Tag: Newport Folk Festival

Be Together: Newport Folk Fest 2019 in Photographs

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Newport Folk Festival has always played host to singular, incomparable, once-in-a-lifetime musical moments. As you read this you can almost certainly think of at least a handful of examples, right off the top of your head. This year carried on that tradition and then some, displaying absolute magic across the festival’s four stages over the course of the weekend. Too many headline-worthy moments were sprinkled throughout, but BGS photographer Daniel Jackson was on hand to capture this folk and roots lightning in a bottle — from the performance debut of super supergroup The Highwomen to celebrating 80 years of Mavis Staples to surprise guests that make being green and looking cheap seem easy and effortless.

Perhaps the most meaningful take away from the festival, though, was not its star-studded stages, but its mantra — a timely reminder in this particular global moment: Be present. Be kind. Be open. Be together. Folk music, in all of its forms, carves out just such a space to allow for this togetherness. See it for yourself in these photographs from Newport Folk Fest 2019.

All photos: Daniel Jackson

Pete Seeger: Effecting Change With Music (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

Pete Seeger was a prolific songwriter, a dogged activist, and a folklorist who believed in magnifying voices from every corner of America. He used his music to further causes from Civil Rights to environmental preservation, and he never let the magnitude of a task scare him away from a fight for what he believed in. The spirit of servitude that Seeger brought to the world didn’t die when he passed away in 2014, and that fact is perhaps most evident at Newport Folk Festival, the now-iconic event that Seeger helped George Wein get off the ground in 1959. “The spirit of Pete, and of Pete’s egalitarian nature, is in every ounce of this festival’s DNA,” says Jay Sweet, executive producer of Newport Festivals.

To coincide with what would have been Seeger’s 100th birthday this month, Smithsonian Folkways released a six-disc anthology celebrating Seeger’s astounding career, complete with twenty unreleased recordings and a hardcover book detailing the many ways Seeger was a catalyst for positive change, both in American culture and the world at large. Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection is a window into the life of a musician who shaped American folk music, but it’s also a road map for those who hope to advocate for positive change themselves.

“We can’t complain about what’s happening to us in the present day unless we start giving the kids the strength and the wisdom and the history of what came before them, and ask them to really pay attention,” Sweet says. Here, the festival producer discusses what Seeger taught him and how he’s using Newport to spread Pete’s message to a new generation.

Editor’s Note: Read the first part of our BGS interview with Jay Sweet.

BGS: You can tell a lot about a person by how they handle a disagreement. Did you ever argue with Pete?

The biggest disagreement I had with Pete was never about any kind of problem he had with rock or electric guitar or any of that. It was that he didn’t think we were doing enough. For a while, the nonprofit’s mission statement was, first and foremost, to keep the Newport Folk and Newport Jazz Festivals going in perpetuity, and then to help continue introducing these genres of music to students and young people. Well, Pete thought that was back asswards, and he let me know it.

The thing is, we’re not publicly traded — there’s no AEG, there’s no massive underwriting sponsor. Newport is hand to mouth, like most nonprofits. But he thought it was wrong to take the financial benefit from the festival and put it back into an endowment to ensure that we could keep this festival going. Pete wondered why we did that—to which I replied that I happen to think it’s important to keep this festival going! [Laughs] But his point was that every year we should be giving every dollar we can back. He didn’t care whether it was music education, environmental issues, housing for the homeless. It was, “Why save for the future if you can affect the present?”

That mantra seems like it’s become more and more a part of what you do.

Because of Pete, we realized maybe we did have it back asswards, in some respects, and that the best way to do this would be to flip our mission statement—now, it’s primarily to provide music education for those in need, and to use these festivals to draw attention to the need. We’ve gone from being a company that works year-round to put on two festivals to being a nonprofit that works year-round on music education, and celebrates that yearlong work with two big supporting parties.

