I feel like I went to the Blue Ridge Rock Festival. Oh, I didn’t have to wait in long lines, sit in the rain or endure 14 straight hours of loud hard rock music. If you manage a bed & breakfast, you don’t have to go anywhere: it all comes to you.
For over six months we had been fully booked for the big weekend Sept. 7-11, with 40,000 fans expected. In fact, we opened a new handicapped-accessible suite in a separate building just as the festival opened.
Guests told me stories about their experiences, both good and bad. The stage and venue were well-managed. There were no traffic problems—police must have done a great job. People were friendly. If a child was lost or somebody was hurt, they would just stop the show until it was resolved.
But the lines to get a bus from the parking lots ranged from 1 1/2 to 3 hours. People who camped avoided this but still had to wait to get in the venue. Garbage cans and toilet paper were scarce.
Music, though, was described as fabulous. There were so many bands. Melissa Griegel posted multiple videos of Alice Cooper, the famed rocker from eons ago, who is still running around on stage at age 74. I am not a heavy metal fan, but I did enjoy his act. I do remember his “School’s Out for Summer.”
Everyone seemed to love “Apocalyptica, a Finnish band of cellos playing heavy metal music. Now that must be a first! Also popular: Day Seekers, which played its music acoustically when the power went out briefly. Among other favorites: Black Veil Brides, Motionless in White and Memphis May Fire.
One of my favorite guests was 26-year-old Izabela Hart of Salem, VA., who is blind and in a wheelchair. She has been going to rock festivals since she was 10, often accompanied by her mother and grandmother. The family credits Jonathan Slye and others with the festival for getting people with disabilities to the site as smoothly as possible.
Hart is quite well known on the music circuit, and bands often send her music to evaluate before they perform it. At one concert, a musician singled her out and the audience sang Happy Birthday to her. “So many people wanted to greet her, it took us 45 minutes to get to our van,” said her grandmother, Sherry Smith.
Over all, everyone thought the concert was a lot better handled than the tumultuous one last year in Pittsylvania County. Still, the long waits for shuttle buses and at the venue entrance need to be resolved.
Photo Izabela Hart with Randy Gluck.
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