Railroad Earth’s Tim Carbone & Andrew Altman Share 2016 Hangtown Festival Diaries

Words by: Tim Carbone & Andrew Altman

Last weekend the sixth annual Hangtown Music Festival (formerly known as Hangtown Halloween Ball) was held at El Dorado County Fairgrounds in Placerville, California. Two of the members of hosts Railroad Earth, fiddler Tim Carbone and bassist Andrew Altman, kept daily diaries of their experiences. Read Tim’s journal from Hangtown followed by Andrew’s below.

Tim Carbone

Hangtown is something I look forward to every year. It’s my favorite festival and not just because Railroad Earth has hosted it from the beginning. There’s something truly unique about it. The vibe, the weather, the music … it feels like the family’s getting back together again and we all feel so blessed to be sharing it with each other.

Thursday

It’s show day for Railroad Earth. We’ll be doing a long set in the late night hall but before I even go into the hall I decide to take a stroll around the grounds and absorb some of the vibe as the festivities get started. Evening’s coming and the heat of the day is riding off into the sunset. I love the weather in the foothills of the Sierra’s at this time of year. The heat and dryness of the day fills the air with the scent of pine and eucalyptus. When the sun sets and the chill of the evening comes lurking around at the edge of nightfall, there’s a freshness to the world. Hangtown has begun!

The Dead Winter Carpenters opened the evening’s festivities and had the audience from the beginning. Like Railroad Earth, they’re a song-based band swimming in the jam band stream but when they jam, they jam hard! Jenny Charles is their fine fiddler who is so pregnant it looks as if she may give birth any day. It certainly didn’t stop her from playing her heart out. Maybe there’ll soon be a new fiddler in the world! Our costumes for the evening were going to be a challenge to wear but they were otherworldly spooky. I took a shot of our drummer Carey [Harmon] and posted it on Instagram and asked people to guess who it was. No one did! He looked like something out of a Clive Barker novel. The crowd was dancing and singing along from note one. They were stoked to get the party started! We had Jenny up to do some double fiddle work on “Reuben’s Train.” It was quite a duel and we both won! The audience loved it too! We ended the evening with “Peggy-O,” a crowd favorite. I stuck around for Pimps Of Joytime and was glad I did. They killed it! I’ve done some shows with one of their singers, Kim Dawson, when we were both part of Everyone Orchestra. Coming from East Coast time caught up to me and I called it a night after the Pimps set.

Friday

I skipped the hotel breakfast and grabbed a breakfast burrito from vending when I got on site. It was as big as my forearm! It’s great to walk around that early at the festival and see the folks just getting their days started and the smattering of the walking wounded who haven’t quite made it to bed yet. I had plans to sit-in with the Kate Gaffney Band but that couldn’t happen as Railroad Earth had arranged to rehearse just as they were kicking off. I did get to chat with them for a bit and heard a couple tunes before we got the practice started. Jeff Miller and Phil Ferlino are part of that band and we’re all members of The Contribution, a band that also features Keith Moseley from String Cheese Incident, Duane Trucks from Widespread Panic and Sheryl Renee from the Black Swan Singers. It was great to catch up with them! After the rehearsal I sat-in on my friends Horseshoes & Hand Grenades set at the Gallows Stage. I love these guys! Their positive attitude rubs off on you. They’re having a blast and so is the crowd. Playing with them is a workout! It’s like they’re from some alternate dimension where everything runs faster and you better keep up!

The first main stage act I saw on Friday was Nahko And Medicine For The People. They have a unique sound that combines flugel horn and violin, playing written parts and also soloing. Together they make a beautiful sound that’s fluid and dynamic. Nahko’s songs are uplifting. They’re a call to action to save our wounded planet and our wounded selves. After the set I got to fiddle-geek out with Tim Snider, Nakho’s fiddler and Joe Craven, Hangtown’s MC and resident costume guru. He also happens to be one of the greatest fiddlers out there and a sweet guy. We all went back to Joe’s dressing room and tried on some of his costumes. He has a trailer full! Next up was Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe. Karl is such a fabulous sax player. His tone is so muscular but he still plays with such amazing finesse. It’s easy to forget what a great singer he is though! This evening he’s playing Prince’s Dirty Mind with Angelo Moore from Fishbone handling the vocals. He nailed it and the arrangements were fantastic! The last time I saw Angelo was when Fishbone played Lollapalooza in 1993! He has lost nothing! He rocked the place, playing the crowd as well as he played saxophone! He was dressed to the nines in clothes from one of the vendors, James Freeborn! He designs and creates his own men’s fashions from cloth he brought back from India. I bought a suit coat from him! After a quick bite to eat I ran over and caught the last couple songs from TAUK over on the Gallows stage. Man those guys can play! Great guitar player! Then it was time for Medeski, Martin and … Kirk Joseph and Will Bernard. Unfortunately Chris Wood, the great bassist and third member of the trio, is recovering from intestinal surgery. I love Chris, such a sweet guy, and hope he’s on the mend. Kirk and Will were a great addition. Kirk is an iconoclast on the sousaphone. No one plays it like him and he’s even taken it to a whole other level since his days with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. The improvs were deep with equal parts funk and psychedelic.

