Newport Folk Festival 2011 – Day Two

Sunday, July 31, 2011

The Journey – Part Two

10:15AM

 If you’re lucky enough to score tickets to both days of the Newport Folk Festival, it makes sense to stay overnight in Newport, or elsewhere in the tiny state of Little Rhodey for that matter.  There’s no camping on the grounds of Fort Adams, but there are some reputable campsites nearby.

I myself, had ferried, bussed and subwayed my sunburned behind all the way back to Somerville with strings still pulsating in my brain, and now found myself back on the Peter Pan. This time, with a less festive crowd, by appearances.

Knowing the score now, there was daydreaming to do. I put on my straw hat and my shades and plugged in. At one point a woman at the front of the bus was staring at me with a huge smile on her face. I searched her face for familiarity and then looked away, thinking she must be looking at someone else. Checking back though, she was still staring at me,  beaming away.

I looked her dead in the eye and smiled, plaintively. She pointed at my head. At a complete loss, I smiled and laughed a “now I get it,” kind of laugh, nodding my head without removing my earbuds or sliding down my shades. She laughed and gave me a big thumbs up.  “Right on!” she seemed to be saying.

I still have no idea what the hell this was about. Maybe she recognized my straw hat, shades and earbuds the uniform of Newport Folk Festival goer. Maybe she was mistaking me for one of the acts. This episode remains one of the unsolved mysteries of Newport 2011. I guess it’s good to have a couple.

Today’s Peter Pan ride was speedy and without incident. We pulled in at about 1130AM and I hustled to up the street to the water taxi. No folk legends greeted me on the journey—just the Call Girl—the name painted on the tiny vessel’s side.

The Early Show

12:20

Early Sunday afternoon was the quietest I ever saw Fort Adams. There wasn’t even a crowd at the Stonehill Yogurt booth, and they were giving out free milk and cookies. Milling about toward the Fort Stage with my fellow straw hats, I heard the distinctive voices of the attractive boy/girl front persons of David Wax Museum, a Cambridge band who plays original music heavily influenced by Mexican folk.

“Who wants to live in a nation in decline!” I heard them shout over their closing chords. This group had gotten quite a bit of press for their “breakout” performance at last year’s festival. This year they had the biggest stage, but kind of a bum slot. No one was gathered in the front-of-stage standing area, so the applause felt a bit tepid.

 When I moseyed over to the much more densely crowded Alex & and Ani Harbor Stage, I saw trio of cute, skinny girls, one in a bonnet and specs, making an Enya-like harmony with some live beat boxing underneath it.

 This, it turned out, wasMountain Man.

A quick informal straw poll of their audience thought they were probably The Secret Sisters, another girl trio, who were on at the same time over at the Quad Stage.

But this was Mountain Man. A skilled vocal group from Vermont who alternately chirped, cooed and purred an old timey repertoire that would have been at home on the “O Brother,” or “O Sister” records.

“This is the last day of a month long tour,” said one of the girls, pattered one of the girls, “and my Dad’s here which is pretty cool.

“My Dad’s at home with my cat,” offered another.

I’m telling, you, these gals are NPR-ready!

My Pick for Best act of the 2011 Festival: Carolina Chocolate Drops

12:40

Speaking of NPR, it was their spot on Fresh Air that introduced me the fabulous Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group of virtuosic, multi-instrumentalists, vocalists and folk historians, with a beat boxer. These young indie folksters learned the old, old songs and the old instruments from the original old black dudes on their South Carolina porches. They’ve also dug deep into old used vinyl and wax and they site their sources with evangelical fervor.

For all of their digging through dusty archives, there was not a mote of dust on their sound, or on their live performance, which featured guitar, gourd banjo, mandolin, fiddle, harmonica, jugs, kazoos, bones, panpipe, an array of styles and tempos, instrument swapping, vaudevillesque patter, dancing, scatting and call-and-response.

Not for nothing, these guys had the oft-uptight Newport crowd jumping, screaming, clapping and singing, and they never once had to disparage their audience’s energy to guilt or prod them into doing it.

 The Drops have recently lost one of their three founders, Justin Robinson.

“We lost him to school,” announced the operatically trained soul singer, kazoo virtuoso and fiddler, Rhianna Giddens.

“He decided ‘reading is fundamental,’ bandmate and fellow founder, Dom Flemons quipped.

Huddy Jenkins

They’ve added New York multi-instrumentalist, Hubby Jenkins who most played Mando at the Fest, and beat-boxer Adam Matta, who continues to bring the hip hop flavor that characterizes the band’s best known tune: a cover of Blu Cantrell’s “Hit “Em Up Style,” with a soaring fiddle line.

