My favorite annual event on the concert schedule is the three days at the Newport Folk Festival which this year took place over the weekend of July 22-July 24, 2022 during a heat wave. “Hydrate” and “ Sun Screen” were the operative words as we watched a multitude of acts perform from 11:00 AM to 7:30 PM and beyond. The great thing about the festival and it’s three stages is that you will undoubtedly discover some new acts, or veteran acts that you had not investigated as of yet, and the odds are you will discover music and accumulate experiences that you will carry with you beyond the extraordinary event. The Newport Folk Festival is a place where special moments still happen, where spontaneous musical collaboration occurs, and where once in a a lifetime concert experiences happen and “surprise” appearances are not only expected but actually occur. This year, on day two, Nathaniel Ratliff and the Night Sweats “presented” a set of Paul Simon songs that ended with Simon joining the band on stage for a few tunes. On the third and last night, Brandi Carlisle, a folk festival regular, interrupted her closing set after a few songs to present the “Joni Jam” with Joni Mitchell enthralling the jubilant festival crowd with her first live performance in many years. “Both Sides Now” was epic during a set of historic Mitchell moments. This festival is such a sensory overload that even though though we had to leave in the middle of Ratliff’s set before Paul Simon appeared, it was OK as my kids, with son in law and girlfriend, were going to the Marcus Mumford after party in town. Mumford is another artist who has become “folk family” snd has appeared in the past, one time as an previously unannounced artist with Mumford and Sons.

We are now recovering from doing another three days at Fort Adams State Park for the late great George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festival. I am by no means a jazz aficionado, but I love all types of music and took it all in with varying degrees of success. We have attended the Jazz Festival a couple of times through the years and the full three days is a marathon. The weather was phenomenal and the jazz music encompassed a wide variety of styles, my favorite of which was the “Remain in Light” Project reimagining the iconic Talking Heads album of the same name.

Love Potion No. 9

Folk on!

GQ