The Way Over Yonder festival brought us a lot of interesting performers on Sunday afternoon. There were two stages, and the indoor carousel stage had a much more intimate setting than the large one on the pier. I arrived just before Aaron Embry’s peaceful set and he was having the biggest and most beautiful smiles you can imagine, while thanking people sitting around the carousel. His music is subtle, quiet, emotionally complex, and the instrumentation is minimal. He was alternating between piano, harmonica or guitar, alone on stage, and his voice was revealing a rare bareness. To match it, he was playing his melancholic songs barefoot, blowing in his harmonica at times, fluidly running his fingers on his old-sounding keyboard. And this ‘Raven’s Song’ of his is a sort of Debussy meets alt-country! He said that his daughter was excited about the carousel, with one of his kid-like smile and the crowd remained extremely quiet, absorbed by the trail of sadness following his compositions. Aaron wrote his album ‘Tiny Prayers’ mostly while he was on tour with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (he was their piano player) and his delicate guitar even turning a bit Spanish-western on one song, was sending chills on the spine at 95ºF.
On the outdoor stage, Jonathan Wilson and his band played a long set of bluesy-psyche-rock, and I immediately thought that the 70s were back in full force. Long hair, tie dye t-shirts, wobbling keys and long guitar jams as if it was the last song of the set each time, this quintet was bringing a strong Laurel Canyon flavor on the beach. It was such a beautiful and hot day, and honestly their set reminded me how special it is to be listening to live music outside. Their psychedelic detours (even funky at times) with languid vocals and harmonies sounding like the Eagles (not a good point for them) was perfect music for a beach day,… they could even turn into some brainy-jazzy-bluesy parts à la Steely Dan or into some Hendrix-esque distortion. People, and in particular a young girl wearing a top pink bikini, were dancing their ass off as if it was a Woodstock reunion. I had never heard of them, but they mentioned a new album out October 15th, and a fast research reveals contributions from Graham Nash, David Crosby and Father John Misty, and at the top of this, ‘their buddy’ Jackson Browne showed up during their set to play and harmonize on a few songs! Not too shabby!
Folk is an old genre, and nobody knows it better than Frank Fairfield who played his mix of old-time Appalachian fiddle, banjo and guitar on the carousel stage. He is a real phenomenon, playing old tunes as if he was a time machine. But he is the real deal, he talks like a guy on an ancient recording, he laughs like a 90-year-old man, and he must barely be in his early 30s. Talk about an old soul trapped in a young body! He called a friend on stage to play his collection of ‘old time’ music, foot tapping along, reading some of the lyrics from a handwritten little booklet, since he is definitively not the type to use more technology even for this. Laughing under his retro-looking mustache, he said he was a sappy kind of guy, and joked about the matching blue shirts that he and his friend were wearing as if they were both working in the same electronic store,… has he had ever entered an electronic store? I bet this guy doesn’t even own a cell phone.
At the end of the afternoon, the Felice Brothers on the outdoor stage played a big warm up show for their set with Conor Oberst. They are a festive bunch, sounding half traditional, half original with a light Dylan-esque accent on some songs… they were a bit all over the place, but apparently this doesn’t bother Conor who adores them! The bass player looked like a punk, they did play some aggressive country numbers, with a bluesy punk violin, sometimes injecting a Cajun flavor with an accordion, sounding laid-back, or even drunk, ‘I put some whiskey into my whiskey’, producing a more or less chaotic but always joyous Americana. They did a new song which started with the lyrics ‘All I want to eat is cherry licorice I don’t care if it sounds ridiculous’, and why not? They ended up with a screaming song about Penn station, which was supposed to bring NYC and LA together? They were certainly entertaining, and I was not entirely convinced but since Conor covered one of their songs, I will have to totally respect that!
Before First Aid Kit and Conor Oberst, I still had time to catch a bit of Spirit Family Reunion, who were playing on the carousel stage, and this big ensemble, all crowded on the small stage, had more spirit than a regimen of Mumford and Sons. They were dusting the stage with some energetic foot tapping, and they were using about everything allowed in folk music, violin, banjo, upright bass, brushed drums, percussion,… stomping, harmonizing, screaming all clustered together, the six of them becoming a mad man shouting higher-than-the-sky-heartfelt choruses… then I left their joyful barn ambiance to see Conor and the First Aid Kit girls.
