Eclectic Company: A Festival Celebrates The Generations

When the kids Facebook about going to Bonnaroo, the mammoth music festival in the Tennessee hinterlands, they’re planning and hindsighting a 360-degree social experience, for which music is the ostensible focus, but hooking up with their peers and earning bragging rights for attendance excesses are the real reasons for going. It’s one of the natural inheritors of the Woodstock tradition. For adults who go to other music festivals, the particulars may be different but the principle’s the same: bragging rights, attendance excesses, and music as the ostensible focus of a mini-vacay in the verdure, with just a few more amenities than Woodstocks past and present.

A couple of weekends ago, intending to hook up with some old friends, listen to familiar and new musical voices, and eat to excess interesting food disguised as good-for-you organic, I went to a festival featuring 100 solo, duo and group performers representing stars of the American folk music scenes of every decade from the 1940s to the present day. Despite the fallen and missing heroes, the lineup was just about the best that the Great Hudson River Revival’s had in many a year: There were iconic figures such as John Sebastian (founder of Woodstock-featured The Loving Spoonful, and compose of the hit TV theme song “Welcome Back, Kotter”), Janis Ian (whose precocious and sharp social commentary in songs like “Society’s Child” and “At 17” were written when she was younger than 17 in the 1960s), Georgia’s finest, the Indigo Girls, Jorma Kaukonen (of the supergroup Jefferson Airplane and the breakout acoustic blues duo Hot Tuna with Jack Casady, also a Jefferson Airplane alum), David Bromberg (Jerry Jeff Walker’s sideman who brought a new kind of big band to the folk scene of the 1970s and 1980s, and now builds violins), Suzanne Vega, England’s man of the people’s politics, Billy Bragg, Dar Williams, James McMurtry (who hates it when he’s puffed as the son of bestselling novelist Larry McMurty, and who hit big with “We Can’t Make It Here,” an anthem for those tired of the outsourced life), and the trio Red Horse, featuring John Gorka, Eliza Gilkyson and Lucy Kaplansky. I recommend them all — find their music on youtube and itunes and their bios on their individual websites. You know what to do.

But this festival also boasted dynasties of folk music heroes/heroines, the generations playing separately and together, including founder of the 1940s group The Almanac Singers (which featured Woody Guthrie), the 1950s group The Weavers, the Great Hudson River Revival (this festival) and Sing Out! magazine, Pete Seeger and his grandson Tao, Arlo Guthrie (son of Woody and composer of “Alice’s Restaurant”) and his daughter Sarah Lee with her husband Johnny Irion, Jay Ungar (composer of “Ashokan Farewell” and score for the Ken Burns epic TV series The Civil War) and Molly Mason and Jay’s daughter Ruthy and her husband Mike Merenda, Bernice Johnson Reagon (founder of Sweet Honey In The Rock, and recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant) and her daughter Toshi Reagon with her band Big Lovely, Tom Chapin (host of TV’s Make A Wish kid’s show) and his niece Jen Chapin, who is also daughter of the late Harry Chapin (composer of “Taxi” and “Cat’s In The Cradle,” and founder of Long Island, New York’s Hunger Project, that works to stamp it out), Mothers and Daughters, comprising singer/songwriter Lyn Hardy and her daughter Ruthy (yes, same Ruthy as Jay Ungar’s, aren’t you sharp to have noticed) with cellist Abby Newton and her daughter Rosie, Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary) and his daughter Bethany with her performing partner Rufus, as well as Justin Townes Earle, named for some famous friends of his famous dad Steve Earle, and David Amram (who scored Elia Kazan movies in the 1950s, played himself in Jack Kerouac’s film Pull My Daisy and backed up the late Odetta’s blues and gospel-tinged material on French horn in the 1960s, played jazz with Dizzy Gillespie in Cuba in the 1970s, and throughout the years since things too numerous to mention) with his kids Alana, Adira and Adam. Well even a clodhopper like me couldn’t help noticing that the musical antecedents of some of the most popular young artists were offspring of some of the most popular old artists, and just to drive it home, each evening of the festival ended with a concert where oldsters and youngsters shared a stage and reminded us that only by passing along the music we love will the next generation learn to sing it back to us when we’re rocking our retirement away.

The Revival is a festival with music whose purpose is to educate and urge attendees to environmental action. It’s the flagship fundraiser for the Clearwater organization, which built an 1800s wooden sloop in the 1960s, and began sailing up and down New York’s Hudson River preaching river clean up and ecological consciousness, eventually leading a successful charge to make the river water safe enough for swimmers, shad fish consumers, and even water drinkers. Over time, the Revival’s emphasis on ecological and environmental issues has broadened from ending pollution of drinking water sources to include all kinds of health food and vegetarian concerns, and is now synonymous with organic and fresh foods, outdoor activities, and socially-conscious activism. More than 25 years ago, I was the Revival’s publicist, working for Pete’s indomitable wife Toshi Seeger, who practically built the festival from objects in their barn, earning my undying affection.

It was a special treat to find some Louisiana connections there too — Jesse Lege & the Bayou Brew filled the Cajun slot, and Jeffrey Broussard & The Creole Cowboys Zydecoed the house down. As my energy waned from the sun and the repleteness of everything including reconnecting with an old friend whose organic orchard Breezy Hill is still producing Farmer’s Market fare (and totally amazing traveling wood-fired copper stove pizza), I made one last stop at the World Dance Stage to listen to the Klezmatics, the full crew in place, playing that voodoo that they do so well, then drifted out of the park with the sounds of home ringing in my ears. I’m still bragging about it.