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Folk Lore

As a California kid, novelist Adam Braver dreamed of the Newport Folk Festival. Now living in Rhode Island, he finally makes it to the epic event where Dylan went electric and wonders: Can the festival live up to its iconic past?

Photgraphy by Alexander Nesbitt

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The first time I went to the Newport Folk Festival was in Concord, California.

It was 1998, and the festival had been touring various cities, taking its storied reputation on the road. We all knew it was a little bit fishy. More marketing than tradition. But for me, having been born and raised in California, I was the target audience. A total sucker. I’d been completely enchanted with the festival since I was about twelve. This was due to my infatuation with all things Bob Dylan, and to cherishing the LP, Newport Broadside: Newport Folk Festival 1963, a recording as old as I was. That record captured songs from people such as Phil Ochs, Sam Hinton, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, the Freedom Singers and of course, Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. I wore out the grooves. Taught myself the songs on the guitar. Memorized the liner notes. I was completely captured by the idea of politics and music, and the notion of rebellion and change coming through these simple songs, all on a single mythical stage. The festival spoke to everything I wanted to be but wasn’t.

In fairness, the Concord Pavilion line-up did try to capture the essence of the tradition, with artists including Joan Baez, Bela Fleck, Wilco and John Hiatt. But the real Newport Folk Festival was more than just an assembly of the right performers. I tried to go with it. I kept saying to my wife, Alisson, “This is the Newport Folk Festival. Can you believe we’re actually able to see it?” It was impossible to convince her, especially when I couldn’t convince myself. We left early. It would become nothing more than an ironic punch line to a mediocre dinner story.

Summer 2009. Our water taxi heads toward Fort Adams. It’s a magnificent August day. The sun is out. The skies are clear. It’s been fifty years since George Wein produced the first festival in 1959, and after a brief absence, he has returned with the promise of restoring the festival to what it once was. Coming across the bay toward the fort, I feel the anticipation of something historic. Still, the question remains as to whether attending the festival will be a matter of reliving an era that has since passed, or will it be, as Pete Seeger says, a time to “find some new things that nobody’s ever thought of.”

Ben Knox Miller of the Providence-based group the Low Anthem is hoping to be one of those “new things.” In the summer of 2008, Miller and his band mate, Jeff Prystowsky, attended the Folk Festival as recycling volunteers. They were given the task of digging through trash bins to pull out “inappropriately discarded” cans and bottles. Miller’s main sensate memory of that day is of stink, or as Miller says, “being covered head to toe in trash juice.” That weekend they proved the adage that the definition of luck is talent and ambition. Miller and Prystowsky managed to get themselves backstage recycling passes, and there, behind the scenes and armed with pockets full of their not-yet-released CD, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, they slipped the discs into the hands of anybody who might take them, including, fortuitously, festival associate producer Jay Sweet.
 
One year later, on the first day of the festival, the Low Anthem is about to take the Waterfront stage. It’s the smallest of the festival’s three stages, set nearest the entrance gates, abutting the harbor. Miller’s entire family is present under the Waterfront’s tent, including his Aunt Tollie, who has come in from Connecticut to see her nephew’s Newport debut because “it’s that historic.” After the band has finished setting up their equipment, they step off the stage into a backstage area that is a backstage area only in its most literal sense — free space between equipment and stacks of carrying cases. They look nervous, awaiting their introduction. Ben Knox Miller has been anticipating this moment for weeks. Clearly it will be different from the previous year, when he ached at the end of the weekend from hauling trash bags all day. It’s not just that he’s always been dying to play the folk festival, it’s that he feels lucky to be making his Newport debut during the fiftieth anniversary, as it seems to Miller that the folk festival has gotten back to what made it so “special in its heyday, with this cast of great iconic American artists.” Miller tries to express what it means to him to be part of a line up that includes Mavis Staples, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and Pete Seeger, but after struggling for words all he can say is that it “blows my mind.”

The Low Anthem finally take the stage in front of an overflow crowd that collectively seems to be sharing the anticipation with the three band members. They strap on their instruments and walk up to the microphones. Miller tells the crowd, “We’re not really ready at all.” He slowly strums his acoustic guitar. Miller, Prystowsky and multi-instrumentalist Jocie Adams look at each other. I wait for their awe to turn to belonging. Finally they begin with the slow falsetto of “Charlie Darwin,” and in only moments their three part harmonies easily catch on the breeze that blows off the bay.
 
At the heart of the festival site, booths snake around the grounds. They sell everything from African drums to clothing, games and handcrafted jewelry. The walkways are jammed with shoppers and browsers.