The most important reason for me to be at the Tønder Festival, was the launch of the CD BANJOMAN - "A Tribute to Derroll Adams", with a pressconference and a concert that I had organized. I had worked a long time on BANJOMAN and now we were ready for the release. Derroll was a friend of the Tønder Festival and attended the festival nearly every year from 1976 until 1999. This made it the perfect spot for the Tribute concert. Festival organizer Carsten Panduro made it possible to invite many of the singers and musicians of the BANJOMAN CD. They were all there: Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Donovan, Arlo Guthrie, Tucker Zimmerman, Youra Marcus, Happy Traum, Allan Taylor, Danny Thompson, Barney McKenna, John Sheahan and I. Derroll's widow Danny and daughter Rebecca also came. The pressconference went very well: there was a lot of interest and we even made the national news on danish tv that evening. My daughter Maria did all the PR in Scandinavia and did a great job!
I held a speech - I have to admit that I got a little emotional at times. To finish the pressparty we sang Allan Taylor's Song "Banjo Man" together.

I had planned the Tribute Concert so that all singers would sit on stage during the whole concert and sing and play together - in the meantime photos of Derroll were shown on a big screen behind us (unfortunately I wasn't able to see them the way I was sitting). It was a wonderful concert; I've been at many festivals in Tønder but never before have I experienced 2500 people in that big marquee in such rapt attention. Derroll would've enjoyed it.
The whole thing was filmed by a student filmcrew coached by Hans Lydiksen. Dolly Parton is the only woman on the BANJOMAN cd, where she sings "Dixie Darling" - unfortunately Dolly was not in Denmark so we were looking for a female singer to do the song; we were lucky and found two ladies: Norma Waterson and her daughter Eliza Carthy - supported by Martin Carthy - sang "Dixie Darling", backed up by the rest of the cast and Barney McKenna on 5-string banjo! We practised the song backstage in the afternoon. Without anything planned, for me this turned out to be one of the finest moments of the festival: all musicians together in a relaxed atmosphere; one of these moments in which you realise why you keep doing what you're doing - it was glorious and to quote the journalist from before: An experience of a lifetime ............ (fortunately Milica had her camera ready so you can at least look at some of the pictures - the music wasn't bad either!!).

Because of the workload during the festival I hardly found time to listen to other bands but the general atmosphere at the festival was great as ever. After the volunteer curry-party on Monday night (lots of artists stay til Monday to give more than 1700 volunteers! a chance to hear some music too), Milica and I spent a few days in Esbjerg with our daughter Maria, her husband Flemming and granddaughter Emma. Emma runs around already and it was a beautiful experience to be around her for a couple of days. (Unfortunately the camera broke down and there are no pictures). We still caught some summer up north and for a person with north-west-european roots the Northsea can't be beat anyway. We flew back via Hamburg and even the airline did their best to bring a great trip to a good end: the guitars landed in Vienna without a dent or scratch.