Caves, Turtles

11:50

In fairness to the acts who played over the next hour, no one was going to top the Drops for me. Their bridging of traditions, their openness and their energy just seemed to embody the best of the festival. There was a grin beneath my brim as I trotted over to the Alex & Ani stage, on which I saw a dude in a neon yellow trucker cap, a sleeveless tee and bluejeans, offering his gentle tenor into a mic. A guitarist was seated to his left, rocking the grundge look, a mop of long whipped hair rendering the rest of his head completely invisible. These were the Cave Singers, with whom I was not familiar. As usual, I had a hell of time penetrating the tent crowd to get a half-decent photo and I was repeatedly shooed away from the perimeters by the perimeter cops.

I didn’t last long. Back through the arch to the tunneled arch to Quad Stage where an equally dense crowd was packed in to listen to Trampled by Turtles, a quintet of string players in plaid button-downs and jeans.

“It’s empty where you are/Just a big gaping hole…” they sang, sliding into delicate harmonies.

It was at this moment that I first realized that for some reason, this The Quad Stage had be relegated as The Bummer Stage. Act after act confirmed this. Not every band that played their was a downer, but every downer act I saw, played there.

I couldn’t handle their melancholy energy. It was time for a drink.

 Now, you can’t bring alcohol to Newport. There’s just two options. There’s a beer tent, behind a rope, way off in a secluded corner where you might be able to hear the Quad Stage but you certainly can’t see a damned thing, and then there’s the press tent, which has luxurious couches, free food, an open bar and often some resting musicians, smoking their cigarettes and pretending they don’t see the half-passed out reporters, who are mostly uploading their photos and their blog posts

 I left the press tent refreshed, passing the turtles, who still sounded subdued but lovely, and headed back through the tunnel, and back passed the—wait! Was this the same band? The Cave Singers!?!

The Alex & Ani tent seemed to be leaping up and down as a collective unit. The yellow trucker cap and slevealess tee shirt were soaked through with sweat, and their owner was red in the face and hollering into his mic like it owned him money.  When the song ended, the crowd roared.

“This is our last song!” the singer yelled and then a thunderous three beat drum pattern just erupted from a kit I couldn’t even see, and the whole tent starting screaming and leaping up and down again.

I guess I probably should have stayed for their whole set in the first place.

Wanda Jackson

2:00PM

I quite literally got thrills and chills from the moment I heard that evil growl emanate from Wanda Jackson, a sorceress with a black bouffant and aruffled  crimson dress. The sounds that came out of this woman-of-a-certain age!—a pioneer of female rockabilly recently rescued from obscurity by guitarist-of-our generation/impresario, Jack White.

Wanda began by paying to tribute a woman for whom she paved the way and then outlived. She sang Amy Whinehouse’s “Like I Knew I Would.”  Chills.

The next chunk of the set was dedicated to Jack and drawn from their recent project,

The Party Aint Over, a reference to her 60’s hit, “Let’s Have A Party,” her closer. “Here’s an oldie Jack asked me to do,” she said, launching into “Gonna Rip It Up.”

“Jack asked me for one song that I really liked and never had recorded, so I hope you like it too. An Elvis Presley song from the the 60’s or early 70’s,” she announced,  singing “You Give Me Love.”

The latter half of her set was dedicated to her original hits and full of charming patter. She revealed that her hit Fukuyama Mama, in which she compared herself to an atomic bomb was bizarrely, a number one hit in Japan, she testified and evangelized heading into her gospel period and she introduced her bandleader Heath Hamels, as the guy who rounds up the band, drives the van “gets you out of jail and pays your child support.”

From bombs to Christ to child support: pure country rock.

Justin Townes Earl

3:00PM

 After Wanda Jackson thoroughly rocked my world, it was time to had back to the Bummer Stage for an act I was truly looking forward to: singer/songwriter Justin Townes Earle, son of Steve, denizen of Brooklyn, a true hipster/honky-tonk hybrid. Earle looks the part perfectly. He’s tall and lanky with tattooed arms and he wears glasses under his old fashioned hats.

He plays the part perfectly too, singing stories and poems in delicate voice while bearing down on the strings f his acoustic with fierce bite.

The first story he told was about his Mama. I guess this was gonna be a country set too.  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began his rhythmic stream of patter, “the first woman who ever hit me was my Mama…for everything I’ve ever done in my life, she’s been there for me. If you ever said anything bad about me she’d take your head off just like that. Here’s a song I wrote for her.”

