Link: http://www.bluegrass.com/planet/folks_festival.shtml

Marsha and I just returned from the 15th Folks Festival in Lyons, Colorado. Marsha went up the weekend prior to the festival and attended Song School. I flew up in the Long-EZ on Thursday for the actual festival, which runs from Friday through Sunday. Many thanks to James Pratt of Colorado Springs, who kindly allowed us to sit under his canopy, which prevented me from getting severely strafed by the strong sun (Lyons is at 5,300 feet above sea level, which makes the sun a lot more powerful than at sea level.
We met lots of interesting people and musicians. There is a parallel set of artist workshops in the Wildflower tent at the back of the festival grounds, where artists not appearing on the main stage can hold workshops, play their music etc. More of that later.
Some quick thoughts:

1. Colorado has the best outdoor music festivals, period. We attended the Telluride Jazz festival in 2004, and that was a superb experience. The Folks Festival was a similarly uplifting experience. The setting is beautiful (a covered permanent stage in a large field uphill from the center of Lyons). Everybody is very friendly, the food and drink are reasonably priced. The festival sound system is excellent. Artists get to perform in a great setting for an enthusiastic audience.

2. If you are camping, the camping next to the festival grounds has better facilities, but is noisier. Meadow Park (where we ended up camping) is quieter, but has only 1 shower, which required us to shower at the festival grounds. No big deal, but if you want to walk less than 100 yards to shower, you may want to factor this into decision-making.

3. The 50:50 limeade/lemonade from one of the festival vendors is a great refreshment bargain at $2.50

4. Day 1 of the festival included a folk singer/songwriter contest. Most of the finalists were female (which on one level is good, but is also puzzling - why so many women? Were there more women contestants in the first place, or is there some bias in favour of female songwriters right now? I have no idea).
However, what was most infuriating about the female contestants is that most of them sounded like weak facsimiles of Shawn Colvin (similar mezzo-soprano voices, minus varying degrees of the songwriting talent). The winner was somebody we would not have picked from the crowd, which tends to confirm my long-held suspicions that (a) arranged talent competitions like this are a crapshoot, (b) they are a poor predictor of future success. Many years ago, I read an article about beauty contests in the UK where a modelling agent basically said "most of the time you never hear again of a beauty contest winner". He went on to explain that many of them wanted to be models, and assumed that they would get a ticket to modelling stardom by winning a beauty contest, overlooking harsh realities like the need to work hard, network like crazy and keep model "looks". I felt the same way watching and listening to these contestants, the same as I felt when watching the same events at Kerrville a couple of years ago. They all want to be famous singer-songwriters, but most of their songs went through my head and out the other side without leaving any significant or lasting impression.

5. Arthur Lee and his band tore up the Wildflower Tent on Saturday afternoon. The five piece band - Arthur Lee Land (lead vocal, acoustic/electric guitars and guitar synth); Grant Gordy (mandolin, harmony vocals); Mark Diamond (acoustic upright bass); Ricardo Gonzales (congas/djembe/drum kit/percussion) and Alison Rapetti (harmony vocals), augmented later in the set by Joe Craven (violin), who played some superb solos (despite monitor problems that led to him eventually standing in a very small space between Arthur and the percussion rig) played a 45 minute set and brought the whole area around the Wildflower Tent to life. The tent was almost full at the start of the set, but by the end of the set, the tent was overflowing onto the lawns. The audience aggressively demanded an encore, but the band had used up it's time slot, and would have been treading on the time allocated for the next artists. A number of the songs were from Arthur's CD "Dragonfly", and having heard the songs live first, they blow the recorded versions into the weeds. The band sound is much more muscular live than the recorded arrangements, which moves the songs into more of a jazz-latin soundscape.
I now have downloaded a soundboard of the band's concert in Boulder, CO in June from archive.org. This soundboard cuts the studio CD "Dragonfly" into tiny little pieces. Too bad that they didn't just hook up a digital multitrack recorder to the desk and put this out as an official release.

6. Joan Armatrading might have been a good headliner for grabbing attention, but she certainly has all of the showbiz airs and graces. As we left the grounds on Saturday night after her set, we spotted a massive stretch limousine heading down the road towards backstage, presumably to pick up Ms. Armatrading. I swear that the front and back of the limousine were in different counties. A jarring reminder of mainstream showbiz, which is otherwise absent from the festival.
Joan Armatrading's band was a somewhat weird lineup - a keyboards player who was (I suspect) triggering a lot of backing tracks, probably including bass, and a kit drummer who occasionally doubled on baritone sax (the first time I can ever recall that combination of instruments...). The overall effect was polished, but somewhat antiseptic.