(if you’re interested in reading my thoughts on Newport 2018, they’re here)
At some point towards the end of the first day of this year’s Newport Folk Fest, my friend Andy commented that for the past 360-some-odd days he could find me at a show in NYC by looking for the Newport Folk Fest hat, because odds were very high that I was the only other person in a room with one all but that at the festival, he joked, there were thousands of me. Indeed, spotting someone with an NFF logo on a shirt or hat out in the wild is something noteworthy, a relatively rare event that feels significant — that person is like me in certain ways, in ways that are very important to me. If music is my religion, Newport Folk is my mecca and the NFF logo is my Star Of David. For one weekend of the year, though, the phenomenon is inverted, it feels like nearly everyone has a Newport cap on, or a shirt or, in some cases I saw, a NFF logo tattoo. What makes you stick out in a crowd everywhere else makes you just one of the crowd, a drop in the bucket of thousands, a single note of music in a weekend filled with more music than you can handle. That logo, that talisman, makes you special in a strange-but-tangible way, but also means you are just one member of a large community. I thought a lot about this the rest of the weekend, the likemindedness of the people at the festival, the feelings I get when I’m there — safety, comfort, happiness, joy. How those feelings are more than just loving the music you hear at the festival, the above-and-beyond sets from acts I already love, the discovery of new favorites, the collaborations and the covers; yes it is a music festival, but it is something much larger than that and that something is captured in the feeling you get when you see someone with a Newport cap or tote or shirt out in New York or wherever and it’s captured in the feeling when you’re surrounded by thousands wearing the same. Someone handed me a patch that says “One of the Folk” at Phish at Fenway this summer because of the hat I was wearing, and the night before the person who commented on my hat was Jay Sweet himself. At the festival, no one is handing you a patch because of your hat, but you’ll get a smile that’s more tangible and honest and real than anything you can put in your pocket.
This year was my 10th Newport Folk Fest in the past 13 years and it was a blissful a weekend I’ve had. Going in it felt like the line-up had been specifically tailored to my passions, to highlight 3 decades of my music-loving passions. I’m sure everyone going felt something similar, because that’s what this festival does. It is personal and it is universal. No other festival could feature both a face-melting guitar freakout like the one I saw from Yonatan Gat in the Museum on Friday and a surprise appearance from Dolly Parton that I’m sure you’ve already heard about. The mood this year was triumphant and joyful, a noted shift from an underlying cathartic anger from the last couple of years. I don’t remember dancing at a NFF quite as much I did this year and it didn’t feel like an accident. I also don’t think that it was a coincidence that this mood and energy was accompanied by more women headlining sets than any festival I’ve been to.
Every year there are one or two artists that are just everywhere, jokingly referred to the “Jim James Award.” I personally give the award to two artists, two that also somehow capture the spirit of the festival. I must have seen Preservation Hall Jazz Band sit in about 5 different times, not to mention their own set, and the result was always the same. During their Sunday morning Fort-stage set, a friend said “they just bring the joy,” to which I replied “and they bring enough for everyone.” When Prez Hall is on stage, you are not thinking about anything else but having fun, about how big you can get that smile on your face and at its heart, that’s what spending a weekend in Newport is all about. The second artist was Brandi Carlile whose presence seemed to transcend merely “musician” at the festival. She did a lot of sitting in at the fest last year, but she really felt like the host, curator and protagonist in 2019. She captures the spirit of Newport in a way few have in my time visiting the Fort. At one point I was walking from the Quad Stage to the Fort Stage and was passing by the Harbor Stage on the way where Amy Ray was playing. I looked over and thought “is that Brandi Carlile sitting in?” and, sure enough she was belting one out with Ray. I stuck around to savor in Brandi’s passion, she just brings a magic to everything she does. Phil Cook came out for the next song and I stayed for that before continuing to the main stage for Sheryl Crow just in time to hear her announce her special guest, who else but Brandi Carlile who not only beat me easily over there but was bounding with energy to bring that magic to another stage. All this happening less than an hour before her own headlining set, the debut of the much-anticipated supergroup The Highwomen. All weekend long like that.
