I’ve trying to recreate the Newport Folk Festival experience for myself, a little late, and a little removed.
I started by reading an article in the New York Times. Or maybe I got tipped off by one of Robyn Hitchcock’s tweets, there he is in the polka dot shirt – not sure which came first.
Musicians leading the Bob Dylan tribute at “ ’65 Revisited,” the grand finale of the Newport Folk Festival. Credit Christian Hansen for The New York Times
Me on the joy of playing @Newportfolkfest: https://t.co/tQvgVROXkt
— Robyn Hitchcock (@RobynHitchcock) July 27, 2015
Next I watched a little bit of pro, and then way too much judder-y vid of various musicians.
Visions of Johanna – Al would’ve been a Johanna if he’d of been a girl. I like the name, when I was growing up we had a family friend named Johanna (called Hanna) whose mom was a doctor who worked with my dad, and her father was a judge. I remember staying at their ski cabin in Ligonier, Penna. – the old abbreviation for Pennsylvania, and her mom’s nickname. It smelled like bacon and woodsmoke and pine trees. And John & Al’s dad, Jeff, agreed to Johanna because it’s in a Dylan song – “possibly the greatest song ever written”, as Robyn says.
Then I tried looking in the Internet Archive for recordings. Nothing there – so I guess that makes me waiting for something to come out.
And, looky here – Watkins family Hour doing Brokedown Palace even made CBS This Morning, although I think this is the night before Newport at a theater. I watched a different snippet of them performing it, that I can’t seem to find again, where they were arranged slightly differently, and Sara Watkins is in black.
And I guess the real coda to my Newport Festival remote experience was this piece on WPR. I turned on the radio in the bedroom a little earlier than usual, because Mark’s off at Lollapalloza, haha. Absolutely no one there I thought I wanted to see, I mean c’mon, Metallica is the Saturday headliner this year, plus wandering in Grant Park with 100,000 people just does not appeal to me anymore, even to see a few bands I like. Anyhow, when I turned on the radio I heard this preacher-y voice talking about playing music by the water, to 22,000 beating hearts – which turned out to be Michael Perry, the narrator of Bon Iver’s Eaux Claires Fest. This was followed by a piece on the history of the 1960s through music festivals, with Craig Werner, a UW-Madison history prof, who often lectures in the classroom across the hall from my office. He talked about Newport ’65 as the handoff from the old left to the new counter culture (sex and drugs and rock & roll). Made me want to go find a good New Speedway Boogie; I had a feeling I had never seen one, and looks like the Dead didn’t play it from like 1970 to 1991 – found this one (track 9), Jerry totally muffs the words, but it’s still good – and I listened while scooping the cat litter. I heard a little sound bite of this piece on why I hate music festivals, about having to sit through a band that you hate to see one that you like, and there’s a zillion people, and the bathrooms are disgusting port-a-potties – about how I feel. I’ll take my music one or two bands at a time, in a club, please. By the time I got downstairs, it was the Indigo Girls talking about the end of the Michigan Women’s Music Fest – the last one is this year.
And ugh, I’ve taken so long writing this I will NOT be early at the Farmers Market. Oh, well. All festival hating aside, I really wish I’d been at Newport ’15.
