Mountain View, Arkansas

Arkansas was mostly a pass through, but we did say for 3 nights. Thanks to one of those “What’s Happening” brochures in the Welcome Center we did discover a sightseeing event going on while we were in the area. This happened to be the 45th Annual Arkansas Folk Festival.

The festival was in Mountain View, a little town in North central Arkansas. We drove the 70 miles from where we were staying over a classic Arkansas mountain rode. Really winding and narrow, with logging trucks posted as obstacles along its length. But the drive was scenic.

Mountain View boasts that it is the World’s center for folk music. They are home to Ozark Folk Center State Park with very nice living displays of mountain crafts. The park also regularly hosts folk music classes which draw people from all over the world (so says their brochure). Here’s a picture of pickers at the park.

The main festivities were advertised as being held around the town’s court house. So off to the court house it was, where we found that in fact the festivities covered the entire town. There were vendor booths everywhere. But the music was concentrated within a block of the court house. Here there’s music and dancers on a stage in front of the court house.

Across the street was Aunt Minnie’s Pickin’ Porch.









And kitty corner from the court house was a park just stuffed with small groups of players and their groupies. You could stand in the middle of the park and hear a dozen different groups all playing at the same time. This was not as horrendous as it sounds, since no one use electronic amplification for their instruments and generally folk music is not played loud.

Here’s a shot of one of those groups playing the in the park. Can you tell what the guy in the in the white t-shirt in the foreground does for a living? My guess is that he is a plumber (judging by the exposed butt-crack).