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Thursday, July 23, 2015

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

I turn to the man to my right and 

ask, “So where are you camping?” 
He and the other journalists and 
photographers at the table start 
laughing. 

“We don’t camp out there,” 

said the woman next to him in a 
hot pink skort and cowboy boots. 
I realize I am the only one burnt 
and unshowered. 

I’m in the media tent behind the 

main stage of Faster Horses — one 
of the largest 3-day country music 
festivals in the country. Staff keeps 
asking to double check my creden-
tials. Each time I show them my 
media and photo wristbands their 
eyebrows raise in disbelief. I have 
“random crazed fan-girl trying to 
sneak backstage” written all over 
me. The room is filled with middle-
aged men in T-shirts and cargo 
shorts, wielding very big camera 
lenses. My Canon Rebel T3i is the 
laughing stock and I know it. I 
don’t try to pretend to be a profes-
sional photographer, or a profes-
sional journalist for that matter 
— instead I weave between the 
realms of media and fans, observ-
ing yet never belonging to either. 

“Alright, 
photographers 
line 

up,” said astaffer who looks like a 
drill sergeant at the entry to the 
main stage. 

I look around and follow the 

much bigger cameras into a line.

“You know the drill,” Staff Ser-

geant announces. “Stay around 
the front of the stage, and return 
to the media tent after the first 
three songs.” 

And then we start to walk. We 

walk out into a cheering crowd, 
into the space in between the front 
row and the stage. The drunk and 
crazed fans stretch their hands out 
to me, high five me, pose for me. 

I look around and realize the 

other photographers are position-
ing themselves, prepping, taking 
test shots. Then, the interim music 
ends, lights come on, and Frankie 
Ballard begins. 

Before this festival the extent 

of my country knowledge was an 
occasional Zach Brown Band at a 
darty, that song about fried chick-
en, and all the other songs about 
getting even with a cheating ex in 
a trucks with a gun. I didn’t under-
stand it and I didn’t really want 
to. The night before I left for the 
weekend I went through and lis-
tened to at least a few songs from 

every artist that was on the line-
up and made brief notes. My note 
for Frankie Ballard reads, “Album 
2014 called <em>Sunshine and 
Whiskey</em>, also popular song 
title, lyric: ‘Every time you kiss me 
it’s like sunshine and whisky’ it’s 
about a girl and a beach and want-
ing to hookup with her with gun 
allusions.” So why am I so giddy 
right now? I didn’t even know who 
he was 48-hours ago. 

From a pure performance stand 

point he shocked me. He is spec-
tacular. He interacts with the audi-
ence just enough so you feel like 
he really cares, but not so much 
that you feel like he is trying too 
hard. He rips off his jean jacket 
and throws it in the heat of the 
moment, only to politely ask for it 
back because; it is in fact his favor-
ite jacket. He promises the lucky 
recipient something else. 

Three songs end in the blink of 

an eye and we are escorted back 
to the tent. The other photogra-
phers make similar comments on 
his animated performance. Every-
one sits down and starts looking at 
their photos, checking their email, 
scrolling through their assorted 
screens. I get confused. The show 
is still going on, things are hap-
pening, and they sure as hell aren’t 
happening inside this tent. 

I leave the tent, the media, the 

stage and wander back to the camp 
inside the speedway race tracks — 
where the real story is.

This 
camp, 
referred 
to 
as 

“infield,” houses a large portion of 
the 40,000 attendees to the fes-
tival. Trailers, trucks and tents 
line endlessly inside a fenced-in 
track — creating a dystopian alter-
nate universe. Men wearing horse 
heads patrol the grounds in the 
back of pick-up trucks. You know 
the movie Mad Max where people 
revert to tribal behavior while 
driving trucks in a barren waste-
land where oil is currency? Well 
it’s like that except the currency is 
ice. Because it is so challenging to 
get out of camp and return, all meat 
and produce is kept fresh in cool-
ers that are refilled with ice daily. 
Because the small convenient shop 
in the center of camp knows they 
have a monopoly, ice is ten dollars 
a bag. The food and water is simi-
larly priced. Rumors heard in the 
bathrooms suggest that discounts 
are given to women who flash their 
breasts. Discounts. Women aren’t 
even getting free ice for exposing 
their bodies. The horror. 

A few girls in my camp encoun-

ter a notorious man in the infield 
whose wife had gotten significant 
breast implants and sits with just 
duct tape over her nipples. The man 
announces that he “paid $40,000 
for those tits” and then encourages 
girls or certain men to touch them. 

During my stay in the infield I 

realize that the festival does not 
center around the stage, but rather 
on the camp. People spend days 
without even going into the festi-
val, trailers and converted buses 
host parties at all hours, and it is 
rare for anyone to leave for the fes-
tival until close to dusk. 

After the headliners on the 

main stage end around midnight, 
everyone rushes back to the 
infield. The open area surround-
ing the bathrooms in the cen-
ter of camp become a gathering 
spot. Next to the bathroom are 
two large tents with a homemade 
stripper pole with a fluorescent 
sign reading “Cameltoe Bar.” It is 
unclear whether it was an estab-
lishment receiving money for the 
alcohol provided, or if it is just a 
very friendly man pouring mys-
tery juice into peoples cups. Two 
rows down to the right is a bit 
quieter, less rowdy “bar” called 
Pilgrim. It is a wooden bar next to 
a converted trolly of some kind, 
with a tent covering it and tables 
in front of it for drinking games. 
The alcohol is poured out of plas-
tic bins — payment also unclear. 
But the real hot spot of the infield 
is on the main road leading to 
the entrance to camp. It is a dou-
ble decker red bus revamped to 
allow for maximum capacity with 
speakers on either end. Music 
blasted day in and day out. (I lost 
my lens cap there one night and, 
when I returned in the morning 
to a middle aged woman sweep-
ing layers of cans, she very kindly 
found and returned it to me.)

A storm came and broke our 

tents and scattered our food. Trash 
littered the yard. I strained my 
Achilles and sought help from the 
single medical tent in the infield 
where I was treated with a wrap 
and Benadryl by a one-eyed-
doctor. I began verbally sexually 
harassing men as they walked by 
me in an ill-thought-out attempt 
to retaliate against the constant 
chirping. Extreme things happen 
in extreme places. But amid the 
chaos was an indescribable cama-
raderie. Between the artists and 
their fans, between strangers who 

happen to stand next to each other 
in line, between neighboring camp 
sites. Within this microcosm the 
people you knew for a day felt like 
old friends. The world may be a 
constructed absurdity, but the rela-
tionships built felt authentic. 

I came to realize that it is this 

idea of authenticity that lies at 
the core of country music. On the 
first day I skeptically asked my 
campmates what was so great 
about country. One said, “It’s the 
only thing that is easy to relate to. 
They don’t hide behind metaphors. 
There are good stories and they are 

real. They are honest.” That was 
the point of it all. I didn’t find this 
raw, unedited, dirty, exciting truth 
inside the media tent. I found it in 
the infield.

It was full of contradictions. 

It was real yet the stories sound 
fabricated. I can’t decide if I want 
to never do it again or do it next 
week. Some elements I know I 
will never culturally understand, 
but I’ve accepted not understand-
ing. Last night I was driving on 
the highway in the dark and my 
Spotify turned on Thomas Rhett’s 
“Crash and Burn.”

Festival Report: Surviving Faster Horses

By FRANCESCA KIELB

Daily Arts Writer

