Nobody goes to the Lowell Folk Festival, it's too crowded! And I had several other reasons, just as logical, for not having been there for several years. But they sometimes have some really good musical acts, and they had a couple in their 2019 lineup. It was a beautiful summer weekend, we had nothing better to do, and we got in the car and sneaked on up to Lowell for the Sunday of the 2019 Festival.
The acts we wanted to see were going to be playing at Boardinghouse Park, and we figured if we got there not too late we could park close by, get good seats, and get out of there easily. We didn't figure that even early on a Sunday the crowds would be massive, but things worked out. And we were reminded again that this is such a great Festival! It's free and there were thousands of people having a great time there. They always have an incredibly well-curated set of artists, which sometimes coordinates very well with my strong musical tastes, and if not that's my problem. And they also have an amazing range of food vendors (cotton candy to Filipino cooking and beyond), crafts exhibitions, and political and social tents. This year they had street magicians too!
And the Festival fits so well in downtown Lowell. They've got an array of great performance spaces, all in a very walk-able area, centered on the National Historical Park in the center of Lowell, where historic canals, mills, and 18th-19th century urban architecture all coincide. I can't think of another city that would approach this ambiance.
So anyway, we got up there and wanted to park in the John Street garage but instead settled for the Market Street garage, which was fine. We walked the 6-7 blocks or so down to Boardinghouse Park and were a little alarmed at the number of people already there at a little after noon on a Sunday, a beautiful, hot day with not a cloud in the sky. Then we were suddenly confronted by a long line when we turned the last corner. But we realized it was a line for the Filipino food truck, which smelled amazingly tempting.
Boardinghouse Park itself was already packed ... around the edges in the shade at least. But we walked right up to the stage in the hot sun (like the day when we saw Dave Keyes do A Closer Walk With Thee on that very stage at about that time of a Sunday) and pulled up a piece of lawn, slathered on the sunscreen, and immediately started enjoying ourselves even more than we had been on the walk there.
Mangum and Company was up first, and they were playing Sam Cooke's A Change Is Going To Come as we got seated. What a great way to start the musical day! This was a very different kind of band for us. They're a "gospel shout band" from North Carolina with a vocalist with a good, deep range, and they were led by Cedric Mangum, a fantastic trombonist who was tuned to the baritone range. He was accompanied by three other trombonists, all tuned differently, a tuba player, a drummer, a percussionist (on cymbals), and a baritone horn player. Their next number was Oh Happy Day and they stretched it out, trying to get the crowd to participate. We were psyched, but it was hot! Their final number was When the Saints Come Marching In and this was another extended exercise in crowd participation, trying to form a parade but not get out of range of the mike. Kind of succeeded and lots of people had lots of fun!
Woo! The afternoon was off to a great start. All bands do just 45-minute sets at that stage on a Sunday, and we barely had time for a quick trip to the car and back before reconvening on the rapidly-filling-up lawn for one of the bands I had come for, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver.
Let me digress a bit to talk about the sound. I think that I give lots of credit when the sound engineers do a great job, or even a decent one. But the sound at Boardinghouse Park that day was not up to par. I've been there many times and the sound has been fantastic ... I particularly remember seeing the Taj Mahal Trio there once and can still feel how good that vibe was. Maybe it was equipment malfunctions, but I think the fault was in the sound engineers. There was an open mike on stage that they didn't detect until Eirini Torneski would not go on until they found it and killed it ... we could all hear it. There were feedback problems all through Doyle Lawson's set. And the lower end of the PA cut out at least 6 times in Albert Lee's set. It was very annoying and I have to suspect incompetence, especially when engineers were staring daggers at each other across the field.
Anyway, we tried to concentrate on the artists and we were very psyched to see Doyle Lawson's band. This was traditional bluegrass, with Lawson leading on vocals and mandolin (and rocking a beautiful rose-embroidered jacket). From left to right they were Stephen Burwell on fiddle, Joe Dean on banjo, Lawson on mandolin, Jerry Cole on tenor vocals and electric bass (on a stand so it *looked* traditional at least), Jake Vanover on tenor vocals and guitar, and Josh Swift on bass vocals and dobro. The right-hand four were the gospel quartet and broke for a few a capella numbers.
