“It
feels great to roam these hallowed halls,” a nattily-dressed Jim James announced, shortly after reaching
the stage on a soggy Saturday afternoon at the 49th Annual Newport
Folk Festival. As James launched into a mesmerizing solo set, he proclaimed his
reverence for the festival’s full scope and history which has yielded “Ghosts
atop ghosts atop ghosts.”
Some
of these ghosts may well have expressed themselves on Saturday, as with shades
of the anger directed at Bob Dylan’s 1965 electric set, lightning struck an
area transformer, cutting all power to the small Waterside Stage. The Felice Brothers responded with a
pure, unamplified acoustic performance from the grass in the middle of the tent,
encircled by a rapt audience.
The
Newport Folk Festival has long since gone electric and eclectic. Well-received
sets by Gillian Welch, She & Him, Over The Rhine, Steve Earle
and Allison Moorer, Richard Julian and American Babies all felt complementary, if oriented towards
different points on the compass (in the midst of Saturday’s deluge, the Babies
received their metaphoric moment in the sun with an impromptu appearance on the
main stage, holding down the fort for a rain-delayed Stephen and Damien Marley).
Chris and Rich Robinson opened The Black
Crowes’ Saturday headlining slot as an acoustic duet before the full-on
band gradually emerged for a liberating performance as the skies finally
cleared. A bit earlier in the day, Trey Anastasio
revisited his catalog and offered two debuts, while looking healthy and hearty
even if his solo acoustic performance did not always play to his strengths.
Richie Havens returned to Newport for the first time in 17 years and described the
sense of collegiality that animated Greenwich Village
in the early ‘60s. A similar sense of camaraderie saw Jim James invite M. Ward up for a couple tunes, while
James returned on Sunday for an appearance with Calexico.Gillian Welch and David
Rawlings not only joined Levon Helm’s
energizing extended family but also emerged during Jimmy Buffett’s closing set for Welch’s “Elvis Presley Blues.”
As
for Buffett, there was no other performer better suited to the physical setting
of the festival, as the noted nautical enthusiast name-checked local harbors
while maintaining a patter with fellow sailors anchored just outside Fort Adams
State Park. The environment
offered its own approval in the form of a rainbow that appeared unexpectedly at
the close of his set on a day without rain and lingered through the final
sounds of Buffett’s sincere solo encore, “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Indeed,
while some purists may have groused about portions of this year’s lineup, such
complaints are decades-old and many of the performers honored their predecessors,
even as they set their eyes squarely on the horizon.
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