A Nine-Year-Old Reviews Pickathon

I’ve written a bit here and on Three Imaginary Girls about my family’s first experience of of the Pickathon music festival this summer. I also made my 14-year-old write a teenager’s review. But Pickathon is truly a festival for the whole family, so I made my 9-year-old do a write up, too. I think you’ll find it helpful.

I made only very slight edits for spelling and punctuation (and added headers) to the following review, which was written without supervision or adult input.

This summer I went to Pickathon. Pickathon is a music festival held every year. This year there was a huge increase of wasps. There were signs saying ‘WASP NEST’ everywhere. That was really annoying but Pickathon was really fun! Here are a few things about my time at Pickathon.

Plan Ahead

So one big thing that helped us when we went to Pickathon, was that we had printed out a calendar thing that showed the times of each band and the activities. Pick a different colored highlighter for each person who is going and highlight all of the bands that you’re interested in. Whether you are traveling with or without kids, set a time limit for when you’re done for the day. We set 10 pm for our time limit if that helps you any. Also make sure to set a budget, I recommend $100-150 but you don’t have to do that.

Activities

One of my favorite parts was doing the activities Pickathon provided. The first one we did was making poi, which was really fun. We put rice in really long socks and then did stuff… and made poi! The other activity we did was making guitars out of cigarette boxes. It was really fun!  I highly recommend doing the activities.

 Tinariwen

One of the bands that we watched that really stuck was called Tinariwen, a band that traveled all the way from Africa to play at Pickathon. Even though I can’t understand the lyrics, I still love their songs and they are now one of my favorite bands. They played a bit late but I’m so glad we went anyway!!! Remember my first tip to check if you like certain bands and if you like them, mark all the times they play. {Ed. Note: I made the girls listen to the samples of each band on the Pickathon website before we left home.}

Sierra Hull

Another one of the bands we saw was Sierra Hull. Sierra Hull was amazing!! She sang some songs from her latest album which was a big moving point in her career. She started focusing more on what she wanted to, what she wanted to sing, what she wanted to sound like. And what that is, is wonderful music. It was some of the best (and only I think) bluegrass music I’ve heard (and that gave me high expectations).

At one point she was talking about how as a nine year old girl she would wonder what Alison Krauss had for breakfast. When people where asking her questions about her and her music, the second to last question was either ‘do you think any little kid might be wondering what you had for breakfast today?’ or ‘Do you think you’ve been put aside any because you’re a girl and there aren’t many girl singers in bluegrasses history?’ well something along those lines. (FYI I’m nine) and for the last question I raised my hand, got called and said, ‘what did you have for breakfast?’ I think that moment was my favorite of all of Pickathon.

Pickathon Nits

One of the most annoying things about Pickathon was that there were tons of wasp nests everywhere!! I mean you’ll see a wasp nest, walk five feet, and then see another one!!! It was crazy! Also by the second day some of the porta potties didn’t have any paper left. Luckily they started to refill the toilet paper in the mornings.

Conclusion

And that’s about all I have to tell you about my time in Pickathon. And I highly recommend you go.