Storytelling in Tennessee

The first weekend in October I spent a wonderful three days in little Jonesborough, Tennessee at the National Storytelling Festival.  Picture three days of listening to some of the best storytellers in the world doing their stories just for you--and hundreds of your closest "friends" packed into a very large tent.  There were five of these tents scattered over a five or six block area.

You needed to get to your venue of choice early.  My strategy was to take water and nibbles, choose the venue where I could be content most of the day, and leave only to go to the bathroom or stretch.  Someone would always mind your seat for you, and you returned the favor for them.  Because you tended to be there early (or ended up standing for the hour's program) you got time to watch the setting up process.  The sound and lighting were excellent, especially considering that often there were 500 people in a tent, sometimes listening with reverence to the grand dame of tellers, Kathryn Wyndam, who is in her 90s and sometimes listening to much more boisterous tellers such as Bill Lepp.  Those sound technicians were awesome.  We were not allowed to photograph the performers, but the crew was fair game.

The only time the sound crew was out of its depth was when the trains came by, and then you just had to wait.  Two of the tents were VERY close to the tracks, and they were NOT quiet.  I didn't have to do more than just turn my little Canon camera in the right direction to get this picture, and some of those trains are LONG!  This one had five engines and seemed to go on forever!

If you got hungry, the local restaurants and scout groups and church groups were all ready and willing to sell you food.  I'm sure some of these groups make good money during this event.  The schools let you park in their lots and on their grounds (for a fee, of course) as do many of the local residents.  If you park at the schools, there is a constant stream of shuttle buses running right into town (five minutes away) and you are poised for a quick exit.  It is cheaper to pay for parking at the school and a couple of bucks each way on the shuttle than to park in town.

When the weather was drippy and chilly, the places selling hot drinks and hot food did a booming business.  When it warmed up, the ice cream shop had a line out the door.  Whatever the weather the Lollipop Shop was always busy.

Jonesborough is a pretty little town, and one of its churches presented a nice view near sunset one day.

This was my second time at Jonesborough, and the storytellers were as great as I remembered them being.  There were so many styles of story from the gentle stories of Kathryn Windham to the outrageous ones by Bill Lepp to the hilarious ones by Don Davis that had me laughing until tears ran down my face.  If you think this is something that would interest you, check out http://www.storytellingcenter.net/festival/  and then reserve your place to stay in the spring.  There isn't much in the way of motel space in town and most of us stayed in places like Johnson City, about 20 minutes away.  If you wait till September, you'll just be plain out of luck.