“I am my father’s son,” began the song, “Mama’s Eyes,”  “I’ve never known when to shut up…”

Earle’s band included a great lap steal player and his set featured some killer harmonies. He has enormous charisma and knows how to arrange. After Wanda though, he was a downer. 

Amos Lee

3:25PM

 I’m going to confess here that Amos Lee had me fooled. In a couple of ways. For one thing, I had him in my head as a black dude. I must of only be half listening when I head him interviewed on Terry Gross a few years back. (Yeah, I listen to a lot of NPR. I also go to folk festivals). He is in fact, what you’d call, a singer of blue-eyed soul, as well as a story-telling guitarist/singer/songwriter.

Here’s the other way he had me fooled: From radio play, I always thought of Lee as a smooth character, vocally. At Newport, he sounded like he’d tried to swallow a burr.

Lee in fact gave one of the most arresting, bone-chilling, soul-tirring performances of the weekend. His voice, powerful and textured, his presence magnetic.  Familiar pop tunes like “Flower” were somehow unrecognizable, not for some novelty of arrangement, simply for unadorned emotional content.

 I got real close to Lee down in the photographer’s pit. I’m worried about him. You could see in his face that a deep and profound pain was bubbling up from the pit of his stomach and soaring out of his mouth.

But Lee was no bummer. No sad bastard music here. He has clearly learned how to transmogrify his pain in the best possible musical way, making it feel soothing and joyous.

His vocals burned off my skin and then rubbed in a balm.

Middle Brother

4:20

First off, for those wondering, there was no evidence of 4:20 being celebrated at the festival in any official capacity—unless you used a port-a-potty.

Second, even though Middle Brother, the “super-group” comprised of Matt Vasquez from Delta Spirit, John J. McCauley III of the excellent Rhode Island-based indie-rock band, Deer Tick and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes played on the bummer stage, they were most decidedly not bummerific. Especially, as it turned out, to the demographic of girls between the ages of about 18-23.

Middle Brother’s Myspace Page categorizes their music as “Breakcore.” I have no idea what that is. They are an indie rock band. Their sound throws back to simple 60’s garage rock. They’re hooky and catchy and have unbelievable swagger.

I kind of wanted to hate Middle Brother. I could feel McCauley, a short, skinny kid with tatted arms who wore the ultimate hipster uniform of ironic Walmart tee, shades and a captain’s hat, just sneering at everyone.

Vasquez too just readiated smarminess. “We haven’t even practiced!” he yelled out with delirious self-satisfaction. “We haven’t even seen each other since North Carolina!”

I’ve never seen a band more aware of the presence of photographers. It was like this was their first gig.

The thing is, in spite of all this, I could not hate Middle Brother, because they were extremely good and playing rock’n’roll and they absolutely lit the Quad Stage crowd on fire. Also, they invited Mountain Man on stage which was adorable.

 Elvis Costello

4:45

I’m convinced that Elvis Costello had the most fun of anyone at the Newport Folk Festival. He was absolutely ebullient in his seersucker suit, straw hat and shades with his plug-in acoustic.

It’s funny—I wasn’t really sure what Elvis was doing here—how he fit in…I mean, I know he’s covered a lot of generic ground, but he’s essentially a British pop star. I got the sense from Elvis that he felt almost the same way. Like he was a gate crasher at a glorious party. His buoyancy was such a refreshing contrast from the ironic indies, and tortured country stars, and mellow pretty melody makers as he blasted through The Band’s “This Wheels on Fire,” and his own “ Chauffeur to Sugarcane,” a swampy stomper.

“All of the photographers are leaving!” when we’re kicked out of the pit after the second song. “You should at least stay and dance!’

After “American Tears” with some successful call and response and a melodica, he started calling up guests to join in the Elvis Costello Revue. The first were the Secret Sisters, who sang a few backup harmonies on a rag Elvis said he imaged as a 20’s song, “A Slow Drag With Josephine.

“You want sing one of your own?” he offered, classily. They sounded beautiful.

Elvis played some rockers, an up tempo, “Cry, Cry Cry” followed by “Dancin’ the Night Away,” and then he called up Chris Healy of the Punch Brothers and Crooked Still and then he brought of the festival’s closer, EmmyLou Harris, to sing “We Will Rise Above” and an up-tempo “What’s so Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding.” The first notes I heard EmmyLou sing absolutely pummeled me in the heart. Way to share the stage, Elvis.

 M. Ward

5:50

Before I got to hear more of EmmyLou, I had one more urgent mission to the bummer stage: M. Ward, one of the most creative and emotional of the indie rock singer/songwriters.

