POSTED: Thursday, August 26, 2010, 10:04 PM
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| John Vettese |
| Hoots and Hellmouth |
The
Philadelphia Folk Fest is almost always about moments. The three-day musical endurance test — four days for those in the campground — typically comes with stuffy heat, slippery rain, or both. By the end of it, full performances aren't the things that stand out – they can be a blur. Often it takes a moment within the performance to really transcend, to really make the festival. This year, there were moments aplenty.
MOMENT 1: Thursday evening, Hoots and Hellmouth loses power, soldiers on
The feisty Philly revival tent trio had already worked their way through a smokin'
Camp Stage set when, just as the sing-song coda of "
Home in a Boxcar" kicked in, the power kicked out. Like perfectly timed. The chord changes led into the freight-train whistle harmonized "Whoo-woo," and suddenly everything was gone — lights, sound, etc. The guys (and their four backing musicians, including ubiquitous harmonica player
Bob Beach) walked to the front of the stage, urging the audience to clap along, to sing along. They obliged. This continued for quite some time. My initial thought was it was a gimmick, a trick pre-planned and co-consipred with the house crew. But it just kept going — two minutes, three minutes, no power return. But the revelers kept clapping, kept "whoo-who"-ing in the night air bliss. Finally, as abruptly as it died, lights and sound returned, the band picked up their instruments, and picked up where they left off, to everyone's collective delight. I was still skeptical — was this some showmanship ruse? Festival programmer
Jesse Lundy and Hoots mandolinist / banjoist
Rob Berliner both told me it totally was not. "That was cosmic," Berliner said. "You don't plan something like that." The cynic in me thinks, well, if it was an illusion, of course promoter and performer would have you believe it was real. The spectator in me thinks that everybody singing along, clapping along, and not letting go for such a huge duration was pure magic.
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| John Vettese |
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MOMENT 2: Friday afternoon, The Spinning Leaves jerk tears
OK, I'll admit it. "
Bridges For Free" broke my would-be hard façade. Coming out of 12 people, horns and strings and voices resonating beautifully from the festival mainstage, that "Love landed in Philadelphia" line and hundreds of people cheering behind me — yeah, I got misty-eyed. Looks from the photo above that versatile guitarist
Andy Keenan did too, and Leaves singer
Barbara Gettes told me afterward that she had a hard time holding her composure amid it all. To some, she and
Michael Baker might come off as flighty idealists when they talk about the power of people and what we can all do together, but there it is, there's your proof. They're not kidding.
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| John Vettese |
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MOMENT 3: Friday evening, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, aloof and awkward, singlehandedly puts 1,500 people to sleep
Since none of the reaction I've heard to
Will Oldham's much-anticipated set was positive, I'll say this much: His band was pointed and precise, and their nuanced interpretation of the delicate woodshedding-on-the-Great-Plains harmonies from
The Wonder Show of the World (the latest Bonnie "Prince" Billy release) was pleasing. For about the first 45 minutes. The music, while graceful, is mellow. So, so very mellow. Practically sub-audible. And it continued for close to an hour and a half. Oldham/Billie did not appear comfortable being on such a big stage (unless awkward discomfort is part of his constructed Bonnie "Prince" persona), so he'd retreat to the drum riser, or struggle awkwardly with a melodica, or give the
Old Pool Farm an unrelenting thousand yard stare. One by one, spectators began nodding off to the
Cairo Gang's frustratingly quiet strains. This would have been a much better afternoon concert, when patience was more plentiful — at night, it felt interminable. Part of the frustration certainly had to do with the Bonnie "Prince" Billy mystique: Lots of people were looking forward to this set, but nobody really knew what to expect, as Oldham has built a career out of circumventing expectations. And while I wasn't chomping at the bit to see perennial festival hacks
Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams follow him by robo-playing the same five songs they do every year, I wasn't wanting Oldham's Gambit to continue much longer. In the end, the highlights were seeing
Meg Baird grace the Folk Fest stage once again, and realizing that the set was over so I could make my way to my tent.
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| John Vettese |
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MOMENT 4: Saturday afternoon, Adam Brodsky is pleasantly surprised that people remember the lyrics to "Cubicle Girl"
Seriously. I forgot all about this dude and that song, but he was everywhere in the early aughts. Literally. Fifty states in 50 days and all that. But at a
Tank Stage musical comedy workshop, Brodsky got a cheery singalong going to his signature tune ("I see 'em all the time at 18th and JFK / O lord send a cubicle girl my way") that took him unawares — and made fellow panelist (and former labelmate)
Butch Ross crack up. Ross didn't do his song about the Trenton Makes bridge, though. Bummed about that.
