Talent Search at the Subdued Stringband Jamboree

Photo credit: My Dad

Three years ago I awoke with the sense that I had no talents of any sort. I had given up the violin and never bothered to pick up another instrument in its place, it had been years since I laced up my pointe shoes, and besides finding myself in a half-marathon maybe once a year I had never considered myself athletic. It didn’t depress me, I didn’t feel that my life had less worth than that of a “talented individual” I just woke on this morning thinking “alright, what could you learn to do this weekend?” I called my Dad, a person who runs with a talented posse, and he told me he was heading to the annual Subdued String Band Jamboree, one of about twenty outdoor music festivals my Dad attends each year. I dressed in my favorite hippie ensemble, one of my best talents, and headed to the Demming logging grounds in search of a long lost, or perhaps new talent and some much needed inspiration.

A lot happened that weekend at the jamboree, over bottles of wine with my Dad and a constant orchestra of highly talented musicians and artists. Sunday morning I dragged my untalented and alcohol sloshing wellies out of my tent. “Damn! No talents!” There were some fiddlers and a base player still up from the night before, playing a sad waltz on the main stage, and that’s when I saw my golden opportunity. In a mud puddle lay my talent ticket: a homemade hula hoop just waiting to be used. I had never learned to hula, in fact I always avoided situations where people were using them out of shame. Enough was enough, I would learn to master this ring and I would be known throughout the Pacific Northwest as a hula hooping Goddess!

Well that didn’t happen, but I did learn to hula hoop that morning and I did discover a world of talent brought together at this incredibly inspiring festival. I was able to re-visit the String Band Jamboree this past Summer, now in its 11^th season, and felt the same inspired desire to seek talent and support talent that I did my first visit three years prior. This year the festival managed to pack in nearly forty acts not to mention all of the talented shenanigans taking place in between shows.

I love this festival for its homegrown roots. Created in the ultra-talented mind of Robert Sarazin Blake, the jamboree marks the start of a new year for Bellinghamster patrons and musicians. Each year resident and foreign bands are brought together, in this green venue to impress listeners with a year’s worth of newly acquired talents and to glean from the talents of an exuberant crowd.

For me, these trips home, in between travels, provide the fuel I require to embark on a new adventure. I need to connect with my community and remember that people are creating and sparking inspiration and talent around the world. Summer marks a sort of advent within me, where I must gather as much light as I can to carry me through those occasional, sometimes frequent dark days of travel. I plan to make the Stringband Jamboree and my quest for new talents a yearly tradition weather I am on the road or safe and sound in my favorite place in the world, Bellingham.

Hope to see you on the dance floor next Summer, I’ll be the one with the hula hoop.