Music has a powerful effect on people. Deep and sometimes stoned listeners will often associate their favorite musicians as having tapped a spiritual well from which we all draw. This is what gives them the ability to touch our spirits in profound and often uplifting ways. Hell, if you’ve been to a Phish concert you’ve probably heard someone describe Trey Anistaso as an alien. However, it’s not often that we get actually have a personal connection with these musicians.

Dante Bucci had a profound impact on the 53rd annual Philadelphia Folk Festival. Sadly, he wasn’t there to see it. The 33-year-old festival mainstay was found dead from an apparent accident in Roxborough home Wednesday, Aug. 13 as he was preparing to perform at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. 

A woman in the beer garden said to me Saturday – “I sense a presence.” It may have been the Yard’s Cheap Thrills Pils talking. Or, it is the spirit of Pete Seeger that is […]

The rain really started to kick up a few hours before the first concert was set to begin. Luckily, I had just finished dinner over the campfire before it started to drizzle, then rain, then pour.

Just as Angaleena Presley was set to take the stage, the rain let up enough for my camping neighbors to snap a photo of a double rainbow in the parking lot. “It’s a sign for the festival,” I said. Everything around here is a sign for a happy fest.

There was a large crowd at the camp stage for the Thursday night concert – which is only open to campers at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Sturgill Simpson came out and played a couple of good songs with the energy of a rock ‘n’ roll band before the lead singer and songwriter, Simpson said, “We had to get the slow stuff out of the way. Y’all want to dance now? This is for the guy who said he wanted to dance.”

How many bands get tapped by Bob Dylan to finish his unreleased work? Well Old Crow Medicine Show have be handed pieces by Dylan, twice, to record and finish. Now that’s a band I want to see!

“Wagon Wheel,” the country single made popular by Darius Rucker was first recorded by Old Crow Medicine Show, the Nashville-based bluegrass and folk band that will perform Friday, Aug. 15 at the 53rd annual Philadelphia Folk Festival.

I never thought I liked bluegrass until I heard The Steep Canyon Rangers. The Grammy award-winning band consisting of Woody Platt, Nicky Sanders, Mike Guggino, Graham Sharp, Charles R. Humphrey III and sometimes Steve Martin […]

More than 50 years of musical tradition will continue at the Old Pool Farm for the Philadelphia Folk Festival Aug. 15-17 in Upper Salford Township.

The lineup for the 53rd annual Folk Festival includes Old Crow Medicine Show, Steep Canyon Rangers, Janis Ian and Loudon Wainwright III. These performers are mixed in throughout an intoxicating three days of crafts, workshops and a variety of musical performances.