Toes Were Tapping at the 11th Annual Crazy Quilt Music Festival

The 11th annual Crazy Quilt Music Festival drew the young and the young at heart for an afternoon of music, friends and hoola hoops on Saturday, April 9.

The weather was perfect for an afternoon outside, and the crowd danced along to the lively sounds of the band.

The New Deal Café has been putting on the festival since its inception, current café owners Karim Kmaiha and Maria Almeida said.

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Almeida. “Last year and the year before, they started earlier in the day, so we cooked outside.”

This year’s festival organizers Amethyst Dwyer and Dorian Winterfeld book the music for the café and have been coming to the Crazy Quilt Festival since the beginning.

The variety of music ranged from gypsy jazz, banjoes and harmonicas to covers of the Grateful Dead and a Johnny Cash tribute band.

“That’s part of the whole Crazy Quilt philosophy,” said Dwyer energetically. “It’s just a big hodge-podge of music.”

Rob Petrie and Ira Gitlin of Cold Hard Cash, the Johnny Cash tribute band, said they love playing in Greenbelt.

“This is one of the coolest communities,” Petrie said.

Cold Hard Cash has been playing on Tuesday nights at the café.

“I like to play on off-nights and still pack the house,” Petrie said jokingly.

Gitlin, the lead guitar player for Cold Hard Cash, said that “in order to capture the sound of Cash, you have to forget about everything you knew about the guitar.”

As The Gait Line, a very lively two–person group got the crowd dancing and utilizing the hoola hoops, you couldn’t help but notice the lead singer’s boots. The boots had homemade percussion attached to them. Hundreds of bottle caps and aluminum can pull-tabs were strung together to help keep you on your dancing feet.

Festival-goers appreciated the eclectic mix of music; smiles were contagious throughout the afternoon.