Alex G, Mt. Joy, SNACKTIME: Philly artists helped define this year’s Newport Folk

Kenny Loggins was a few minutes away from taking the stage on the first day of the Newport Folk Festival when the emergency announcement came. A storm was coming and we all needed to seek cover immediately. I found myself in the walls of Fort Adams, sitting in dirt on the floor, reading over the shoulder of the woman in front of me who had carried in a lawn chair and her Kindle. The smell of rain came through the gates, soon followed by actual rain that turned the dirt floor muddy.

But that chaotic scene was just one snapshot of a weekend where Philadelphia was well-represented at the historic festival. It’s about a six-hour drive to Newport, maybe less if you’re lucky and the only traffic is in Connecticut. For the Philly artists who made the trip, the journey was worth it.

SNACKTIME has become something of a Philly staple. They played NonCOMM at WXPN earlier this year and are slated to hit the stage at XPNFest on September 19. At Newport, they took over the Quad stage on Friday, then popped up again and again throughout the weekend, backing just about any artist in need of a brass section. Wearing their signature SNACKTIME basketball jerseys, the band spoke about what it means to represent their city.

“To bring this music to the people means everything to us,” said Sam Gellerstein. “I grew up on Newport live albums. It’s so nuts being here, because one day you’re in the park playing for 150 people, then you turn around and you’re at Newport Folk Fest.”

Also taking the stage were other hometown heroes like Alex G and Mt. Joy. Alex G’s set was stripped down – just him and violinist Molly Germer, who is also his real-life partner. He joked to the crowd that he had just seen the Bob Dylan movie where Dylan went electric and everyone hated it, so he figured they might appreciate an acoustic set.

Mt. Joy hit the main stage with a big crowd and even bigger energy. The band is nearly a decade old, and it was clear they’ve mastered their chemistry. For their track “In The Middle,” they brought out Jensen McRae to sing Gigi Perez’s part, paying homage to the Newport tradition of collaborating.

From New Jersey came singer/songwriter Adam Melchor and his dad, Louis. “My dad taught me how to play guitar,” Adam told me. “When I got the offer to do Newport, I was thinking how I could make it fun and memorable. Selfishly I was like, ‘Oh, I’d love to do a show with my dad one day,’ and I figured this was the right time to do it.”

While Louis didn’t do any singing, he did grab the microphone for just a minute to tell the crowd that he always wondered how he’d get to play Newport Folk Festival. The solution? Have a kid who would take you there.

Jesse Welles, this year’s John Prine Songwriter Fellow, made his presence known throughout the weekend. It started Thursday night, when he was named MVP of the festival’s softball fundraiser. From there, he was everywhere, joining other artists’ sets and soaking in as much of the experience as he could.

Welles grew up listening to KUAF 91.3, the public radio station in northwest Arkansas. “That was the first time I ever heard any kind of news that wasn’t Rush Limbaugh,” he said. “Public television and public broadcasting in general played an integral role in me coming up. I think it’s an important bastion of information for the United States.”

Becky and Josiah Correll, a couple from Chicago who’ve been coming to Newport since 2010, said that what sets the festival apart is the sense of community. “I usually come in thinking like, ‘oh man, the world is just turning to shit’,” they said, “then I leave kind of inspired thinking… ‘this music thing might actually change the world a little bit.'”

“There’s this feeling of everyone here being a really genuine, deep, and passionate music fan above all else,” Jensen McRae told me after her set. “It’s cool to go to a place where everyone wants to see everything.”

“It’s a thing that would’ve been on my bucket list, and I never dreamed it could’ve been,” said Florida’s Robert Lester Folsom. The 70-year-old played Newport for the first time after his 1976 record Music and Dreams was re-released by Mexican Summer.

There were some new acts, but there were also a number of legacy artists. Notably, Iron & Wine. My first introduction to them, like many people my age, was through the original Twilight film. Sam Beam said he owed a lot of his success to that movie, and specifically to Kristen Stewart, who suggested listening to “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” while blocking the prom waltz scene. “It’s probably the reason I’m still able to do what I do,” he said.

Friday’s headliner was New Jersey’s Jack Antonoff and his band Bleachers. They put on their annual Ally Coalition Talent Show, bringing out special guests to play special songs. With Rufus Wainwright, Bleachers paid homage to Bob Dylan, doing a piano and strings version of his 1997 song “Not Dark Yet.” It was, surprisingly, Wainwright’s debut at the Folk Festival.

Antonoff also brought out Hayley Williams, who debuted a song on what happened to be the 20th anniversary of Paramore’s All We Know Is Falling. A few days later, Williams quietly dropped 17 new songs on her website.

A standout from the weekend was Obongjayar. The Nigerian-born, London-based artist popped up on my radar a few years ago when he was featured on Little Simz’s “Point and Kill.” No word could better describe Obongjayar than cool. After his set, he told me how amazing it felt to be at Newport. “So much history, so much legend. To be a part of that lineage is something very special to me.”

Tom Odell is another English star who hit the Fort over the weekend. Odell got his start back in the early 2010’s, when his song “Another Love” absolutely blew up. The track is a moody piano ballad. As of writing this, it has over 3 billion streams on Spotify. Odell, who married his wife in 2023, has been writing about love from the very beginning.

“I feel this tremendous sense of fortune having met my wife, Georgie,” he says. “She seems to understand something that most others don’t in me.” Odell makes an analogy to the book “The Little Prince,” and describes love as being synchronous with responsibility which feels reminiscent of the whole point of the festival. On a grander scale, it is imperative that we have love for each other, and with that we do have a responsibility to show people grace and kindness.

Sunday’s Songs For The People slot was packed with guest appearances, tribute songs, and calls to action. Organized by Bonny Light Horseman’s Josh Kaufman, we saw some truly wild combinations of artists play historic songs. Jeff Tweedy brought out the legendary Mavis Staples for a tearjerking rendition of “Friendship.” Margo Price and I’m With Her’s Sarah Jarosz stood together to sing Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee”, but not before a statement from Price. “I’ve got two words,” she said. “F**k I.C.E.”

The final set carried forward a spirit of protest, something deeply rooted in the history of the Newport Folk Festival, and folk music as a whole. Many of the weekend’s performances spoke to the role music can play in building community, sustaining hope, and offering resistance. In a time marked by political unrest and climate uncertainty, these moments on stage served as a reminder that connection is a form of strength. Creating and sharing music together is not just meaningful – it can be transformative. At Newport, that spirit was felt in the lyrics, in the collaborations, and in the way the crowd listened with care.