The rain was stubborn on Friday to get things going at Fort Adams, but that didn’t stop the good vibes as every slated act found some sort of riot to incite. From The Mountain Goats‘ country punk, Phosphorescent‘s “Right On/Right On” mud party, Amanda Palmer‘s uncensored homages to “bush” and of course Old Crow Medicine Show‘s sunset-closing string romping with faux-drawl rhymes for virtually everything from Leadbelly to whiskey, things are just getting started in Newport. Buskers even carried some line-waiting smiles as people exited for the evening. Deer Tick‘s John McCauley captured it best, though, howling mid-afternoon some verses from “The Bump” as soaked full grown men (and women) screamed back at him: [LISTEN]
Stay tuned for recaps in brief leading up to our full feature after the weekend, in which we make sense of this festival, raucously aging into its 50s and still kicking out some of the best sentiments of the summer:
