Weekend after Labor Day weekend, and it has, and I guess it always will be. It’s only a two-day event, it’s Saturday and Sunday, like I said, the weekend after Labor Day, and it’s become a monster of an arts festival. It’s won awards for art festivals all over the Northeast, which is amazing, Again, you’re dealing and competing with places like New York City and Boston, and we are right up there now. It takes place in both the east side and west side parks, they close the side roads, they have food trucks and things. But it’s a very tough show, if you’re an artist, you have to apply, and it’s a tough show to get in, your stuff has to be first-rate, not good, first-rate to get into this show. Every kind of art you can imagine, there’s over 100 artisans there, they all have white tents, they fill both parks.
And the estimates are usually for the two days, we get between 10 and 12 thousand , and they come from all over, including the artists, they’ve come from all over. I’ve met people there from different countries, it’s incredible. They’ve always had music, again they started using the gazebo once it was built, but now we have three stages. One is the courthouse stage, which is, this is my seventh year playing that, and then we have a children’s stage by the old school, which is now the arts council, and then of course, we have the main stage, which is the gazebo in the east side park. And we bring in bands. the whole event is free. And it’s an incredible… Incredible art, incredible music, the food is great, it’s not even the typical food trucks, you can go there and get Thai food, you can get German food, so it’s really cool.
It’s run very, very well, they have a commission, a committee, and it’s just run really well. And I believe this is the 32nd as well, and we also lost one of these shows for COVID as well. So, it’s one of the great events in Chenango County, once you come to that, it’s like the Blues Fest, you’ll be hooked, you’ll want to come, just to walk through and see all the art. When I first heard of it, which was in the late 90s, I guess, I used to go just to walk through. I just thought it was an amazing event, and eventually, as they found out about me being a musician, and they asked me to start playing on, as I say, this is my seventh year now, playing the festival. Yeah, it’s a wonderful, wonderful event, I recommend anyone interested in any kind of art, or just music, you should come by and see it.
Once you see it, you’ll be amazed. I had family come up some years ago, and they were totally knocked out, they thought, oh, a little arts festival like they have on Long Island, that’s not what this is. 10 to 12,000 people in two days, that’s how popular this is. And you should come. Yeah, yeah, everything, from glassblowers, to a lot of painters, to potterers, guys that do wood carvings, they do some, there’s a guy that sits up on one of the corners with the chainsaw doing the bears and that kind of thing. But then you have wood carvers that make the most extravagant little items, handmade… Yeah, everything’s handmade. But you can get all kinds of art there, any kind of art you can imagine that people create, it’s there. There’s a huge diversity, so…
