Folks Festival Hosts Iron & Wine
By Timothy Dwenger
www.bluegrass.com/folks
August 17-19
Planet Bluegrass Ranch
Lyons, Colo.
Over the last couple of years the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival has grown leaps and bounds. Last year featured their best lineup yet with artists like Bob Weir, Brandi Carlile, Jackson Browne and more, and this year they may have outdone themselves.
With a lineup topped by none other than Lyle Lovett and his Large Band, the Planet Bluegrass staff has tipped their hats to all of the long-time festivarians who have made the pilgrimage to Lyons year after year, hoping to catch this Texan on the banks of the St. Vrain. It’s also clear with the addition of indie folk’s marquee act, Iron & Wine, that the staff is serious about keeping younger folks, who have become interested in the festival in recent years, in the mix.
It’s this kind of genre-blurring dedication to great music that keeps the Folks Festival so relevant. Folk music is about great lyrics, it’s about passionate story-telling, and most importantly, it’s about the community that it takes to make this music an integral part of the fabric of our nation’s history. With the Folks Festival, Planet Bluegrass is proving again and again that the folk tradition is alive and well in this country.
You’re going there to see: Lyle Lovett, Iron & Wine, Amos Lee, and Dawes.
You’re going to come home talking about: Local upstarts Elephant Revival and their hauntingly beautiful sound, and Caleb Hawley, who has reinvented songs like Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” and Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” with his mind-blowing guitar skills.
TRAVEL TIME:
(As calculated by maps.google.com from Denver, Colo. to Lyons, Colo.)
Total Est. Time: 1 hour, 1 minute
Total Est. Distance: 45.9 miles
While early lineup announcements included the legendary Randy Newman, Newman unfortunately had to cancel his appearance at the Festival this summer.
Camping: Both on-site and off-site camping is available, but very limited.
