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NEWPORT — The Newport Folk Festival finished its third sold-out day at Fort Adams State Park Sunday, and although nothing quite equaled Patti Smith's soul-stirring performance on Saturday, the Festival finished with two strong sets on its main stage.
Alabama Shakes, starring force-of-nature Brittany Howard, closed out the night.
Immediately preceding Alabama Shakes was Elvis Costello.
Oddly, Costello's all-hands-on-stage show felt more like a finishing act at the Newport Folk Festival than the Alabama Shakes set, fine as it was.
Alabama Shakes is a blues/soul band with the focus on guitarist and singer Howard. On a song such as "You Ain't Alone" she threw back her head and let her huge voice loose, then dropped back to an emotional hush.
She had three back-up singers with her at Newport Sunday, using them for a call and response during "Over My Head." On "Miss You," her singing built in volume and intensity, relentlessly climbing on top of a repeating guitar riff.
To close the show, she called out Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes — it takes a brave man to sing with Howard — and they did Bob Seger's "Night Moves."
Costello's show, advertised as a solo set, was the least solo show I've seen in a long time. (Costello himself joked about it.)
He started accompanied by mandolin and steel guitar, while he played "Blame It On Cain" and "Clown Strike." Out came the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for "Sulphur To Sugarcane," which Costello referred to as "a campaign song."
Preservation Hall stayed on stage for a slow, strangely ominous version of the old standard "Side By Side." "We don't know what's coming tomorrow / It may be trouble or sorrow," he sang, and sounded like he meant it.
Costello was joined by Middle Brother — Goldsmith, John McCauley of Rhode Island band Deer Tick, and Matt Vasquez of Delta Spirit — for classics such as "Everyday I Write The Book" and Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?."
Costello had everyone back on stage, including Preservation Hall, for a sweetly harmonized version of an Alison Krauss song, "The Scarlet Tide."
Speaking of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, they played a set of their own on the Quad Stage, located inside the walls of Fort Adams, that went well beyond the traditional Dixieland they are associated with. That was an influence, to be sure, but there was also bop, Latin jazz and R&B.
There's a posse of hip, young brass bands in New Orleans these days, and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band sounded like one of them.
A standout early in the day on the Quad stage was The Strumbellas, a six-piece Canadian band that uses both fiddle and synthesizer, and makes the combination work. It was an invigorating mix on tunes such as "We Don't Know" and "Young and Wild."
Band members proclaimed they were thrilled to be at The Newport Folk Festival for the first time ("We can cross one off the bucket list," said fiddler Isabel Ritchie), and played as though they meant it.
With four stages of music, sometimes enjoying the Folk Festival is a matter of timing and luck.
I happened to be passing by the small Museum Stage just as the wonderful Savoy Family Band started a set of Cajun music. Happy listeners were clapping along and waltzing in the aisles.
"This is not a museum to me, this is a dance hall," said Marc Savoy.
It was the Newport Folk Festival that helped introduce Cajun music to the wider world when it hosted Dewey Balfa to wide acclaim in 1964.
As Balfa liked to tell the story, many of his friends and colleagues told him not to go, that his music would be laughed at up North. Fifty-two years later, a fan yelled "Let the good times roll!" as the Savoy Family Band played at Newport. Let ‘em roll, indeed.
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