Now in its fourth year, the Elm City Folk Festival has reached beyond the borders of the city and state to put together two nights of music and 12 acts at Cafe Nine on the corner of State and Crown.
The festival runs Thursday and Friday, April 19 and 20.
“I have Cullen Gray, who recently moved to New Haven from California. He’s doing something that not a lot of people are doing,” said festival organizer Margaret Milano. She also managed to snag Austin, Texas-based Curtis McMurtry when she learned he was on tour. “He was happy to do it. His dad is famous, and his grandfather is famous as well, so it’s this line of talent. I’m happy to have people from out of town, and out of state.”
But the state and city are also represented. New London-based Daphne Lee Martin, who has played at a few Elm City Folk Festivals, is returning this year as well to play on Thursday night, along with New Haven-based singer-songwriter Christopher Bousquet. The Proud Flesh have a slot on the Friday night bill, as does Eli Greenhoe, a composer currently studying at the Yale School of Music who also happens to know his way around a song and a guitar.
The bill is a testament to the way Milano brings back some familiar faces and also finds room to introduce new acts to New Haven. Orb Mellon, playing on Thursday, “is definitely doing something that I don’t see enough that I think is special,” Milano said. “He’s always playing up north” — meaning northern Connecticut, where he’s based, and she’s glad to bring him south. “I always try to put a raw, to the roots person,” she said.
The youngest person on the bill, playing on Thursday, is 17-year-old Quinn Harley. “She’s recently been accepted to a couple different colleges — composition programs — so it seems like she’s really going places,” Milano said.
As she has in other shows she’s organized, Milano is also hoping to draw festivalgoers’ attention to a local organization that she thinks is doing good work. This year it’s Lockets Meadow Farm, an animal rescue farm and sanctuary where she’s been putting in hours. “I just went there randomly one day and they told me that they needed volunteers,” she said. “So I decided to take a step back from people for a minute and shovel manure.” The farm takes in horses, pigs, donkeys, llamas, and other farm animals. “It’s a lot of work — break your back, wheelbarrow up the hill — and they need a lot of volunteers.”
So she’ll advertise ways for interested festivalgoers to get involved. “If I have a platform I try to use it for good,” she said.
Milano.
The fourth year finds Milano hitting her stride as the festival’s organizer, already looking ahead to next year. “I love festivals. I love two-day, three-day things where you become a family at the end of it,” she said. She went to Riot Fest when it was still in Denver — “I flew out for that,” she said — and takes inspiration from the way that Riot Fest draws attention year-round to their acts. “On the page I always try to promote other people who have played the fest,” Milano said — as she did with Leila Crockett, who recently appeared at Cafe Nine herself.
“Kath Bloom wanted to be on” this year, Milano said, “but her dates didn’t work out.” Milano hopes to book her next year. She’s looking to branch out more into the Rhode Island scene as well, to widen the draw of the Elm City Folk Festival across southern New England. “I’d love to have the budget” to bring in more acts from farther away, she said. “That’ll be something to work on this year.”
She’s interested in making the festival bigger. “I would have loved to fill up four days — I had enough for it,” she said. But she’s also careful not to step on the toes of other events that happen around the same time, like Meriden’s Daffodil Festival at the end of the month. “April’s been a really good month for folk music,” Milano said, noting that Cafe Nine’s regular calendar is seeing a little more of it. “Everybody’s touring, feeling good,” she said.
Between setting up shows at Cafe Nine and tending bar there, Milano is confident about putting the Elm City Folk Festival on its stage. “I joke that when I die, I’ll just re-spawn there,” she said. “I just know that the show is going to run smooth there.”
And she’s also seen the festival grow not just in performers, but in audience. “Last year there were 80-something people for one night, and the only people I knew were the bands.”
“You want something to happen, you have to make it happen,” Milano said back in 2015 on the eve of the first Elm City Folk Festival. Four years in, it’s safe to say she has.
The fourth Elm City Folk Festival runs Thursday, April 19 ‚and and Friday, April 20, at Cafe Nine, 250 State St.
April 19 features Glenn Roth, Quinn Harley, Terri Lynn, Christopher Bousquet, Orb Mellon, and Daphne Lee Martin. April 20 features Eli Greenhoe, Cullen Gray, Curtis McMurtry, The Shoutbacks, Wolf Harbor, and The Proud Flesh. Tickets are $5 per night. Click here for more information.