My first look at M. Ward sent me into the same shocked disbelief I’d had with the brothers Felice. That deep, echoing, mournful voice I’d heard in recordings was emanating from what looked like a short, skinny kid! It was inconceivable. I’ve since learned that M. Ward is in his late 30’s. He looks about 16.

Once I got over that, I was deeply impressed. I’m used to hearing M. Ward’s voice mediated by an echo mic and confined to a safety zone of about 2 chords. All the nets were down as he sang “Chinese Translation” (“What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?”) and “Sway” with blistering whispers and solemn harmonica interludes. It was beautiful. And sad. So, so very sad.

What’s more, Ward spoke as if fighting back a lump in his throat, with ominous ambiguities and long, tortured pauses. He seemed Brian Wilson-like, as if he had just immerged from being locked up in a room for many weeks.

 “This guy is great,” I thought to myself. “I’m calling in a suicide watch. (I might ask them to check on Amos Lee, while they’re here, too.)”

EmmyLou Harris

6:05

EmmyLou Harris, who began her set with “Orphan Girl,” was the perfect Newport closer. She is a heartfelt storyteller with an instantly distinguished, rich, powerful, feminine voice. Storytelling is what she did all night. She described herself as a girl, buying Dylan Baez records and dreaming of what this festival might be like.  She sang “Me and Lilly,” and the gorgeous soliloquy that is Merel haggard’s “Current River” with an accordian underneath.

“This song is about—oh you know this song—by one of our great singer/songwriter poets” she said before letting Townes Van Zandt’s ballad of “Poncho and Lefty” speak for itself.

She told about witnessing civil rights struggles in the south and the need to remember and then sang about Emmet Till…

 My heart was full to the brim as I headed away from the Fort Stage.

The Peter Pan

10:15AM

The journey begins with the Peter Pan. I’m bussing it from Boston. 90 minutes each way. $52 round trip. I’ve never been to the Newport Folk Festival before and the line for the bus offers an informal survey of what I might be looking at in a festival crowd. Behind me, a tattooed waif is loudly describing the composition of her drum kit.  Her companion has broad shoulders and skinny jeans. Near by us is a bald dude with a 3-foot beard wearing a Beatles tee. It’s the clean-cut Beatles with the grey suits.

A teenaged couple is decked out in eye-burning ensembles: white tees tucked into tight white jeans with white socks and white tennis shoes. They’re like White Stripes costumes. There are middle-aged women in loud sundresses, and men with a certain aging boomer look: hair gone on top but long in the back, glasses, slight paunch, khakis. Funnily enough, it’s easy to imagine huge swaths of my musical taste overlapping with these busmates. I guess that’s why the festival works.

Once I’m on the bus, I quickly tweet some findings. Then, I unplug. No podcasts, not even music. I just want to think about my parents’ old records and their tales of coffee houses in Philly and Cambridge, and about the thuds of all those harmonicas that all of those kids pelted at the stage when Dylan asked if anyone had an E harmonica in that footage from ’65.

All this when it’s really Delta Spirit, and Gogol Bordello, and Devil Makes Three that got me out of bed this morning. I guess that’s also why the festival works.

The bus breaks down about 1 mile from the Visitor and Transportation Center in Newport. Everybody off. Horrible smell of burning. The crisis is short lived, but it costs me some opening acts.

The Old Man on the Water Taxi

12:45

 From the Visitor and Transportation Center, you walk a block to the water taxi that takes you to Fort Adams State Park. $10 round trip.  Waiting in line, I noticed an old man in a denim shirt, faded trousers and sandals with a banjo case strapped to his back. His face struck me like a lighting bolt—is that—?

I hung back and listened to him chat with some other line-waiters. “The thing is, I’m supposed to sing at this festival,” I heard him say, adding that he didn’t want to sit in a car in this traffic. His conversants smiled and nodded as if not knowing what to say, and I watched him find a seat on a patch of grass in an island of concrete while he waited for everyone else to board. A beautiful young woman with a guitar case strapped to her back led him onto the tiny boat and they sat together quietly. I tried to restrain myself, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. Finally I got the nerve to walk over and ask them if they were playing in the festival.

“I’m here to tell a story and sing a song on someone else’s program,” the man said with a bouncy rhythm that was instantly familiar.

“Who are you going to play with?” I tried.

“Just by myself.” His companion grinned.

I explained that I was covering the festival and asked for his name. He responded in a near whisper.

“Seeger. Pete Seeger.”

Pete Seeger and his granddaughter Moraya Seeger on the ferry to the festival.

So, wow. You don’t want to go up to the first old man with a banjo that you see on your way to a folk festival and say, “Hey, are you Pete Seeger?” But there you had it.

