With the wrap of the Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival for another year comes a little sadness on my part. I say that because I spend a whole year looking forward to the festival and in a few short days it’s all done. That’s just how life goes, but that doesn’t mean those few days weren’t awesome.
In the previous “#MyHarvest” blogs I laid out my evening’s experience from the day before but today things are going to be a little different. Of course I spent the entire weekend hopping from tent to tent to catch all of the great artists as shown in the pictures to the right, but I also noticed a few other things worthy of mentioning as well.
This year’s Harvest was one of the best I’ve ever seen in terms of talent. There were plenty of bands I had heard of that played during the festival but also many that I wasn’t familiar with. A perfect example is “The Record Company” who blew me away on Friday night during their set at the Mojo tent; their performance made me an instant fan. Also blowing me away were Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires, who somehow managed to harness all things funk and soul into about 90 minutes of pure awesome. The list of unbelievable sets could go on and on because each one of the bands had their own way of making their part of the night special. It just goes to show you that our little slice of paradise knows how to put on a world class festival, if we didn’t then we wouldn’t have the phenomenal acts that the Harvest brings in each year.
I wanted to take a second to thank the festival organizers for all of their hard work year round to bring us the Harvest we have come to love. I also want to thank the volunteers for all of their efforts in making the festival roll smoothly. I can’t tell you the number of people I spoke with over the weekend (from town and out of town) that mentioned how amazing it was that something this big ran seamlessly. That said, obviously there were problems that came up from time to time but they never bled through to the crowd who wanted nothing more than to enjoy themselves. Without all of the tireless effort put forth by everyone wearing a Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival logo the event could have been a disaster.
I said earlier that this blog would be different, and here’s why; I would like you to take a second and reflect on your Harvest experience this year if you were lucky enough to have been there. Once you have finished reflecting take a second and write down all of the good things you have memories of and send them to the festival crew, they work so hard and don’t ask for a thing in return so this can be our way of saying thanks! I hope they read this blog and feel the pride that each and every one of them should for making Harvest 2012 one of the best since the festival began!

Keep it classy,

TKG
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