Clifftop '07, Part 1

“Early Monday morning on that east bound train
Goin’ where John Henry fell dead
Folks goin’ where John Henry fell dead.”
Dave Macon

Clifftop, West Virginia is about 20 miles as the crow flies from where John Henry fell dead, more like 40 miles as the flatlander drives. After 10 years of finding reasons not to go there, I found none and went this year. Good decision.

I left early Monday and made a couple of business stops along the way, finally got to Clifftop Tuesday afternoon. We drove the back roads from Charleston just to look at stuff. Lots of stuff to look at, mostly rocks and trees in a vertical configuration. A lot of the back roads in that area consist of a single paved lane down the center and a gravel shoulder on each side that is wide enough (sometimes) to allow 2 cars to meet. Since visibility is often limited to a hundred feet or so, it makes for a lot of quick darting to the side. The folks over there also have a tendency to build houses and such within 3 feet of the road. This adds even more interest to the required darting. Flat ground is at a premium and they don’t waste any of it.

I went to Clifftop to dance, starting with a workshop Wednesday morning. Charlie Burton was the lead instructor and he is a great old time dancer. There were a lot of others who came by for one or two days to demonstrate steps and ideas, including Ira Bernstein, Mike Seeger, Phil Jamison, and 6 or 8 other outstanding dancers some of whom I had heard of and some that I had not. The workshops averaged 2 hours per day for four days, and that’s plenty when the temperature is close to 90 with a fair amount of humidity. Dry shirts became a premium commodity in short order.

In addition to the workshops, there were dancing jams. The wooden porch of the main camp lodge was a prime location and featured some long sessions with 5 or 6 musicians and a rotating group of dancers. 3 or 4 dancers at a time would go on the porch and dance until they had enough. Somebody else would then step up and take a turn. There were also a couple of other jamming groups that had plywood dancing boards set up in their camps and there was seldom a shortage of participants.

Dancing is a totally different thing than playing or singing at a festival. I didn’t find a single individual that I know the whole weekend. In that situation, it would have been very hard to do much playing or singing, as its very hard among strangers to find people who want to play with you, play the material you want to play, and do it at a skill level that will make it enjoyable for all concerned. Not so with dancing. If you can keep the rhythm, match the tempo, and do a few interesting steps, you will be welcome to dance anywhere. At least that was true at Clifftop.

I will have to say that the music was wonderful all over the campground. This is truly Mecca for oldtime, the place was crawling with fiddlers and banjo players. I did play a bit, particularly with a guy that I met who was from Wichita and relatively new to oldtime. In all, I met three people from Kansas and one from Missouri. Also a couple from Arkansas if that counts.

This is a contest and jam festival. Banjo and fiddle on Thursday, progressive old time bands (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean) on Friday, dancers and real deal oldtime bands on Saturday. Preliminaries in the afternoon, finals in the evening. The only bands that played were the ones for the dances and the two winners from last year’s contests. Square dances every night and a few workshops and showcases by individual performers.

A lot of people and bands enter the contests. There is a fair range of ability levels, not just hotshots. There seems to be a very relaxed atmosphere about the whole thing, not the gunslinger mentality that you tend to see at the Winfield contests for example. I decided to do the flatfoot contest even though I knew that I wasn’t going to do any serious damage. They had two age groups for kids 15 or so total entries, adults which probably had 40 contestants, and over 60 with about 12 people.

The dance judges held a special workshop to explain the rules, which was pretty cool. Not too complicated:
1. Dance in time with the music. No brainer.
2. Keep your feet close to the floor. Jumping and kicking are OK with clogging, but flatfooting is just what the name implies.
3. Move around and do a variety of steps.
4. Look at the audience and act like you’re enjoying the whole thing.

I of course was 60 on the day of the contest so was entered with the old folks. This somehow seemed like cheating. I understand that dancing is a physical activity and that physical capacity diminishes with age. When I used to run distance races I always welcomed the turn of a 5-year age span in order to move into a theoretically slower group of competitors. Still, we all ran the same race and I had the opportunity to beat anyone out there regardless of age. This was going to be a separate contest, sort of like being confined to a dancing ghetto of the lame and halt. All this went through my mind in spite of the fact that I knew I would not be able to win any division of this contest.

Once I resigned myself to the fact that it was too late to lie about my age, I began to assess my chances. I had seen one old guy that I had no chance against, he was one of the best dancers at the festival. I didn’t really see any other folks in that age range that were impressive in a contest sense. My biggest weakness was lack of experience and a limited repertoire of steps. My greatest asset was that judges often screw up the results of contests and I might get a better score than I deserved.

I showed up backstage at the appointed time. The younger contestants were first, so I had time to evaluate the situation. Total dancing time was no more than 45 seconds. The band played the same song for everybody, 1 measure of potatoes, two A parts, two B parts, and a shave and haircut ending. Tempo was fast, not an all out breakdown, but faster than a normal dance speed. The judges said that you could ask for a slower tempo if you wanted, but nobody was going to do that. You might as well wear a shirt with “I am a wuss” written on it. 3 judges sat on the stage right beside the dance surface, which was 8 feet square.

Once I decide to do something like this, I am competitive enough to want to maximize my chances. Thus, I sought out a place out of sight, but where I could hear the contest band and began to try to work out something that I could do. It’s good that I did. The tempo was fast enough that there was no time to think after starting, and the first dozen times through I made a mess of it. After 15 or 20 repetitions, I had a sequence of steps that might work. I went back to the stage, waited my turn, and did it with reasonable success.

I heaved a sigh of relief and sat down in the audience to await results. About 5 minutes after the contest, the announcer called for Dale Frazier and somebody else to come back stage to do another dance to break a tie. Somewhat amazed, I want there and found that I was tied for third with a little old lady who wore tap shoes and danced the Charleston. This further puzzled and confused me as I couldn’t figure out what the Charleston had to do with flatfooting. I was also frantically trying to decide what to dance, as I didn’t want to do the same sequence as before, although in retrospect that is exactly what I should have done. Who was going to remember? To make short work of this story, I never did figure out what to do and mostly did a two step shuffle in one place and finished fourth, out of the money and glory.

By now I was physically and mentally exhausted, so watched part of the band finals and went to bed. Got up Sunday and drove about 950 miles to get home and that is that.

Well, not quite. I made some side trips that will rate a short addendum, but not right now.