LEAF
Black Mountain, N.C.

  

Though there are four primary stages, a family act stage and a jam tent with continual activity, the music is almost incidental at the Lake Eden Arts Festival. Particularly if you have kids, you could attend the LEAF and never actually sit down to see any of the dozens of jam bands and Americana and world music artists who perform over the course of the four-day weekend.

In addition to catering to families with a large kids' area and activities on and around the lake, the LEAF offers poetry competitions, healing arts (yoga, massage), group hikes and a trail run, and arts-and-crafts and food vendors.

But the festival is just as much a jamboree-style campout, with thousands of tents dotting the 600 acres of Camp Rockmont, the site of the historic Black Mountain College in the 1940s-'50s. (There are also cabins, lodge rooms and bunks available on campus for the weekend.)

Perhaps because the LEAF offers so much more, the music venues are not very large. And because the festival admits a maximum of 6,000 people each day, stage areas, except for the Barn, usually don't get too crowded.

The main stage, Lakeside (below), is an eight-pole tent where the audience inevitably spills out on all sides. Because it is relatively small and there are no reserved seats, it's easy to enjoy a show whether you want to get up close or take it easy back in the crowd.

7 Walkers guitarist Papa Mali joins Galactic in October 2011.

Wanda Jackson at the October 2011 LEAF.
Eden Hall, the camp's mess hall, is the next largest venue. Seating here is in ladder-back wooden chairs.

A local vendor operates a cafeteria in Eden Hall, ensuring the availability of three square meals a day for campers who didn't bring their own. Other vendors around the grounds offer some of the usual street-fair foods, like pizza, barbecue, sausage dogs, gumbo, and the like, while some serve vegetarian and vegan meals, and breakfast foods.

Wine and beer are also readily available at the LEAF, though we never saw anyone who had had too much, except for late at night at the front of the concert crowd. In addition to alcohol sales, though the rules say not to bring alcohol into the festival, there was no search whatsoever of what we brought with us, and we met folks who had clearly brought their own.
The gymnasium at the center of campus is transformed into a dance hall with the addition of the Brookside stage, some protective flooring and a little decor.
The Barn (at left and below), with its tiny performance area in the hayloft, sits up the hill from the car camping area and the main areas of the festival. The Sundance Jam Tent, which we did not photograph, hosts instrumental workshops.

The Kids Village has two of its own stages, including the Roots Family Stage (below at day and night), which hosts musical acts for grownups in the evening, and the Wildwoods stage, which hosts professional children's performers and performance workshops for kids.
The Kids' Village offers opportunities for bungee trampoline, a climbing wall and volleyball (the court was being used as a giant sandbox whenever we passed by, actually), as well as face painting and other arts and crafts, and other games.
And back at Lake Eden, kayak and canoe rentals, and a zipline that splashes down into the water are popular. There's also a small beach and a swim area. (A "Splash Pass" costs extra.)

The deck outside Eden Hall, at left and at left in the photo below, is one of many nice places to sit and take it all in.

Even with all there is to see and do, in many ways (when the weather cooperates), just being at the LEAF is the biggest pleasure the festival has to offer.


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