{"id":10739,"date":"2015-07-31T18:53:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-31T23:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/?p=10739"},"modified":"2015-08-02T21:40:52","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T02:40:52","slug":"newport-folk-15-from-afar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/newport-folk-15-from-afar\/","title":{"rendered":"Newport Folk &#8217;15 &#8211; from afar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve trying to recreate the Newport Folk Festival experience for myself, a little late, and a little removed.<\/p>\n<p>I started by reading an article in the <a href=\"http:\/\/nyti.ms\/1HWfr1J\">New York Times<\/a>. Or maybe I got tipped off by one of Robyn Hitchcock&#8217;s tweets, there he is in the polka dot shirt &#8211; not sure which came first.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_10740\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/28NEWPORT-master675.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10740\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10740\" src=\"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/28NEWPORT-master675-400x242.jpg\" alt=\" Musicians leading the Bob Dylan tribute at \u201c \u201965 Revisited,\u201d the grand finale of the Newport Folk Festival. Credit Christian Hansen for The New York Times\" width=\"400\" height=\"242\" srcset=\"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/28NEWPORT-master675-400x242.jpg 400w, https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/28NEWPORT-master675-650x394.jpg 650w, https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/28NEWPORT-master675.jpg 675w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-10740\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Musicians leading the Bob Dylan tribute at \u201c \u201965 Revisited,\u201d the grand finale of the Newport Folk Festival. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/07\/28\/arts\/music\/newport-folk-festival-pays-tribute-with-a-jolt-to-dylan-and-seeger.html?_r=0\">Credit Christian Hansen for The New York Times<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Me on the joy of playing <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Newportfolkfest\">@Newportfolkfest<\/a>: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/tQvgVROXkt\">https:\/\/t.co\/tQvgVROXkt<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Robyn Hitchcock (@RobynHitchcock) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RobynHitchcock\/status\/625735696796545024\">July 27, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Next I watched a little bit of pro, and then way too much judder-y vid of various musicians.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YX5NKbLRpkI\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mJvmbkt26Bw\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Visions of Johanna<\/em> &#8211; Al would&#8217;ve been a Johanna if he&#8217;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 href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/newspapers?nid=1144&amp;dat=19511001&amp;id=fgMiAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=g00EAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=6202,20681&amp;hl=en\">a judge<\/a>. I remember staying at their ski cabin in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ligonier,_Pennsylvania\">Ligonier, Penna<\/a>. &#8211; the old abbreviation for Pennsylvania, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/news\/obituaries\/2005\/03\/25\/Obituary-Dr-Rebecca-Frances-Drew-Taylor-Physician-and-former-dean-at-Pitt\/stories\/200503250285\">her mom&#8217;s nickname<\/a>. It smelled like bacon and woodsmoke and pine trees.\u00a0 And John &amp; Al&#8217;s dad, Jeff, agreed to Johanna because it&#8217;s in a Dylan song &#8211; &#8220;possibly the greatest song ever written&#8221;, as Robyn says.<\/p>\n<p>Then I tried looking in the Internet Archive for recordings. Nothing there &#8211; so I guess that makes me waiting for something to come out.<\/p>\n<p>And, looky here &#8211; Watkins family Hour doing <em>Brokedown Palace<\/em> 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&#8217;t seem to find again, where they were arranged slightly differently, and Sara Watkins is in black.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zNc2Vx6JgSE\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>And I guess the real coda to my Newport Festival remote experience was this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ttbook.org\/book\/summer-music-festivals\">piece on WPR<\/a>. I turned on the radio in the bedroom a little earlier than usual, because Mark&#8217;s off at Lollapalloza, haha. Absolutely no one there I thought I wanted to see, I mean c&#8217;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 &#8211; which turned out to be Michael Perry, the narrator of <a href=\"http:\/\/eauxclaires.com\/\">Bon Iver&#8217;s Eaux Claires Fest<\/a>. This was followed by a piece on the history of the 1960s through music festivals, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ttbook.org\/book\/too-young-woodstock-heres-what-you-missed\">Craig Werner, a UW-Madison history prof<\/a>, who often lectures in the classroom across the hall from my office. He talked about Newport &#8217;65 as the handoff from the old left to the new counter culture (sex and drugs and rock &amp; roll). Made me want to go find a good <em>New Speedway Boogie<\/em>; I had a feeling I had never seen one, and looks like the Dead didn&#8217;t play it from like 1970 to 1991 &#8211; found <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/gd91-02-19.sbd.ladner.8574.sbeok.shnf#\">this one<\/a> (track 9), Jerry totally muffs the words, but it&#8217;s still good &#8211; and I listened while scooping the cat litter. I heard a little sound bite of this piece on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ttbook.org\/book\/why-i-hate-summer-music-festivals\">why I hate music festivals<\/a>, about having to sit through a band that you hate to see one that you like, and there&#8217;s a zillion people, and the bathrooms are disgusting port-a-potties &#8211; about how I feel. I&#8217;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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.advocate.com\/michfest\/2015\/04\/21\/years-michigan-womyns-music-festival-will-be-last\">Michigan Women&#8217;s Music Fest<\/a> &#8211; the last one is this year.<\/p>\n<p>And ugh, I&#8217;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&#8217;d been at Newport &#8217;15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;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&#8217;s tweets, there he is in the polka dot shirt &#8211; not sure which came first. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,148,6],"class_list":["post-10739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-folk-rock","tag-live-music","tag-robyn-hitchcock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10739"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10754,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10739\/revisions\/10754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}