Ultimately, the thing we love about going to festivals together is the experience of being with so many people. As my friend Jenny says, "You have to believe that there's something wonderful that you will see, hear, experience—not in spite of—but because there are so many people." When FreshGrass got dark, the family next to ours pulled out glow sticks to share. We enjoyed the hayride at the Hawthorne Valley Fall Festival because we were sitting across from smiling strangers. At the Winter Hoot, a small festival in a compact space that's more like a sprawling party, we let the kids travel in a pack, and coordinated watching the gaggle with the other adults we knew or met there.
When the Summer Hoot family next to ours pulled out inflatable beach balls (brilliant because they can be easily stored), we joined in the game and made festival friends. We had first walked around the Ashokan Center, exploring the little village vendor area, making a mental note of our food options, blacksmithing demo times, and sweet treats that we'd mete out at various junctures throughout the day to keep the kids reaching. We pointed out landmarks so they could feel oriented and always find us if we got separated. Then we settled into a spot on the hill, where we could see the two stages, as well as the kids' tent at the top, full of activities and volunteers. It was the perfect perch, where the kids could ebb and flow between watching the festival from afar or rumbling into the crowd to get in on the action, as the mood struck over the hours we spent there.
When we left FreshGrass for the last time, Iggy in arms and the girls in tow, I spied a little one just entering, wearing a glow-in-the-dark skeleton costume. Aha!
The Magical, Musical Night
Something beautiful happened when the singer Elizabeth Mitchell was organizing the kids' tent at the Newport Folk Festival in 2013. Musicians who were playing that weekend did half-hour sets in the tent while the main stage was being reset for the next band. It wasn't especially advertised, just a mention in the info section of the website, with more on hand at the actual festival. But for Hurley resident Ruthy Ungar of the band, Mike + Ruthy, the kids' tent was where it was at. "It ended up being these really intimate sets," Ungar smiles, remembering its mellow vibe. "You could hang out in that one spot for the whole weekend and continually see bands."
When Ungar and Merenda were on tour a decade ago with The Mammals, she'd marveled at the huge teen scene at the roots festivals in Michigan. "They weren't coming because so-and-so had a hit song," Ungar says. "They came because they'd been coming since they were five, and they wanted to see their festival friends." It inspired them to organize the Winter and Summer Hoots at the Ashokan Center in February and August.
There's a campsite at the Ashokan Center that's dedicated to burying music deep into kids' cells. Originally called the Noisy Campground, the name was changed when a blogger suggested a more apt name: The Magical, Musical, All-Night Campground. That's often a major choice for Ungar's family: camp or hotel? It can be helpful to have your own space at night, but the idea of a festival is to become immersed in the world that's created there. "Sometimes camping is better than you thought it would be," Ungar muses. "You want kids falling asleep to live music played by their neighbor. That's something everyone should do."
Having grown up going to lots of festivals with her folk musician parents, Lyn Hardy and Jay Ungar, and stepmom, Molly Mason, Ungar credits those early experiences with her love of music. She didn't even want to play the fiddle until she was in her 20s. "But then it was all there," she says. "It's different when your whole family does something together. You just kind of absorb it." At Newport, Ungar strapped her toddler, Opal, to her back while playing on stage with husband Mike Merenda. Their son, Willy, played banjo, and with his suit and bowler hat, he quickly became a festival celebrity. "There were core moments where he was a kid, though." Ungar recalls how he'd also ask to go home. "It's the gamut of total involvement and having the best time, and then the pit of despair. But that's a five-year-old at home, too. You have to ride that wave with them."
