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New music and old favorites will be at Michigan festival

by Jennifer Earle

It's time again to daydream about warm summer fields filled with women the 24th annual Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is just around the corner. The dates for this year's festival are August 10-15. Try to remember where the tent is packed away and mark that late summer vacation down on the office calendar.

A number of very familiar faces will show up on the stages this year, plus a few new welcome visages. Two of the original perpetrators of "womyn's music" (love it or hate it) return to the land. Cris Willamson and Tret Fure will bring old favorites as well as music from their new album Radio Quiet to the main stage. Williamson made her Michigan debut way back in 1982, nearly twenty years ago.

Atlanta native Michelle Malone (and friend of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, a.k.a. the Indigo Girls) returns to the wooded get-away jumping this year from the day stage to the night stage, along with folk mistress and festival veteran Dar Williams and the ever irreverent Tribe 8. And that's just Thursday night.

Get up late the next day and groove to Jennifer Kimball, the Murmurs and Stefone and the Rites of Passage on the day stage. Kimball is most wellknown for being one-half of the famous folk group The Story. She is currently traveling on her own now with a great new album out, Veering From the Wave. If you love heartfelt quirkiness, this girl's for you.

Speaking of quirky, girl-kissing pop rocker Jill Sobule hits the day stage one day later.

Perennial festie-goers will notice that the traditional Sunday comedienne concert has been split up. Marga Gomez and Suzanne Westenhoefer make appearances on the night stage Friday and Saturday evenings respectively.

"For years and years we've had the comedy on Sunday afternoon," says Delgado. "Now we are doing the battle of the bands on Sunday. That's a big change." Also, the spectacular and hard-working Gretchen Phillips brings her band Lord Douglas Phillips to engage in deadly musical combat with The Butchies on the last day of the festival. Quite a good-bye wave that will be.

In addition to the wildly diverse selection of mu-

The Murmers

The much-celebrated Urban Bush Women, a troupe of eight African-American dancers debut Saturday evening.

"It isn't often that a dance performance brings an audience spontaneously to its feet in a standing ovation, then sends that audience out singing. But Urban Bush Women did just that," said New York Times dance critic Jennifer Dunning.

The Pulp Vixens, a theater group from Seattle, will perform "a parody of those '50s pulp novels with lesbian characters called 'Innocent Heat.'

"It is very funny," according to the festival office's Christi Delgado.

Spoken-word artists Sister Spit's Ramblin' Roadshow finally make their Michigan appearance with a new line-up of performers.

The festival draws craftswomen, photographers and authors from around the world. Certainly one of the attractions of Michigan is that every woman is the same, no matter who you are, what you believe or what you look like. You might find yourself buttering your bagel next to Michelle Malone (as happened to moi) or in the showers with JAN WATSON

The ironsit system

sic and performances, "Michigan" is also a hands-on kind of vacation, featuring week-long intensive and dany workshops.

Sini Anderson and Michelle Tea of Sister Spit's Traveling Road Show will host a spoken word how-to called Out of Your Journal and Onto the Stage. "Fat grrl" and oppression fighter Nomy Lamm leads 'Fighting Fat Oppression' and Sharon Bridgforth not only performs "the bulljean stories," but she'll lead a week-long creative writing workshop. Add self defense, polyamory, moon yoga and cultural etiquette, and we've got just a small sample of the workshop options available.

A number of superstars from the lesbian countryside show up at the festival every year, even if they aren't performing.

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One thing is guaranteed: "Michigan" represents a chance to open minds and experience difference, sameness and oneness, in whatever orders or ways imaginable. The possibilities are endless.

In addition to those endless possibilities, a vacation taken at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is not only fun and full of music, dykes and restorative energy, it is a damn good bargain too.

The maximum cost of a festival ticket is $340, which covers six days. That amount is charged to those who don't make advance reservations and buy their tickets at the gate. Paying by mail in advance will net Festie-goers about $30 off. The price is sliding scale. Each woman pays what she can afford.

There is also a limited number of ticket subsides for women who are truly out of the range of the sliding-scale fee. You must request the reduced rate application from the festival offices by mail or by phone. Women 65 and older who are on fixed or no income can get a 50 percent discount at the gate. No other reductions are made at the gate, but they will accept Visa, Mastercard, money order, traveler's check, or plain old U.S. currency in exchange for the ticket.

What does that amount purchase? Tent

Tribe 8

JAN WATSON

The day stage

camping with outdoor showers and porta-janes, health care, child care, three meals a day (vegetarian and vegan only), entertainment at three separate stages by some of the best female musicians, performers and artists out there these days, as many workshops as you can fit into your busy or relaxed schedule, and all the adventurous possibilities you can think of when 6,0008,000 women bunk together for a week on 650 secluded acres.

All around the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is an event some women never miss. It is important to remember, when making your vacation decision, that the festival requires camping. Which is not to say that many city dwellers and our more delicate sisters can't hack sleeping on the ground and setting up a tent, but it should be a consideration. However, if they should want to try a wooded get-away to "the land” they'll have plenty of support and more women-centered entertainment than they can shake a granola bar at.

For further information, write to We Want the Music Co., P.O. Box 22, Walhalla, Mich. 49458 or call 231-757-4766 or visit www.michfest.com

Jennifer Earle is a feature and entertainment editor for the Windy City Times in Chicago.