Newport Folk Festival 2024: Live updates from the fest

Follow along for all of the best photos, videos, and stories from all three days at this year's Newport Folk Festival.

Newport Folk Festival invites a harmonic crowd of folk fans who boat, bike or drive into Fort Adams State Park for a weekend filled with sonic surprises alongside the expected beautiful instrumentation and art vendors.

This festival’s tickets sell out infamously fast, sometimes within minutes, despite the fact that the lineup won’t be announced for weeks to come. Sitting on decades of history, poignant performances that reflected essential social justice movements of the 20th century and (of course) a young Bob Dylan, Newport Folk deserves its reputation as an essential American summer music festival.

Couldn’t get tickets or looking to know about sets you couldn’t quite make it to? Here’s a guide through the weekend on this peninsula in The Ocean State.

Hozier closes out the festival with vocals of epic proportions (Friday, 9:46 p.m.)

Andrew Hozier-Byrne, also known as Hozier, closed out the festival with a set of spoken humor and hearty vocals.

“Unknown,” made up of vocals which draw questions on how he can possibly hold enough air to produce such sounds in his body, filled in the evening air.

He brought Allison Russell, who he told the crowd he met at the Newport Folk Festival, to the stage to share a song with him. They also happen to be on North American tour together.

This duo brought the crowd to their feet and compelled the attendees enough to take their phones out as well — to take home a piece of the experience.

Singing in the end of the evening, people brought their hands together to the beat.

The sheer size of his voice and stage presence (yes, being as tall as he is does help this cause) filled the main stage.

“I wouldn’t know where to start,””” he sang a portion of “Almost (Sweet Music). “Sweet music playing in the dark.”

Hozier-Byrne mentioned the supportive and genuine nature of the folk festival as something he truly appreciated.

Adrianne Lenker stuns with new songs at Newport

Adrianne Lenker, who dedicated Big Thief buffs caught earlier during Meek’s set, took to the Quad stage.

Lenker, whose alt-folk music can be heard in the rooms of fans in search of a heaping portion of vulnerability, held the last slot of the day on the stage.

Sitting atop the stage with just her guitar astride her lap, Lenker began her set to not only the majority of those in attendance but dozens of photographers as well.

“New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” was her opener of choice.

The crowd’s applause took up the space as the sun-kissed (and burnt) masses gave their ear to the performance.

Lenker’s poignant tales of love are filled to the brim with imagery delivered in a stripped-down manner, to their essential core of voice and guitar.

“In the hour I loved you, like a dream it was true,” Lenker sang. Just a piece of “abyss kiss” was enough to keep the crowd’s attention.

Using her guitar as both melodic and rhythmic, Lenker’s impressive musicality drew the crowd in closer until it felt like the mass of people was just a ground of campers around a fire, listening to their favorite (although obviously world-renowned) camp counselor sing.

She creates intimacy using her heart and mind (and guitar and voice) in not only the permanence of her recorded music, but in the ephemeral performances Newport Folk attendees were lucky enough to see.

It’s impossible to leave a set by Lenker without feeling internally moved.

After a slew of new songs, Lenker said, “Some Big Thief songs I’m testing out.”

Fans stood near the end of her set, although it wasn’t quite time for the standing ovation, in celebration at the end of “anything.”

“True and rare, to travel through the chambers of your care,” sang Lenker.

Her songs, which put words and melody to feelings next to impossible to name, stunned the crowd to silence followed by deafening claps and cheers.

Meek joined Lenker on stage at the end of the set.

“I love to sing with you,” said Lenker to Meek, as she recounted their time together living in a van and burning CDs.

“Sometimes there’s just a lot of feelings,” she said.

Anyone who was lucky to see Lenker on this stage was lucky enough this weekend.

Black Pumas fills the early evening with stage presence alone at Newport Folk (Friday, 6:50 p.m.)

Black Pumas, one of the last sets on the nautical Fort stage, is composed of singer/songwriter Eric Burton and guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada.

Their psychedelic soul sound made for a grand entrance onto the stage on the edge of the sea, while hundreds without official tickets floated by the edge of the peninsula in devices of varying kinds.

The group’s most recent release is a record titled, “Chronicles of a Diamond” in 2023.

“It’s alright to get down as you feel it,” said Burton at the beginning of “Fire.” Although the sun beat down on the crowd, people filled the front of the space and raised their hands in the air.

“When the sun comes up in the morning, darling, you look so good,” crooned the singer as he sang “Gemini Sun.”

Vocal effects, such as the echoing of Burton’s singular voice throughout the space, created a sense of stateliness to the group’s performance on the grand stage.

