I always told people I wanted to grow up to be Pete Seeger. That was a lie. I wanted to be Chad Mitchell. Chad had a great tenor that rode over the often acerbic and histrionic harmonies that were the Chad Mitchell Trio’s signature on Woody Guthrie’s “Great Historical Bum” and Michael Brown’s takedown of …
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 …
BROOKLYN, NY; JULY 19, 2019—Len Chandler — folk singer, songwriter, actor, activist — walked on stage at the Newport Folk Festival late Saturday night July 20, 1969 with a piece of paper in hand. Chandler fumbled with the paper, trying to find a way to attach the lyrics on that sheet to the microphone stand. …
Click here for the Spotify playlist. In 1967, I was a student at Far Rockaway High School in Queens, New York. I was participating in anti-Vietnam War marches, with Phil Ochs’s sister, Sonny Ochs, who lived nearby, leading the requisite sing-alongs; spearheading a program to convince the community that permitting a Phoenix House drug rehab …
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 …
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 …
I grew up wanting to be Pete Seeger. Problem was I couldn’t sing; I never got the 5-string banjo down no matter how closely I followed Pete’s instruction manual and accompanying record, “How to Play the 5-String Banjo;” and try as my 12-year-old-self did in front of the mirror, I could never get my Adam’s …
nightmayer 