Music Notes
By 
Last weekend was Newport Folk Festival. A few general notes, similar to what I’ve said in the past. There are great things about this festival, some frustrating things about it, but overall it’s a good event that I enjoy every year. It’s not very romantic to say this, but one of the best things about this festival is the amazing logistical job that happens. The food is good, there are free water fillup stations across the festival, there’s some shade if you need it (though it could use more), the sound is generally quite solid, the port-a-pottys remain mostly clean. And since you have to work to drink alcohol here–none allowed in, beer gardens are only open until 6, you can’t take your beer outside of the gardens, neither of which is particularly close to a stage–you have far fewer issues with fans that usually do. The lines can be bad getting in, but they made some critical adjustments this year to prioritize those (like me) who don’t bring chairs and blankets in and thus should be able to get through more quickly. Moreover, since they underestimated how many people would shed their crap to do this on the first day and the line to get through security wasn’t any shorter, they adjusted for the final two days and we flew through. So they are attentive to these issues and it makes for a very fine viewing experience. Not to mention the fact that you are in the Newport Harbor and it’s freaking beautiful, especially with ideal weather, as we had this year.
I guess I start with that because the programming hasn’t been super the last few years. I blame Nathaniel Rateliff, the vastly overrated singer who has been the Folk Ambassador or whatever it is called there for the last three years, which meant his style of making black music safe for white audiences and bringing in harmony-based jammy groups that challenge nothing but provide easy listening to millennials. Here I am talking about Dawes, Punch Brothers, Lake Street Dive, Illiterate Light, Mt Joy, Bonny Light Horseman, Langhorne Slim, Shakey Graves, and a lot of more minor and completely forgettable bands that are worse than these. There is good stuff to see most of the time. And I saw it. Sometimes there are even tough choices at the same time. On the other hand, there’s a lot of great acts who should get asked to play here who never ever do and it makes no sense to me (we can start with James McMurtry). Rateliff’s term is over and I hope they pick a non-white guy next who is less likely to center these kinds of boring ass white bands. The one year it was truly great was the Black Lives Matter year of 2021 when they gave over half the festival to Allison Russell and it was tons of black artists and Chaka Khan came out at the end of the festival and it was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. The Rateliff era is not that.
OK, a quick rundown of what I did see. One thing that was interesting about this year’s lineup is that there was no one I had seen more than twice before. That meant few of my very favorites were on the bill, though a couple were, but a lot of people I wanted to explore more I could. So I enjoyed that, mostly.
Friday: I started with Courtney Marie Andrews. I had seen her once before, opening a large venue solo for Jason Isbell. That’s a hard gig. But I was impressed with her in that venue, at least up to the point I could hear over Isbell Bros not caring about the opener. So I started working through a couple of her albums and I enjoyed them too. She fits squarely into the emotive woman singing about her feelings with an acoustic guitar genre, which is a bit overfilled if we are being honest. But she’s a better songwriter than most and a good singer and a good enough guitarist, so it works. Worked in this live show too. Was definitely an above average set for the festival and I would absolutely see her in a club. She has a good band with her and has real skill.
Then came a duo set with Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover. I was familiar with her work but not his. She’s a super talented young songwriter, a Filipino-American with a sharp sense of America’s potential and shortcomings. Here, they came together to listen to a lot of Woody Guthrie and think about writing songs that would be inspired with his spirit. Given the general soullessness of a lot of the acts at Newport, this was one of the sharpest sets of songs I heard, especially Conover’s. But that’s just one half-set of a live show. I missed their album from last fall and now I plan to check it out, which is what you want with a set like this.
I couldn’t stay for the whole thing because Wednesday was playing, which is by far the best set of the festival. Wednesday is the best and most necessary rock band today, especially the live show. Karly Hartzmann is a force of nature, a true rock and roller who barely fits at Newport. No bullshit fey folk shit here. No white wannabe Beach Boys harmony shit. Rock And Fucking Roll. This show may have had the first mosh pit in Newport history. Plus there was this conversation I overheard:
Karly from the Stage: “I would like to scream in this song in honor of Lindsay Graham dying.”
Four year old behind me: “Mommy, why does she want that man to die?”
This was more or less the greatest thing I’ve ever overheard. Mommy changed the subject quickly.
Plus Wednesday’s cover of Gary Stewart’s “She’s Acting Single (I’m Drinking Doubles)”. My God.
From there I had to check out at least part of Hot Tuna. Yep, old hippies fucking around with the blues like they were opening for the Garcia Band in 1975. All good, this is exactly what it should be.
Then it was onto Deer Tick, which is always a super fun band to see, plus they have their new album out about Providence in the Buddy Cianci era, which brings joy to my mafia loving heart.
