Full Frontal Folk


Crowd with Plena Libre

For, yes, the Alison Brown Quartet – blistering jazz-grass behind a tiny wee banjo-picking ex-investment banker – and Mary Chapin-Carpenter, with a couple of songs let out of New Song Jail, just for the occasion, on the huge Martin Guitar Stage - and we’re not even talking six o’clock, and the grandly-costumed sweep of the grounds for dinner (you’ve never seen a sanitation crew marching across a hillside, banners flying aloft to a triumphant “Dies Irae!” until you’ve stood-jaw-dropped, one more time at Philly on a Saturday afternoon).

OK, a pause to catch up with friends. Then the gates swing wide on the other side of the hill and the crowd comes pouring thro, the marching band striking up “Colonel Bogey,” people rushing to spread their blue tarps to nail their spots, and it’s the evening of the second day, if you can still count. Magpie – Terry & Greg – are ready to assist genial Gene Shay, Philly’s perennial MC, in vamping a few between acts, while the mikes and lights get switched around for each new configuration, and away we go again.

		Afternoon Concert: Mary Chapin Carpenter Magpie Alison Brown and Gary

First up - a gorgeous array of expert singers and songwriters – Steve Gillette (think “Darcy Farrow”), Michael Smith (“The Dutchman”?), Anne Hills and Cindy Mangsen, all touring together as ”Fourtold,” behind the Appleseed Records CD of that title, just lilting the crowd up and on for the evening. An all-to-short round-robin of their songs, and then a break - Magpie to the rescue – and next up is Eddie From Ohio, sweet Virginia’s bold traveling quartet, with songs from “Three Rooms,” their latest joyous offering. Ah yes.

After Eddie From Ohio, Bob Brozman, National steel guitar virtuoso supreme, gave the audience a treat by accompanying Led Kapaana, Hawaii’s master of slack key guitar, in a set of beautiful songs from the Islands. Those of us who’d loved the jolly Hawaiian maestro at the Tank Stage earlier got to giggle along with him again – and then shut up, one more time, to listen to the delicacy of his rippling duets with Bob. Another Philadelphia Folk Festival delight.

The Holmes Brothers, a group of sixty-ish African-Americans who followed Led Kapaana and Bob Brozman, with a drummer who sings lead falsetto (on the Beatles’ “And I Love Her”), and a bespectacled electric guitarist who leads the hillside on a bouncing “Amazing Grace” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” were one of those soul-filled rocking surprises Philly’s always got up its sleeve as a special present for us all. And now Odetta.

Regal matriarch of folk blues, this time thro accompanied on grand piano by – you cannot make up this stuff – Steve Bay, of “Hairspray,” here from Broadway for the occasion – Odetta took the audience thro a melodious class in American social history, soaring from “This Little Light of Mine,” as introduction, and then providing the reasons why Leadbelly found Washington DC to be just a “Bourgeois Town.” Along the way she elided the wailing, “Bertha, Let You Hair Hang Low,” into “St Louis Blues,” and circled back, almost unbelievably, to where she began – “This Little Light of Mine,” the hillside singing it by itself, at her command, as she exited the stage arm-in-arm with Steve Bay. At this point, we were all completely satiated.

Not quite, maybe. As finale, here came old festival, the lovely Cajun band Beausoleil, with their fiddler Michael Doucet, now snowy-bearded but still twinkling-fingered, two-stepping everyone home to bed, parents and kids alike on their feet for one last Saturday night fling.

Cindy Mangsen		Anne Hills
Steve Gillette		Michael Smith
Bob Brozman		Led Caapana
Evening Concert
		Eddie From Ohio
Odetta		Sherman Holmes
Beausoleil

But a few of us had church in the morning (“The New Testament? Whatever will they think of next?”), and the school buses were lining up outside the gates to carry us back to our distant cars for the ride home. A reluctant file of weary festivalgoers, bags and folding chairs slung over their arms, began the outward trek as Beausoleil continued their merry ching-a-ling on the tiny triangle for all the party-goers spread across the hillside still. But for some of us, enough delight for one night. Tomorrow, more of the same? Grandma – what are you doing to us?

For those few folkies who had obligations elsewhere in the universe, there’s always next year in Upper Salford Township. For us, at least, this was one more reason to be grateful for those long-ago friends who decided to put on a show. Thank you once more. We’re exhausted! – John & Jamie