nightmayer

Jottings from a pop culture junkie

After a full and musically satisfying Friday at the Newport Folk Festival with the family last weekend, the heat got to me Saturday morning while waiting to get back in for Day 2. The medics on-site determined it was dehydration and did a work up in their M*A*S*H tent. (“You’ve seen M*A*S*H, right? You have …

Continue reading

NEWPORT, RI; July 31, 2019—If there is one musician who embodies the spirit of the Newport Folk Festival today it is Brandi Carlile. Within a one hour span on the opening day of this 60th anniversary festival Friday she sat (really sang) in with Amy Ray on the Harbor stage, with Sheryl Crow on the …

Continue reading

If anyone wondered just how Patti Smith would close the Saturday concert at the Newport Folk Festival, where the guiding principle is “speaking truth to power,” it was with one lightening jolt after another. And I don’t mean the kind that lit the sky shortly after her sun-drenched set ended. Who else would even dream …

Continue reading

Except for the history/continuity implied in the existing name, the Newport Folk Festival might more accurately be called the Newport Roots Music Festival, what with The Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, Jason Isbell, and a host of other not-very-folkie acts on the roster. The irony was lost on no one at this year’s 56th edition of …

Continue reading