Booking folk Bob Jones began working for the Newport Folk Festival as a volunteer in its second year, 1963, and has been with Wein and Festival Productions virtually ever since. Over the last decade, the biggest boon to the festival audience has been the movement in women’s music, particularly artists like the Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco, and Sarah McLachlan. " I think we had Sarah here the year before she started Lilith Fair, " says Jones. " I’m sure that if she was as smart as people think she is, she would have looked around and seen what was happening. At that point, a lot of the women moved off in that direction. For Jones, the major challenge in booking the Newport Folk Festival is competing for talent, especially against the concert booking arm of multimedia behemoth Clear Channel (represented locally by Don Law). " We had a terrible time this year trying to find main headliners for the folk festival. In booking we were just hitting dead ends. Not that we didn’t have the money to spend — we were trying to spend money — but many artists, even the second echelon of artists, wait for a tour to come along. So they play 27, 30 dates across the country. " With the onslaught of SFX — now Clear Channel — it’s become even more difficult. . . . We’ve felt certainly on the folk festival that we catch artists sometimes on the way up and sometimes we catch them on the way down. It’s nothing to do with their artistry, it’s only to do with the power of the financial structure that they have. The festival this year we feel is a fabulous festival musically — the jazz festival is the same way, presenting people that you don’t get to see very often. But still it’s become much more difficult to book these kinds of artists — and expensive. " — JG

" When I came back, " says Wein of his ’81 return to Newport, " I knew everybody in the audience. It was all the jazz fans from the ’60s and going back to the ’50s. As a few years went on, those people were getting older, and our crowds were getting bigger with people I didn’t know. There was a gradual change in the audience, so that now I see a few people my age or a little younger, but basically I don’t know anybody in the audience. " The ’69-’71 audience was a Woodstock aberration, not a " lasting audience, " as Wein puts it. For the past few years the festival has featured a second stage, around the corner from the main " Fort Stage " at Newport’s Fort Adams State Park, featuring edgier artists — last year John Zorn and James Carter’s Electric Project, this year Caine and James Blood Ulmer and even jam band the Slip. " The second stage is very popular, " says Wein. " So now you are getting the more curious younger people who really don’t know that much about jazz but they don’t want to be just rock kids. So that keeps us alive. "

As the Indigos revitalized the Newport Folk Festival (see " Booking folk " ), the jam-band scene, with crossover stars Medeski Martin & Wood, has helped bring new blood into the jazz fest. Certainly MM&W have given hope to jazz audiences — this is a group with a strong contemporary feeling for rock and funk but also with a strong sense of jazz tradition and forward-thinking experimentation. " There is a jazz relationship to what they do, " Wein agrees about MM&W. But, he argues, MM&W and their jam-band camp followers " don’t want to hear Diana Krall on the same bill. The Diana Krall people will listen to MM&W. They won’t like it, but it won’t keep them away. If you did a jam-band festival, you’d have a uni-directional group of young people and it would feel like an old-time rock festival. "

Wein’s idea, of course, is to avoid overstocking the festival with a particular type of pop band, or with any one band who’re " too popular " and could take over the festival. He also offers reasons why the hope of great crossover epiphanies among diverse audiences isn’t easily achieved. " I once said that in soul music, the performers related to the daily lives of the people in the audience. There was a relationship — the blues, losing their lover, the unfaithful husband, ‘Baby, baby, baby, wha’d you do to me?’  " Rock wasn’t in a relationship to the world, it was an escape from the world. It went to a world where the sound is so loud it shut out all the problems of school, all the problems of parental difficulties. And I think the jam-band thing is not unlike that. "

Yet Wein keeps trying to find the right mix of pop and " pure " jazz expression, with more forays into world music. And there are those few stunning discoveries, like the Afro-Pop star Femi Kuti. " The crowd loved Femi Kuti last year. They just flipped! They didn’t know who he was. But all of a sudden there was all this life from the stage. . . . To me, the musical content is negligible. But there’s a spirit there that communicates. The three girls wiggle up there and the band keeps banging away and the people can boogie. We’ve got to have a little of that. The audience has to stand up a few times during the festival. "

I mention artists whom I as a jazz fan would consider mainstream — former Ornette Coleman bassist Charlie Haden, whose wonderful concert at Sanders Theatre a few years ago with a string ensemble was undersold, even though it featured his most accessible, popular repertoire. " Charlie Haden’s one of the great musicians in the history of jazz, " Wein responds. " As an attraction, he has literally no ticket-buying public. But you put him on a festival and package him correctly, he’ll get incredible applause. By themselves they can’t do it. That’s my continual dilemma: how can I draw people, still keep the critics interested in what I’m doing, and still keep my sponsor happy? It’s a total dilemma. The last one I try to make happy is myself. We’ve been doing festivals for so long. There’s never any given formula to use, except that a festival without people is not a festival.

" People never ask me, why is it that I’ve lasted since 1954 when festivals come and festivals go and styles of music have come and gone and I’m still putting on festivals and my sponsors are staying with me? And I do it in the most difficult city in the world, in New York, in a rock-and-roll age. I don’t know myself, I would like to find out what it is that has allowed me to last. A real analysis. I can think of a lot of things. One thing is, we work very hard. " Wein talks about the integrity of the people he works with, the use of sponsorships. But he also emphasizes that concert presenters have to pay attention to the drift of young musicians — whether it wanders toward avant-garde or funk. " There’s an energy of young musicians out there that cannot be ignored. No matter what your tastes in music, you can’t ignore that energy. "

But, after all, he concludes, " I come from another world, my sets of standards, my concepts, are different. But I still survive in this rock world. And I don’t know how! I really don’t! It’s very strange. "

The Newport Folk Festival takes place this Friday through Sunday, August 3, 4, and 5; the JVC Jazz Festival-Newport follows on August 10, 11, and 12. Saturday and Sunday events are held at Fort Adams State Park, Friday-night events at other locations in Newport. Call (617) 931-2000 or visit www.festivalproductions.net.

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Issue Date: August 2 - 9, 2001