thedigitalfolklife.org
 A Production of The Folk Life ( Inc. 1976)
John McLaughlin and Jamie Downs, Editors



 





Finishing off that Festival Sandwich:
Knowlton Sunday afternoon

So I just woke up from crashing out for the evening after getting ourselves over the Delaware to Knowlton, NJ's Riverfest Sunday afternoon, having got back from Philly's Saturday show 'bout 2:30am, oh well.

Knowlton's Riverfest is in the town park, it's been running nine years now, set up by a couple of old friends who live there. It's sort of a Philly North by now - lots of the same artists, who'll play Philly one day, Knowlton the next or vice versa. So you can drive all the way down to Philly or drop on over the river in fifteen minutes. Of course, if you're from Philly it's the other way around, right. But Knowlton's got a single performance stage, in a big marquee tent - three support poles long? - so you don't have that amazing Philly carnival madness that, of course, so many people love & enjoy but others have come to fear over the years. Been both places in my head. I mean, how many simultaneous concerts can you not hear coz you're hearing one? But then at the carnival you can always drift across the hill if the guys in front of you turn out not to be to your taste, too. Arguments both ways, I know.

Anyway, since I'm getting a bit old for this shit, even if Jamie's forever young, this was a perfect way to wind out a perfect weekend, both weather-wise - brilliant sun in a cloud-flecked sky, big fat puffy clouds high up - and musically. None of this Brigadoon search for a festival site that's impossible to locate the rest of the year, right? Just kidding, Grandma.

For Knowlton, just cross the Delaware at the toll bridge – no toll this way, that must mean something - get off I-80 at Exit 4B, go south two miles, park's on your left, bob's yer uncle. Town cops park ya with a smile. Place could get more popular than originally expected, but once you put on a free show like this for nine straight years, word will get around (Mark Twain: if you dress like that and walk down the street without charging anything, people will stop and take a look).

Anyway, there was enough of a crowd today we had to park across the road - horrors - and get walked across by the nice traffic cop. So we got there in time for a totally wailing Harlem Gospel Choir, doing "Oh Happy Day!" - crowded tent, everybody testifyin’, singin’ along. Little 7-yr-old girl called up onstage between songs to get a present - a lovely kinte scarf taken from one of the lady choir members by the leader and draped around the little girl's neck, so she blissed out while going down the off-stage ramp - will she ever remember this day! - leading directly back into the applauding crowd, which lit into the closing "Celebration!" with a happy roar, dancing and clapping, howling along. Oh wow.

  
     
 
     

 


The Nashville Bluegrass Band was next, after an interminable wait to fine-tune the two sound systems - I think they travel with their own soundman - and I guess I was hoping for the kind of inspired bluegrass-gospel response that I recall from years ago, at the Middletown Folk Festival in NJ, when the Calvary Zion Baptist Choir was followed by the late Joe Val and his New England Bluegrass boys. Sorry to say it was not to be – to me, but wait a minute - despite the all-star lineup that was one of the reasons for putting together the Nashville Bluegrass Band, back when Roland White was in the group.





The guys turned in a note-perfect set of their standards, oh well. The dancing, cheering crowd said the hell with me and kept right on having a good time, let me catch up on my twenty winks. The little Kerouac-style notebook says they ran thro a great set-list, but I'm too tired right now to go fetch it. See me later, alright?

Not so the closing act - none other than the Alison Brown Quartet, who as you'll recall blistered the Philly Main Stage the previous afternoon with their combination of straight-ahead bluegrass and rippling, flying jazz-grass, opening for Mary Chapin Carpenter - see what we mean by acts who play both Philly and Knowlton?

In fact, it's what we came to hear, among the reasons being that Jamie had burned a CD of pix she got of them just the previous day in the photographers' pit at Philly and wanted to pass them along to Alison, whom we ran into walking her little blonde baby daughter (Anna) over to the line of food stalls up along the front of the park-site, with a friend Marsha - who, it turned out, was an American astronaut who's the subject of "My Favorite Marsha," a tune that was played as a wake-up call for her NASA space-flight (a tune also played in Philly, but this way it really connected with the crowd at Knowlton when she announced Marsha's presence from the stage). This is Knowlton, where you get an astronaut to babysit your baby while you go destroy a crowd with jazzgrass. It is such a cool festival!

A high point of the show was the set-closing guest, Stuart Duncan, fiddler for the Nashville Bluegrass Band and old friend of Alison, who joined in with her and the pianist, John R Durr and the drummer, Kendrick Freeman, along with her husband and bassist (and co-founder of her label, Compass Records - a story in itself), Gary West. Again, easy to talk to people - no closed-off press-only bullpen between the stage and the public, thro which performers would have had to run the gauntlet to go get a bite to eat – it is so laidback, like a day in the park should be. Right?

  
     
 
     



Anyway, it was a really nice afternoon, sitting in the sun on a folding chair that was easy to carry in its bag from the car to the performers' tent. Just lie back in the afternoon sun in the town park, make a few notes in the notebook - it's around here somewhere - and mellow out, listening to a Sunday afternoon concert near the river. What could be more perfect?

Ran into Tim Carbone, from Railroad Earth, heading for a bite to eat while waiting for the Alison Brown Quartet to get up and jam - told him I'm starting tomorrow's Roots and Wings with the nine-minute title cut from Railroad Earth's "Black Bear Sessions" in the morning. And that reminds me - I gotta go get my beauty sleep. Yawn. Just checking in, guys. What a lazy summer Sunday afternoon. Think maybe we got some sunburn. Wotta tough life this is. Jamie’s pictures tell the story. For the rest, you have to get your own ass over to Knowlton next year, to hear the music. It is just topnotch. Thanks, Rick, thanks Eleanor, thanks everybody else- the musicians especially. Artists first and last. Look at the pictures, put on the music - John