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| John Vettese |
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MEANWHILE, BACK AT CAMP...: The Topless Foot Race delivers what it promises
Folk Fest's campground is one part
Monty Python school of absurdist theater, one part bacchanalian frat party. To wit: This year's annual topless foot race, a bare-chested sprint up the campground's steep main drag, featured three women participants. That's three more than signed up last year, I'm told. Apparently this thing is usually a shitshow of moobs.
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| John Vettese |
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MOMENT 5: Saturday afternoon, Jeff Tweedy tells a rock tale
Of course somebody yelled "rock n' roll" at Mr.
Wilco, and of course he made the requisite comment about "Isn't this a folk show?" Then he told us "a rock 'n roll story." In his candid, casual manner that can make the most inane stuff compelling, Tweedy the solo acoustic troubadour described an ill-fated pizza dinner with family the night before. He held up his infant nephew and got pizza-puke all over his face. He washed up and went to bed. The next morning, he discovered a piece of pepperoni crusted in his beard. "I slept all night with a puked-up piece of pepperoni on my face," he said. "That's pretty rock n' roll." Someone asked what became of the peperoni. "Oh, I ate it." Awesome.
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| John Vettese |
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MOMENT 6: Saturday night, Taj Mahal emotes
I could point to the variety in legendary guitarist
Taj Mahal's set — how it moved from rough and ribald blues to the chiming West African guitar styles of his 1999 album with
Toumani Diabate,
Kulanjan. I could talk about how tight the time tested three-piece was, or how they too played for 90 minutes and yet left me wanting more. The thing that stands out most about Taj's performance was how he emoted. His facial expressions. Every note triggered a corresponding eyebrow arch, a pop of the eyes, a knowing head shake or shrugging suave sway, a puckered-up kiss face made to the microphone. Punctuating his music this way, Taj not only gave us something lively to look at – he became a full-body vessel for his songs, something where the music and the character began to seem inseparable.
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| John Vettese |
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MEANWHILE, BACK AT CAMP...: Aliens invade! Robots attack!
Oh, don't worry. This happens every year.
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| John Vettese |
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MOMENT 7: Sunday morning, rain brings the Lee Harvey Osmond crowd onstage
Their churning acid folk and lively wit was a great Sunday morning wake-up on the Camp Stage. But Canadian four-piece Lee Harvey Osmond won the most points when the skies opened up for the third time that day; noting the crowd retreating back to their tents, singer / guitarist
Tom Wilson invited folks to stay and gather under the awning protecting him and his gear. A handful of eager listeners took him up on the offer, piling to the stage and sitting cross-legged, like it was story time at the Schewnksville library.
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| John Vettese |
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MOMENT 8: Saturday afternoon, Cheers Elephant frightens Folk Fest octogenarians
Now I'm not quite sure what exactly the boisterous Philly indie-psych four piece Cheers Elephant was doing on this lineup. The closest they came to "folk" was an electric bluegrass'd reimagining of their song "
Mr. Marvelous." But mostly they did what they do so well — amp-peakin', high-kickin', loud guitar jams. Halfway into their set, an elderly attendee walked in, stood right in front of the largely seated crowd and stared scoldingly at the band. His fingers plugged his ears, his eyes pleaded that these kids and their rock n' roll would hush up. But the band played on. Their new song "Como Es La Vida" was epic. And the Lobby Tent crowd screamed. Did Cheers Elephant fit at Folk Fest? Of course not. Were they any good? Absolutely. Did they make an impact? Oh hell yes.
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| John Vettese |
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MEANWHILE, BACK AT CAMP...: An epic water balloon battle rages on
Shoulda got combat pay for this one!
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| John Vettese |
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MOMENT 9: Sunday evening, Iain Matthews and Richard Thompson stage a mini-Fairport reunion
Good on Philebrity for predicting that the two former Fairport Conventioneers would engage in musical camaraderie while sharing a lineup on the closing day of Folk Fest. During Matthews' stately, classy evening set, Thompson emerged from backstage to collaborate on
Joni Mitchell's "
Woodstock," plucking improve leads and strumming with intensity while his onetime bandmate wailed out the high notes. During Thompson's closing set later that night, Matthews came out for the encore, the two collaborating on Fairport numbers this time, a fine treat for the soggy few who stuck the day out.
