August 6, 2024

Orville Peck shines and Billy Bragg gets real on Newport Folk Saturday – 7/27

The second day of the 2024 Newport Folk Festival featured Bragg, Peck, The War on Drugs, Gillian Welch and more.

__________

Armed with the knowledge of this year’s Gate Problem from a trying Friday afternoon, my Newport Saturday began on a less frenzied note with an earlier arrival – early enough to catch a noon set from the colorful, rhythmic Reyna Tropical before a sparser Fort Stage show from lifer Billy Bragg. The British singer/songwriter was outspoken as ever, touching on everything from unions to climate change, Oliver Anthony, the refugee crisis and the upcoming presidential elections in and between his songs. The ratio of playing to pondering the issues audibly wore on a few audience members – particularly as he decried the atrocities currently taking place in Palestine – but attending a Billy Bragg performance expecting an apolitical romp through the hits is a user error. The set was among the weekend’s few to directly tap into the festival’s protest-song roots, and in Bragg’s commitment to stomping out cynicism and apathy, one of its more genuinely inspiring.

Saturday’s billing also felt topical elsewhere, particularly in the inclusion of Grateful Dead drag tribute act Bertha, whose genesis stemmed from anti-LGBTQIA legislation in their home state of Tennessee. The fabulously-outfitted collective punctuated satisfying takes on classic Dead tunes with impassioned words in support of the queer community – and drew a huge crowd doing so.

Orville Peck – the masked country singer who, along with his band, was also a contender for the day’s best dressed – dropped from last year’s Newport lineup as part of a wider swath of cancelled dates owing to health concerns, and a late afternoon set in which he thanked an adoring mass of fans for their patience and support was both a triumphant return and a testament to the importance of taking care of oneself. Peck has always been a stirring performer, but the swaggering confidence backing his Orbisonian voice has really stepped up since I last saw him play (way back in 2019 at Great Scott). His set was another heartening moment, and a weekend highlight.

Earlier in the day at the Harbor stage, you could feel a twinge of Peck’s influence in newly-minted trio Chaparelle. Joined by an ace backing band, they spun vintage country with modern twists and a magnetic pull – a markedly successful festival outing for a band with but a single song available for the public to hear.

Rhiannon Giddens and her band, meanwhile, had to get real vintage at the top of their Fort set, gathering up front to play mostly un-amplified while a prolonged sound issue was sorted out. The dreamy heartland-rock reveries of The War On Drugs fared better in that department, shimmering across the early evening in the waterside setting.

Across the grounds, veteran Atlanta rapper and Run the Jewels member Killer Mike closed out the Quad stage with big smiles and dexterous flows, joined by a crew of backup singers to bring the gospel flavor of last year’s MICHAEL. It was a winning example of Folk’s tentative forays into booking hip-hop, provided you tuned out the occasional tone-deaf “woke-ass shit / broke-ass shit” bars.

Back at the Fort, Saturday closed out with the spare stylings of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, one of the festival’s more classically folk-y headline slot bookings in recent memory. Introduced by the legendary Joan Baez, who was on hand throughout the weekend in guest-appearance and poetry-reading capacities, the Newport regulars performed sans-accompaniment apart from the occasional upright bass. The pair reaffirmed something that’s always been broadly true of folk: that a striking song (which Welch in particular has plenty of), performed simply, holds as much power as any flashier presentation can muster.

See a gallery from Saturday’s sets below and tune back soon for a Sunday recap.

Reyna Tropical: