Newport Folk Festival is always a special place to be every July - not just for the Narragansett Bay views, but also for the top-notch curation and camaraderie between artists and between attendees. After a canceled 2020 iteration and a half-capacity 2021 festival, 2022 brought a larger Harbor stage, two new smaller stages (the Bike and Foundation stage, both serving as counterprogramming to the Quad and Fort stages between their sets, respectively), but the same intimate feel, full of lawn chairs, buskers, frozen lemonade drinks, and musical surprises that fans have come to expect. Here are some of our favorite moments of Folk Fest 2022.

The “Joni Jam”

Just when you thought Brandi Carlile couldn’t top her 2019 get, Dolly Parton, she and the Newport Folk organizers pull off an even more massive one: Joni Mitchell’s first live performance in public since her 2015 brain aneurysm, and her first full concert in 20 years. While the set was billed as “Brandi Carlile & Friends,” Carlile had something big planned for this set for a while now. Since 2019, the likes of Carlile, Lucius, Celisse, Wynonna Judd, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, Allison Russell, and more have been quietly holding jam sessions at Joni Mitchell’s house. The group pulled out all the stops, decorating the stage with couches, books, candles, rugs, and orchids, making the big stage feel as much at home as possible. While the musicians on stage took turns singing Joni’s songs, she took center stage herself for a few songs. Her performance of “Both Sides Now” has already gone viral, and it’s not hard to see why: her life experiences give lyrics like “I’ve looked at life from both sides now / From win and lose and still somehow / It’s life’s illusions I recall / I really don’t know life at all” even more emotional heft than when she wrote these songs decades prior. The set brought many in the audience (and even those on stage) to tears, a reminder of her singular impact on modern music that will forever reverberate for the 10,000 fortunate attendees present.

Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats present the “American Tune Revue,” featuring Paul Simon

Speaking of living legends, Nathaniel Rateliff and company paid tribute to Paul Simon with what fans only knew going into the set as the “American Tune Revue.” It only became known to fans at the start of the set that the band would be playing an entire set of Paul Simon covers, bringing other Folk Festival performers to the stage to put their own spin on Simon’s classic songs. The classics were fully covered, like “Cecilia” (with Marcus Mumford and Natalie Merchant), “El Condor Pasa (If I Could)” (with Natalie Merchant, Adia Victoria, and the Silk Road Ensemble), and “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” (with Lee Fields), For the last five songs of the set, Rateliff surprised the crowd by inviting Paul Simon on stage, a rare post-retirement performance for the singer-songwriter who backed away from touring in 2018. The set closed with Rihannon Giddens singing “American Tune” with Simon backing her up on acoustic guitar, a group sing-along of “The Boxer”, and a solo acoustic performance of “The Sounds of Silence” by Simon himself.

DakhaBrakha

“We are DakhaBrakha, and we are from free Ukraine.” These words roused the crowd to rapturous applause, with many Ukrainian flags flying in the audience. The quartet’s spin on traditional Ukrainian music was a hit, filling their set with pounding, urgent drums, call-and-response chants, and more accordion and mouth trumpets than Newport Folk will usually get in a normal year.

Black Opry Revue

Some great up-and-coming Black artists made their presence known and blew away the Harbor Stage crowd with a rock, country, blues, folk, and Americana showcase. The full list of performers was Lizzie No, Autumn Nicholas, Buffalo Nichols, The Kentucky Gentlemen, Chris Pierce, Joy Oladokun, Leon Timbo, and Julia Cannon.

The Bike Stage

Newport Folk’s festival layout received a new addition this year in the form of a new stage inside the fort’s walls. Harrisonburg duo Illiterate Light, who wowed the Newport Folk crowd in 2019, created this stage as a thought experiment to see what it would take to power concerts in the future. As it turns out, all you really need are a few solar panels and bikes retrofitted to generate electricity. Festival attendees got the chance to watch from the side of the stage while biking, powering the stage with their pedals and receiving a great view along with free iced tea to cool them down in the summer heat. The duo invited artists like Langhorne Slim, Yasmin Williams, Odetta Hartman, Danielle Ponder, and more, and they even gave a performance of their own to close out the stage on Saturday afternoon.

Sylvan Esso

Surprise! Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn are releasing a new album called No Rules Sandy in a matter of weeks, and they played the entirety of the unreleased album for the Folk Festival crowd. The songs are some of the most gleefully frenetic that the duo have created up to now, and they may be some of the most danceable beats that the Fort has ever laid witness to.

Arooj Aftab

Pakistan’s Arooj Aftab has won accolades (Grammys, even) by uniting South Asian folk and jazz together in English- and Urdu-language songs rooted in heartbreak and longing. Backed by a violin, harp, and acoustic guitar, she gave a moving vocal performance and lightened the mood by cracking jokes about hangovers and dating in-between her somber songs.

The Roots

Giving The Roots only an hour-long festival slot isn’t a lot for a group as influential as them, but with that one hour, they delved deep into the worlds of funk, soul, and hip-hop in a way that is now widely imitated but never can be replicated. Black Thought is still one of the best MCs in the game, doling out verses with urgency as hard as Questlove’s breakbeats on drums.

The Silkroad Ensemble with Rihannon Giddens

Rihannon Giddens is no stranger to musical collaborations at Newport, having been part of the impressive Our Native Daughters with Allison Russell, Amythyst Kiah, and Leyla McCalla at Newport Folk 2019. While both Our Native Daughters and the Silk Road Ensemble span centuries of musical history, her latest project is one that also spans continents. In an interview with NPR, Giddens explained that the group’s music is like “passing through a Balkan dance party on your way to the juke joint.” Giddens could sing in Bengali on one song and then launch into “St. James Infirmary Blues,” a song popularized by Louis Armstrong, in the next. The 14-piece ensemble, featuring instruments like the Japanese flute, harp, banjo, and more, took listeners on a compelling musical journey around the world.

The Spiritual Helpline Revue

Phil Cook is no stranger to Newport collaboration, and Sunday morning music is his bread and butter, as fans of his music know. He brought together Thomas Rhyant, Jr, Leslie Gardner, Simone Appleby, Lena Mae Perry (of The Branchettes), and special guests Natalie Merchant and Valerie June for an inspiring, soulful, and very purple start to the final day of Newport Folk.

Other notable artists worth listening to: Sierra Ferrell (Appalachian folk), Neal Francis (piano-fronted rock), Leith Ross (folk), The Linda Lindas (power pop/punk), The Dead Tongues (Americana/rock), Hermanos Guiterrez (Mexican guitar duo), Odetta Hartman (Appalachian folk)