Collaborations, sit-ins and covers. These are the punctuation marks of a stellar line-up that tells a story on its own, the commas and exclamation points of the weekend. On their own, guest appearances and covers are cool. At Newport they seem to take on a larger life. The collaborations, often first-time interactions or one-time bands put together just for the festival, have elevated the Festival booking to a higher art form. They also are a strong symbol of perhaps that most important aspect of the festival, that feeling of community, interconnectedness, togetherness. The lines between musicians and bands and the audience are blurred, sometimes non-existent, what defines a band outside the fort doesn’t always pertain to what goes on inside. And the covers, so many awesome choices that pop up over the weekend, they kick ass on their own, but taken collectively over the weekend, within the “standard” sets and pronounced more so in the collaborative sets, they are a strong reminder that Newport is equally about its past as it is its present and future. The covers connect generations of musicians, the living musical history not just of Newport Folk, but the greater musical universe. Some are fun, E.B. The Younger ending his first-on-Sunday set with Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up,” (made popular by the TV show “Russian Doll”) as a get-up-and-go start to the final day of the festival, while making me wonder what it’d be like if Sunday at Newport was a day I could possibly live over and over like the protagonist in the show. Many more have deeper significance to the festival community, like Tallest Man on Earth joining Phil Cook’s Cooks In the Kitchen for a Gillian Welch cover (come back to Newport Gillian and Dave, we miss you terribly!) or the entire audience singing along to “This Land Is Your Land” during the final set of the weekend.
Over the past few years I feel like I’ve raised my NFF-going to an art form of my own, navigating the lineup to see as much as possible while still getting a chance to relax and savor so many moments, share them with family, friends old and new. Yes, you can’t see it all, but somehow I’ve managed to bend my time at the Fort to my will, catching significant portions of almost every act. In my mind I’ve “seen” a set if I catch at least 15 minutes or 3 songs, but typically I saw 20–40 minutes of what I “saw” (which means missing even more than that), with a few acts I caught most/all of. I’d love to review it all, and will do my best to at least blurb as much as I can, if only so I can someday look back and remember everything that captured my heart, soul and ears over the course of my 10th best-weekend-ever.
I’m going to try something different this year. Instead of breaking things down by festival day, Fri/Sat/Sun, I’m going to separate into different categories across the weekend and will try to weave some of my thoughts throughout, hopefully without rambling too much. All told, I saw over 50 acts, missing only a very small handful outside the Museum Stage, over 30 sets from artists I’ve never seen previously, which is really where it’s at.
{and bear with me, because this all purely, 100% from memory, so if I left something out it’s equally likely that I didn’t see it as it is that I forgot it… and also, this is all largely for my own well-being and benefit}
In that spirit, the first category is my favorite batch: the acts I had never seen but was really excited to catch for the first time at Newport. Almost all of these are musicians I’ve been listening to and loving-the-hell-outta, but hadn’t seen yet. Actually, many of them were featured in my JamBase RecommNeds column (or will be soon!).
I’ll just start with my favorite of this batch, which was Kyle Craft. I discovered Kyle through an awesome covers EP a couple years ago, his track “The Rager” was one of my favorites of last year off another EP and his brand new LP is totes awesome. Been looking forward to seeing him play live for a while and, as is often the case at Newport, he vastly exceeded my expectations. Craft is the real deal: killer songs, high energy rocking, awesome voice, great band backing. Already looking forward to catching him in Brooklyn this week. In the past, getting into the museum was a chore, you either had to wait on line or get lucky to get in. This year, for reasons I can guess at, but can’t know for sure, it was very easy to get into the Museum, so I had no trouble getting in for this and other sets there, which was very much appreciated by me.
Jupiter & Owkess kind of blew me away as well. This is a band that I’ve heard some light buzz on, nothing prepared me for their Congolese funk machine. I already mentioned that this was the danciest NFF I’ve been to, and J&O were the epitome of the joyous boogie that pervaded the weekend, with the space in front of the Quad stage filled with people getting down in a way I’ve never seen in my years at the fest. Sweaty, smiling fun, these guys were already killing it when Preservation Hall came out and blew the proverbial roof off the tent. Wow!!
I’ve already mentioned EB The Younger, who was awesome early Sunday, shades of Father John Misty with all the things that annoy you about FJM replaced with a bunch of opposite-of-annoying lovability. I liked how EB came out and said something like “they said to make the set extra special” after an extended almost-jam and before the awesome set-closing Nilsson cover. I love this album so much, was great to see the songs carry over live. EB & the drummer are from a former love of mine, Midlake, so this band makes me extra happy. So glad my first time (of hopefully many) was at NFF.
On the folkier side of things (yes, there is some folk at Folkfest!!), Todd Snider is someone I’ve somehow never seen live. Been a fan of his songwriting, wit extraordinaire, for a while, but seeing him live is the way to capture it best. On top of everything else, Newport seems to bring out the best banter from musicians and Snider’s banter and music seemed to intermix in brilliant ways. This was one of those sets that I stayed longer than I had planned to and I easily could have listened to Snider wordsmith for another hour.
