Folk Fest Reveals A Changing Scene

Having just thanked the audience for ​“being here on this dog day of summer,” Ian and Dustin Meadows lifted their guitars like offerings for a third time, launching into the first verse of their new song ​“Julianna.”

Their lyrics (You only have to be a song Juliannaaaaa…) traveled to nearby booths, where New Haveners Pat Kane and Channing Harris exhorted the values of DoCoMoMo and the New Haven Preservation Trust to passing visitors.

Closer to Edgerton Park’s steamy greenhouse, kids and their families stopped to peruse local merchants’ takes on environmentally aware goods, express their fondness for tap water on a large pad of paper and chat about solar energy.

Others hula-hooped closer to the side of a road that cut through a park, Creative Party Games’ Judi Ann Jones guiding them through a series of hooping exercises. Beside them, families drew elaborate designs in sidewalk chalk, trying to ward off the afternoon’s rainy forecast. From the stage the Meadows Brothers finished, and announced that they would be closing out their set after a final piece.

That was the scene Saturday at the annual Connecticut Folk Festival in Edgerton Park.

This year’s fest expanded on last year’s ​“green” vision, envisioning not only new activities to foster environmental awareness, but also a greater diversity of voices.

Why? Folk is changing, said CT Folk’s President Barbara Shiller. And the festival needs to change right along with it. (CT Folk organized the fest.)

“I wanted to see many different kinds of voices represented. I think at Connecticut Folk one of the things we do really well is promote the emerging artists … but I also thought it was important to have people like David Roth, Cosy Sheridan and Sloan Wainwright who got us where we are. The boundaries are shifting … Folk used to be your whiny singer/songwriter holding a guitar, singing a 37-verse song of angst. It’s changed a lot, and we’ve worked at embracing all of the different genres [and] being as inclusive as possible,” Shiller said in between acts on Saturday.

In that spirit, vocalists offered an incredible layering of styles, some blowing the ​“folk” label wide open in the most glorious of ways.

For instance there was Voci Angelica Trio, whom some of our readers may remember from this year’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas. The Massachusetts-based group has readily accepted the challenge to help re-imagine the boundaries of folk music, offering their own arrangements of traditional, often folksy or communal standards from multiple cultures. On Saturday, their selection spanned centuries, continents, and languages; an opening mash up of ​“She’s Like the Swallow” and ​“A Cuckoo” with ​“a Middle Eastern beat that we wanted to add” dissolved into ​“Hine Ma Tov” (video above), followed by a Japanese folktale for children, ​“Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” and ​“Kyrie Eleison.”

Or artists reflecting a ​“local is green” idea, which Festival Coordinator Coleen Campbell said has become increasingly important to her and other organizers in the past years. Among these were Connecticut State Troubadour Kristen Graves, joined onstage in a ​“Grassy Hill Song Circle” by Jesse Terry and Jenna Lindbo (pictured above).

Graves brings her politics to her music, joking on Saturday that she founded her ​“Just Be Nice” party after a longtime annoyance ​“at the government’s lack of efficiency.” Her songs, many paying tribute to the nature and people around her, are easy-to-follow and aurally addictive. Take a listen below:

“I think good music, regardless of style, fits together. But what was really cool about being a part of such a varied afternoon is that you get to be your unique self. There aren’t 20 people who sound like you. I’m on the board, and one of the things we were looking out for was a very varied day, to make sure there was something for everybody,” she said.

Folk, she added, is essentially ​“about bringing people together … about creating community and using that community to empower people.” As Lindbo and Terry joined her on the late Pete Seeger’s ​“If I Had a Hammer,” the audience responded, rising to their feet, clapping their hands, and singing along in at least 10 different keys. 

They weren’t the only ones. A break in the music during the early afternoon brought a different kind of diversity – a panoply of people, all ages and skill levels – down to the Eli Whitney Barn for some Contra Dance 101.

So they learned.

And they danced.

Back up the hill, local favorite Professors of Bluegrass set up beneath a tent, waiting out a drizzle that had turned, momentarily, into a downpour. In the past, perhaps this genre wouldn’t have been recognized within the folk canon, Shiller noted, citing the group as proof positive that the festival had grown ideologically in the past few years.

Once they started playing, that didn’t seem to make too much of a difference to the audience, who leaned in to the seductive, breathless singsong of Katie Scharf Dykes’ fiddle, Sten Havumaki’s guitar and Joe Lemeris’ banjo (video above), which made sitting down difficult for festival members of all ages.

“Folk is the people’s music. It’s definitely evolved … I enjoy bluegrass and think of it as a vein of folk,” Lemeris (who was filling in for banjoist Oscar Hills, and also plays with the CT-based Grass Routes Bluegrass Band) said.

Their voices weren’t the only thing adding a wider lens to the festival. True to folk’s long tradition of protest (or perhaps angst), a group of Yale students congregated towards the back of the 200+ audience, holding up signs that protested Yale Corporation’s recent decision not to divest assets away from fossil fuels. 

“Salovey has the potential to be an ally,” said Alexandra Barlowe (pictured above, with ​“Yale” sign), a sophomore at Yale. ​“We thought a lot about it [protest in folk music]. Last year, when Pete Seeger died,[Yale] President [Peter] Salovey came out and said he … felt his [Seeger’s] spirit in a lot of the things he does, and in his music. We wanted to make that connection with the culture of the CT Folk Festival … a lot of people here are down with that … and engage with the greater New Haven community.”

Unfortunately, many of the protesters were long gone before a chance to engage with the next acts, who perhaps best channeled the older spirit of folk: storytelling and ballad-making…

on everything from memorializing grandparents’ love-at-first-sight stories…

…To ballads that were the improbable, stupendous love children of Chris Smither, Natalie Maines, Jason Mraz, and something completely new, pining for lost loves, whiskey, beer and just about everything in between. Listen to Marc Douglas Berardo’s duet with Abbie Gardner here to get a feeling for it.

Also harkening back to the tradition of folk that Shiller had mentioned at the beginning of the day – and the communal aspect that Graves had touched upon – were seasoned singer/songwriters David Roth (pictured below), Cosy Sheridan and Sloan Wainwright.
 

While the three are well established on the scene, make no mistake – there is nothing old, weathered, or crusty about them. There is a harp somewhere in Sheridan’s throat and steel in Wainwright’s (click here to listen to an epic tribute to her dog), a wonderful rock quality infusing folk standards and good-humored lyrics.

As for the final acts of the night, their music may speak for itself.

But if they warrant words, they are only those of pure joy. In their cover of Tim Gearan’s ​“Talk About Heaven,” off their new album Red Ducks, Pesky J. Nixon showed that they could harness unbridled energy and turn it into something magical. In slower songs like ​“Breathe in Autumn” (accompanied on Dobro by Gardner, video above), they moved very close to that specific, momentary quality breath has when it catches in the throat on a goodbye.

And Red Molly? Pure electricity.

Covering everything from old standards by Dolly Parton (video above) to new tracks off their The Red Album (2014), their set reflected Shiller’s hope that folk could grow and bend in new and exciting ways. Everyone from Gillian Welch and Patty Griffin to Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong … not to mention a healthy dose of Pink Floyd or The Doors and even a teaspoon full of Alanis (on her happier days) and Natalie Merchant was invited to their party.

And it was a dance-worthy one. The evening ended with a duet from the last two acts that had the audience applauding and cheering ​“encore!”

The final duet was, for so many artists who had performed, the personification of folk as an inherently collaborative genre. As Jake Bush, accordionist for Pesky J. Nixon, explained: ​“There’s not really a fourth wall in folk music. It’s one of the things we treasure about the whole scene.”

To get involved with CT Folk or see a list of their upcoming concerts, visit their events page.