Music has the right to children
wordplay: Orangepeelmoses.com
pictured: Super 400
School music programs are disappearing at an alarming rate. This fact hasn’t escaped Chris Davis. Although he’s got a “real job” hawking Alpine Insurance to Vail Valley residents, insuring that his little girl receives a decent music education is priority numero uno. Since Eagle County Elementary School budget cuts forced them to drop the ball and axe the majority of music and art classes (mostly motivated by the Bush-authorized No Child Left Behind Act), Davis believes it’s on his shoulders to make it happen. That’s why he conceived the aptly named Realm of Caring, a non-profit intended to facilitate just that. “Music has the right to children,” a Boards of Canada album alias, is its mission statement.
“I have a four year-old daughter in the Eagle County Public School system. Every single year, there have been budget cuts. They’ve lost music and art teachers and more money has gone to science and sports and other subjects. Music and art has dwindled. We started seeing after school programs cropping up, but they’re expensive. I thought it was unfortunate that everybody couldn’t attend these after school programs. I founded The Realm of Caring for my daughter’s sake, knowing that she’d have to attend these, but also for some of the kids that wouldn’t be able to afford the opportunity to experience music and art at that age, because that’s when you find out if you have a natural talent for it.”
Music education should be an inalienable right. The day music programs became expendable was a very sad day indeed. There are seven ways to communicate information, words and numbers (English and Math) are only two of them. The other five are movement, sounds, images, objects, and spaces, all of which are provided through the arts. Few outside the Bush administration will argue that elementary music education isn’t a worthwhile cause. Cash was needed to support the cause, though. And what better way to raise funds for music ed than with a music festival? Enter: The Realm Fest.
“My buddy knew these friends that had a farm, and we’d go up there, start a bonfire and camp. It started off like that, hooting and hollering and somebody with a guitar. It went from that to, ‘Hey, let’s do some barbeque, more guitar, more music, more people started coming. ‘Hey, let’s hire a local band, get a couple kegs and charge a couple bucks.’ It just built up from there. The mom that owns the farm has boys that are master carpenters--framers--and they said, ‘We can build a stage.’ So they built a stage for the bands and the whole thing just got larger and larger. Then I stepped in with the Realm of Caring and musical production and turned it into a more professional festival.”
Serenading Mother Nature is never a bad idea. Apparently, this particular patch is well-deserving, too.
“It’s just absolutely spectacular. Brian Neubauer (Neu Waves), a buddy of mine, he’s probably one of the top sound engineers in the state of Colorado. He’s doing Tom Petty, Red Rocks, Mile High Fest, you name it. He came in and designed this amphitheatre and the backdrop of it is these red rocks. It’s almost like a mini-Red Rocks. There’s also rolling fields and Elk Creek, all on this 230-acre centennial farm.”
The fest has been a fairly modest affair to date, but that’s about to change. The addition of Realm partner Adam Anderson (Response Records) and heavyweight talent buyer Diane Moudy (Resort Events) have helped transform the festival’s long term dreams into an immediate reality. Between them, they’ve already managed to manifest a newsworthy lineup including Rose Hill Drive, JJ Grey and Mofro, Outformation, Great American Taxi, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Banyan, DJ Logic, Super 400, Polytoxic, Stanky Pockets, Little Hercules, Speakeasy, Deep Shag, Midnight Ultra, Twitch Reunion, and Thunk, along with special guests Colonel Bruce Hampton (ARU, Code Talkers), Oteil Burbridge (Allman Bros.), Bill Kruetzmann (Grateful Dead) and Bill McKay (Leftover Salmon).
“Two years ago, I got an opportunity to befriend Billy Kruetzmann and he’s kind of culminating Oteil [Allman Bros.] and Colonel Bruce [ARU]. He took a sabbatical for about five years and moved to Kauai to fish and surf, because he had a pretty long haul with The Dead. It’s good to see him back in action, I think something magical is gonna come out of that set. I’ve never seen Banyan before either; I’ve heard they’re off the hook. Great American Taxi, my old Leftover friends, and the band I used to manage--Little Hercules--that I took to Hawaii to play with Billy. They’re gonna put on a smoking set too. JJ Grey from Mofro, he’s gonna bring the old dirty Southern swamp water rock. We got a mix, there’s no one genre that will dominate. There’s gonna be something for everybody.”
August 8th-10th @ Klein Ranch (Newcastle, CO)
TheRealmOfMusic.com