For years, Pete was shaking his head and saying we could do more. [His disapproval] was really tough to hear—if we don’t have enough money, [I worried] we might not be able to do [the festival] at all. We had it backwards because we were trying to look out for the future, but the future is now. Pete’s reason for starting [Newport] was to effect change by giving a platform for the freedom of speech, freedom from rules. And if you’re always giving money away, you’ll find a way to do it. You will find a way to throw the festival if you’re helping people.

One of the ways Pete used Newport to effect change was during the Civil Rights era—he will always be known as a fierce advocate for equality. How can you honor that with what you do at Newport?

Equal rights was one of Pete’s biggest causes. Newport was one of the meeting points for the Civil Rights movement—[the festival] was always being watched by the government, and people learned how to sing the marching songs in workshops with Pete at Newport. All these Cambridge, Mass., and Ivy League people would come, and he’d say, Let’s get on these buses now, and go South and stand with our brothers and sisters. It was very politicized and very political at the time.

But the spirit that I take away, that I continuously turn to almost daily, is the egalitarian nature of Pete. At Newport Folk in particular, that egalitarian nature lives on. We’re all in general admission, and there’s no VIP pass to purchase. We don’t do a poster where [artists’] names are in different font sizes, or anything like that. If you’re playing, you get the same treatment whether you’re a five-hundred dollar artist or a five-thousand dollar artist or — well, I won’t say fifty-thousand because we won’t really ever pay artists that much. [Laughs] There are plenty of five-hundred-thousand-dollar artists who play Newport, but we basically tell them, ‘You need to check your ego at the Pell Bridge, because it will not fly at Newport.’ Because of that, we’ve been able to foster a community, that does go back to “We are all equal,” but it also promotes all opportunity for all people beyond the festival.

Pete stood for using music to effect change. As a person who always had an instrument on him — walked around with a banjo and a guitar for his entire life, or a penny whistle — Pete took for granted, I think, that music would always be in the curriculum for all kids. I never once think he considered there might be a world where there are five million kids in the United States who don’t have access to music education. And that’s just access to any music education—I’m not talking about the uncounted amount of broken instruments, or the fact that sports teams get brand new uniforms and stadiums and lights, when the music departments get nothing. Those things would shock Pete because he used music as his medium. We think the best way to create more Pete Seegers is to actually give more people access to music.

One could argue that, with Newport, you are fostering the next generation of legends. What do you look for in up-and-coming artists, and how do you help bring those attributes to the forefront?

I think it goes to what we were just talking about. It’s the people who I can’t see doing anything else. There is no separation between showperson and who they are off stage. To me, a folk artist is not necessarily someone who puts on a persona and comes out and creates. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ll say some of the best pop performers in the world come off the stage and they resemble nothing of the personality they bring to a show. But I think a true folk artist is somebody who can’t separate it. What you see is what you get. …

Newport, to me, is not just a platform for artists to be able to speak their mind in a safe environment. Yes, that was its blueprint from the minute it was conceptualized but that was when other platforms didn’t exist. [“Needing a platform”] meant that you couldn’t break into radio and you couldn’t break into TV. Now there’s a festival on every g-ddamn street corner, and with the Internet, everybody can get their fifteen minutes of fame.

But Newport continues to represent a true sense of community. You are not alone out there, in a van doing three thousand miles every month. You have a place. No matter how far you go, you can feel tied, feel a weight off your shoulders, and have a rest from the corporatization of music and the sludge factory that’s out there for a lot of these people to make a living. If I can offer that respite and a sense of community and a sense of home, that, to me, is just as much a part of Pete’s legacy as anything else. This idea that we’re in this together. If you’re part of our tribe, we’re fiercely loyal. And the door is pretty open if you leave your ego behind.

Illustration: Zachary Johnson

Pete Seeger: Listening from the Rafters (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

Pete Seeger would have turned 100 this month, but he fit well over a century’s worth of impact into the ninety-four years he had. His accomplishments as an activist, musician, folklorist, and organizer have long been numerous enough to fill an anthology—and this month, Smithsonian Folkways has finally released one, complete with six CDs, a 200-page book, and twenty previously unreleased recordings.