Caught part of Lucy Dacus’s set, she’s such a wonderful songwriter, even if her thing is a bit more queer millennial woman than, well, me. Always great to be in the presence of someone who is just better at it than most people.
I then tried to see Lauryn Hill. She came out 37 minutes later. I bailed after 15. Fuck unprofessional divas. Grow up.
I kinda wanted to stay for the Haley Williams to close the day, but that would mean not only that set, but all the traffic and getting home at 10:30 instead of 7:30. Jenny Lewis came out to play “Silver Lining” with Hayley. Would have been great. On the other hand, I’m old.
Saturday:
Got in early to see Kirby. She was a fantastic soul/gospel/blues act. This is emblematic of a real Newport problem. The organizers know their main acts are as white as a Lutheran church. So they make sure they have diversity by stacking good black acts at 11 AM when no one is in there. But these acts deserve serious audiences. Kirby kicked ass in that timeslot. Gotta keep them soulless white harmony acts in the good slots though. What if there’s a bitchin’ mandolin solo on a song about getting high? Now that’s FOLK MUSIC!
Then I went to see The Ollam. It was fucking horrible. Do you like your Irish/Scottish music as jammy light funk with a keyboardist so cheesy he should be in 1978. This is the worst act I’ve ever seen at Newport.
Luckily after that I caught some of the This is Lorelei set. Despite a stupid band name (not that I have any claims to that issue after being a fan of Drive By Truckers and Wussy), I had heard great things about this band. Waxahatchee’s been covering one of their tunes. I see why. This band was absolutely fantastic to catch. Wish I had seen the whole set. At least I got to them to recover after that horrible Irish shit before.
Then it was a real highlight. Yasmin Williams and William Tyler are both astounding guitarists. I had seen neither. Now I have. What talent. What interplay. What mastery. Also the drummer they had can be in any band at any time. Great, great set. Saw the whole thing. Wish it was longer.
Then came Devon Gilfillian, a cool dude if nothing else, bringing his Sea to Shining Sea project to Newport, where he worked with Newport head Jay Sweet to find a few obscure local musicians to come sing their favorite American songs in this shitty time. It was great, an older black woman busker from LA, a songwriter from Birmingham, and then known people like the singer from American Aquarium. Everyone got to sing the song they thought would bring America together. From “Raise Every Voice and Sing” to “Fortunate Son” to “Born in the USA” it was a heartfelt singalong. Me, I would have picked “Rockin in the Free World” and then “City of New Orleans.”
After a beer and break, ended my day by seeing Gillian Welch and David Rawlings playing Grateful Dead songs they way they should be played, a focus on the lyrics instead of jam band bullshit. It was absolutely a great way to end a day. I could see this over and over.
Could have stayed for the Lumineers to close the day, did not care.
Sunday:
Got there early again to see Brittany Davis and Black Thunder. Davis is a blind musician who is a bit like Lonnie Holley with the improvised lyrics but she’s a better singer. Again, 11 AM Black Sunday to clear space for those cracker ass harmony bands who wish it was 1973 in Laurel Canyon. Brittany Davis is a force of nature. God bless her. Then it was White Time for most of the rest of the festival, just like 99% of the attendees want.
I followed that with Dove Ellis, a boring polite earnest Irish boy who is decent but is Coldplay-esque. I got a seat in the shade at least. It was OK.
Then came CMAT, another Irish singer, a theme ths year. CMAT does a country sort of thing and is very fun and very entertaining and very queer and body positive. I can see why people like her. But the live show is not nearly as country as her albums. OK, whatever. The bigger issue is that the schtick gets very old. How many times do you have to ask the audience if you are sexy between songs? How many dumb dance routines to you have the band do? She’s very talented and very fun and it’s all good, but dialing the whole deal back about 40% would really help. At some point, shut up and play.
OK, now, Tedeschi-Trucks Band was supposed to play. But Susan Tedeschi had to have emergency appendicitis surgery. Yikes! But I’m not really a fan, so it was my in personal interest to have their replacement play. That was Father John Misty. Now I’ve been a fan of sorts for a decade. But the character is such a scumbag piece of shit, so I was always conflicted. Never saw him. Glad I did now. It’s really just him and a piano or guitar. And it was better when Dave Rawlings came out to play with him, because then someone on stage knew how to play an instrument. But boy has his character grown up, now that there’s less drugs and sex and more being a dad and that’s what he’s writing about and turning his intelligence and insight to his family is pretty satisfying, as he previewed his next album. So this was cool.
I caught a bit of the Kathleen Edwards set. I had last seen her in like 2008 in Austin at the Continental Club as part of a triple bill opening for Jon Dee Graham and then James McMurtry. My God what a night. Her new album is excellent, she was so happy to finally get to Newport, she sounds great.
