Inside the 2014 Newport Folk Festival
NEWPORT, R.I. — "How did I end up here?"
That's what John C. Reilly asked the crowd at the beginning of his set at the 55th Newport Folk Festival on Saturday. It's a fair question, coming from an actor best known for his roles opposite Will Ferrell in "Step Brothers" and "Talladega Nights." But Reilly is an accomplished musician, as evidenced by his role as singer Dewey Cox in the parody biopic "Walk Hard" and the singles he's recorded for Jack White — Saturday's headliner. And Reilly's early afternoon set of traditional folk songs proved he belonged in Newport as much as anyone.
Reilly, though, wasn't the celebrity milling around Fort Adams State Park over the weekend. Joaquin Phoenix sipped a beer unnoticed in a backstage tent before meeting up with White to watch Band of Horses. Director Gus Van Zant, a musician in his own right, was there, too. (Van Zant, who directed Joaquin's late brother River Phoenix in "My Own Private Idaho," is a graduate of the nearby Rhode Island School of Design.)
And Reilly wasn't the only Hollywood actor to play the role of folk singer in Newport. Ed Helms, best known for "The Hangover" and TV's "The Office," led his Lonesome Trio through a perfectly pleasant set of folk songs during a rainstorm on Sunday.
"Even God is crying at how beautiful this event is," Helms joked.
Rocker Ryan Adams, who headlined Friday's lineup, seemed to agree.
"Seems like 10 years ago I was super depressed," Adams said. "Now I get to play music with sailboats in the background."
"What are the hot chances that Michael McDonald is on one of those boats?" Adams joked before launching into a mock McDonald song with hilariously improvised yacht rock lyrics ("Can I borrow some weed/I just had a lobster roll and it was pretty good").
The picturesque setting provided the backdrop for beautiful, genre-bending sets of country (Caitlin Rose), blues (Valerie June), folk (Nickel Creek, Devil Makes Three, Hurray for the Riff Raff), soul (Mavis Staples, who celebrated her 75th birthday at the festival), pop (Lucius, Jenny Lewis, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down), rock (White, Adams, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Houndmouth, Band of Horses) — even reggae (Jimmy Cliff).
But the revelation of the weekend was Reignwolf, led by frontman-guitarist-drummer-stage-diver Jordan Cook, whose face-melting, distortion-heavy blues nearly blew the roof off the Quad stage tent.
Cook's boundless energy during the band's set Friday was infectious, and set the tone for another awe-inspiring Newport Folk Festival, an event that has (quietly) become hands down the best music festival in America.
— Dylan Stableford
