So I did, 'cause I know where it came from. I wrote it, about 21 years ago or so.
Back then, the TRF used Ferguson Advertising as their agency, and they had a cheap TV commercial showing still-frame smiling faces accompanied by a distinctive piece of needle-drop banjo. For me, that banjo tune became the herald trumpet of the Festival.
So, when I was interviewing for a job at Ferguson, they gave me a couple of free-lance assignments first, to see what I'd come up with, and one was ideas for a new TRF TV commercial.
I thought the festival needed a theme song, and so I wrote "It's Festival Time" (borrowing the lyric line "hundreds of events that will make you smile" from the old TVC) while cutting my grass at Maple Bluff Court. I still think it's the most successful jingle I ever did (or at least in the Top Five: it's been years since it's been heard anywhere, and yet many local folks can sing the first two lines unaided at the mention of TRF.
Just for the extra trivia: The original Dixieland version was a band put together for the session by local legend d*ck Seger (who played trumpet) and featured yours truly on the vocal. The updated pop/rock version is me playing everything with the versatile David Todoran on the lead vocal (later I wasn't really happy with the "Palisades Park" keyboard choices I made at the time).
I'm talking to Shannon about donating time to create a new, updated version that goes back to the original Mardis Gras/big party feel of the original, with the hope that I might have actually created one crummy little chunk of crap that might out-live me.
