Saadi Halil perfoms Louisiana folk song "Iko Iko" Saturday at the DIO Festival. Photo by Jacob Pierce.
“It’s great, now that it’s in full-swing,” Tony Mills of the band Big Baby Guru says Saturday afternoon, gripping a red Solo cup of lager. “We’re on a fast learning curve.”
“Yeah, no major slip-ups, right?” says his bassist Tyden Binstead.
“Yeah. Well, except for this guy,” Mills says, pointing to a friend who has his arm in a sling made out of a t-shirt.
“It was just dark, and there was a little slope,” Corbin Schuppert says of the drunken escapades at night one of the Do-It-Ourselves Festival in Boulder Creek.
This is how great music festivals start out—not simply with a few drinks, but with a good atmosphere.
Last weekend, 500 music lovers got to experience a ridiculously underpriced, three-day hoedown, complete with onsite camping and bring-your-own-instrument jam sessions at every turn.
The first ever DIO Fest, which was thrown together in a few months, represented the best in the area’s acoustic sounds. Emerging folk singer Kendra McKinley drew a huge crowd Saturday night. The North Pacific String Band, mainstays of the local fingerpicking scene performed, as did On the Spot Trio and Dan P. and the Bricks.
“I know the guys who put this on,” says Saadi Halil, who performed in the amphitheater Saturday afternoon. “They’ve wanted to do this for a while, but it was only three months ago they started putting it together. I told them, a lot goes into a festival, but I’m blown away. Everyone’s very respectful and happy to be here.”
Music festivals are known to evolve quickly, whether it’s Coachella, Outside Lands, Sasquatch or Strawberry. They usually become more expensive and less homey. DIO Fest planners aren’t worrying about that at this point, of course—they’re not even sure when the festival will happen again, but are thinking about another one in the fall, and they might aim for a twice-annual schedule.