But I left that to go see Brandi Carlisle. Tom Morello was playing at the third stage. Brutal choice. The thing was that Brandi Carlisle is an important artist but her live show is just pretty straight ahead rock that really wasn’t that great. Also, she is a very literal songwriter, so she would tell a story about the song and then the lyrics were just reiterating the story she just told. It was fine to finally see her, but it wasn’t really that great.
Then I closed my festival with a very special thing–Peter Rowan, now very very old, surrounded by some of the greatest living bluegrass musicians–Sierra Hull, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Sam Grisman. It was great. I’d seen Rowan in maybe 1999 and then in 2005 or so. See him now if you are going to. He can barely get around. His voice is OK but he can’t do much. But my God, that set. The band gave him breaks and the band is so great too. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings came up to help him sing his signature song. See, in 1965, the year of the legendary Dylan electric performance, Rowan was playing there with Bill Monroe. And Rowan, right around that time, wrote maybe the last real signature Monroe song, “Walls of Time.” When they came up to sing that with him, the end of an era music in a real way, I cried. And any reader of this site knows I am not a sentimental person. But it was beautiful. After, I found that Welch and Rawlings had their big break opening for Rowan 30+ years ago in Nashville when some execs saw them. Then they played some Old And in the Way songs. The band, without him, closed with a cover of the Dead’s “Attics of My Life.” It was so beautiful.
After that, it was time to leave. I was curious–Nathaniel Rateliff was closing his underwhelming 3 year run at the festival with his friends. Who would the big special guest be? It was Dave Matthews. Fuck that. I am glad I left and went home. Let’s hope for a better Newport in the future, but even in this slack ass shitty white band era, it was still pretty good.
Other News:
The big thing that happened this week in the music world, as you have have heard, is that the Irish singer Glen Hansard died in a motorcycle accident. I have to note that I think that anyone who rides a motorcycle is basically getting what they wanted when this happens–the activity seems completely insane to me. But people find it fun. So whatever. Anyway, Hansard got super famous in 2001 when he and his then musical partner and girlfriend Marketa Irglova starred in the 2007 film Once, which was a pretty good love story of the kind that I wish the studios made more of these days. Their song from the film “Falling Slowly” was a huge hit. They broke up after that, but still performed together at times in a band they called The Swell Season, and in fact were at Newport Folk a year or two ago. He had quite a few other successful songs, especially in Europe. By nearly all accounts, he was a really good guy too, did a lot of charity work, worked on homelessness issues. He was 56. Sad stuff.
The French DJ Kavinsky, whose work you probably know from the opening sequence of Drive, also died. He was 50. Finally, the classical music radio show host Bill McGlaughlin died at 82.
Experimental artists to know. Some of these you should already know like Bjork and Sun Ra, but others are less known and I can personally recommend Snapped Ankles, a recent band I’ve been listening to a lot.
Durutti Column has a new album out. There’s a band I haven’t thought about in a long time. Here’s a discussion of the band and its history.
This week’s playlist:
- Corb Lund, El Viejo
- Chip Taylor/Carrie Rodriguez, Let’s Leave This Town
- Waxahatchee, Out in the Storm
- Mekons, Deserted
- Laura Veirs, My Echo
- Matthew Shipp Quartet, Sonic Fiction
- Blue Mitchell, The Thing To Do
- Mitsuko Uchida, Schonenberg Piano Concertos
- The Lowest Pair, Fern Girl and Ice Man
- Yo La Tengo, There’s a Riot Going On
- Speedy Ortiz, Twerp Verse
- The Sound of Siam – Leftfield Luk Thung, Jazz & Molam in Thailand 1964-1975
- Snapped Ankles, Hard Times Furious Dancing
- Art Blakey, Hard Bop
- McCoy Tyner, Echoes of a Friend
- Derya Yildirim & Grup Simsek, Yarın Yoksa
- Chris Stapleton, Starting Over
- Patsy Cline, Showcase
- Mac Wiseman & Chubby Wise, Mac & Chubby–Live
- Chubby Wise & W.C. Averett, Bluegrass
- Jim & Jesse, Y’All Come
- Talking Heads, Remain in Light (x2)
- Bob Dylan, Desire
- The Highwomen, self-titled
- Richard Buckner, Dents and Shells
- John Prine, self-titled
- Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Matapedia
- Emily Scott Robinson, Appalachia
- Wyndham Baird, After the Morning
- Amanda Shires, To the Sunset
- Duke Ellington, Black, Brown, & Beige, disc 3
- Cory Branan, Adios
- Mitski, Puberty 2
- James McMurtry, Complicated Game
- Sarah Jarosz, Polaroid Loves
- Meridian Brothers, Mi Latinoamerica Sufre
- The Gourds, Shinebox
Album Reviews:
The Paper Kites, At the Roadhouse
As exciting as James Taylor, which means extremely boring. The best thing one can say about this is that it is reasonably effective background music. It has some tasteful guitar licks and some fine harmonies. It might grab your attention for a half-second before it goes back to its banal 70s singer-songwriter self. Also, at 79 minutes is interminable. Occasionally one of the songs rises above the mediocrity for a worthy listen, such as “June’s Stolen Car,” but it’s a lot of nothing to get to them.
