee managed to get me onto the Chix Lix set playing tambourine on “Love Child,” “Everyday People” and “Stand.” The only problem was that rehearsal fell right during the time when I would be at the womyn of color sweat and it was right before my own band rehearsal. So I knew it was going to be tough.

I prepared myself better, or so I thought, for the sweat this time. Last year I didn’t drink enough water so when I came out I had a terrible headache and I couldn’t get warm. Turns out it was the coldest night of the festival. So this time I was ready. I drank lots of water the day before and the day of the sweat. I also ate so that I could make sure I was okay. I really love to sweat, but it’s intense to say the least. I needed a healing that day because I needed to sing that evening for rehearsal. So I got myself ready to sweat and be healed.

Just a side note, on Wednesday night I hurt my finger playing tambourine with Black Patti. On Thursday, Linda from the Topp Twins did a little healing on my finger with her pendulum, which helped, but it still hurt just a bit. So the sweat needed to clear my voice and help my hand because I needed to play bass on my show the next day.

If you are not familiar with going to a sweat lodge, it is a Native American tradition. There are various reasons and seasons when people sweat, but on the land there are sweats during the week for all different kinds of folks. Even one for kids. There are usually four rounds and after every round the flap is opened and the sun/air can come in. Depending on who is pouring water for the sweat will depend on how intense it gets. In this case and in the case of all the sweats on the land Shirley Jons pours the water. She’s an amazing woman.

I won’t get into too much detail about being inside the sweat lodge, but I will say that I made it through. When I thought I was getting a headache I would let that thought go and feel better. The only thing that worried me was my finger because it felt like it was swelling up, which would make sense because I was in heat and the finger needed ice, or so I thought.

When the four rounds were over we all filed out of the lodge. I felt okay inside, but as soon as I got out I was wobbly. I almost felt like I couldn’t get my balance and I was very dizzy. I stopped to wash my hands, but I had to put my hands on the ground to try and ground myself a bit more. When I was able to get up I walked slowly to a chair under a tree. I felt nauseous and like I could pass out at any moment. I couldn’t cool down. I was talking to myself, telling myself not to throw up. I hate throwing up. Someone asked me if I wanted some water. When it was handed to me instead of drinking it I poured it over my head. Then another and another. Then I looked up and that’s when I knew something was different. Everything in front of me looked like a picture negative. The people in front of me were all light. It was like I was seeing peoples light and everything behind them was dark. Just like a negative. That kind of freaked me out so I just put my head down and kept pouring water on me. Then I looked up again and the same thing. Head down. At this point Shirley asked me if she could pour water on me. I said yes. She checked to make sure there was water in her cup and not another clear liquid, and then pours it over my head. Now at this point something happened.

The water she poured over me was not as cold as the water I was pouring over my own head, but when her water hit me something happened to me. It felt like something jumped out of me. I had to tell her to stop because it felt so wild and jarring. Then she laid down in front of me and asked me if I wanted an orange. I sucked the juice out of it, but couldn’t eat the whole piece. I still felt like I would throw up. So I just spit the rest out. I kept eating oranges and I started to feel better. Shirley looked at me and said “I told you you were going on a journey.” Uh...yeah! I finally came back from somewhere. Then I ate watermelon and I don’t really like watermelon, but it was good and it helped.

Most of the time I was trying to come back, Ganessa was by my side. I thought she was there for moral support, but it turns out she was down for the count as well. It was very intense. Ganessa, Tiffany, Marya and I walked back to the artist/workers section and I had to go straight to Chix Lix rehearsal.

Now Chix Lix is a set that happens every year at Michfest, well at least since I’ve been going, that is usually a set of covers. I can’t remember what it was the first year, but last year it was Chix Lix Flix. So they did songs from movies. This year it was Chix Lix 60’s. The set is always put together by Alyson Palmer who is the bassist from the band Betty. It’s pretty amazing. Folks are given the songs before they get to Michigan, but they only get to rehearse together on the land. As I stated earlier, Lee got me on the set playing tambourine and I was ready to go.

As we were walking up the hill toward the rehearsal tent I could hear tambourine coming from the tent and I was a bit bummed because I figured I had been replaced. Well when I got to the tent I knew I had been replaced because there was Vicki playing the tambourine! [Just to be clear about who Vicki Randle is. She was lead vocalist and percussionist for the Tonight Show band (now the Jay Leno Show band) for 17 years.] Now how could I top that? Well I remembered that Sly and the Family Stone had many tambourines in the band so I jumped in and added to the atmosphere of the song.


[Me, Auntie Vicki and my cheesy grin. lol. Doesn't it look like we could be related!]

I was totally muddy and wet because I just came from the sweat. My hair was literally dirty, but I just jumped in. As I started playing I got the smile of approval from Vicki and I felt better. Then I though to myself, “Hey, I’m playing with Vicki!” It was amazing. After rehearsing the Sly songs they did “Girl from Ipanema.” So I took a break and rinsed myself off. Then I came back and they did “Baby Love” and “Love Child.” Vicki just let me take the tambourine for that because she sang with She (that’s the name of one of the performers) and Melissa Ferrick.

When that rehearsal came to an end it was time for blaKbüshe rehearsal. By this time I am beat and I have a headache, but low and behold I can sing. The sweat had worked. Also my finger was feeling way better. Dare I say all the way better. I was healed! When the ladies got to the tent we jumped things off, and managed to almost get through the whole set. People were stopping by the tent to see who were. I am not a festie virgin, but my band is new to the festival. So not many people knew who we were, and unbeknownst to me they were asking around. I had no idea until later when Gina told me that people kept stopping during dinner to ask. That made me smile.


