nightmayer

The question strangers ask between sets at the Newport Folk Festival — and yes, strangers talk to each other at Newport! — is no longer “Is this your first?” The question is “How many have you been?” Since I’m older than most but not all of the attendees, I usually “win” noting that my first was 1969 when the Sunday afternoon New Faces concert featured Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and James Taylor (Taylor famously got rained out).

The question when I return home is, “Who’d you hear-who’d you like-who was your favorite?”

I start by explaining that Newport isn’t a folk festival anymore, and barely has been for at least a decade. It’s an Indie Rock-Americana-Inflected Country-Hip-Hop-Everything Festival. I’m not sure anyone knows what I mean, but that’s how it’s evolved. And the programming is so reliable that this festival regularly sells out months before a single artist is announced.

There are three primary stages whose schedules overlap, so you will never see everything or everyone you had hoped to see. Indeed, you will miss far more than you will see or hear in any given year.

The paths between the Fort, Harbor and Quad stages are narrow and crowded, with 10,000 attendees (not counting musicians and staff) inching along to sample as many sets as they can. There is minimal shade, though the festival organizers have been adding bigger and bigger shade tents where they can, and that is very appreciated.

Each year I dutifully listen to just about all the acts I’m not familiar with in advance so that when the schedule is released a couple of weeks before the festival I can map out my days — a map that may or may not prove useful, given the crowding, or because something else catches my ear while en route, or a severe rainstorm interrupts the proceedings, or courtesy of our 19-month old grandson wanting to hang at the family tent and bang maracas on a bongo drum.

I offer my personal highlights and observations here and urge you to read some other folks’ recountings and discover that there’s very little overlap. Also, search Newport Folk 2025 on YouTube and pick your own favorites among scores of videos fans have posted. My list:

• Jesse Welles, who writes and sings like a cross between Bob Dylan and John Prine, with much of his set given over to what might once have been termed “protest songs.” Prine’s son, Tommy, guested during Welles’s, set singing his dad’s “Angel from Montgomery” as a heartfelt duet with Welles, Welles himself sounding more John Prine-like than even Tommy. Also, check out Welles, Lukas Nelson and Nathaniel Rateliff on “That Can’t Be Right.” Rateliff, who has been featured in previous years, wasn’t on the program this year, yet performed an unannounced festival-opening set Friday morning which most people likely heard, if at all, while waiting to get through security and onto the grounds. Rateliff joined just about everyone during their own sets throughout the festival, and kicked off the traditional closing “Goodnight Irene” Sunday night.

• Speaking of fathers and sons and Lukas Nelson: the more he sounds like dad Willie, which was much of his time on stage, the better — vocally, melodically, and in structure of his set.

• Luke Combs, who performed an acoustic set with his band. “We never get to do this anymore,” he said excitedly and repeatedly, also commenting how the view from the stage (of the Newport Bridge and harbor) was the best he’d ever had. And suspecting that not everyone was familiar with his songs, he gave lovely brief, highly personal background for just about each one.

• Obongjayar, a London-based Nigerian singer whose propulsive mix of Afrobeat and soul is high energy and highly infectious. Think Jimmy Cliff meets Fela Kuti.

• Big Freedia. As my son-in-law put it, “It’s. A. Production.” Soul, hip-hop, a bunch of kids on the stage dancing with her, as was the early-afternoon audience in the dance pit down front of the stage.

• Waxahatchee, aka Katie Crutchfield. I don’t always recognize her voice on WFUV-FM, yet invariably hear songs that catch my attention and they turn out to be her. Great set and guested with many others. Here she is with MJ Lenderman, “Right Back to It.”

• I’m With Her. I’m a fan of each individual member — Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins. Great instrumentalists, singers, and songwriters. Their voices blend beautifully. On record and live the mood and tempos can drone; Watkins even addresses it (she’s used the line often): “Okay, the folkies can relax now. Here comes the banjo!” True to her word, that was the song that elicited the loudest cheers.

• Dan Reeder, performing with his daughter Peggy Reeder was a mystery. I’d heard about him from my son and son-in-law, both of whom were eager to hear him live. The problem was both Dan and Peggy sing so softly that they were barely audible. Have to check out the recordings more closely.

Among my favorites discovered post-festival on Youtube: A rocking, intense, fun “Maggie’s Farm” featuring Margo Price, John C. Reilly, and Jesse Welles; Maren Morris with Lukas Nelson on “Me and Bobby McGee;” Mavis Staples (also not scheduled but a regular on this festival stage for more than 50 years) with Jeff Tweedy and Lucius for “You Are Not Alone.” This is a great rabbit hole.

If you haven’t gotten the idea yet, just about every set features musicians sitting in who are also appearing on their own. (And yes, Kenny Loggins’s first hit album was “Sitting In” with Jim Messina; Loggins was featured on the roster this year, though I heard only the last song and a half of his set, his voice instantly familiar even as I rounded the path to the main Fort Stage.

Like us humble ticket buyers, though, once a musician has experienced Newport the Un-folk Folk Festival, they want to be there, and often clear their weekends to hang out all three days whether they are formally on the schedule or not.

Our family calendar is marked for July 24-26, 2026, with thanks to our daughter and son-in-law for donating to the Newport Folk Foundation at the festival each year to secure our chance to buy tickets for the following year!

P.S. While my first Newport was 1969, we took our kids when in the ‘90s, ‘00s, and ‘10s when they were in middle school, high school, college, and on. This was our 3-1/2 year old granddaughter’s 4^th Newport, and the 18 month old’s 2^nd. As Tevye sings, “Tradition!”