Polite as he was, it was clear that Seeger wasn’t looking for attention during the ride, so I resisted my desire to delve into his stories of the old days and find out where he stood on today’s music and politics.  Not in an ambush with only a few minutes until we reached the shore. But I did ask if I could take a picture for my story.

“Take both of us,” he said, meaning himself and his companion, who introduced herself as Moraya Seeger, Pete’s granddaughter. “You can say ‘Pete Seeger on the ferry to the festival.’”

Pete and Moraya had come to support a performance by Pete’s grandson Tao, with the Seeger Clogging All-Stars. Many of the festival’s headliners were as star-struck by Pete as I was.

“You know you’re in the right place when you’re backstage with Pete Seeger, watching Wanda Jackson!” Elvis Costello exclaimed from the stage on Sunday. EmmyLou Harris, who followed Costello to close the whole shebang started by asking how we’d been blessed with so much sun throughout the weekend. “It’s probably Pete Seeger,” she postulated.

The Scene

Newport seemed to define “folk” as almost anything roots-inspired. True to the crowd on the Peter Pan, the festival drew a range of ages and tastes by booking an impressive mix of legendary traditional folk stars (Earl Scruggs, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot), big-name rock and country crossovers (EmmyLou Harris, Giilian Welsh & David Rawlings, Elvis Costello), indie rockers with singer/songwriter chops and/or acoustic repertoires (Delta Spirit, M. Ward, The Decembrists), up-and-coming traditional folk groups (Carolina Chocolate Drops) and young folkies on the bar and coffee shop circuit (David Wax Museum, Mountain Man).

Festivalgoers were likely to get hit with a mixture of salty air, and the sounds of strings and harmonies from the moment they stepped off of the water taxi.  Near the entrance to Fort Adams, home of the Museum of Yachting, was the Alex and Ani Harbor Stage, a small, densely packed, and tented area, with viciously policed perimeters to avoid traffic jams (murder on photographers). This is where the bar and coffee shop stars played.

And I do mean the stars of the circuit here. So not that woman who strums a few chords and beats her guitar with palm of her hand while singing her one quirky dating song followed by awkward patter and then her tale of the day the stained glass window of the church in her home town was shattered, and wasn’t it symbolic? Nor that sensitive dude in the flannel with the smooth, whispery voice who sings about the hard times outside the window of his Brooklyn coffee shop. Those folks were not represented.

On Day One, I caught a set there by the great Ellis Paul. He was playing in a “song circle” with Dar Williams, John Gorka and Liz Queler & Seth Farber who told a story about playing for a crowd of “five muddy people in raincoats” at their first festival, and plugged “The Edna Project,” an upcoming album which sets the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Malloy to music.

Ellis Paul on the Alex & Ani Harbor Stage

Queler & Farber on the Alex & Ani Harbor Stage

Wrapping along to the east of this tent, a labyrinth of familiar hippie/New Age craft and food venders led the way to the Fort Stage, where most of the biggest headliners play. This is the stage with the giant LCD screens, and the vast patchwork of blankets and tarps brought by those who choice to camp in front of it for the duration. There are a lot of these, and precious few aisles, which makes mobility pretty frustrating. The nice thing is, if you needed a break from the crowds, you could always take a two-minute walk to the shore and watch the sail boats and kayakers.

To get to the third stage, the Quad Stage, or as I came to call it, the Bummer Stage, you had to follow the labyrinth back passed the Alex and Ani Stage (where a good enough band could stop you in your tracks), wrap around to the west and walk up a tunneled ramp in Fort Adams to a separated patch of land.

The Quad Stage did host the festivals two true rock bands, Delta Spirit and Middle Brother. It was also blessed by the Seegers. For some reason though, the majority of its acts, including headliners, Justin Townes Earl and M. Ward, were clearly rocking the sad bastard side of things.

For the goods on these and other acts, including pictures, stories and reviews, check out parts 2 and 3 of the Journal.

NEW YORK — When I looked in front of me to see a girl had torn off her shirt and was shouting the lyrics in nothing but a black bra without a goddamn care, I knew things were right. Five minutes longer on the sweaty dance floor, and I would have been right there with her, as clothes were rendered useless at this point in Defiance, Ohio’s set.

Crowds at Defiance shows form into a swaying, pushing, dancing mob of fans shouting every word to the folk punk, DIY sound of violin, drums and guitars. A sound that mashes with lyrics of genuine concern for our often destructive and isolating society and structures. The show and crowd at the Europa Nightclub Tuesday night in Brooklyn were no different: positive, energetic and entirely uninhibited.