You dig bluegrass? The half-set I caught from The Infamous Stringdusters was another expectations-exceeder. It featured another(!) sit-in from Prez Hall and one of the better musical moments with a brilliant dobro-led jam that sounded like a bluegrass’d version of Phish’s Curtain With before backing into Terrapin Station in rather epic fashion. Apparently they do that often, but didn’t take away from a blow-me-away moment. Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings seem like a match made in bluegrass heaven, they don’t represent the future of the genre, they are the here-and-now of it and man, did they show it in the 20+ minutes I caught of this set. I say this of a lot of acts I see at NFF, but someday people will look back and say remember when we saw them at Newport!?!?
That’s the way I feel about Kacey Musgraves as well, but she’s already a star well into her rise and showed why. Was happy to get a chance to see her play on the big stage. Perhaps my favorite part of Musgraves’ set was that my daughter came to the festival on Friday, largely to see Musgraves. She’s been a few times over the years, but she was genuinely excited for this and put in the effort to get up front for it. A huge part of my Newport experience has been time spent with family, it’s been an extended-family vacation, my parents and siblings and all the cousins together for time together and beach time, a highlight for almost all of us for much of the last 13 years. The Festival is a big part of it, but it’s also still part of it, which makes the trip to Rhode Island that much more meaningful.
Conflicts at Newport are part of the game, you can’t see it all, mathematically you’re always going to miss more than you see, and that’s fine. It’s the confounding beauty of a festival like NFF, but with a lineup this strong, whatever music in front of you is almost always the right thing, the best damn music happening for you in that moment. Still, it does hurt sometimes to miss something. I caught about 15 minutes of Our Native Daughters and it just wasn’t enough. Those minutes I saw, though, they were as powerful as anything I saw. Rhiannon Giddens sometimes seems like she’s not just singing, not just playing, not just respecting history, but channeling it in a very deep way. She is a part of my Newport experience in a very real way, I first saw her during my first NFF with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I loved that set then and the other times I saw them, but none of that prepared me for what she’s become, a powerhouse in the folk community. Some deep, deep shit in that set at the Quad Sunday, she sang “Mama’s Crying Long” and appeared to sing herself to literal tears, going beyond just “powerful” to a transcendent spot. Serious.
I also loved sets from Adia Victoria who was wow factor good, the kind you can’t appreciate if you don’t see it live, the moment, the look in her eyes, so good, and J.S. Ondara with his ridiculous voice, born to play at Newport and Charley Crockett in his bright red nudie suit playing old school country and Haley Heynderickx who was goofy-Portland fun with sharp-eyed lyricism and an engaging new-school folk (and cool “Baby, I’m Gonna Leave You” cover to open her set).
Newport also featured plenty of musicians that I’m already a huge fan of, acts I’ve seen before and, honestly, can’t get enough of. Each time one of these was announced, the smile in my soul grew bigger and bigger. So this is my second category: the breakaway dunks of the lineup. Not surprisingly, these were some of my absolute favorite moments of the weekend.
I’ll kick it off with Liz Cooper & the Stampede who kicked my ass the previous couple times I saw her and absolutely crushed their set at the Quad. Quixotically, the Quad stage had the most sets that were conducive to dancing, but is also the least conducive to dancing. (one of my 2 or 3 constructive criticisms of the festival is just this: don’t book a bunch of bands that people want to get up and dance to and then make it hard for them to get up and dance; the security in the Quad tent seems intent on joy-killing and I’m not into it at all). Anyway, if a band was able to get everyone out of their seats, that was significant, because they were fighting some serious inertia. Cooper and Co. passed that threshold and made as many new fans as could fit at that stage.
Speaking of getting up and dancing Yonatan Gat and the Eastern Medicine Singers took their unique thing and made it work in the museum. I’ve seen Gat like a dozen times and he always plays “in the round,” in the middle of the floor surrounded by the crowd. I’ve written a bit about the experience, so will spare you my deep thoughts on the magic he creates in this format, but needless to say I was leery that it would work in the Museum Stage which is a small space where people sit. Well, whaddya know, it worked out awesome, with the audience crowding around, some on the stage, all the Eastern Medicine Singers surrounding a giant drum, and Gat doing his blistering, tribal, mindmelting guitar thing. Newport surprises you in so many different ways and even though I’ve seen YG so many times, this set was still a shocker. One of my favorite moments at NFF ever, I think.
