Newport comes on all breezy and sunny and sweet, and while one would be flint-hearted to claim otherwise, the delirious summerness of it all can obscure some harder truths. “There are some people put here on earth to make you happy… we’re not those people. And that makes us happy,” quoth John Paul White of my own personal headliners The Civil Wars. In heat loud enough to drown out all but the most urgent music, through traffic to put fear in your mortal soul, and with only a single water faucet for 10,000 sunstruck folk, Newport does not only make us happy. Even if happiness is the end result.
RI locals Brown Bird became my favorite find of the festival within ten minutes of arrival on Sunday morning. Singer/guitarist/percussionist David Lamb is precisely as terse and grave and beard-matted as the band’s excellent EP and even better record (due out in October) suggest. Though it's worth noting that he’d be lost without the laconic strings (violin, cello, bass, whatever) and voice of partner MorganEve Swain.
Said Swain, of the boat-studded harbor: “Shame you guys are facing this way. You’re missing a pretty nice view.” Quipped Lamb: “I think you’re a pretty nice view,” his patter not as effortless as the uproarious percussion he produces with scarcely any visible movement save the heartbeat throb of the kickdrum at his feet. They play Great Scott in September, and if you don’t show, we’re done being friends.
Brown Bird was the sort of set you just can’t leave even when it’s your godsworn duty to see as near to everything as possible. So I stayed as long as possible, then in quickly took in the implausible-not-to-say-incredible Seeger Clogging All-Stars, the sweaty but never-sagging David Wax Museum, Legos, snacks and (crucially) shade at the very sweet Lego Duplo Kid’s Zone, where we ran into Boston’s own folkstar Aoife O’Donovan of Crooked Still who lead us in the call-and-response of “Oh The Wind and Rain.” I trust the kids overlooked the sibling murder at it's heart. Because, you see, this year I undertook the festival in the company of my always-game two-year-old son. Which means, amongst other things, that somewhere herein you will read likely your first-ever review composed while changing a diaper. Bonus points if you correctly identify the band in question.
I wish I’d got to spend more time with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who spice their bluegrass with scat and hip hop references, but I had to push back across the Fort Stage to see Mountain Man. I don’t think there’s any way to save what I’m about to tell you from sounding hokey, but remember: this is a Folk Festival we’re talking about, and what is more Folk than having the audiencefolk do the singing themselves? So the three Mountain Man pixies (has there ever been a more delicious dissonance between moniker and members?) led the Alex & Ani Stage crowd in an eerie, fervent round – an unworldly hushed, bashful sound that would never survive anywhere serving beer. Maybe this is what the Festival is for: to preserve space for a more delicate, volatile music.
Then again, Trampled By Turtles is hardly delicate, despite entirely eschewing percussion and being as Folk as Fuck. Rather than the vocals and harmonies that are the raison d’etre of many of their colleagues, Turtles strum their battalion of strings (28 by my count, but that’s probably low) like they’re fixing to kill somebody.
The afternoon was then becalmed for a stretch, or perhaps it was heat-stupor. Amos Lee is blessed with a voice as classic, wellworn and unsurprising as a denim shirt. I sort of feel bad for the guy – with a voice that bars any irony and almost any sense of fun, he held the Fort Stage rapt. At the other end of the Festival, Justin Townes Earle did something similar with his rapscallion blues. Is it just me, or does anyone else have the feeling he’s going to be really, really good in twenty years or so? Chris Thile and Michael Daves play pristine bluegrass (there was a lot of that this year, unless the heat’s to blame for that too) that requires the kind of focus only sustainable if you’d scored one of the chairs (!) and could peek in at the intimacy between guitar and mandolin, which the two keep homoerotically inclined towards each other throughout their set.
Middle Brother shook us out of the doldrums though – even my son woke up from his afternoon torpor. The three principals in the band are having too good a time together to keep it quiet, and drag their audience boldly along with them. The Head and the Heart are more upbeat in person than an record, with an emphasis more on velocity than abandon; at any given point, the band seems to have at least two members serving duty by clapping and singing fit to bust regardless of whether there’s a mic in sight.
Over at the Fort Stage, Elvis Costello was busting through his suit and a medley built around “This Wheel’s On Fire,” a predictably perfect choice for his inimitable smear of a voice. His own compositions, including the burdensomely wordy “Sulfur and Sugarcane,” suffered somewhat by comparison. But then, “Wheel” is one of greatest folk songs ever written.
The day all but ended for me with The Civil Wars. We actually got seats, no small feat when you need one for the two-year-old as well, and the relief of sitting down, in the shade was indescribable. But even better were the duo of John Paul White (who actually looks the part suggested by his illustrious name, a sort of pre-Pirates Jonny Depp, gleefully depressive) and Joy Williams, but you probably knew all that already. Festivals offer an opportunity to see a band riding their cresting wave, and the buzz around the Wars couldn’t be much bigger, especially seeing as there’s only two of them and they play gloomy, albeit luscious ballads and cover Sade. The sensual intimacy between the two voices is such that one feels a voyeur, breathlessly taking in the orgasmic, gasping swoon. The rest of the world appears intrusive, uninvited, but luckily we were deep in a fort that had stood since, well, the Civil War. At least.
And then the sun began to flirt with the horizon and Emmylou Harris took the stage for the preservationist, emeritus headline show, with the weekend’s up-and-comers massing in the wings for the obligatory singalong. It may be the passing resemblance to latter-period Michael Jackson, or the worthy-but-dated aura of “My Name Is Emmett Till,” but I’ve always understood to be Emmylou to be a Hall of Fame collaborator rather than a superstar herself. And this time her collaborator was the unimpeachable glory of a New England summer sunset, rendered in 270 degree Imax SuperReal 9billionHD. Pretty damn fine.
