Monday, August 4, 2008

Newport Folk Festival 2008 - Day 1, Part 1 (In The Sun)

(Just as a disclaimer, I only attended the festival on Saturday...)

6:00am: “No…No! Captain Stubing, I don’t care if this is the Love Boat, I told you I don’t want to see your poop deck!”… Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz! (annoying alarm clock noise) Whew, what a weird nightmare – crap, is it really 6 in the morning?! Rassum frassum Newport…

7:30am: Stupid birds singing, stupid sun out, stupid people on the road in front of me. Need car-to-car missile system to clear traffic! Grrrrr!

7:45am: Dunkin Donuts coffee good – feeling humanity resurface. Caffeinated Juano happier, doesn’t want to smash puny humans.

10:45am: In Newport now, found nifty back route to Fort Adams last year. Yay, no downtown gridlock!

11:00am: Pulling into Fort Adams – seriously, they’re charging $15 for parking? Gotta say, liked Dunkin Donuts sponsorship a helluva lot more than the Festival Network so far.

11:20am: After setting up a base camp at the main stage, we head over to the Harbor Stage (the mid-sized of the three) to check out the Young at Heart Chorus. Yes that’s right, we traveled three hours from Western Mass to catch a band from… Western Mass. But with all the attention they’ve gotten from their award-winning documentary, we figured it was about time to actually see them.

11:30am: Impressive band backing Young at Heart: Freddy Freedom (Drunk Stuntmen) on guitar, Jim Armenti (Lonesome Brothers) on bass and Ken Maiuri (Mammals, School For The Dead) on keyboard. (Sorry to say I didn’t recognize the drummer, but I will amend if I find out who it was.) Steve Sanderson (Drunk Stuntmen) was also around, mainly helping set up the mics for upcoming singers (and lending a hand with vox at their urging on “Dancing In The Dark”). If you don’t know the story of the Chorus themselves, they currently range in age from 72 to 88 and do covers of songs ranging from Bruce Springsteen to the Ramones. Sounds interesting? Pull your heartstrings a bit? You don’t even know until you see it live – I saw tattooed up, muscle-bound tough guys with tears fully flowing by song #2, no exaggeration (as for me, I'm pretty sure my sun block was just making my eyes water). And the material! Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” (with the “giving head” line appropriately – and very cutely – censored with an “ahem” at just the right time), Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”, James Brown’s “I Feel Good” (with some crazy dance moves that almost made ME need to take a nap), The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” and the obligatory Bob Dylan tribute for the set finale, “Forever Young”. Young At Heart’s name says it all – and I wish I could show as much energy at 37 as they do now.

12:15pm: Checked in on the main stage, caught the end of the Cowboy Junkies. Much louder than I remember them – but quite good. Lead singer Margo Timmins has quite the set of pipes.

12:25pm: I was a little worried about this. All the stages are starting to have a lot bigger acts playing, and the headliners seem to be getting more pop/cult-friendly every year. With the Black Crowes as the finale today, and Jimmy Buffett tomorrow, this year seems to be much more jam-packed with attendees. Couldn’t even get past the people standing in back to get into the TENT for Jakob Dylan. Listened to two songs from the back - he played the big single, “Something Good This Way Comes”, for the second - couldn’t deal with the masses of people beyond that…

12:40pm: Went to the Waterside Stage (the smallest of the three, generally showcasing up-and-coming talent) to catch the second half of Red Rooster’s set. They’re a pretty cool alt-country band from New York, and one of the winners of the Ourstage.com competition for slots to play the fest. There were male/female harmonies, banjo and saxamaphone – Oh My! I plan on exploring a bit more of their stuff at redroostermusic.com.

1:20pm: Caught the end of the legendary Richie Havens’ set, which finished with a rousing cover of “Maggie’s Farm” – are you sensing the Bob Dylan trend here? Makes sense given the venue and all, I suppose…

1:40pm: Headed over to the Harbor Stage again to try and stake a claim after Dylan’s set was scheduled to end. Pushed through the throngs to find a little patch of grass off the right side of the stage we could call our own (there was still no getting near an actual seat). Planned to stick it out through Steve Earle/Allison Moorer and She & Him.

1:50pm: Steve Earle came out solo with an acoustic guitar, starting with the appropriate “Christmas In Washington” – which calls upon the spirit of Woody Guthrie to “come back to us now”. Earle’s wife and musical compatriot Allison Moorer came on stage a few songs in to accompany him and did a solo song, “Mockingbird”, about halfway through. The weirdest part of the set? A DJ provided a techno drum backbeat for the last few songs. When you think of Earle, you generally picture a scruffy folk/country singer with earnest and honest songs, and a couple of rants about the police – like the one that started when the speakers picked up some other audio (“It’s probably the cops – they think they own all the frequencies”, he jibed. Give him a break, he was in prison for a bit.) The point is, you don’t expect to hear electric beats backing him up – once you got used to it, it was okay, but hearing him shout “Kick it!” like a kid at a rave was still unnerving. His upbeat singles “City of Immigrants” and “Satellite Radio” actually worked pretty well with this arrangement, a nice exclamation point to a set pulling half of its songs from his most recent effort, Washington Square Serenade.

Up Next: Part 2 - And then the rains came… Craptastic!

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