Saturday

I slept in. It’s hard sometimes to sleep when you travel to the West Coast from the East. I was grateful to actually sleep until 9! I took a long walk in the warm California sunshine. There was a faint smell of smoke in the air and the strong scent of pine. I made it over to the festival site in time to play a few songs with the Kate Gaffney Band on the Baller Stage. The Baller stage is in a good position this year, set up in the far corner of the Eldorado stage field. It used to be out in the parking lot in front of the late night hall. People watching music on the main stage can now just turn and walk a couple hundred feet and the music continues. It was a blast playing with those guys. Kate’s got some great songs and the band sounds real tight! I had to run back to the hotel to run through some of the songs Railroad Earth would be playing that evening. As soon as that was done I headed back to the festival to play with The Wood Brothers. Oliver had reached out to me to see if I would play some tunes on their set. The Hangtown all-stars did the best we could to fill the shoes of Chris Wood, someone whose shoes can really not be fully filled. It was an honor and pleasure.

After that amazing experience I just wandered around for awhile, soaking in the festival that was in full swing. Kids blowing bubbles, moms chasing after them. Hoopers of all ages. I saw one little girl, a toddler, run up to another boy her age who was walking with his dad and take his hand, walking beside him. The little boy was startled but his dad said, “It’s O.K. son, she just wants to hold your hand,” and they walked off hand-in-hand. A great Hangtown moment! I walked over to the space that I would do my morning meditation workshop on Sunday. It happens in a sacred space that’s put together by a sweet human named Chad Sult. He makes a big mandala under a gazebo and a buddha shrine next to it under a round grape arbor. I chatted with Chad and talked about the workshop the following morning.

I headed back to the main stage to dig some Incidental Animals. I’ve played music with all of these folks and it’s always a pleasure. Jennifer Hartswick is a great trumpet player and the interplay between she, Kyle Hollingsworth and Dan Lebowitz was fantastic! Now it’s time to get made up for the evening’s show. Alyssa Trudel has been helping us get made up at Hangtown for years and this year she had us made up as werewolves. She and her helpers put the finishing touches on and we hit the stage for the first of two main stage appearances. We had Kyle up to play on “Hunting Song” and of course, he killed it! Carey sang a part of Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” that we sandwiched in “12 Wolves.” I love it when Carey sings lead. His voice is so unique and his vibrato is a signature. I say, more Carey! (He’s going to hate me for writing that). The crowd was so great … they are family to us. It was an amazing night but it wasn’t quite over for me. I went and sat-in on the last song of Horseshoes & Hand Grenades late night set. It was an epic marathon of a jam. Absolute fiddle mayhem ensued. Adam kept exhorting Collin and I to go on and on until the crowd sounded like a jet engine and my arm was about to fall off!

Sunday

It was an early start. My meditation workshop was at 10 a.m. Chad met me and he helped me place some Tibetan temple license around. I always feel a little weird about teaching a workshop on meditation. I’m only qualified in that I do meditate. People seem to get something out of it and the feedback is always positive. Once we settle in and actually meditate, all is well. There were about 25 early risers and this time all attendees were experienced meditators. I went through a brief explanation anyway and off we went. Afterwards I went to breakfast with some friends down in the cute little town of Placerville and was back in time to catch Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers. It was a perfect Sunday afternoon treat! I played some with The Infamous Stringdusters. Their fiddler Jeremy was home with his wife who was having a baby! Yet another fiddler born! It’s so great to play with those guys. They are all simply some of the best players in bluegrass and it’s a treat to pick with them. I like to say I’m not really a bluegrass fiddler, I just play one on TV. You’ve got to be on your game to hang with these boys!!