The first time I saw Defiance, Ohio play was at Mass Art in Boston in a spacious wood-floored rectangular room four years ago during my freshman year of college. After hearing my long-haired boyfriend at the time scream each word from a scratchy cassette player attached to his iPod, swerving around the dull streets of downtown Castle Rock, Colorado in a truck, I designated myself as qualified to see a live show.

The band essentially played two shows that night in Boston because the room was so full the first round that you couldn’t possibly throw another body into the rhythmically swaying sea, and 50 people were still lined up waiting to get in. After one set, the next crowd funneled in, and Defiance kept playing.

“That was nothing like the Mass Art show in Boston,” I somewhat obnoxiously told my friend as we waited for Tuesday’s show to start in Brooklyn, when she referenced last summer’s Colorado show in a giant garage, somewhere across highway I-25 in Denver.

That show had awesome energy and the band was lovely. It was after they had recently come out with Midwestern Minutes, so it was fun to hear the new stuff, but the space just wasn’t right. The lights were on and the concrete floor was too large, so people spread out—some even sitting on the floor or couches—and all I could think about was the bursting room in Boston, where we jumped up and down, essentially on top of each other, drenched in sweat, screaming the words like they finally rendered sense to our existence.

It was my first folk punk show, or punk show for that matter, and I have found myself using that Boston show as a standard for all other shows since—whether Defiance, Ohio was the band playing or not. And with this very personal standard, I can say that Tuesday’s show in Brooklyn was a testament to the relentless, evolving talent of the band as they have toured in various ways for almost a decade, and the passion of their fans, who do still sing their hearts out because they do know the words by heart now (“This feels better”).

I got chills when Sherri came on stage just to sing her part in “Oh, Susquehanna!”–the part when the fast paced drumming settles for a heartfelt interlude of childhood reminiscence that contrasts a depiction of modern-day monotonous lifestyles, a harmonica in the background.

They played a lot of songs from this album, The Great Depression, though not as much from Share What You Got, their first album produced in 2003. I’m pretty sure they played almost every song I wanted to hear (e.g. “The Condition,” “Anxious and Worrying,” “Hairpool,” “Response to Griot”). But then again, anything they could have played would have been what I wanted to hear.

While we got to the venue late, we caught a few songs performed by one of the opening bands, Nana Grizol, drummer Theo Hilton’s side project that involves Laura Carter and Robbie Cucchiaro, who both formerly played in Neutral Milk Hotel.

Dressed in a white t-shirt and jean cut-offs, Theo transitioned the band from song to song in an awkward, but endearing manner, wiping his greasy hair out of his face. This was my first encounter with Nana Grizol’s sound and I enjoyed the combination of trumpet duos with Theo’s folky vocals and lyrical style.

As soon as Defiance came on, the stage diving and crowd surfing started and became a constant throughout the show, with girls and guys tossing themselves from the stage into supportive, waving hands as band members occasionally smiled at the loving chaos. During the last song they played, “Condition 11:11,” there were four people diving simultaneously on multiple turns, as though it was a swimming race and everyone needed to finish.

There’s something uniquely “Defiance” about the environment at the band’s shows. A sense of support and love as you bop around in the mosh pit, even catching smiles from other people singing. Ryan, lead vocals, checked in mid-way through the show to ask if everyone was doing okay.

Though never lost, the show re-affirmed my enthusiasm for not only the group’s music, but their values as they tour, and the liberating atmosphere they create during their shows. One in which a girl can dance shirtless, strangers can put their arms around each other and everyone can scream refreshing, poetic lyrics in unison—and even if just for a few moments, our “petty problems” aren’t really all that ba-aaaaaad.

Only 11,000 people live on the 171,000 square miles that comprise Nunavik, the northernmost, frigid cold section of Québec . Only the Internet could make a young artist — who writes songs in English, French, and the Inuit language of Inuk — break out from beyond these borders.

Not all music enthusiasts may understand the Inuk lyrics that compose the songs written and sung by Elisapie Isaac, a world-folk musician from Salluit, Nunavik, but the 25,000 sales she has already made with her new album, “There will be Stars” in Québec alone, translates into every language.

“There will be Stars,” a trilingual album that switches from English, French, to Inuk words, was released in Canada since 2010 and is anticipated to make its appearance in New York in the near future.

“I was just a little girl when I first wrote songs,” Isaac said when describing her start in music.  Later when she was 19, she collaborated with Alain Auger in the musical project Taima.  Three years later she had the album Taima under her belt.

“It’s modern music,” she said.

She described her melodies as very simple and different because of its language.  “I guess you would find it in the folk pop section,” she added.  In comparison to her first album which had a masculine approach, There will be Stars has a more feminine feeling about it according to Isaac.