The release, Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, is just one way to celebrate his centennial. Fans and admirers have also marked the occasion with “Spirit of Seeger” concerts nationwide, and a special set at this summer’s Newport Folk Festival, an event where Seeger’s impact is perhaps most evident.

But Pete’s legacy is about more than a single release or celebration. Jay Sweet, executive producer at Newport Folk and a friend to Seeger, says the late folk music icon wouldn’t want any fanfare for his birthday—he’d rather see a new generation put that energy towards helping others. Here, in the first of a two-part interview, Sweet recalls conversations and memories with Seeger and discusses the way Pete’s egalitarian spirit and fiery pursuit of truth continues to propel the Newport Folk Festival forward.

BGS: You met Pete for the first time after he was a well-established icon in the American folk scene. What was that like for you?

Sweet: They say to be careful when you meet your heroes. For me, with Pete, it was the exact opposite, and it was mostly because he wasn’t Mister Positive. When I met him in his late eighties, he was a bit of a curmudgeon. I actually really liked that. He was feisty, he was disgruntled with the state of everything that was happening in the world, and he was questioning why the younger generations weren’t doing more. I think he kind of considered them soft, and I liked that he was calling it like it was.

Did that attitude reveal itself more as you grew closer over the years?

A story that I love happened few years after I met him, at Newport the first time I brought the Decemberists there. I was really excited to see them—they were going to do a funny reenactment of Dylan Goes Electric, including Pete with an axe. (I’d even told them it’d have to be kind of tongue-in-cheek, because, y’know, uh, Pete’s here.) But during the set, I get this security guard running up to me: “We’ve lost Pete. You told us to keep an eye on Mr. Seeger. We don’t know where he is.” Then, immediately, there’s another security guard running up to me. “There’s somebody in the scaffolding up on stage left, thirty-five feet up in the air. We’ve asked him to come down, but the music has started and we don’t want to interrupt the band on stage. What do we do?”

So I go, and I look, and lo and behold—in his Wranglers and a purple-pink button-down work shirt, with his little hat—was Pete Seeger at ninety-plus, thirty-five feet up in the air, looking down at the Decemberists. I remember being terrified, thinking, Well, the best thing to do is to not scare him, to wait til he comes down. There were no stairs or anything, he had just climbed.

So when he got down, I was like, Pete… what?! And he said, “I was so sick of people asking me to take pictures with them and sign autographs. You told me that this band had a lot of good stuff—that their music was based in old-time sea shanties, had all these metaphors, took from these old tales. And I was fascinated. I had to see it. And they’re fantastic!” And I just remember thinking, I know Newport is onto something when Pete Seeger is climbing the scaffolding to be left alone, just to see good music.

I’ve heard that it was actually Pete’s idea, decades ago, to pay all of the performers the same fee to play—$50. And I know that’s not how it works now, but—

It’s pretty close! [Laughs]

What elements of that spirit are still around?

Well, we perhaps overpay up-and-coming artists — those who need it, really, in order to be able to take the dog-crap offers they get all over the place and still survive. If we don’t overpay them, we give them the opportunity to collaborate with somebody that is gonna help their star shine a little brighter, give them a platform to succeed. With anybody bigger than that, we basically ask to take a zero, or even more than a zero, away from their normal asking fee. And then we make a donation in their name to something that they believe in.

And the reason that works is because there’s an understanding. You can look at, say, the Avett Brothers, who I booked three or four times before they ever headlined. Hozier — his very first, basically, gig, in the United States? It was Newport. Courtney Barnett and Leon Bridges and Margo Price, all these amazing people that came to Newport before they became the names that you might recognize. We need to support the hell out of them, and not just for altruistic reasons. Bands like the Avett Brothers and Wilco and Hozier and the Alabama Shakes and My Morning Jacket, you don’t get those bands to come back year after year if you didn’t support them when nobody else did.

And I think that is all about that $50 model, and a general understanding of it. Fleet Foxes’ Robin [Pecknold] said it really well on a PBS special: He said, when we first came here, they didn’t pay us much, but we hadn’t proven ourselves. Then I think they paid us the exact same amount when we came back to Newport to headline. The interviewer was confounded by that, he asked — why? And [Robin] essentially said, “Because now there’s another band that Jay needs to book. They’re the Fleet Foxes from ten years ago, and they need that help. Me playing it, it’s a giving back.”

And that? It’s very rare. But it comes from the spirit of Pete saying that regardless of whether you’re Bob Dylan at the height of his popularity or church singers from Appalachia, you’re getting fifty bucks. That we’re-all-in-this-together mentality comes from that fifty dollars. And if during my tenure, if the whole thing is as close as I can get to the ideal of Pete Seeger, the better off the festival will be.

What were some of your last interactions with Pete, and how do they affect the way you move forward with Newport?

My last conversations with Pete were much more interesting than my first ones, in some respects. One is that he said to me, “Jay, if you’re not upsetting someone, you’re doing it wrong.” That’s a mantra I keep with me — a what-would-Pete-say kind of thing. That’s what makes Newport, this festival that Pete basically co-founded with George Wein, iconic in American music and around the world, even though it’s so small—why its name gets continuously mentioned in the same breath as the Glastonberrys and Bonnaroos and Coachellas. I remember him saying, “You’ve gotta keep challenging the ears of our audience. Unless you’re upsetting a certain faction, you’re doing it wrong. Take the opportunity.”

About four months before he died, he asked me, “How are you going to keep booking people that speak truth to power, speak on the human condition? Who is doing that now?” I said, “Well, at this point Pete, it’s hip-hop.” I sent him some lyrics—just lyrics at first, no music—and he wrote back and said, “These are fascinating. Does any of this stuff get radio play?” And I was like “Actually, no. It’s somewhat like when you started the festival.” Because when people like Pete and Joan Baez and others had lyrical messages that, due to the lingering effects of McCarthyism, were not “fit for radio,” Newport was created out of that blacklisting.

Pete figured, if I can’t get my message to the masses via these mediums, I’m just gonna do it in person, all over the country and all over the world. I’ll take it to union halls and VFWs and town assemblies, and whatever it is—gymnasiums at public schools. The festival was basically just a massive culmination of the grassroots effort to play for the island of misfits. So I think there was a lot of connection there, for him, with hip-hop—Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper. It was fascinating to me. But white Pete was alive, we could never bring that to fruition for him. Bring somebody to Newport in a free rhyme, just a beat and somebody freestyling. I think he actually would have climbed that scaffolding again: “Leave me alone—I want to go see this truth.”

Illustration: Zachary Johnson
Editor’s Note: Read the second part of our interview with Jay Sweet.

BGS 5+5: Kyle Craft

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Kyle Craft
Hometown: Vidalia, LA
Latest Album: Full Circle Nightmare
Personal Nicknames: My piano player calls me Craft.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Bob Dylan hands down. When I write, I like to imagine the ghost of 1965 Dylan watching over my shoulder and smacking me in the back of the head whenever I write a trash stanza, saying, “Come on man, what are you? One of them?” One of the most pivotal moments of my life was when I first heard “Mr. Tambourine Man” at the age of 15. That song and other songs like it, (“Visions of Johanna,” for example) are what keep the sun burning, the world spinning, and the oceans dark and lonesome.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Probably singing Bowie’s “Heroes” at Newport Folk Festival this last year for the Speak Out set, as well as getting to sing with Sharon Van Etten that same day. That place, Newport, feels unusually dreamy to me and the view over Narragansett Bay from the main stage is gorgeous.

If you could spend 10 minutes with John Lennon, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Joni Mitchell, Sister Rosetta, or Merle Haggard how would it go?

Most likely I’d pick John Lennon, but 10 minutes isn’t enough time for the acid to kick in, so we’d most likely just laugh and talk about how despicable and piggish our idiot president is.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

I’m not one for rituals, but I like to smoke a cigarette before doing vocal takes in the studio. I know how this sounds, but … it helps my voice clear up, especially in the morning. It makes your clothes smell great, too!

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

You’re gonna die. Don’t overthink it.

Photo credit: Peter Karavias

The Power of Two: 30 Years of Indigo Girls

Posted on by Editor

Although the earliest traces of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers joining musical forces date back to 1981 — and their original meeting back to 1974 — the Indigo Girls’ debut album, Strange Fire, was released in 1987. To mark the much-beloved duo’s 30th anniversary, we wanted to say “thank you” to Amy and Emily for everything they have given us over the years … the art and the activism, the influences and the inspirations. To do so, we reached out to artists who have walked the trail they blazed, starting with singer/songwriter Mary Gauthier, who penned this wonderful recollection that speaks for so many. (Keep an eye out all month for more artists paying tribute through stories and songs.)  

Lesbian icons. When I was a kid, the mere thought of such a thing was laughable. I was growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the 1970s. There were no iconic gay women. Hell, there were no gay women, period. When I began to wonder if I was gay, I went to the library looking for lesbian authors. My research brought me to one book: Radclyffe Hall’s sad book, The Well of Loneliness. I read it, then landed on its predecessor, the bi-monthly mailed-in-a plain-brown-paper-wrapper-lesbian-newsletter, LC (Lesbian Connection). A nod to Hall’s 1928 book, the polite LC personals were called “The Wishing Well.”

LC introduced me to “womyns” music. I loved the great Canadian folk singer Ferron, but as an angst-filled, queer, ’70s teenager from the Deep South, I did not relate to much of the womyns music scene. I didn’t fit in there, either. I found myself listening more to Southern folk singers like John Prine, and other male songwriters whose words I felt close to.

Imagine my surprise when I moved to Boston in my early 20s and heard the Indigo Girls for the first time on WUMB college radio. There was SOMETHING THERE for me, personally — a brand new, yet deeply familiar sound. It resonated. I FELT it. Though I did not know it consciously, a part of me understood: Those voices were gay women from the South, like me. I parked my black Toyota restaurant truck in the driveway, turned the radio up loud, sat there stunned, and listened as the song played out. The sound infiltrated my soul. What was this, some kind of cosmic lesbian musical sorcery? Who were these people? They fucking rocked. The harmonies peeled back layers of scar tissue at my center, exposing a longing in me that I could not name. The song coming out of the radio was called “Strange Fire.” Hearing it for the first time in my truck that evening literally hurt.

I come to you with strange fire
I make an offering of love

The incense of my soil is burned
By the fire in my blood

Those harmonies landed like a déjà vu — utterly familiar, but not at all known. The sound was pointing me to something vital about myself, but I did not know what it was. The alchemy evoked a buried self I had not yet met, the future songwriter in me, entombed in a personal Pompeii, frozen under layers of active addiction. When the song ended, I turned off the radio, clenched the steering wheel, laid my head down, closed my eyes, and cried. I banged both hands on the wheel … harder, then harder still.

I was drunk, stoned, and tired of feeling alone. I had a hole in me that the call to songwriting had once upon a time tried to answer. But the call wasn’t even a memory anymore. I had put my guitar and musical longing aside, buried them both in a past I did not contemplate, and forgot about them. Women who did not (or could not) abide the compulsory rules of gender — the sexualized female appearance tailored to the male gaze — didn’t stand a chance in the real music business, right? I’d grown up, turned away from music. Made peace with 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”

I was a restaurateur now, a businesswoman, and a CEO. A chef. I established and ran several restaurants. I had what thought I wanted. I was young and successful. But I felt empty. There was money, but it didn’t matter. I’d spent the last decade subconsciously flirting with death. I lived with a gaping hole in the center of my being that I poured booze and dope and romance and success and any other thing I could jam in there to deaden the pain, the sadness of an unlived life. I was lost, careening the wrong way down a one-way street. I did not know how to turn around.