One of my top 5 sets of the weekend was definitely Kevin Morby on the Harbor Stage. I’ve seen Morby like 5 times in different formats and every time I see him I have the honest, literal feeling that more than any other musician I’d love to go on tour and see him play every night. I listen to a lot of improvised music and one of the things I love is the sensation of your mind losing itself inside the music, north flips with south and east with west and while your internal compass spins, you maybe get to see god or something like that. It’s the best feeling. Somehow I get the same feeling when I listen to Morby’s songs, the words and the syllables and the music that permeates those lyrics. There’s a magic in his music. His set on Saturday maybe is maybe the best I’ve seen him, playing all the “hits” with a killer band featuring Sam Cohen on lead guitar and a female backup singer as well as a guy playing sax/flute. Wow, did this just work in such a wonderful way. His triumphant “Beautiful Strangers” with one verse sung by the backup singer and then flute and just fuck yeah, that was special. Oof. Ready for tour.
When Newport announced this supergroup Bonny Light Horseman with Eric D Johnson and Anais Mitchell and Joshua Kaufman, I think I tweeted something like “this is the dream band I didn’t know I had” or something. I mean, those three together? Yes please! We saw their first show at Rockwood in NYC and it was even better than I’d hoped and their Newport set was even better than that. Eric Johnson as NFF regular is something I am more than happy to subscribe to.
Milk Carton Kids are another longtime favorite. And every time I see them, I remember seeing them one time at Newport, I think 5 years ago now and how it was the one day my dad joined us at the festival and happily bounced around from stage to stage with some combination of me and my brother and my sister and how we all enjoyed the hell out of MCK, the balance of beautiful folk and goofy humor proved to be irresistible to the whole family. Memories of the festival are filled with so many amazing moments, so much music, but also, so much about who you are with. Milk Carton Kids will always have a place in my heart for that kind-of-rainy afternoon and the photograph the 4 of us took in the quad that day. So, despite conflicts this way and that, I was not going to miss the Milk Carton Kids and they never disappoint. I love their sound and their songs and their jokes (even if I’ve heard a few of them before!).
Anyone who’s known me or followed me on Twitter for the last 10 years knows how big a fan of Portugal. The Man I am. This pick for the lineup was so far out of my expectations sphere and the final one that it truly felt like it was for me. While it was annoying that they ended up starting 15 minutes late when there was a fest-ultimate set to get to (and ended up making me miss the Kermit the Frog appearance), and even more annoying that the security wouldn’t let a few of us dance up front, PtM absolutely crushed their set. Band members collectively wore t-shirts of Pantera, Oasis and the Grateful Dead and that pretty much summed it up. A small string section, a sitar and all the hits made their NFF appearance a memorable one for me.
Rounding out this category, Lucy Dacus seemed to touch the crowd at the Quad stage with her dark, opposite-of-cheer-you-up songs. She caught my ear many years ago and it was awesome to see her at Newport, I love her. On the other end of the spectrum, The Nude Party were one of those out-of-your-seats rocking sets. I love these guys and love that they’re in the family now. If you missed their set, you missed a good one.
My next category we can maybe call the veterans, musicians who have well-established careers in the biz, some of whom I’ve seen and some of whom I haven’t.
Caught bits of Benmont Tench’s set on a grand piano at the Harbor Stage which was noteworthy for the between-song banter. I enjoyed what I saw, but even more so was super impressed with Tench who gave it his all and then some, appearing all over the place all weekend long. It seemed you couldn’t go an hour without looking up and seeing his hat on stage behind a piano or an organ and almost always adding something great to the music going on. Applause for Benmont, if that is your real name for making the most of his Newport weekend. I mentioned the couple songs I saw from Amy Ray. She was another one who was bouncing around and I definitely love that aspect of the festival, the way a headlining set can just serve as the spot where the pebble hits the water and a musician’s presence can ripple throughout the weekend and I must say it’s noticeable when people just play and leave. I walked by Amy Ray at one point (and isn’t it great that you can see these musicians, occasionally legends, walking among us) and I saw her t-shirt which said “NAH” in big letters and then underneath a “- Rosa Parks” and I did love that shirt. Sheryl Crow was a pro’s pro in her own set and during the collaborative sets, happy to take on some guests during her headliner and someone I’d probably otherwise never see, but happy to say that I now have had the pleasure and to have had that pleasure at the Folk Fest. Stephen Marley sounds so much like his dad it’s scary in a good way and his mix of old school Bob Marley classics and his own stuff was a nice sunny-hot mid-day treat at the Fort Stage.
