If in doubt, just keep pouring
The day before the 30th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Jumpin’ Jan, the town’s local, legendary radio personality, highlights the key points of a page-long list of rules. We are the select few who have decided to forgo the typical music festival wristband-and-tent-city experience in the name of volunteering at the KOTO Beer Booth. We page through the document. Most of the rules are straightforward, expected. Show up. Do so on time. Don’t give away beer. These make sense.
The next item is a bit more delicate. No drinking in the tent. Really? I look over at an equally disappointed friend/volunteer. Then comes the shocker. No tripping in the beer tent. This should be an interesting weekend.
I wouldn’t be telling you anything new if I said Telluride Bluegrass is the granddaddy of Colorado’s annual banjo-and-fiddle parties. Each June, thousands pack the town’s main park for four days to listen to music and stare at the majestic 12,000-foot-plus peaks that surround the stage. The legends always show: Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien.
The typical way to attend the shindig includes staking out a spot, sitting on a blanket or in a camp chair by day, drinking beers, trying to stay shaded from the sun and jamming out to everything from downhome bluegrass to eclectic pop. At night, you get tossed around in a crowd of thousands dancing with the rhythm of a tortoise.
Anyone who has made the pilgrimage to this gem of the southwest resort town knows that Bluegrass is one helluva party. Tent cities pop up nearby, providing some of the most elaborate, 24/7 tailgate parties imaginable. Complete strangers will invite you into their camp to try their Bloody Mary bar, pop open a PBR or partake in whatever else they happen to be passing around.
I have attended Bluegrass the traditional way many times and spent long afternoon hours baking in the Town Park sun. It is getting old. So this time around, I thought I’d give the Beer Booth—which is a massive fundraiser in support of KOTO, one of the last great community radio stations remaining in Colorado—a chance.
Serving as a Beer-Booth volunteer is a sort of rite of passage for Telluride locals, but the honor is by no means limited to residents. Many out-of-towners who return year after year for Bluegrass have discovered this tiny little secret. To be a volunteer, all you have to do is sign up (the earlier the better, spaces fill quickly) for three five-hour shifts to serve as the festival’s beer wenches. For all that hard work, KOTO buys your four-day festival pass (worth $175)—plus you pretty much don’t ever have to buy a beer.
I am assigned to the Thursday night, Saturday day and Sunday closing shifts. During the training meeting, we learn the basics of beer pouring from the kind folks over at New Belgium. It’s pretty darn simple: Fill up as many of the biodegradable plastic cups with as little foam as possible, collect some cash and hand out the proper change.
Over the course of three shifts, I spend an inordinate amount of time on my feet and learn the hard way that open-toe sandals are not a good idea (picture a day’s worth of beer foam caked on the toes). Still, these five-hour shifts hardly feel like work. Instead, it’s a few hours spent socializing and listening to music bellow off the canyon walls.
We pour a few beers for the public then one for ourselves. Wait, you’re thinking, they’re breaking that no drinking rule. Well, there’s a loophole. Because the rule forbids drinking under the beer tent, all we have to do is step out from under the tent and tip one back. Technically that’s not in the booth. Not that it matters. One of my shift managers actually yells at me for not drinking enough and tells me to have more fun.
As if I need the push. By the time Saturday rolls around, I am the life of the booth (in my eyes anyway), ringing the tip bell every few minutes (all tips go to the nonprofit radio station) and finding creative ways to double the donations—and expedite my beer buzz.
When a willing participant arrives, I offer a simple challenge: Chug a beer quicker than me and it’s on the house, but if the patron loses, the cost doubles. I’m not sure if there is a rule against this practice, but I’m just 23 and fresh out of four years of University of Colorado training. Needless to say, the donations double more often than not.
I spend hours off-shift being the typical Bluegrass festivarian (although I think I only pay full price for three or four beers the entire festival), meet countless new friends and find some truly unique places to pee all while the best bluegrass in Colorado plays on the main stage.
To be honest, it’s a minor miracle that I’m still standing by the time I finish my shift on Saturday. Better yet, I’m still making accurate change.
Fresh off the shift, I plow into the crowd, looking for friendly faces willing to share some of their prime space. It doesn’t take long before I’m groovin’ to Yonder Mountain String Band and Vince Gill with complete strangers and having the time of my life.
By the time the Sam Bush Band makes its way on stage to close out the festival on Sunday night, I’ve battled three epic hangovers, partied my way until 3 in the morning every night and developed a fan club. So what if it’s just one-member deep? She’s pretty darn cute. And—in the true spirit of the festival—she gives me her extra ticket to an after-hours concert at the historic Sheridan Opera House where we dance until well past last call.
This chance meeting sums up the types of people you run into at Bluegrass, whether you’re working the Booth or not. Everyone from Boulder yuppies to dred-sporting, patchouli-stinking hippies to middle-aged bluegrass aficionados comes here to shed off those labels and just be a part of the experience. All you have to do is follow the unwritten rules. •
Jacob Haskins is the editor of Kickstand, a magazine devoted to cruiser bikes that will hit newsstands this June.
Do It: You can volunteer to work the beer booth, too. Contact WKOTO, koto.org