So I worked harder, tried to make more money, and became grandiose. Angry. I demanded that those around me work harder, too. We had to push the limits of what was possible. I was hoping to succeed my way out of the feeling of being lost. Somehow, the sound of that song on the radio saw me and called to me, but I couldn’t understand what it was telling me about myself. I could not make sense of the visceral response it released in my gut, even as the waves of emotion doubled me over.

A few months later, I was arrested for drunk driving. The court sentenced me to mandatory rehab. I got sober. Soon after, I decided to find the source of those magical voices I’d heard on the radio. I called the station, described the song, and the DJ said they called themselves the Indigo Girls. I went to Tower Records and bought the record, Strange Fire.

Amy Ray, Michael Stipe, Natalie Merchant, Woody Harrelson, and Emily Saliers perform for Earth Day in Washington, DC in 1990.

Soon after, I went to see them perform at the Paradise, a Boston rock club. It was 1990. I was a few months clean and sober, and what I saw that night made me dizzy, weak, and queasy. The mostly female audience was screaming the singers’ names, while crying and shouting the words to the songs, as the two women on stage sang smiling, delighting in the raucous, carnival-like excitement. In short, the fans were out of their fucking minds. The scene that night was like the black and white footage of girls screaming for the Beatles in 1964. For the first time ever, I saw women jumping up and down and screaming at the top of their voices for women. It was pandemonium. No Well of Loneliness here, this was a grand public display of woman-loving-woman energy, a giant wave of out-ness that rode the waves of the music being played on stage, blasting through the house speakers. It blew my mind.

I’d been out for years, so it wasn’t the queerness that freaked me out; it was something else. I could not name what was happening inside me, but I left early, after going into the bathroom, afraid I would literally be sick. My knees could barely hold me up. I was only a few months sober. I wasn’t even sure I saw what I had just witnessed. I was utterly confused. I loved the music, the passion, and the songs. What the hell was making me so queasy? I had no idea then that the pain of an unlived life was dropping me to my knees in the not-so-clean stall in the women’s room in the Paradise Rock Club.

I went and saw them play again at the 1991 Newport Folk Festival. I’d listened to the Strange Fire record hundreds of times, and had just bought their self-named second record, Indigo Girls. The record had thrown off a smash radio hit, “Closer to Fine.” The Indigo Girls became Newport headliners the summer I celebrated my first year of sobriety. As a gift to myself, I bought a ticket to the festival.

The skies over Newport, Rhode Island, burst open with rain before the Indigo Girls took the stage, but I didn’t care. I found something to hold over my head. Maybe a stranger loaned me an umbrella? I don’t remember. What I do remember was the absolute joy I felt watching them with a full band, brilliantly and confidently take over the entire universe, as the rain came crashing down and rivers of water raced down the hill, magically splitting along both sides of my little island of safety. I had not felt joy like that since … maybe … ever.

Gone was the upset in my gut, the confusing angst, even though the heightened emotions in the women in the audience at Fort Adams State Park was like the Paradise Rock Club times 10,000. I was becoming one of the singing-along-out-loud fans. There were screaming, crying, lyric-shouting women as far as the eye could see and, this time, it made me smile. Song after song, women running up to the stage in tears reaching for them, while security had to push back the surge, while beautiful young girls threw themselves and their passionate, hysterical love at the women on stage. It was amazing. I was witnessing a seismic shift in American culture, and in myself.

The Indigo Girls went on to rule the Newport Folk Festival in the 1990s, appearing as headliners nine times in 10 years. They were stars and bona fide lesbian icons. I had no way of knowing that, a decade later, I’d be standing up on that very same stage myself. I was just beginning to feel the pull to my own music, to the old guitar that had sat in my closet for so long.

