Dollywood Report

Dollywood's Festival of Nations a Huge Success!

I just got back from a week-long excursion to the mountains of Tennessee as part of Jana Broder's DrumMagic team. Joining forces with Jana were myself, Pierre Greene, Kimberly Colbert, and Danny Mullikin. The gig was a week of drum circles at Dollywood, a country music theme park, as part of their month-long Festival of Nations theme. I drove from Raleigh all day Wednesday and was detoured from I-40 due to a rockslide closing the freeway; two states and six hours later I rolled into Pigeon Forge, TN.

We stayed at a local hotel during the trip. Dollywood provided bus service to the site every day. Our on-site hosts Tom and Marcia were simply golden - truly beautiful and giving people who took care of everything imaginable, including getting my taxes to the post office! They made the whole adventure easy-peasy. The park provided access to their host lounge for free lunch and dinner for all performers and cappuccino's all day long. We also got great discounts at really cool vendors all over the park and reciprocity at various shows in town for free admittance (not that we had the energy to do much once we left the park for the day).

At the park we shared a stage with the Caribbean Airlines Invaders steel drum band from Trinidad and Tobago by alternating sets with them. We would do late afternoons and the following morning and they would flip flop with us. We would configure the space with benches (unfortunately in one giant oval) under a huge outdoor pavilion. The other group left their pans set up on stage and we used the floor in front by re-arranging the seating and then loading them with 50 small djembes. We would do two or three half-hour sessions with a 30-60 minute break in between. If we did mornings, we then broke down and reconfigured for the other group, dragging all the drums to back-stage storage in the dressing rooms. If we did afternoons, we could leave the drums set up in the pavilion over night with no worries that things might walk off. That part was HUGELY cool!

Our drums came from Shorty Palmer's "Djembe Drums and Skins" (www.goatskins.com - my go-to guy for drum building supplies). Shorty and Sandy and their friend Tami manned a booth across the concourse from our theater and we frequently flocked there to jam and to socialize and to help sell drums and percussion. We had some great visits out to their home and got tours of Shorty's most-amazing shop! You've never seen so many treasures in one spot! I always learn tons from him about drum building whenever we get to chat.

Each day we did two to three drum circles for 50 people each session and literally THOUSANDS of passersby. Over the course of the six days that the group was "on-park", we drummed and danced with roughly 700 people in the circle. Jana led the circles using a wireless headset mic. Pierre helped in the circle by drumming along and offering encouragement. Danny held down the dununs. Kimberly and I meeted and greeted and danced in the circle with kids and adults alike.

We drummed with toddlers to seniors, hillbillies to hipsters, pros to "what is that thing?" novices. We met people who were local, from Bavaria, even missionaries from Africa. We made great friends with a lovely family from Kentucky; they sing acapella gospel with their two girls and were simply wonderful. We hung out with the eight other bands from Trinidad/Tobago, Nova Scotia, France, Zambia, Equador, Peru, China and elsewhere.

On our downtime, we got to roam the park, shop the vendors and hit the rides. Check out my Facebook page for a video of Pierre and I on the Tennessee Tornado roller coaster!

CLICK HERE for pics from the trip.  Be sure to check out galleries from the various days!  We had so much FUN!!!

My greatest learnings:

1 - If possible, always mic with a large group.
2 - Round is always better than amoeba shapes.
3 - Particularly in a festival setting, be prepared to roll with it and go with the flow.
4 - In a festival setting, ALWAYS have helpers!

As always, I had a blast and am truly impressed with Jana's professionalism and power to work a group. She's hugely charismatic, a first-rate business woman, and a truly talented facilitator. Learn more about her work at www.corporatedrummagic.com

With love and rhythm and many thanks to my friend and mentor Jana Broder....