Since the theme for the night was Sky, we all got to be birds for our last performance of Hangtown, complete with wings. Some of the band members turned the wings pointed up and they looked like archangels! We had Andy Thorn up on “Elko.” You should have seen the look on his face when, right on cue, the crowd tossed playing cards in the air as Todd sang, “I need a card, hit me, but not too hard”. It was as if someone shot off a confetti cannon filled with cards! It was such a fun set! I played hard all weekend and had a ball! There was still one last rush to be had though. The Incidental Animals asked me to play a few tunes on their late night set so I made my way over in time to catch some of Twiddle’s opening set. Good stuff! I went out front for a bit and danced. Then I jumped up with the Incidentals. Every time I play with Dan Lebowitz the synergy is amazing. We seem sewn together at the brain. It was super fun to finish the festival playing with some wonderful musicians that I’m proud to call friends!

Hangtown Music Festival was a ball! It was beyond perfect for me. The weather, the people, the vibe … there’s nothing like it. We’re very lucky to be part of something so beautiful. Thanks Hangtown! I’m counting the days until the next one!

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Andrew Altman

Thursday

Landed on site late afternoon and walked around the grounds a bit to see everything coming together. There is only music in the hall on Thursday so it was fun to see the Halloween decorations coming up and the main stage being built early in the day. People were pitching tents and parking their RVs. The vibe of anticipation is so different than the walking dead Monday after any long festival weekend. We played a two hour set from 8-10 p.m. inside but before that The Dead Winter Carpenters took the stage dressed as the Ghostbusters. Jenni Charles is expecting a baby in the very near future and she took the stage dressed as the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man which was totally fitting and totally hilarious. The indoor shows at any fairgrounds can be a challenge sonically, but DWC sounded great and closed their set with the “Ghostbusters Theme” which the crowd really got into with a very loud response to the line of “Who you gonna call?” We took the stage shortly after them and had a bit of a funny situation with our costumes which consisted of masks and horns. Our LD and his Hush Hush Productions crew always do a good job getting the outfit ideas together for us but didn’t add up the need to sing, or play a saxophone in Andy’s case, through a mask. After an extended rendition of the Ernest Ranglin instrumental “Congo Man Chant” we went into “Monkey” and Todd figured he would try singing through the mask anyway. Well you could hardly hear him and was basically laughing between words much to the confusion of the audience, but he pulled the mask off after a minute and everyone went nuts which was pretty funny. It was a fun night to kick off the weekend but east coast jetlag was setting in so most of us called it a night before Pimps Of Joytime and TAUK took over the late night shift.

Friday

We arrived to the site early to have a bit of practice to work out some new things for the show Saturday. We usually take this day off every year so there is more room on the schedule to bring in another headliner. This also affords a chance to catch some other artists that we might normally miss. Kate Gaffney Band was getting ready to take the stage for the first set on the main stage when we showed up for practice and they were sounding great. Really tasty songs and she put together a band with some of the SF area’s finest players from bands like New Monsoon and others. After practice it was time to go back to the hotel for just a bit to get out and get some exercise in the perfect California sunshine, and then head back to the festival to hang and check out some other bands. First was Nahko And Medicine For The People. I hadn’t seen them before and I’m so used to bands where the lead singer is tied down to an instrument that it’s super fun to watch a band where there is one person liberated from this duty and just getting into it with the crowd. That being said, there is not just one, but a bunch of great singers in this band as evidenced by all the musicians taking turns at some point on either lead or harmonies. When that ended I shot over to catch the last few songs of TAUK who I also had never seen. The best way I could describe this brief encounter was completely unhinged (in a good way). These guys are all monster players and were pretty much letting everything out to finish the set strong. This isn’t just loose and gratuitous note pummeling though. They had some pretty complicated arrangements and I couldn’t sniff out even a hint of a fuck up.

