TMF Virtual 2020

When planning for the 24th annual Tumbleweed Music Festival began, the COVID-19 pandemic was not yet begun.

The pandemic turned the entertainment world upside down.  While we hoped at the time it would be a short-lived distuption, by May, it was perfectly clear that we would need to choose:  cancel the 24th annual festival outright, OR commit to the intense work it would take to hold a VIRTUAL 2020 festival at the traditional time – September’s Labor Day weekend, to inspire change, AND maintain Tumbleweed’s family and community spirit.

The Tumbleweed Virtual Music Festival 2020, also known as “TMFVirtual2020,” had a central tenet to maintain the feeling of family and community that has grown over the years among not only the volunteers, but the performers and audience as well.

Having less than five months to learn how to hold a virtual, online music festival AND build the online structure to make it happen was a very strong challenge.  Members of the Planning Committee all rallied to the cause, in whichever ways they were able, to help push the effort along.

Some were better at thinking through how to structure our presentation – it was Jim Honeyman who came up with the idea of having “Stages,” just as we do when we have a physical festival; each stage to be a collection of perforamnces themed in the same way that our physical stages are.

Some were already skilled at what it takes to stream events, and it was Chris Glanister (Soundman extraordinaire!) who brought us the method of being able to essentially livestream the initial presentations of the Workshops.

We had to do some training ourselves of Tumbleweed family members who (like we were) stepping into this then-esoteric world of online performances.. We had the great good luck to have on our Planning Committee an actual filmmaker and editor, Tom Reitter (and his wife Kelly) who were able to take the incoming performer video files and get them into shape to be able to present to the public.

David Carson, who was then in his second year as Festival Coordinator, worked out a safe means of filming the MC parts  (actually in Howard Amon Park) that would be placed at the start of each performance, and a few of the performances as well.

The TMF Virtual 2020 festival opened (against the odds) on Friday, September 3rd, and featured nearly 100 prerecorded performances from five countries, 14 live workshops, a live Zoom Shanty Sing, and a live Zoom Contra Dance.

Among the brightest points of building TMFVirtual2020 were our “wild-caught” performers – people who have heard of our virtual festival and have reached out to us, asking to be a part!  This included bands from the Northwest area, a performer from Indiana, and TWO bands from Ireland!  With the addition of a set by Tom Lewis, another 3RFS and Tumbleweed fixture for many years who now is living in Ireland, we were tempted to begin calling ourselves the “Tumbleweed International Music Festival!”