Over the past few years Newport Folk has done a great job of balancing the old and the new, both featuring luminaries from the festival’s history as well as “old timers” for lack of a better phrase who are in the orbit of the festival. In the past I felt like their inclusion felt very bare-minimum and so they stuck out with the shifting directions of the festival. Now it’s all a natural weaving of new, old, older and oldest. I like the way some of the true dawn-of-NFF’ers are now featured in the Museum Stage in creative ways. Glad to catch Alice Gerrard singing with keep-your-eye-on-em personal faves Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves (if you haven’t heard their album yet, it’s a stunner). Another one I hated to leave, it was so good, so very old school and real-deal old time Appalachian, but ain’t that always the case.
And finally, my last “vaunted vet” is Phil Lesh who closed out the day on Friday. For the past few years I’ve been waiting for a more overt Grateful Dead infusion to the festival and so I was happy to see Phil in the lineup (as well as the super cool Steal Your Folk t-shirt (and postshow)). As the last set of the day, I was also happy to see Phil and his band invite up some guests, with Benmont Tench, Warren Haynes and Sheryl Crow (!) (singing and playing harmonica) adding some highlight moments to the set. I thought Tench brought out the best in keyboardist Jason Crosby, the two pushing each other to some interesting places and Warren ripped it up during “Almost Cut My Hair.”
Whew, still with me here?
My next short category is solo acoustic awesomeness, a spin-off of the previous category. Here we find a delightful set from Trey Anastasio. It’s funny, the year after my first year at Newport was the year Trey played and we ended up not going that year for one reason or another and so I ended up missing it and have never seen him do a solo acoustic thing. He didn’t disappoint. And that’s the funny thing about seeing Trey play in a situation like this because he doesn’t have a very good voice (IMO) and he’s not a very good acoustic guitar player (IMO), and he’s just so much better with a band, particularly, you know, his regular gig with Phish, but somehow his energy and his Treyness transcend all that. We got all his goofy/cheesy songs and also some inspired versions of “Sand” — I don’t think I’ve ever seen TA do the layered-loop thing and really enjoyed that — and a few others. I enjoyed the heck out of it. Jeff Tweedy, on the other hand, is the master of the solo acoustic set and is always a treat. I saw him recently at Town Hall and this was every bit as good as that excellent show. Finally, Warren Haynes did a very Warren-Haynes set. I laughed as he introduced every song I saw with something that could be paraphrased as “I’ve been playing this song for a while.” It was Warren solo as you’d expect, although I think I missed the highlight, leaving before the guests came out for his set closer. No worries.
Getting close to the end here, I’ll try to keep it short. There were a bunch of sets from artists I’d seen (and reviewed) very recently. In all cases I was happy to see them all again. Madison Cunningham was spectacular playing solo in the Museum, she’s so high on my keep-your-eye-on-her list and did nothing to dissuade, with a rather stunning Radiohead cover. Caught various bits of Rayland Baxter (nearly full set — awesome as usual), I’m With Her (fantastic, very similar to recent show in Brooklyn), Nilufer Yanya (who I saw just on Tuesday) and Courtney Marie Andrews (who I heard a bunch of at the Harbor Stage, scratched my head thinking this sounds very familiar, did she play Newport last year or something only to later realize that I saw a similar set a couple months ago opening for Deer Tick).
How about a batch of what I’d call “Newport regulars” starting with the always fun, work-up-an-early-sweat-dancing Sunday morning set from Preservation Hall Jazz Band (with a Dr-John-tribute version of “Walk on Guilded Splinters” sung wonderfully by Nicole Atkins and a Art-Neville-tribute version of “Mardi Gras Mambo” sung by J.S. Ondara). Dawes is a band I discovered at Newport many years ago with their first appearance at the Quad Stage whenever that was. Cool to see them pack the space with their North Hills retrospective set with a ton of guests. Didn’t see it all, but glad I caught some, because they put together a great set. Lake Street Dive, Phosphorescent, Gregory Alan Isakov, Mountain Man caught some of all of ’em and I’m sure it won’t be the last time any of them are at NFF. Lukas Nelson played for the second straight year and of all the things he learned from his dad, putting on a consistently awesome show is probably the best attribute. No complaints from me if he makes it back next year.