Vanover and Swift were fantastic both on vocals and on their instruments. It was hard not to concentrate on just them, though the arrangements themselves were very democratic, as good bluegrass should be. Lawson may have lost a bit off his vocal fastball but those two made up for it. I especially loved Swift's runs on dobro, which he attacked with his left hand like it was a snake he needed to keep back.
I wandered around a bit after that, back to the garage for a sandwich in the shade and checked out the street scene, where people clustered in the shade. Back to the Boardinghouse Park Stage and next up was a delightful Greek band playing traditional instruments, the Pharos Ensemble featuring Berklee grad Vasilis Kostas on laouto (different Anglicized spellings abound), Eirini Tornesaki on vocals and castanets, Panos Aivazidis on qanun and harmonies, and George Lernis on percussion.
These guys were very good, though perhaps the hot Summer early-afternoon wasn't the best place for their atmospheric vocals. But a little concentration was very rewarding, as Kostas on Greek guitar produced an amazing, crisp sound, and Aivazidis on qanun was just amazing. I'd never heard that instrument and, though it went out of tune easily since there were so many strings, he rocked that thing, playing it like he'd sold his soul to the devil to play zither.
Another quick set, though this was riveting all the way through. We had a nice chat with Kostas after the set and then it was time for another break. The shade had almost reached us in the middle of the park by then, and the crowds were creeping in with it. We took a break in the shaded beer garden with some acceptable beverages, and we soon noticed that Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne had come on and that we'd be fools not to go back up front.
Kenny was dressed in a powder blue leisure suit and wore a color-coordinated hat with a color-coordinated feather in it. Don't know if that was the best sartorial choice for the weather, but it worked. He had a great Telecaster player wailing away to his right, a great bass player (beautiful walnut instrument) to the back on his left, and a drummer on a riser way at the back of the stage.
They turned in an incredible set of ballads, boogie-woogie blues tunes, and balls to the wall rockers. They closed with Muddy Waters' Hoochie-Coochie Man followed by one of the most infectious takes on Leiber and Stoller's Kansas City I've ever heard. And they were fun too. At one point Kenny started on a jazzy right-hand riff and seemed to get captivated by it, he played it over and over. The bass player woke from his own vortex and slowly approached. He ended up looking over Kenny's shoulder and shaking his head until he broke the spell and went back to his corner.
Yikes! We were hot and sweaty and though the shade was approaching it was still not on us in the center of the lawn, about 15 feet from the stage. We had said that we hoped to stick around for Albert Lee's set, but if it got too much we would be willing to bag and go home. But at this point we just had to stay for fucking Albert Lee. I mean, how authentic can an English country rockabilly guitarist be? This guy has an amazing pedigree and, as mentioned above, was one of the two world-class acts that had attracted us. I don't think I'd ever seen him before, maybe one of the first few times I saw Emmylou.
Anyway, the afternoon was ending and Albert came on with his custom guitar (guys next to me were saying it was a tricked out Telecaster), a drummer, a bassist, and a keyboard player, who were all just great. But this was a case of rocking along to the song a bit and then just being floored by Albert's guitar leads, over and over and over. Or being floored by the sound suddenly dropping out, which was very annoying and had several of us gesticulating angrily to the soundbooth.
OMG, what didn't he do? Well, he didn't do ... never mind. He played a great set of tunes he'd done with Emmylou and/or the Everleys (Restless, Wheels), some classic Gram and Rodney songs (Luxury Liner, Song For the Life), and some off-the-wall tunes like Highwayman and Two Step Too by Delbert. We'd seen both Emmylou and Rodney on that stage, though not Delbert. He switched to piano and did another great Rodney tune, 'Til I Gain Control Again, though the sound guys didn't deign to get his fucking vocal mike working until the second verse!?! Good thing we were up front.
And then he just floored me with his last song, which was one he wrote and has been recorded by Ricky Skaggs, Country Boy. You have to believe I was singing along with every word. Albert's not a great vocalist but he sure did some fantastic songs in that set.
That was a fun afternoon but it was time to go. We packed up quickly and got out of the swelling crowd, back up to Market Street and to the garage. Fired up the car, cranked the AC, and then it wasn't a very long drive home.
I may look like a city slicker
Shinin' up through his shoes
Underneath I'm just a cotton picker
Pickin' out a mess of blues
Show me where I start
Find a horse and cart
I'm just a country boy
Country boy at heart
No comments:
Post a Comment