The three days of peace, love, and music that is the Newport Folk Festival were graced by beautiful summer weather and another strong lineup, anchored by its Saturday and Sunday headliners, punk rock legend Patti Smith and blues rock stirrers Alabama Shakes. Those still laboring under the notion that Newport Folk is, well, predominantly filled with folk acts might be surprised to see how this venerable music fest -- the oldest in the country -- has reinvented itself in recent years. Festival organizer Jay Sweet’s definition of "folk" seems to have been expanded to cover just about anyone who plays really good music. If you happen to use an acoustic guitar to do so, all the better -- but that clearly is no longer a requirement. Let’s not let a silly thing like genre stand in the way of putting together a stellar festival, shall we.
Here are the 10 best things we saw at this year’s festival. They may or may not be the 10 best sets of the weekend, for there were some very good moments we weren’t able to catch in a very busy three days, but they were the 10 best we saw and they were pretty damn good.
Ryan Adams with Infamous Stringdusters and Nicki Bluhm
Two years after headlining at Newport, Ryan Adams was back again, accompanied this time around by the newgrass band Infamous Stringdusters and singer-songwriter Nicki Bluhm. The collaboration with the Stringdusters let the ever shape-shifting Adams try a new take on some of his extensive songbook, and the results fit the mood of the festival to a tee. Classics like “Oh My Sweet Carolina,” “New York, New York,” “Gimme Something Good”, and “Come Pick Me Up” were refracted through a bluegrass lens into something just a little bit different. Adams has become considerably more relaxed on stage since the days when he used to be thrown by the slightest interruption. So when two Blackhawk helicopters buzzed Newport Harbor in the middle of “New York, New York” he just screamed “Run, run, run” before picking right back up with the tune.