The Old Port Crowd - Q97 Stage

First Sunday in June – in Portland that means the Old Port Festival!

Polly and I have been attending this event for five years now, and this was, by far, the most organized and well-run Old Port Festival we’ve seen.  Great, friendly crowd, quality craft booths, interesting food choices, and great music!  Congrats to the Portland Downtown District and all the music stage sponsors!

Everyone mentions the weather when they talk about the Old Port Festival, so I won’t!

Local folk and roots music figured prominently in the festival this year, thanks mainly to the nice folks at WCLZ!

Lara Seaver at the WCLZ Stage at the Old Port Festival

Kudos to the ‘CLZ staff for supporting local music as they do, and for putting together a great Old Port Stage.  A special thanks to Lara Seaver, morning show host and producer and host of “Music from 207″.

We arrived at the ‘CLZ stage at Silver and Fore Streets in time to catch the last few chords from Pete Kilpatrick‘s guitar (damn!).  After Pete came a young woman from Toronto – Serena Ryder.  She played a couple of very small acoustic guitars, maybe 0-0-0 size, but the sound that came outta these guys was very big!  Huge energy and emotion, lyrics to match, great guitar chops.  She’s with Atlantic

Serena Ryder on the WCLZ Old Port Festival Stage

Records – must be doin’ OK!  I bought her new CD, “Is It O.K.”, great music.   Folk? eh, maybe folk/rock… ok maybe rock/folk..  but great tunes!

Spooner was next – Jason Spooner has a new live album out, which is good, because live is the way to hear this guy and this band.  ”The Flame You

Jason Spooner before his Old Port Festival set on the WCLZ stage

Follow” is his last studio album, and it’s great, but there’s so much to enjoy in a live set from these guys.  Reed Chambers on drums, of course, and Adam Frederick on bass (I love to see him play the double bass, but today he had the electric strapped on.)  The three of them play together as if they were networked, so tight and balanced.  Frederick has a great set of harmony vocal pipes – who knew?

To sweeten the deal, they were joined on the last song (Dylan’s “Girl of the North Country) by Maine fiddle ace Ed Howe (who recently and reluctantly had to leave the Dave Rowe Trio for personal reasons.) Oh, yeah, they were also

Ed Howe and Adam Frederick dish it on the WCLZ Old Port Stage

had some help on that song from Dar Williams!

Bringing Dar to Portland for the Old Port Festival was a real coup for ‘CLZ.  The crowds at the rock stages were huge, but us folkies gave those rockers a run for their money with Dar.  Fore Street was wall to wall Dar fans as far as the eye could see.

Dar Williams on the WCLZ Old Port Festival Stage

She put on a great set, (The Babysitter, Are You Out There, etc) and the crowd loved her.  Dar has a way of connecting with her live audiences that is different from other folkies who do that well.  Other great performers project their power into the audience.  Dar makes it seem as if she’s out here in the audience with us, watching the show, laughing at her mistakes and her intimate sense of humor right along with us.  It’s as if we’re all at the same party and we’re all entertaining each other.

Let’s see, what else was cool?

I ran into Tin Foil Man (Robert Wilson), a street artist familiar to many Portlanders.  He fashions sculptures out of foil, and he’s won the Phoenix Best of Portland street art title two years running.  I actually just wrote a song about this guy, and I can’t wait to play it for him.  Rumors were that he left town, but he’s here, and he had some nice pieces of his art with him.

After watching Dar Williams’ set, I walked down the hill to the Portland Coffee Roasters shop, and caught a few minutes of music from Truth About Daisies, one of my favorite local folkie bands.  They are down to three

Truth About Daisies

members now, Ronda Dale, Sheila McKinley, and Doug Swift, but the new sound is clean, simple, and uncomplicated – I like it a lot!  Sheila and Ronda’s harmonies are wonderful, and Doug is a talented multi-instrumentalist.

Guess that’s it – quite a day of music in the great city of Portland, Maine!  One of the reasons I love living here!

Oh, and the weather was GREAT!