As explained on our “About” page, this blog was born out of the experience that is the Newport Folk Festival. That experience cannot be captured in words, but this outstanding long-form article from consequence.net makes an extremely impressive attempt:
Category: article
from Rickie Lee Jones
Why I Love To Share The Films I Love
Lady In White, from a larger writing…
Most of the actors in this film are Italian American. Little Frankie’s family is portrayed as a happy, normal family, with troubles, sure, but lots of love. Kinda like Leave it to Beaver but with Italian food and rhythm and names. This is the kind of thing that helps teach people how we are alike, by showing that what is different is wonderful, not destructive or threatening. It’s important. It is a lesson all of us must learn or we grow up harboring fantastic fears, (you can see it everywhere nowadays) and we grow terrible molds and spores made of rumor and conjecture and convenience, until we are racist, and sexist, and spoiled to happiness. Understanding these simple lessons that films can bring a kid is timely. Different syllables in names can seem like they are insurmountable differences. In the heart of us, we are living the same lives in America. Well, we were, anyway. I believe that we are connected by a common love of one another that is simply not celebrated nearly enough. Films are a way of reminding us how much we value our common legends and history.
—Rickie Lee Jones, Fish Sticks, 10/21/2024
quote from Valerie June
“A whole lot of magic has to happen to make music. A whole lot of minds have to see something invisible. The act of making music — that could be spiritual. You’re taking something that’s not physically seen and you’re bringing it from nowhere, pulling it from thin air, so people can experience it.”–Valerie June, 2021
message from Tyler Childers
article by Warren Haynes
“No true musician can claim to embrace the music of someone without accepting as equal the human being from which it came. It is impossible to regard the influence of someone else’s creativity as great while judging the person who created it as somehow inferior.” — Warren Haynes, Newsweek, 6/24/2020
David Handelman on coping with the COVID lockdown
“How have you been coping with COVID? If not the illness itself, then the whittled-down existence it has demanded?
I have a suggestion.” –David Handelman
click to read David’s blog post
live music comforts coronavirus patients and caregivers
“I’m hoping to offer a brief moment of comfort or distraction or beauty.” —Michelle Ross, violinist in Manhattan
click here to read the full NY Times article
RIP John Prine
“I guess I just process death differently than some folks. Realizing you’re not going to see that person again is always the most difficult part about it. But that feeling settles, and then you are glad you had that person in your life, and then the happiness and the sadness get all swirled up inside you. And then you’re this great, awful candy bar, walking around in a pair of shoes.” —John Prine, quoted by Pitchfork, 2018
read rememberances in Rolling Stone and The New York Times
art against coronavirus in Philadelphia
“What you’re seeing is empty businesses, empty schools, empty playgrounds. What is the emotional toll that takes? How can we replace some of that emptiness with images of hope, resilience, anger, and also dreams of a future that is hopefully not far off?” –Mark Strandquist, Mural Arts Philadelphia
quarantined Italians sing from their balconies
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Click here for a Vox.com article, with photos and additional links.
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