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Roots and wings

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Philadelphia Folk Festival Photo Collage

PLAYLIST (& 39th Philadelphia Folk Festival) Roots & Wings 8/28/2000 Noon to 4 pm, WESS90.3 FM, ESU Radio East Stroudsburg, PA 18301

John McLaughlin

It was already in full swing when we got off the yellow school bus in the parking lot, harmonies all across the hillside from the Crafts Stage to the Tank Stage, down thro the Dulcimer Grove and on out to the Camp Stage for all we knew (the program book didn't list official action out there, but John Lupton was on the scene with his beautiful bride Suzy Wollenberg, so there you are) -- Philly, our grandmother as far as folk festivals go. What can you add? Highlights -- snapshots -- three days and nights of music and fun : The Juggernaut String Band with Maxwell Donkor leading the Friday afternoon hillside crowd from the Main Stage, with the African calling-on song, "Amonko" - Jeff Lang, who came all the way from Australia and brought his licks with him -- the incredible harmonies of Amy Fradon and friends -- Cary Fridley, with a mountain voice that could cut sheet metal -- the sultry Irene Ferrara -- Mary Gauthier and "Drag Queens and Limousines," a song to make her mother happy -- Patty Larkin, happy to be early in the weekend, when the port-a-johnnies still had their naive innocence -- the wailing Nields, holding court with "Jeremy Newborn Street," oh my -- a sunbaked Aly Bain, a white-haired Cathal, the Boys of the Lough still kings of Celtic music after 33 years on the road -- Utah Phillips, beaming benevolently via videotape from his home in Nevada City -- Rosalie Sorrels, telling tales of folksong collecting for Wayland Hand, wryly recalling making old people give up their ballads -- Jack Williams, doing double duty, filling in for setups on the mainstage and being joined by Inti-Illimani's guitarist on a cross between ragtime and Andean music -- Chris Thile and Sara Watkins' harmonies on "Reasons Why" -- Nina Gerber behind Mollie O'Brien, then Nanci Griffith, *then* Rosalie Sorrels! -- John Gorka, as sweet and diffident as ever, "as heard on WXPN" -- a frail John Hartford turning a banjo tuning into an extended, minimalist lesson in understated humor -- the slow fiddle of Tracey Grammer, Dave Carter's incandescent ode to Richard Feynman -- fair Mollie O'Brien belting out torch-songs -- Julie Murphy Wells triumphantly not "Eddie's Concubine" -- Rosalie Sorrels and a sweetly introspective set that mingled Kate Wolf, Utah Phillips, Malvina Reynolds and her own songs in praise of love, "which is never easy" -- and then came the rain, in buckets, driving some of us to cover, others to dancing on the hillside to the thunder of Entrain -- the school bus back to the parking lot was filled with half-naked, mud-covered, grinning teenagers (you cannot make up shit like this) -- and I was so glad today's program had already been set up before we left the Poconos on Friday morning, just tweak a little when I got back, right, and then I opened the mail on the way into the studio, and decided to cause some stock market fluctuations....

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