Appel Farm last weekend was great. It was raining pretty steadily until about noon, then off and on until 2, but we had a canopy set up so we were fine. It was actually nice to have a cooler day for once. Usually it’s blazing hot.
Crooked Still was cool. They had a pretty awesome cello player. Their banjo player was missing (doing some shows with Springsteen in AZ) so they had a bunch of other random people on stage with them, including Kristin from Uncle Earl.
Danielia Cotton was amazing, of course. They played one new song, “Bang My Drum”. I went up to the stage for her set. They had a person on stage doing all the lyrics in sign language and she was hysterical. I couldn’t look away from her. Her expressions were just so out there and she was so into the song.
I picked up a CD by James Hunter, a British R&B / Soul guy. He kind of sounds like Sam Cooke sometimes. His set was a lot of fun. There were two saxophones (tenor and bass), an upright bass, percussion and keyboard. It definitely wasn’t the usual kind of set for a folk festival. I’m actually a little disappointed by the CD after seeing him live. That’s not to say it’s a bad CD (because it’s definitely not), he just seemed so much better in person. He was very happy and having fun, and the band seemed more into it. There’s a different band on the CD. He’s going to be at the TLA on the 20th but I’ll be at the lake then. It’s only $12.50 though, I recommend going. If you look at his news or tour pages, you can see he’s playing with Etta James, Susan Tedeschi, Van Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Los Lonely Boys, Boz Scaggs, just a ton of great people. You can check out a video about him at youtube.
Richard Thompson and Fountains of Wayne were the headliners who closed out the two stages. They were both pretty good but I don’t really have much to say about them.