On the other side were some first-timers like Black Belt Eagle Scout who had the honor of opening the festival with the first set of the weekend and did so with a blaring, distorted rock and roll chord. A good and proper way to start. Others included Yola (covering Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” among her own originals, sweet banter and a bunch of name-making appearances throughout the weekend), Illiterate Light (banging two-man rock and roll), Devon Gilfillian (smooth-groove soul on the Fort Stage), Jade Bird (delicious singer-songwriter stuff), Susto (Folkfest ready songsmith), and The O’My’s (got a smidge of this mid-afternoon soul on the Quad)
Let’s finish strong, the way Saturday and Sunday finished strong, with a bunch of magical “collaboration” sets. Phil Cook (and brother Brad) has become the master and de facto ringleader for at least one one-of-a-kind collaboration sets during the festival (and/or at an aftershow). This year’s version was called “Cooks in the Kitchen” and was a wonderful variety of Americana. I mentioned the appearance of Tallest Man on Earth and also Amy Ray joined in when I was there. Also awesome was Songs for Beginners which was a quickly-thrown-together full-album cover of the Graham Nash album which was a substitute for Noname who had to pull out. This was led in some part by the aforementioned Kyle Craft and was highlighted, for me, by Hiss Golden Messenger (another annual flagbearer of the Newport spirit) singing “I Used to Be A King.” Other guests included Jonathan Wilson, Ballroom Thieves and more.
The Highwomen might not necessarily count as a collaboration set, as the supergroup has been putting out their own music, and is on their way to putting out a legit album. The band is Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Amanda Shires and Natlie Hemby and, not for nothing, features Jason Isbell on guitar. The set was pure delight, a true collaborative spirit, everyone lifting the others up, making each other better. It’s not always the case that such endeavors work, but man, this one works, in large part to the presence and energy of Carlile who had, as I already described, bounced from two sit-ins within the preceding hour and changed her outfit, taboot.
Two more…
Saturday night ended with a set called The Collaboration, again Carlile was the centerpiece. I think I could write 5 or 6 pages about this set alone, the mixture of guests and song choices and surprises, was just superb. Over the past few years, Newport has finished many days, particularly Sundays, with these types of sets with enigmatic names and little information. This was clearly a set that would feature women artists, but was also incredibly empowering with their song choices and did a nice balance with musicians from the festival lineup and surprises, with old school and new school meeting on stage at the Fort. Yola singing with the Highwomen, Judy Collins (!!!) coming out and telling one of the best pre-song stories of the festival before doing a duet with Brandi on “Both Sides Now,” Linda Perry rocking with a singalong version of “What’s Up?” and, as you hopefully heard by now, the surprise appearance of Dolly fucking Parton for a mini-set with the Highwomen. Brandi Carlile saying “I love you” in the most genuine way possible when Dolly stopped her banter to ask if she had something to say will be the defining moment of that set for me. The crazy thing about these sets is that the next day(s), these are what you hear about in the major media stories about the festival, Dolly Parton Sings at Newport!!, and with good reason, that’s the first thing you say when you get home, but the crazy thing is that if you left early and missed it and saw everything else, you’re still doing fine. The festival is made in the pre-noon discoveries and the monster afternoon covers and sit-ins, your old favorite bands blowing away a packed Quad stage and falling in love with your new favorite bands in a half-filled Harbor Stage. Sets like The Collaboration are magic beyond belief, festival booking at its absolute finest, and still are completely dessert to a gut-busting meal, an unnecessary luxury in an embarrassment-of-riches line-up.
The final set of the final day was called “If I Had A Song.” It’s a line from one of the songs from the set, from If I Had A Hammer, one of the more recognizable folk songs out there. The set was basically a sing-along with thousands of people, their favorite musicians on stage leading them. “We’re stronger when we sing together” was the promise and ain’t it true. Every song that was chosen for this set was perfection, everyone that was tasked with leading each of those songs was just the right fit, the catharsis of singing these classic songs together, was incredibly powerful. Where else could such a set take place? Where else could the organizers hand out little songbooks and have people sing along without irony or self-awareness? The same festival that Yonatan Gat broke the boundaries between audience and music, between generations and genres. The same festival where a legend like Dolly Parton can appear like it’s no big thing, in a headlining set with barely a hint about its contents.
This freakin’ festival is more than just the acts and the music, more than a gorgeous spot on the water, more than just a logo on a hat or a shirt. I could go into detail on every song in that final set, the chills each one sent down my spine, singing along with the spirit of Newport coursing through my veins, each word tingling in its meaning, the history of each selection, how cool it was to hear the people on stage lead them. I could do that, but I’d much rather tell you to just make sure you’re there next year to experience it yourself.
