The Holmes Brothers had a scare Friday, when 68-year-old bass player Sherman Holmes became short of breath.

He was taken to a hospital, but was back on stage yesterday and in fine form. A crowd gathered where the trio autographed copies of their CDs.

Lisa Long and Lucy Watson, both of Richmond, came to the festival at the urging of friend Fleming Morris, who wanted to see the trio he has admired for years. The two newcomers to the Brothers' music were not disappointed, and all three had their own way of describing what made them so good.

"They sang with all they've got," Watson said.

"They sang some gospel. They sang some country. It was pretty nice," Long said.

"The versatility. The music just makes you feel good," said Morris, of Varina.

It wasn't just music. Fiber artists demonstrated how to weave and spin wool under a tent that featured Virginia trades and products.

Kit Young of Midlothian watched appreciatively as Leslie Shelor smoothly fed a blend of angora rabbit hair and alpaca fleece to an old-fashioned spinning wheel, creating one long continuous string of fiber.

"It's a lost art," Young said. "I am just learning to knit."

Shelor runs Greenberry House in Meadows of Dan in Patrick County, Va., a shop and studio where she sells handspun fibers and teachers classes.

Shelor said she spins about six hours a day, taking at least one break. It takes about two years to become really skillful at it, she said.

Scraped knees, bruises and a few sprained ankles made up the bulk of the medical events Richmond emergency crews were handling.

"We have had a couple of people step wrong off a curb, twisted their ankles," said Capt. Keith Vida of the Richmond Department of Fire and Emergency Services.

"Nothing too serious. It's all been fairly light," Vida said.

Vida said four emergency tents were placed throughout the festival grounds, and three bike patrols were on duty. Emergency crews also had at their disposal a six-wheel ambulance. Its smaller size made it easier to get through the crowds, which grew as the day wore on.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine was munching on a gyro as he and his wife, Virginia first lady Anne Holton, milled through the crowd, getting stopped and greeted as people recognized them.

"The Holmes Brothers. Man, they are something else," said Kaine, still pumped from an hour of listening to the trio play.

Kaine's daughter, one of his sons, his brother visiting from Kansas and another friend were enjoying the festival as well.

"We are going to watch a little bit of the bluegrass show, then I have to go to Northern Virginia, but then I am coming back tomorrow," Kaine said.

Hampton resident Elton Williams only had to begin tapping out notes on a steel drum for the crowd to start to gather around his booth.

"The music is so pleasant to listen to," said Dale Bleecher of Glen Allen. "Beautiful sounds. It's amazing they can get this kind of music out of a steel drum."

Steel drums are just that -- drums made from 55-gallon steel oil drums. The drums are also called pans. The tops of the drums are pounded into a concave shape, with indentations tapped into the top to form the notes, said Earl Sawyer, who is an apprentice with Williams.

The style of music originated out of Trinidad and Tobago.

Williams tapped out a song from "The Little Mermaid" movie and a "Sesame Street" tune to the crowd's delight.

"I first saw this in Disney World in Florida," said Sawyer, of Portsmouth. "I was 5. I am 41 now," Sawyer said. "I've been back into it about seven years. . . . It plays any type of music. Classical, jazz, gospel. Everybody has heard these, they just don't know what they are listening to."

It's a folk festival. So what is a cherry red 1952 Nash Rambler doing parked there?

"It's rolling art," said hot rod rigging apprentice Don Fitzgerald, who owns and restored the car recently.

Very recently. He started four years ago and just finished it last week.

"If you look at the odometer, it has two-tenths of a mile on it," he said.

Fitzgerald lives in Roanoke and brought the car here on a trailer. He drove it from the hotel to the festival.

The Nash car company was owned by Kelvinator, the company that makes refrigerators, Fitzgerald said. The car's door handles are the same handles that were used for refrigerator doors, and the stainless steel trim on the bottom of the dashboard also came from the refrigerators.

Fitzgerald plans to take the car to shows, but he is also going to drive it around town. "Part of the fun is going down the road and people not knowing what it is," he said.

After taking photographs of a band, Spencer Stuart gave this warning for folks who want to hear all of the performers at this year's National Folk Festival: It's not going to happen.

"There's no way you're going to catch it all -- unless you really run fast," Stuart said.

A pianist and music lover from Olney, Md., 16-year-old Stuart began volunteering with his father when the festival came to Richmond two years ago. In exchange, they get a free hotel stay and festival entertainment.

Stuart said he and his father hope to continue volunteering when the festival moves to Montana beginning next year.

"We just do it because we love the music," he said.

A group of Christian Ethiopian-Americans shared their form of prayer publicly for the first time yesterday.

The men, dressed in long, white robes, said their message is similar to other Christian churches. The difference: Their service consists of three to four hours of singing.

"Literally, our prayers are songs," church member Aklilu Habte said.

Debre Selam Kidist Mariam Church was established in 1987 by a handful of followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Washington.

Members of the church choir, Moges Seyoum & The Yared Choir, say they've sang only in church settings. That is, until they performed at the festival yesterday.

Since the age of 3, Beverly Giron, 15, has been playing the marimba, the national instrument of Guatemala, with her family. Her family band, Marimba Linda Xelaju, consists of her parents, two sisters, brother and grandmother.

Her parents married young in Guatemala and moved to the U.S. She said the family formed the band in 1997 "to show our culture."

The marimba is rarely used in the U.S. because only Guatemalan wood can make the right sound, she said.

Staff Writer Daniel Neman and Special Correspondent Brandon Shulleeta contributed to this story.