“Ice Cream (Pay Phone)” included powerful backing vocals from Angela Miller and Lauren Cervantes as well as Burton’s signature pizzazz and the essential guitar riffs from Quesada.

Lord of the (dragon)flies (Friday, 4:32)

While Guster played the harbor stage, a veritable sea of dragonflies decided to also take the stage.

Guster’s lead vocalist, Ryan Matthew Miller remarked about the amount of beach chairs in the distant landscape of the crowd.

Twenty minutes later on the Quad stage, the dragonflies kept coming. Festival goers had their hands up in the air, not for the love of the beat, but in hopes of catching one wingéd insect of the seeming hundreds that flew overhead.

Wednesday’s set, their Newport Folk debut, made hairs and audience members stand at attention (Friday, 2:45 p.m.)

Hailing from Asheville, North Carolina, alt country-rock band Wednesday followed Buck Meek on the Quad stage, making their Newport Folk debut.

“There will be a fine on your way out if you sit down,” said the band’s vocalist Karly Hartzman, who donned court jester-themed makeup for the performance.

They began their set with a performance of the slowly building “Ghost of a Dog” with their full band of guitarist Jake Lenderman (whose solo project is under the name MJ Lenderman), lap steel player Xandy Chelmis, drummer Alan Miller, and bassist Ethan Baechtold.

That gradually building vibe was quickly eclipsed by the band’s usual sound — something that would be a little insulting to sit during. Head banging is more appropriate. And what is a Wednesday set without a little classic alt rock screaming?

A breeze carried through the shaded Quad stage and on it, the sound of Hartzman’s lilting, almost yodeling, rendition of “Chosen to Deserve” alongside the essential sonic backdrop of dynamic instrumentation.

“This one’s a quiet one — if you need to take a seat I will understand,” Hartzman said.

“Formula One” soon followed. “Quarry” came a few songs later. But by that time, everyone was standing again.

Towards the end of the set, Hartzman dedicated a song to Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Springfield, Illinois. Her autopsy confirmed she died due to being shot in the head.

That wasn’t the band’s only political moment. “They were standing up and supporting genocide,” said Hartzman, referring to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech made to the U.S. Congress and the ensuing applause from elected officials.

Newport Folk has a long history of popularizing and highlighting songs which call for social change, such as “We Shall Overcome,” which would become an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. The festival’s legacy of using music for social change remains to this day.

Buck Meek leads with love on the Quad Stage (Friday, 1:45 p.m.)

Buck Meek, a former Somerville resident, played a dynamic set on Quad stage Friday afternoon, creating both a soft place for listeners to sit and take in the sonics surrounding them, and, in equal measure, a rip-roaring session of experimental musicality.

Known as the lead guitarist and vocalist of renowned folk group Big Thief, Meek played a solo set at Newport Folk Festival full of his individual flair.

His most recent solo release, Haunted Mountain (2023), is filled with poignant lyrics on love of varying kinds and sources.

This is certainly true of the hauntingly irreverent “Secret Side,” whose lyrics declare, “I’ll never know, I’ll never know the secret side of you.”

“Haunted Mountain is about love and … something other,” reads his artist bio on the record. That certainly rings true. Accompanied by his bandmates Ken Woodward on bass, Kyle Crane on drums, and Adam Brisbin on guitar, there’s a sense of being greater than the sum of our parts in his set.

Sitting on chairs, standing off into the far stretching field behind the covered Quad stage, people bob and tap and clap for Meek.

At Newport, his set was consistent with his western Indie-music sound.

Inviting up his band mate Adrianne Lenker (whose set will be later on Friday evening), Meek put on an inspired performance of Big Thief’s “Certainty,” another song containing a whole lot of love of varying complexities and actions in the lyrics.

His set also contained a roaring rendition of “Cyclades,” which, he relayed to the crowd, was full of true stories.

A new song, entitled “Out of Body,” which contained a swing-and-tap-worthy beat, made an appearance on the stage as well. The set ended well — with, not surprisingly, a standing ovation.

Friday 10 a.m.: Getting to Newport Folk

For festival goers, arriving slightly earlier or later than what seems to be the prime time entry at around 11 a.m. is a more sound bet.

Newport can be accessed via water taxi, bike or car. However, if you’re planning on parking at Fort Adams make sure you bring cash. The water taxi, $20 round trip, is cash only as well.

Ride sharing apps also offer a slightly pricier, but more convienent alternative. “Ridesharing” signs are posted at the entrance to Fort Adams State Park according to reporting by the Newport Daily News.