This is our second year attending this music and craft beer festival in Islamorada Key. If love…read morestring instruments this and bluegrass this is definitely one of the better Winter festivities to do. The weather was a little iffy today, given a large storm moved through in the morning, and the afterwards winds were still pretty heavy. It probably scared off folks as traffic heading down to the event was actually much better than expected. We found free parking next to the police station and walked to the event.
The venue was similar to the previous year. Proceeds of our ticket purchase helped fund Arts and Music Scholarships for Upper Keys Youths as well as Islamorada Community Entertainment's mission. Entrance fee cost $37.50 per person but included a stainless steel pint cup which was definitely my sustainable than littering our oceans with plastic cups. While that decision may have increased the cost per ticket, I didn't complain. The beer vendors were plentiful and beers were $6 per ticket to fill our 8-10 oz pint cup or $25 for unlimited fills in a 4 oz cup glass mug. Among the list of beer Venders were Florida Keys Brewing, KeyBilly, Barrel of Monks, Twisted Trunk, Bangin Banjo, Due South, The Waterfront Brewery, TBC, Coppertail, Tampa Bay, just to name a few. I was already familiar with many of these and glad to be able to sample from a good selection of beer!
For food, there was also a good selection: we ordered tacos, purchased kettle corn, and even had a gyro sandwich. Now talk about diversity.
Additional vendors of note were the custom t-shirt printing tent which sold Baygrass event shirts, a honey bee farmer, jewelry, two string instrument vendors that sold high-end custom guitars and mandolins, and a local dive shop, and many more. We purchased the local event T shirt for $15. Sometimes I am a sucker for a nice T. I also didn't expect to but I ended up purchasing a custom ukulele from Jett Instrument Co maker Danny Goddard, who traveled all the way from Tallahassee to sell his instruments. After stopping by his tent at least three or four times and speaking with Danny, I learned the he took the same amount of time to produce his Uke's as he did his guitars. However, the guitars sell for 4-5 times what a Ukulele will fetch, which explained why the one we purchased was only the 2nd of 5 he has ever made. I saw several professional musicians drooling over the guitar and mandolins he had for sale. The ukulele was an exquisite instrument and his inlays of various shell was also remarkable.
The event of the main stage was on a slice of beach which was situated next to two playgrounds for kids; the restrooms were also close, which was also very clever and thoughtful--this year extra portable potties had to be set up as the WC were out of order. Not a problem at all. We brought our own fleece blankets, beach chairs and were only feet from the stage.
Perhaps the only down side to the entire event were the location of the beer vendors which were located closer to stage #2 which was on the grassy side, about a 2-3 minute walk. We purchased 10 beer tickets and really didn't get a chance to sit down longer than 5-10 minutes to enjoy the music the entire time. One beer was donated to the beach as it spilt chasing after Mayla, who at 18 months had many other other interests besides watching bluegrass. And each beer only lasted about 15-20 minutes, so up we were fetching the next one again. Also, one of my favorite bands The Coppetones played on Stage 2 and I had no idea so I completely missed their act. Wish the organizers had provided or posted performance and location information a bit better. I really didn't mind the walking though, ending up with well over 20k steps that day.
All in all it was a successful and fun time. I'd encourage everyone to come next year. The drive back home was beautiful with the Super Moon shining low.