What I did know was that a door had opened. Things were different now, and weren’t going to go back to how it was before. The Indigo Girls had shattered the glass ceiling in music, the ceiling that no “lesbian-looking lesbians” had been able to smash through before them. Soon, lesbian artist after lesbian artist made their way through the opening the Indigos created. I become one of them.

I doubt I would have had the audacity to become a songwriter and take the stage without Amy and Emily laying the groundwork for up-and-coming artists. I owe them a huge debt and a heartfelt thank you. The spirit that flows through their music, and through all good music, contains much-needed truths that can help bring lost souls back home.

In their highest form, songs are vibrations from a higher world, which humans have been given the power to channel. Songs are a gift, an offering, and an open exchange between singer and audience. Songs are emotional electricity and know no sexual preference, gender, race, nationality, or age. Some are more than just sweet melodies or sellable entertainment products. The most meaningful ones are powerful medicines that can connect us to ourselves, each other, and to the divine. They carry emotional truths that burn through time and space, touching something eternal.

The songs of the Indigo Girls pointed me home to me, when I needed it most — a date with destiny, a divine decree. By being authentic, Amy and Emily have pointed millions of other people home, as well. Damn near everyone I know (straight and gay) has an Indigo Girls positive impact story. The world is a better, more inclusive place because of their music. So, I say with great joy, happy 30th anniversary to the Indigo Girls and to Strange Fire. You have done much for many, and we are better because of you and your music.

— Mary Gauthier

Photos courtesy of Indigo Girls

MIXTAPE: Newport Folk Festival’s History of Memories

Posted on by Editor

To celebrate the release of his book, I Got A Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival, and this year’s upcoming event, Rick Massimo rifled through his memory (and notes) and put together a list of some of Newport’s most memorable mainstays from across its 58-year history. 

Pete Seeger — “Bells of Rhymney” (at the Newport Folk Festival, 1959) 

Because you can’t start with anyone else. Pete Seeger wasn’t always an official organizer of the Newport Folk Festival, but he was the guiding light, the conscience, from the beginning, and in many ways, even though he’s no longer with us, he still is. “America’s tuning fork” is what Studs Terkel called him in the introduction to this performance, and who’s gonna argue with that?

Bob Gibson with Joan Baez — “Virgin Mary Had One Son” 

Also from the first festival, this was Joan Baez’s major-venue debut. She was 18 years old and wasn’t on the bill, and she knocked the crowd unconscious. “I didn’t faint; I sang, and that was the beginning of a very long career,” she said years later. Gibson was later credited with discovering her — he scoffed and said that was like being credited with discovering the Grand Canyon.

The Freedom Singers; Theo Bikel; Pete Seeger; Joan Baez; Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary — “We Shall Overcome”

Coming at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, this was one of the defining moments of the early days of the Newport Folk Festival. “We felt we were speaking to the aspirations of our country to be a moral nation,” Peter Yarrow told me, remembering the moment. “And, for that reason, it was a very precious experience.”

Bob Dylan — “Like a Rolling Stone”

If someone only knows one thing about the Newport Folk Festival, it’s probably about Bob Dylan going electric for the first time there in 1965. Did some people boo? Did some people love it? Did Pete Seeger say he wanted to cut the PA cables with an ax? Did he deny saying that? The answer to all of these questions is “yes,” and the chapter I wrote about this night is structured like a narrator-less documentary: It didn’t take me long to realize that the thousands of refractions of this performance, through the thousands of eyes who saw it, was in fact the real story … much realer than any one interpretation.

Arlo Guthrie — “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”

After Dylan’s electric performance, he was done with Newport. And as he moved into rock, the folk movement that sustained Newport’s early days deflated. The festival disbanded from 1970 to 1985. That’s not to say there wasn’t some great music made at the late-‘60s festivals, and Guthrie debuted his signature song at Newport. It went over so well, they brought him back to do it twice more that weekend, in front of steadily larger crowds.

