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11/07/2024

SFF Presents: Bring On The Next Decade

Central Oregon Highlight

By BOB HOWARD // The 29th Sisters Folk Festival 2024 has come and gone leaving memories that will carry on to the celebration the festival's 30th year. 

Sisters is a magnet for artists and music lovers from all over the world.  The first festival in1995 featured six acclaimed artists, Christine Lavin, Tom Russell, Dave Carter, Peter Yeates, Kelly Joe Phelps, and Peter Case.  Sisters put a stake in the ground and started a festival that set a new course for the future of a tiny town in central Oregon that started as a logging camp. 30 years later, over 5,000 attendees enjoyed 32 artists, 7 stages, 94 sets, and 16 hours of shows presented during the last weekend of September.

Saturday night featured the headliners Aoife O'Donovan, Hawktail, and The Mammals.  All three groups appeared together for several songs during The Mammals set on Saturday night before Aoife's set with Hawktail.  Hawktail had many friends at the festival.  They were on the verge of releasing an album with Väsen. The album, Väsen + Hawktail is the culmination of decades of influence and musical relation.  The Swedish duo, Väsen, is Mikael Marin on violin and Olov Johansson on nyckelharpa. With almost 40 years of making music together, the concert showcased their intimate knowledge of each other's talent and the elegant music they create together.

Mike Merenda and Ruth Ungar are The Mammals, a husband-and-wife duo that are setting the folk scene ablaze. “The acoustic community serves me really well as a songwriter, but I'm still like a teenager at heart and I just like to rock out.” They are a union of their roots.  Mike shared his musical roots with us, “I liked like loud heavy music but, I also loved incredible songwriters Dylan, Lennon and Petty. Ruthy grew up straight up traditional folk music with her parents Jay Unger and Molly Mason and the folk music circuit. She didn't even discover like rock n' roll and indie rock till she was a teenager. She put a banjo in my hand for the first time that was my entryway into traditional tunes." On stage Ruthy channels Scarlett Rivera, Bob Dylan’s rocking fiddler on the Rolling Thunder Revue.  

Headliner Chris Smithers is 79 and still touring. Since 2002 Chris has played the folk festival three times. “I just hope I can keep doing this for a long time." He's had a longstanding working relationship with Bonnie Raitt which took shape as Raitt's cover of "Love Me Like a Man" appeared on her second album Give It Up. He told us, "there was a period when my wife kept asking me to think about retiring, and then she gave up and she said I think you should just do this for as long as she possibly can." "That's how I feel, I don't have any ulterior motive. I write the songs, I make the records, so that I can go out and play for people. Yeah, that's why I do it." For Portland sensation Glitterfox, it's a chance to put some wind in their sails to reach for larger venues across North America.

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Chris Jacobs spent the week in Sisters teaching and performing.  He soulful rock-and-roll, Jacobs is beloved by fans and respected by peers including such as artists as Sturgill Simpson and Steve Winwood, for whom he opened tours. "A celebrated collaboration with Ivan Neville turned heads in 2017, while NPR, Rolling Stone, Paste, and others have encouraged music lovers to pay attention for years. But Jacobs still felt like he was hungry for something just out of reach." Chris shared  his experience at the Americana Song Academy and the therapy behind the art of songwriting before performing his song, "Everybody's Lost" which he performed at the festival. 

After 10 pm, the venues are standing room only and the volume goes up. Tropa Magica brought their unique tropical psychedelic surf mash up.  Mike Penk, who joined us for the weekend, said, "Their blend of guitar and rhythms of 60's, Peruvian Cumbias, and 90's grunge successfully took the crowd to a tropical psychedelic dance party." David Pacheco, lead guitarist, said the band started in east LA. "we've been doing this project full-time for seven years now. It's been sustainable for now and we can finance our own projects. David was an English teacher at a continuation high school. "My goal was to make the same amount of money with music that I did teaching."  He said, "We're at that point now. The dream is just to keep cruising."  

Among the stand outs included Kyshona, a singer/songwriter/activist based in Nashville.  She has recently released an album called Legacy. Her songs are mostly about family and heritage. On Saturday night, her song, "Whispers In The Walls," took us on to an old rundown and deserted house. The house doesn't have people living there anymore, but it once meant something to the people who laughed and cried there. Kyshona sings in a bluesy soulful gospel voice as she acknowledges their presence, while her backup singers, Jannelle Means and Nickie Conley recite their ghostly echoes.

Balla Kouyaté and Mike Block have been working together since 2009 bonding over their shared interest in music from across the world, and their commitment to innovating on their instruments. Balla Kouyaté, a balafon player and singer coming out of the Djeli tradition of Mali, was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Today, the first balafon, over 1,000 years old, remains in the Kouyaté family. Mike Block is an American cellist, singer, and composer, and a Grammy Award-winning musician with the Silkroad Ensemble originally trained in western classical music. "Later this fall we're part of the Silkroad Ensemble founded by YoYo Ma and directed by Rhiannon Gibbons."

Sunday, many clear out. But most don’t leave until after the community celebration in the main tent. The celebration is 90 minutes of music with ten artists performing who appeared during the festival. Open to the public, it is a thank you to the neighbors who have welcomed the artists and the festival to almost 5,000 people. After the celebration, 21 more performances close the festival, and those who are left can catch a performance of any of the artists that they missed in the first two days.

Collage 2024, Three days of amazing performances.  Photos by Debra Penk, Soundtrack in order of the music, Carsie Blanton, Kyshona, and Fantastic Cat.

Reporters covering the events for Oregon Music News: Debra Penk, Photographer, Reporters Scott Gilmore and Sarah Vitort (Fox & Bones), Mike Penk, Aimee Okotie-Oyekan, and Bob Howard.  There is no way one person could do justice to the performances.  The diversity of genres and the intensity of the day is infectious.  There were a lot of smiles as people made their way from venue to venue to the next performance. 

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