KJHK’s Assistant Music Director’s take on a now-classic concert experience.
By Zachary Graham
Music festivals have always been an emotional contradiction for me. I love music and I love shows and, with joy equaling more than their summation, moreso when you combine and spread them out in nice weather for days upon days. However, I hate large groups of inebriated people.
This doesn’t just apply to festivals, I’ll admit. And I was very mindful when I used the word inebriated because, although drunken behavior is the main cause. I’ve had shows ruined for me at pretty much every Lawrence venue by people in almost all chemically altered states. In my show going life I’ve had a person literally knock me over while screaming “I’m rolling!” while holding his face like it was melting. I’ve also had a shirt that I was holding ripped out of my hands and thrown into a pit while the person that did just laughed. I’ve had joints almost forcibly puffed openly into my lungs and pipe resin discarded in my face. I’ve been puked on and I’ve had full beers dumped on my head. I’ve been scared for my life (not in Lawrence but Google Rage Against the Machine at Lollapalooza in 2008 to see what I’m talking about) and I’ve had cigarettes put out on my arm. I’m also pretty sure I’ve been pissed on. And I’ve only lived here for four years. This is probably the same story a lot of show-going people have, though. To see the shows, at least the ones that I want to see, you must go to tiny bars that must sell a lot of alcohol in order to keep the shows coming. I know this. And I know people make specific plans to come to these tiny bars and drinking an Irishman’s share of cheap well shots or PBR. Yet, like an Alzheimer’s patient, I keep going to them.
The problem, which I fully accept, is me. I have a major phobia of public intoxication. I’ll have a beer at a show but never two. Alcohol is the one drug that decreases my sense of enjoyment at a live show and as for the others, I’m too old and have too much on the line to risk that type of drug use. The one beer that I allow myself to have is to temporarily distract me from all of the other people that are, almost involuntarily, getting drunk around me.
This phobia exists because of a few things that I won’t necessarily go into great detail explaining but I believe should at least be mentioned. It is not rooted in a desire for safe driving after a show as I don’t have a car (although I usually am de facto DD). It is not rooted in self-consciousness or hyperelitism as I have nothing against drug use, and, for the most part, encourage it. It is rooted, primarily, on familial history, and the reality of it not being that anymore. There’s no grandeur in a publicly drunken 27 year old PhD student, at least in my mind. For all of the perceived benefits of going to festivals, I always have a hard time convincing myself to pay the large sum of money for tickets and travel. But,
there is one festival, the Newport Folk Music Festival, which based on reasons either already mentioned or structurally implied, as well as a couple more which I’ll cover later, that is absolutely perfect for me.
The Newport Folk Festival in Newport, RI is a two day festival that occurs every year towards the end of July and the beginning of August who’s history I’ll cover very briefly. Created by George Wein in 1959 in the shadow of his more famous Newport Jazz Festival, it was first headlined by bluegrass monarch and banjo virtuoso Earl Scruggs as well as folk hero and board member Pete Seeger. It’s most famous for being the place where Bob Dylan became a national folk icon as well as being the place where he later plugged in. The festival, along with American folk music as a whole, completely disappeared from the public conscious during the 70’s and early 80’s. It was brought back in 1985 and has been an annual event ever since. It is now ran by the non-profit Newport Festivals Foundation, rooted in keeping alive the folk and jazz festivals for the future. The folk festival has been changing, though. Not in it’s principles, but in the manner in which it is showcasing folk music. Recently the festival has not only embraced traditional American folk music legends such as John Prine, Steve Martin, Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson, it has embraced the evolving world of folk-based or folk-inspired indie rock. Talented indie artists such as the Avett Brothers, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, the Cave Singers and the Felice Brothers have been showcased by the festival. Newport has even taken major risks and invited insane acts like O’Death and Gogol Bordello as well as talented but seemingly out of place artists such as the Pixies, Nneka and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings in the past few years.
This evolution has happened, easily enough, of necessity. To be profitable and to sustain a festival these days you must have artists that sell a lot of tickets. Unfortunately, you won’t get a sold-out festival, which Newport did this year for the first time, by booking elderly folk and bluegrass artists. As wonderful as Earl Scruggs is, the random 22 year old has no idea that he altered the coarse of bluegrass. Even the youthful and supremely talented Chris Thile, known for Nickel Creek and The Punch Brothers, gets passed over for his ability to experiment with bluegrass, for that matter. The money is driven by youth-oriented spectatorship that support bands that border the fine and pretentious line of indie and mainstream. The Decemberists, the Saturday main stage headliner, is the perfect example of what is needed to keep successfully cycling the festival. More examples include M. Ward headlining the second stage on Sunday and a 25 minute delay to the Tegan and Sara show because so many people were trying to see them that they clogged the fire escapes. A better case could probably be made by telling a story based upon last year’s festival. Last year, O’Death, a New York based alt-country band, had somewhere around 250 people. Being a huge fan, I knew their live shows are unhinged, spontaneous and loud. A macabre mix between bluegrass and Tom Waits they are a show to behold. The same stage at the same time this year held the aforementioned Tegan and Sara, a very talented Canadian duo in their own right, and there were probably close to 500-600 people, and they were playing at the same time as the legendary Earl Scruggs and his bluegrass lineup. It’s somewhat of a symbiotic relationship: acts such as Tegan and Sara allow for acts such as O’Death. My only hope is that the festival doesn’t outpace itself and begin to only book the Tegan and Saras of the indie world while turning away from other bands that are experimenting with folk music.