When writing, Isaac doesn’t like to draw inspiration from others; however, she enjoys the work of fellow musicians like Fleet Foxes and Bob Dylan.  Her music is set apart because her lyrics are based upon personal experiences.

“I’m not a big story teller.  I’m an emotional song writer.  It’s something very deep,” she said.  In total, her soundtracks are 80 percent her own words and the remainder are collaboration pieces.  Isaac’s personal favorites include “Turning my Back” and “Butterfly”.  The melodies are very soothing and laid back.

Isaac’s itinerary with music has included over 100 shows so far this year including work in France, a continuation of her touring in Québec, a folk and jazz fest in West Canada, and the beginning of her work in New York City.

Obstacles down the road like moving out of her isolated community into a bigger city like Montreal have definitely affected Isaac, but issues such as these are not holding her back from achieving goals like touring in the United States and working on a new album.

“Making music is not only about making music.  It’s about fighting for your songs and yourself,” Isaac said.  “It’s constantly nerve-racking, but I’ve learned to be strong.”

Another thing that feeds Isaac’s desire to move forward within the music industry is the support and feedback that she receives from her fans.  Isaac spoke highly of one particular diehard fan who regularly attends paid and free shows.

“I thought I was going to be scared of him and that he was going to be weird, but the last time he saw one of our shows he said that it had been a very powerful one with a lot of energy,” as Isaac had described.

The open interest that fans have expressed in her music is namely one of the most rewarding things that Isaac has taken away from her work with music.

Throughout July Isaac will be performing in Orilla, Ontario, but fans should visit her homepage at elisapie.com and follow Isaac’s touring schedule on Facebook and Twitter for more updates.

facebook.com/elisapieisaac — #elisapie

Brandi Carlile isn’t reinventing the wheel on her third album, “Give Up the Ghost” out October 6. The Seattle folk singer, who plays Boston’s House of Blues this evening, treads over familiar female singer/songwriter territory on “Ghost” with help from contemporaries like the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray.

Carlile, 28, exploded with “The Story” her 2007 T. Bone Burnett-produced sophomore album whose title track became the basis for a “Grey’s Anatomy” music video. (Several other songs were featured on the show itself.) “Grey’s”-friendly folk songs continue to dominate on “Give Up the Ghost” particularly the ukulele-infused “Oh Dear” and wistful “That Year.”

Also prevalent on “Ghost” are Carlile’s country influences, namely on the honky-tonk “Caroline” to which Elton John lends a restrained collaboration. The idea of small town escapism also plays an important role, particularly on the outcast anthem “Looking Out” on which Carlile muses, “I went out lookin’ for the answers “¦ Some people get religion, some people get the truth.”

While none of the songs showcase the raw vocal chops that Carlile displayed on “The Story” (“Pride and Joy” comes close, as Carlile wonders, “Do I make you proud? Do you get me now?”), her distinctive voice quivers with emotion, fluctuating pitch like a slide guitar as she sings about love, heartache and self-discovery.

Brandi Carlile is in Boston tonight at House of Blues.

A ukulele, a stove, a set of spoons, the autoharp, the upright bass — these are just a few of the instruments up-and-coming artist, Rachel Goodrich, has in her repertoire.

It doesn’t seem quite so unusual when you realize this is a girl who records her music video in a ladybug costume, “just for fun.”

Born and raised in the Sunshine State — Miami to be specific — Goodrich definitely does not need to worry about Seasonal Affective Disorder. With a healthy dose of sunshine on her face most days, Rachel says the warm weather has more than slightly shaped her music. “Keeps it a bit more upbeat,” she giggled.

Goodrich’s style is not typical of the area, but really neither is any other musician’s hailing from South Beach. It’s a mix of electronic, Latin fusion, funk, and the worldly sounding artists who line Lincoln Road, where Goodrich has spent countless hours buzzing her kazoo, strumming her ukulele, and crooning about life as she knows it.

She could play music on just about anything, probably even the kitchen sink if presented the challenge. It was a literal lack of instruments that fostered this resourceful creativity.

“I had to be inventive. I used to use the stove as a snare, made the best of what I had. Then I was like ‘Wow, this sounds much better than a snare.’ I stuck with it and enjoy those sounds a lot,” she said in a recent interview with Blast. She believes her music style is “a little different.” How different? Goodrich coined her own term to describe it: “shake-a-billy.” It makes you want to move your hips and, well, shake.

As for influences, she names Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Joni Mitchell, The Dead, and Dr. Seuss among the many.