Back over on the main stage Karl D. was getting ready to fire it up. I have seen Karl many times and he has played with RRE on occasion when we have crossed paths on different festivals. My favorite thing about all those meetings is when we come to him with our version of a groovin tune and he’s like “Nah man I want to play some bluegrass!” Got to love that coming from one of the funkiest sax players on the planet. His set lived up to his energy and sprint of collaboration. A big focus of the performance was a lengthy Prince tribute with Angelo Moore of Fishbone taking lead vocals. Another singer liberated from the duties of holding it down on an instrument and he was all over of the stage in full Prince (and Fishbone) mode. After that, it was with bittersweet anticipation that I was looking forward to John Medeski and Billy Martin. This night they would be doing something a little different in the absence of Chris Wood, one of my favorite bassists, who was at home recovering from surgery. It was still classic Medeski & Martin but with a unique twist provided by Kirk Jospeh on sousaphone (!) and Will Bernard on guitar. Kirk Joseph’s thing is really unique since he drops a mic inside the sousaphone and plays through some effects that give it just enough power to match an electric bass and just enough vibe to still be a sousaphone. As a musician, the most inspiring things are unique voices and everyone on the stage at that time falls firmly in that category. It was time for me to call it a night after that since Saturday called for even more rehearsal and us playing our own set to close the main stage.

Saturday

Saturday started similarly to how Friday ended in that Chris Wood’s absence had created another void in his band with his brother Oliver. I reached out to Oliver in case there was any way I could help and he sent me over a few tunes that I spent the morning getting together before RRE met up to practice a little more for the night’s set. I headed straight over the festival after that since The Wood Brothers were on at 4 p.m. Aside from Chris being a favorite of mine on the bass, The Wood Brothers are all equals when it comes to their music. Oliver has a such great voice and he has that personal, yet universal, touch to songwriting that doesn’t just come to anyone. Jano Rix plays drums, keys, melodica, sings, and does this really cool percussion thing with an instrument that I’m pretty sure he called a Shitar. Seriously that thing is sick. He’s holding a guitar but all you here is drums. It was an honor to play with them and here’s to a speedy recovery for Chris.

Later on in the evening someone came asking if Kyle Hollingsworth, SCI keyboard whiz, could borrow a Wah pedal for his Clavinet and as it turns out I am the only one in the band that has one. This was quite fortuitous because it reminded me what fun it was to have Kyle up on stage with us in RRE and it got the wheels turning in my brain about a possible collaboration later. I caught some of Incidental Animals which is most of ALO with Kyle on keys and Jen Hartswick. This was a supergroup thing but they definitely sounded like a band due to their choice of material. Great mix of tunes that really suited the sublime groove that the ALO guys are so adept at laying down. After their set we made plans with Kyle to have him join us and away we went. We elevated our costume game a bit for this night and got a werewolf vibe going with face paint, wolf heads, and everything. The set reflected as much with things like “Wolves” > “Dogs” > “Wolves” and “Hunting Song” which Kyle joined us on. We are so lucky to have so many talented musical friends join us on stage at different points throughout the year but it is always a treat to have Kyle up because, not only does he have great intuition, but there is so much room in our band sonically for a keyboard with all the string instruments that we have on stage. It was a fun set with Carey singing on the first bit of “Dogs” which we had never covered before and also a bust out of “Old Plank Road” which the band hasn’t played in about 10 years.

Sunday

This was a short and sweet day for me. I didn’t get to the grounds until late afternoon and caught The Infamous Stringdusters set. It was a bit of deja vu because it was just last Sunday when we were playing at Hillberry Festival in Arkansas which we also host and the Dusters came on just before us there to close that weekend as well. Another absence was being felt in that Jeremy Garrett, their fiddle man, was out, but it was all for the positive because he was welcoming a child into the world. Congrats to you Jeremy! They played a great set anyway with some help from our own Tim Carbone and Nicki Bluhm. We took the stage as the sun was setting in some pretty funky bird costumes as the theme for the night was something along the lines of “Sky.” It is always bittersweet closing out a long festival weekend, you feel like you are just getting reconnected with old friends and getting to know some new ones, but at the same time it’s always good to know you will be back home after a brief night’s rest and a flight back East.

The crowd wasn’t really showing any signs of weariness though and the set was a blast. There is a bit of a moment during our song “Elko” where Todd says “I need a card” and people have taken to throwing fistfuls of cards in the air. This night was one of the more generous offerings and I think the bird masks we were wearing must have doubled as safety equipment. We had some help from Andy Hall of from the Stringdusters on a couple tunes and Chris Pandolfi also came up to help us end the night with “Long Way To Go.”

The Hangtown Ball has had a good run so far with this being it’s sixth year and it wouldn’t happen without a great team of people at High Sierra, Pet Projekt, and all the production and management folks that work year round to bring this all together for a just a few short days in Placerville. Also have to send a shout out to all our musical friends who make the lineup so interesting and the RRE production crew for going the extra mile with costumes and other added Halloween vibes for this weekend. We can’t wait to see what the future holds!