[The blaKbüshe ladies crew rehearsing "Box" for Saturday's performance.]

After rehearsal we ate dinner and then I took a real shower. I still had a headache and I wanted to go to sleep, but I needed to twist my hair so that I would look like something for my show the next day. Since I was doing that I sat in the Belly Bowl and listened to the music on the night stage. Everyone sounded incredible.

There was a bit of a Friday night debacle. Medusa was supposed to open the night stage, but she didn’t make it to the festival. I’m still not sure why, but in here place Lisa put together killer line up of MC’s which included Hanifah, Reina, God-dess, and Judith Castleberry with Karma on vocals. The band was Vicki Randle (percussion), Julie Wolf (keys), Gail Ann Dorsey (bass) and Melissa York (drums).

Sia was up next. Talk about killer show. I could only hear it, but damn it was amazing. Folks that saw her said she was in all white up to her eyes and then her she had on pink gloves. They said that she signed one of her songs while she sang and also had jokes all night (I could hear the jokes). The thing I really liked about Sia was the fact that whenever I saw her on the land she had a big smile on her face. She just oozed joy and she was so cool. Never took herself to seriously.

The night ended with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls. She was amazing as well. As I listened to all these ladies while I twisted my hair under the stars I felt really blessed. Really, really blessed. Another late night meal and I was off to bed. I had to get my beauty rest for the show ahead, but alas rest was not to be had.

Michfest Part 2 (Rolling In & Setting Up)

Day 2 (8/3) Monday
When we work up in the morning it was raining. I prayed that it wouldn’t be raining when we got to the land because I had no desire to put up my tent in the rain. Usually I wouldn’t even think about it because the festival provides tents for artists, but this year I decided to purchase my own tent because Bombshell was coming with me and I wanted us to have enough space. As an artist you are allowed on guest for free, but the festival will not provide a tent for them. With that in mind Bombshell and I would have to share space and the two-person tent the festival would have provided would not have been big enough for us. So I made the tent investment.

Now, back to the morning at the hotel. We all came down and ate the free breakfast. We got ourselves together and made one more civilization stop at Target just to make sure we had all that we needed. I had to purchase another set of sheets for the air mattress and a few other choice things. Then we left Target and headed for the festival.

The ride was a lot shorter than I thought it would be. Bombshell drove us onto the grounds and what a site to see. Since this was the first time we drove (you might remember my dreaded Chicago airport blogs of last fest) we had never seen the line to get in the festival. When driving in to Michfest, the last place to get phone signal is Hart, MI. When you get there the festival asked us to call the office so they can inform the gate of our arrival and we won’t have to wait in the festie line (that’s the line of folks who are regular festival goers not performers or workers).

There is a 3-mile stretch of road that leads to the gate. We turned off a paved road to this dirt road and let me tell you there were almost three miles of cars waiting for the gate to open. It was amazing. People were just posted up by their cars, meeting and greeting each other, playing instruments and eating. Basically just chillin’. It was just incredible. They had either been there for a while or knew they would be, but everyone was cool. I saw a cool lady in pink who would later turn out to be my girl Christine Love and then another woman in a full on Wonder Woman costume. I really need one of those in my life. We rode by all of these folks and right up to the gate where they waved us in and we parked. It was the VIP treatment, woods style.

We unpacked the van and repacked the vans that would take us to the artist/worker area where we would be camping. When we got there everything was taken off the vans for us. That’s one thing about this festival. You don’t really have to life a finger for your things. They have folks specifically designated to help the artists with their items. All of our things were unloaded off the vans and brought into an area called Central Heating. That is basically the artist nerve center/night show green room. In Central Heating they know when people are coming in and going out, how they are traveling and who they are traveling with. It’s a seamless operation. Honestly this ship is so tight it’s amazing. I’m so glad that this is one of my first festival experiences of this size so I know how things should really go and how you should be treated as an artist.

When we got all of our things out of the van we located out tent. Lee Free (Hanifah’s drummer) and Kelly dropped it off earlier. We put everything on a cart and two workers were assigned to help Bombshell and I put up our condo tent. I call it a condo tent because it was really big and it had a screen porch.

We wheeled our stuff down to an area that I later dubbed the suburbs because it was kind of far from everyone else’s tent area, but very cool still. It took us a bit to put the tent up, but we chose not to read the instructions because they were a bit like IKEA and any one who has bought something from IKEA knows what I’m talking about. After a bit of back and forth we got the thing up and it was great. We could fit our air mattresses and the rest of our things with no trouble. I hung a clothesline between two trees across the way so that I had a place to hang my towels and such. We were home; at least for the week. Tiffany and Lucianna were in our area, but they hadn’t arrived yet. Tiff would be there on Tuesday and Luci on Thursday.


[This is my condo tent in the wood. Tiffany next door]

Monday was pretty chill. After we got set up and ate I walked around the land a bit. All in all the land is 650 acres. I went and said hello to folks at the Womyn of Color Tent (Cassandra in particular) and just took it all in. Monday night was not so exciting, but it was one of the best nights of sleep I had. I was warm that night so no sleeping in layers. There would not be much more of that. The following nights were very cold.

One day down and many to go. Well at least that’s what it feels like when you get there, but then the days just fly. Sadly they just fly by.