Goodrich’s father played the guitar, and her grandmother, he piano, so there are at least a couple of musical genes in the family. Her parents fueled her musical passion by passing down numerous old-school vinyls, which she continued to collect, cherish, and idolize.

“I was introduced to (music) super young. Growing up, I thought it was part of being a child, regular, like taking piano lessons. I was like yeah I really want to play music,” she said. Rachel took action and started learning the guitar as a twelve year old. From there, she formed a few bands in high school and kept moving forward in the musical direction.

“It wasn’t until I was sixteen that I got really serious about it,” she recalled.

Goodrich left Miami for a brief academic stint in Gainesville, Fla. There, she tried her hand in the formal study of music, but found that it “stunted her growth.”

“Gainesville didn’t play a necessarily negative role,” she said, in a charmingly defensive manner. “It was just the whole small town, college party scene- it wasn’t my thing.”

Rather than going out eight nights a week to keg parties full of inebriated undergrads, Goodrich retreated to her bedroom for almost two years. There, basking in the creative silence of her own space, she “became truly acquainted with my records and music and real things and stuff.”

Goodrich returned to Miami and dabbled in jazz guitar. Despite honest intentions of continuing her studies, Rachel found herself fully immersed in the South Florida music scene. Now twenty-four years of age, her favorite place to play is Churchill’s Pub, a local joint. “It’s the best place ever. Everyone just kind of ends up there at the end of the night. Sometimes it’s just one big jam session. It’s awesome,” she said.

The past several years have been spent recording tunes in friends’ bedrooms, eventually releasing her first album, Tinker Toys, which dropped on her self-made label last October. Yellow Bear Records is the label, and Goodrich hopes to develop and grow it in time.

The story behind the name Yellow Bear is only fitting. Goodrich had been living in Gainesville at the time, hanging outside between classes (one can almost picture her: long shiny black hair, white retro sunglasses, skinny black jeans and converse sneakers– strumming the banjo) when a Native American man suddenly approached her and said “Me, I am Blue Bear. But you, you, you are Yellow Bear.”

“I thought I was hallucinating. I could have been,” said said.

While usually displaying an uninhibited and optimistic tone, Goodrich breaks her own mold in “The Black Hole,” a track with undeniably dark and downbeat undertones. Most of the album, she corrects, has dark undertones.

“It was a pretty weird moment when I wrote that song; it was a bright and sunny day but I wasn’t feeling so bright and sunny. Most of my songs are very related to events in my life. Sometimes I need an escape and it’s fun to tell a story,” Goodrich said.

What’s fun is being the listening ear to Goodrich’s many and colorful stories. In between our questions, Rachel inserted more than several “Oh mans” and “Ya knows.” It’s hard to tell if she’s an active participant or desperately reassuring herself. Either way, her manner is genuine and heartfelt.

As for a five-year plan, well, Goodrich has never even heard the phrase. Lucky her.

“I am so not aware of that term. I do live day by day. Wow! I mean, I do think it’s good to maybe set up some goals or, you know, things to look forward to- challenges and stuff. But no, I don’t plan ahead years I don’t think. No. No. I can’t even think…” and she trails off as if the here and now is all that is relevant.

A self-proclaimed “thinker,” Goodrich really does enjoy life — sudoku and good food among her many pleasures. The highlight of her most recent gig at the Heineken Transatlantic Music Festival was the spicy Jamaican food a fellow performer dished out.

As for all of that thinking, “It’s ok, but not great always. Either I am really excited and enjoying everything, or I am totally having an anxiety attack,” she said.

This sentiment seems all too familiar in the artist’s persona. Truly gifted musicians are, more often than not, conflicted, in one way or another. For Goodrich, the tedious tasks in life bring her down — like folding creases in sweaters at an old retail job, or the mixing of each individual track on her album.

No, Rachel Goodrich does not suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. She is an upbeat, positive young woman with a disposition as sunny as the state she calls home. Only by delving deep into her person, her lyrics, and her tone can one begin to sense what may be found beneath the sunny exterior- conflict, struggle, and thought. It is a rare bunch, however, which is so blessed and able to turn such complex talent into such beautiful music.

Listen for yourself. Buy Tinker Toys, and listen to every single word on every single track. You too will become one of Rachel Goodrich’s newest fans. You may even find yourself picking up a set of spoons and trying to make your own kind of music.

So what would she be doing if music weren’t an option? Goodrich says she’d be painting or doodling. For a long time she wanted to be a cartoonist, and was encouraged by her grandmother in that pursuit. “So for now I do both. If it’s not music, it’s art,” she said.

A moment passes and she nonchalantly adds, “or maybe I’d be a tollbooth collector or something.”