Judy Collins — “Both Sides, Now”

Written by Joni Mitchell, who played at the last of the “original” Newport Folk Festivals in 1969 along with a passel of future legends including Van Morrison and James Taylor. Collins was a long-time Newport board member and one of the headliners when the festival was revived in 1985 as something of a statement by a generation of singers and songwriters who had seen the pop landscape pass them by but still had plenty left in the tank, in terms of both creativity and popularity.

Indigo Girls — “Closer to Fine”

They dominated the Newport Folk Festival in the 1990s, playing nine times in 10 years and packing Fort Adams each time. They loved Newport as much as the festival loved them: They once took a year off live playing with the exception of the festival, and Amy Ray told me that her favorite memories of Newport involve not playing but soaking up the music, the friendships, and the traditions.

The Avett Brothers — “Talk on Indolence”

The 2009 Newport Folk Festival ended with Jimmy Buffett — yeah, I know — and as the Parrotheads took over Fort Adams, other fans left in droves. The Avett Brothers were playing on the stage set up right by the exit, and gobs of people got introduced to their power, speed, and sense. I was recently asked which Newport performances were my most memorable, and I could only answer that what sticks out most is seeing an artist go from the smallest stage to the biggest over the course of a few years. That’s true of the Avetts, Old Crow Medicine Show (who looked about 12 the first time I saw them), and of course …

Low Anthem — “Ticket Taker”

This Rhode Island-based group’s first Newport experience wasn’t a show — it was rambling through Fort Adams bagging up the recyclables for Clean Water Action. But they gave out demos by the handful while they were doing it. The next year, they were on the smallest stage, and it wasn’t long before they were on the main stage, mystifying and captivating as ever. I still recall Ben Knox Miller and Jeff Prystowsky tossing a baseball around Fort Adams long after their first festival as performers was over. They clearly didn’t want it to end.

Deer Tick — “Christ Jesus”

Also from Rhode Island, Deer Tick and John McCauley may be a little louder than the typical image of a folk festival, but they’re Newport to the bone, including reviving the tradition of late-night shows at several nightclubs downtown after the festival is through for the day at the Fort. Informal and spontaneous collaborations are the rule at the nighttime shows, and a kind of community feeling reigns.

New Multitudes — “My Revolutionary Mind” 

Jim James is a new Newport mainstay, and few people have more respect for the traditions of the folk festival. “For me, [Newport] is the festival that you go to for two or three days, and you get lost in the world of it,” he told me. “… you’re playing looking at the water, looking at all the boats. It’s like everything’s drawn in pastels or something.”

Dawes — “When My Time Comes”

Dawes has opened for and backed Jackson Browne (including at Newport). Jackson Browne was part of the Laurel Canyon scene in the 1960s and 1970s. So was Joni Mitchell, who played at Newport in 1969, in the singer/songwriter wake of Bob Dylan, who played at Newport in 1965. See how this works?

Staples Singers photo by Ken Franckling. Other photos by Diana Davies, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Stream Newport Folk Festival This Weekend

Posted on by Editor

Can't make it to Newport Folk Festival? Fret not, you can stream performances of the festival from the comfort of your own home! Newport Folk Radio will broadcast a number of performances this weekend, all for your listening pleasure. 

Listen here. 

Other Roots Music News:

• Watch Gregory Alan Isakov perform "Saint Valentine." 

• Sharon Van Etten is one of many artists featured on an upcoming Donovan tribute album. [Consequence of Sound] 

• Go backstage at the Grand Ole Opry with Ashley Monroe. [American Songwriter] 

• Dave Cobb and Anderson East talk bromance in the Nashville Scene. 

• Sturgill Simpson sold out two nights at the Ryman and added a third. [Nashville Scene]