C
Dogo du Togo, Dogo du Togo
Pretty reasonable modern Afrobeat interpretation by Africans who have immigrated to the U.S. I can live with it.
B+
CMAT, Euro-Country
As I stated in the Newport stuff above, CMAT really leans into her personality. People like it and who am I to argue with a successful formula in music in 2026? So fine. My only question here is, given my ambivalence about the live act, is how the album would play, since she at least purportedly claims to be playing country music. And the answer is that, yes, this is much more a songwriter album than the live show demonstrated. Stripped away from the image and all, this is a basically fine album with some real highlights and some kind of weaker tracks. Unfortunately, “Lord, Let That Tesla Clash” is not about Elon Musk blowing up. But “The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station” with its unbelievably catchy chorus of
So, okay, don’t be a bitch
The man’s got kids, and they wouldn’t like this
I’m saying, okay, don’t be a bitch
The man’s got kids, and they wouldn’t like this, oh
is way, way too catchy for its own good, especially given that singing “bitch” to yourself all the time in public could be a problem. Given how much the Irish love American country music, actual country musicians from Ireland always had made sense. I totally respect what CMAT is doing here–her combination of country and pop is better than the shit coming out of Nashville and certainly no less “authentic” or whatever that means than what Brandi Carlisle or Ashley McBryde or a lot of other folks who are not producing shitty Nashville music are doing. I’d like to see a few more bangers on the songwriting, but she’s better than a lot of people selling a lot more albums. So good luck to her.
B
Matt Mitchell, Oblong Aplomb
Like a lot of streaming new jazz, only a few chunks of this 2023 album is available. The first half pairs the pianist Mitchell with the drummer Kate Gentile and the second with the drummer Ches Smith. The first two tracks are among what is available and Mitchell and Gentile just spring into this with intensity within one note and it extends through the appropriately titled track “all immoderation.” I like it enough that I will try not to hold the present curse of lower case titles that is through music these days against it. The whole set is like this, just a very high energy set of compositions that sound like a lot more than 2 people. Mitchell isn’t often discussed among the most important current set of jazz pianists, but I’m not sure why, as everything I’ve ever heard is pretty first rate, up there with people such Matthew Shipp, Craig Taborn, Renee Rosnes, Sylvie Courvoisier, etc.
A-
Pug Johnson, El Cabron
A set of Texas country released last year with some nods toward the old timey days (a lot of tuba for one). I was a little skeptical of this album at first, thinking it would be another backward looking nostalgia trip with decent sound, but Johnson is a pretty good songwriter and this is a real sweet spot of country music on most of the songs. Shoutouts to Terry Allen never hurt. “Thanks to the Cathouse (I’m in the Doghouse With You)” is such a classic title that I’m amazed no one has used it before. Sure he wishes it was the 70s, but would you rather hear this or the latest Nashville shit? This is better, at least.
B+
Ruen Brothers, Awooo
This British neofolk act on Yep Roc is like a lot of artists on that label–focused on the past, firmly in the present, but still kind of repeating the same sounds. These are generally fine songs, but the vocals feel somewhat put on at times. It’s folk music at its most twee and while it’s not bad, the whole attitude gets old for me. They are just trying really, really, really hard. Too hard. Surprised these guys aren’t at Newport Folk Festival.
B-
Joel Ross, The Parable of the Poet
I tend to be mixed on a lot of what Blue Note puts out these days. The best of it is among the best jazz that exists but some of it tends to be so backward looking that it’s just a nostalgia trip. But this Joel Ross album is a pretty good one. Ross is a vibraphonist. I wish there were more vibes in modern jazz. It’s around of course–Patricia Brennan is a favorite modern master and of course there’s Lionel Hampton in the past and many in between. Here, Ross works with the always fantastic Immanuel Wilkins on alto sax, Maria Grand on tenor sax, Marquis Hill on trumpet, Kalia Vandever on trombone, Sean Mason on piano, Rick Rosato on bass, Craig Weinrib on drums, and Gabrielle Garo on flute. Most of these folks I don’t know, so that’s always nice for me. I try to look for albums that have a person or two I do like and then learn about the other musicians as I go. And I didn’t know Ross’ work at all before hearing this 2022 release. Very solid release, can recommend as music that thinks ahead to the future.
B+
As always, this is a thread for all things music and art and none things politics.