The music of this festival is always refreshing because it doesn’t have to cater to booking acts such as Eminem and Lady Gaga, which are essentially extravagant gimmicks marketed toward your everyday radio listener. Acts like this will always dilute my ability to enjoy a music festival. There was a time, when I was just entering high school, when Eminem was considered a refreshing artist that was pushing the barrier of hip hop. But now he is just pop fodder that hasn’t challenged the structure of hip hop in 10 years. Lady Gaga is somewhat the same but with her it’s the visual as opposed to Eminem’s auditory. The nature of Lady Gaga is not progressing music; it’s altering the idea of performing. But even this gimmick is getting old and expected. There is only so much you can do with production values and astonishing amounts of wardrobe before everyone starts to realize that, when it all comes down to it, it’s really quite boring. And once your act becomes expected and boring you are no longer pushing the elements of your art, and, to me, you begin to lose your ability to call yourself an artist. The very idea of art is progression in which your are required to continually build upon an idea to demonstrate a personal view to the world. Performers such as those two, who are very talented, will always exist because not everyone wants to explore music and accepts mainstream radio and television as being a bastion for skill and artistry. That is fine and I do not take it personally when people say that their favorite artists are playing on the radio. But I do take it personally when people tell me it is good music when in 10 minutes in the shack I could probably find 100 albums that adequately demonstrate what good music is. Is it pretentious? Of course. That’s what happens when you explore and research a hobby. Ask a serious pothead their favorite strand of marijuana and then ask someone that has only puffed a few times. It is the exact same thing. And because of that, I will always look at Eminem and similar artists through Sufjan’s eyes and be keenly suspicious of those with very large followings.
There are other great properties of this fine festival that don’t revolve around the music lineups. As one random passer-by put it, the beer line was “a four hour death march.” Alcohol, on the actual grounds of the festival, is prohibited. To get a beer you had to go to a special pier or beer garden and couldn’t take your drink out of that designated area. I also heard they cost $8.00 but I don’t know for sure and I really don’t care. This is the main reason why I like this festival so much. I have been to Newport the past two years and encountered zero drunken behavior. I can understand the willingness to get drunk at a bar. It’s usually a late show, there are beer specials and you can pick shows around your work or class schedule. But getting drunk at a music festival has always seemed very crazy. First, gouging festival goers is standard for all vendors, regardless of the goods being sold. But beer is on a whole different level. At no time would I want to repeatedly spend $8.00. Second, the event is usually all day in warm to hot weather. Being drunk and being hot is not a way I want to spend 10 hours. Finally, unless you live close to the road the state park is on, odds are you have a pretty long drive home. None of those sounds fun.
The What? Cheer Brigade is also another great quality of the show. W?CB is a punk marching band, resembling crust punks wearing deranged clown masks and sporting tattoo sleeves, that ramble across the grounds playing impromptu high energy 15-20 minutes sets all weekend. And this marching band resembles Balkan and gypsy-rooted brass music driven in God’s key of A minor. There is no Sousa here. There are two great stories involving W?CB that I witnessed this year. During the Wailin’ Jennies sound check, W?CB parted the masses sitting in front of the main stage and went off. Their music, completely acoustic, rendered the sound check inaubible. However, the Wailin’ Jennies, while seeming a bit perturbed, gave in and started dancing/waiting while their fiddler picked up the tune and played along for a few minutes.
The second story revolves around the final great aspect of the show that I’ll cover and that is the close vicinity of the main stage to Narragansett Bay. The south part of Newport, where Ft. Adams is located, juts out toward the west, creating a micropeninsula and giving a great view of the Jamestown Bridge and north Newport from the main stage. As the day grows longer and the more notable acts begin to take the stage, there is an ever growing flotilla of yachts, speed boats, fishing boats, personal boats, canoes, tubes and kayaks that gather around the water surrounding the outskirts of the fort, taking in the music and the atmosphere of a spontaneous party. The sound quality is top notch and the large screens show the performance. The second story goes as follows. My girlfriend and I were leaving a bit early to beat the traffic (there is only one road that gets you away from the fort) and we heard W?CB playing but we couldn’t pick out where it was coming from. As we went through the gates, we realized the sound wasn’t coming from anywhere on the fort. As we, very confusedly looked around, I saw the glare of sun hitting brass in the middle of the cove. The band was on a boat playing a set in the middle of the flotilla. Yes, it was as cool as it sounds.
There are a couple of things that I won’t cover, such as the child friendly areas, the no standing policy, the friendly camera policies, the general “greenness” of it and the weather, that make the festival wonderful. This year I went because my favorite band, Gogol Bordello, was playing an acoustic set and it made sense to make a weekend out of it. The Gogol show, was a bit tame. Those that have seen their shows know why as the festival would not have allowed a show so crazy that they have been band from several of New York’s famous punk venues. But it gave me a different aspect of the band that I hadn’t seen, yet, and the show was easily worthwhile. The Felice Brothers were great and seeing 87 year old Earl Scruggs picking a banjo was one of my favorite concert moments of all-time.
Everything about the festival seems to revolve around intimate distances. You are never too far from a stage. Parking isn’t that far away. We stayed in Warwick and were 25 minutes from Newport. We hung out and walked around Providence and Brown University which was only 15 minutes away. We took the train from Providence to Boston to spend the day eating and exploring and it only took 80 minutes. We even craigslisted our tickets and parking pass for the second day of the festival to go exploring the island. We also stop to go hiking in random state parks and to venture through the little coastal towns on our way home, which are about 20 minutes away from each other. We did all of this in three days. It was the perfect way to signal the end of summer and to prepare for another year of living the glorious life of a graduate student. As I stare at the computer writing a manuscript or reading journal articles or grading exams I can always think back to the festival and how it was three days of complete personal perfection. It’s amazing what your favorite band will lead you to.