Hayley Williams, Dave Matthews, Wednesday

Given his addition as a last-minute substitution for Tedeschi Trucks Band following their health-related cancellation, it came as some surprise (and a thrilling one at that) that Father John Misty chose this relatively high-profile setting to test out a notable chunk of new, unreleased material. There were songs about doomsday-prepper dystopia, songs about fathers who may in fact be secret CIA spies (that one’s called “Josh Tillman, His Father, and the Scottsdale Experience”), and politically charged songs portraying right-wing xenophobia (sample lyric: “We need walls that never end/An ocean sideways between us and them”). He was accompanied for some of the set by David Rawlings, best known as Gillian Welch’s longtime sideman; mostly, though, the bearded California satirist switched between piano and guitar during his entirely acoustic, stripped-down set. It was a bold bet that paid off thanks to the new songs themselves.

By the time the DJ played the third track of Bob Marley’s Legend compilation 25 minutes after Lauryn Hill was supposed to take the stage, the crowd had grown restless. Would the singer take the stage in time to sing even one song? Hill eventually arrived, opening with “Ex-Factor,” before running through some more contemplative acoustic material from 2002’s MTV Unplugged No. 2.0. Hill performed those songs sitting down and playing guitar, but after another Miseducation staple, “Tell Him,” she stood up, announced “We gon’ bring it up a notch,” and proceeded to deliver the most electrifying three-song closing run in this festival’s recent memory: “Doo Wop (That Thing”), “Killing Me Softly,” and “Ready or Not.” (“Just do the beginning!” Hill, running well over her allotted set time, called out to her band before ending her set with the latter.) She seemed to shed decades as she transformed into bandleader, prophet, torch singer, and folk bard all at once, rapping, singing, and leading the crowd in a call and response during “Ready or Not” that would’ve made Pete Seeger proud. 

No performance this past weekend was more engaging nor higher energy than the one given by CMAT, who brought her six-piece backing band to Newport for a powerhouse hour-long set. There was dancing (“Take a Sexy Picture of Me”), there was posing, there was country camp (“I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!”), there were dead-serious ballads (“I’d Want U,” the “sapphic torch song,” as CMAT put it, that she sang as a duet with Brandi Carlile); there were show-stopping sing-alongs (the set-closing “Stay For Something”). All of it — the fiddles, the arena-ready choruses, the gender norm-shredding backing band, the running out into the crowd for the finale, the beautiful showbiz of it all — went over so well that it’s not hard to imagine her headlining the festival next time around.   

Much has been said about Karly Hartzman’s cow-grunge collective over the past few years, but Wednesday’s mainstage Newport set proved that the band is still peaking. Who else takes the stage to Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys’ a capella hymn “Gloryland” before drowning it out in feedback? Who else starts an early-afternoon mosh pit at a folk festival? Who else delivers the Gary Stewart drinking song “She’s Acting Single (I’m Seeing Double)” straight, as a honky-tonk weeper, during the verses before erupting the song into a garage-punk thrasher during the chorus? Who else introduces one of their live showcases (“Bull Believer”) by announcing “the next song I would like to scream in celebration of the death of Lindsey Graham”? Wednesday is never better than when they’re fully embracing their impossible-to-categorize identity, and they’re currently embracing it more than ever. “Remember when Bob Dylan went electric and everyone was like, ‘Boo!’” Hartzman observed early on. “Imagine if them motherfuckers were at this show right now!”

How would the most influential indie-rock songwriter of the past two years fare at the mellow folk fest? Quite well: It turns out the songwriter whose material has been covered by a who’s who of singer-songwriters in the past few years (Cameron Winter, Waxahatchee, MJ Lenderman) is the perfect fit for an audience that prioritizes songs over showmanship. Nate Amos’ set steered away from the glitchy bedroom pop tendencies of his earlier Bandcamp recordings and accentuated the hidden-in-plain-sight roots and bluegrass influences of both his 2024 breakout, Box For Buddy, Box For Star (“Angels Eye,” “Where’s Your Love Now”), and his forthcoming LP The Singer in My Band (“I Will Eat My Heart in the Morning Light”). By the time he got the audience out of their seats for the sing-along closing one-two punch of “Dancing in the Club” and “I’m All Fucked Up,” it was clear that This is Lorelei’s songwriting has gotten him to a place where he’s commanding sit-down folk festival daytime crowds just as effortlessly as packed rock clubs.

The weekend kicked off with a rousing showcase from Brother Wallace, the journeyman school teacher turned soul singer touring behind his debut LP, Electric Love. That album is a lovely set of textured soul, but onstage, the songs burst open. At times throughout his showcase, Wallace appeared to channel everyone from Clarence Carter to George Clinton to Sam Moore. On the set’s highlight, “Top Shotta,” Wallace invoked Curtis Mayfield, telling a potent story-song interspersed with a get-out-of-your-seats chorus. That moment was the clearest proof that Brother Wallace hasn’t merely been plucked out of nowhere by the music industry as the latest soul revivalist, he’s arrived as a songwriter with an important story to tell.

As Friday’s headliner, Hayley Williams used her set more as an opportunity to showcase her friends than herself. There were artists who clearly influenced her (Jenny Lewis, who sang “Silver Lining”), along with artists whom Williams and her band Paramore have clearly influenced (Karly Hartzman, who joined on “Mirtazapine,” Lucy Dacus, who helped on vocals with the deep cut “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris”). There were also artists operating outside the confines of Nashville who Williams just wanted to showcase, like Annie DiRusso and Joy Oladokun. That one of the set’s most exciting moments was Remi Wolf debuting a yet-unreleased song is credit to Williams’ curatorial and community-based impulses. Her headlining showcase wasn’t an ego death so much as a lack of ego: By the time she invited all her collaborators for a feel-good Bill Withers singalong to conclude, it was clear that Williams’ set has crystallized a vanguard of next-generation stars of Newport (most of them Southern women). 

In a year where it often felt like no one knew how (or if) to talk about the disparity between the walled-off communal joy of Newport and the ever-rising right-wing hellscape that exists outside the fort, Tom Morello came as a breath of earnest fresh air. His high-octane full-band set delivered a blast of righteous fury, working-class solidarity, and yes, rage-filled release. The singer-guitarist channeled and paid tribute to his many guises: as Rage guitarist (the crowd went berserk during the instrumental RATM medley), as Audioslave torch-carrier and memorializer of Chris Cornell, and as occasional sideman to Bruce Springsteen (Morello reprised their searing duet on the Woody Guthrie-indebted “The Ghost of Tom Joad”). In his hands, and in this setting, “Killing in the Name” — introduced by Morello as a song that “Bob Dylan left off his first record” — was greeted like an age-old traditional the crowd could sing along to as readily as “Wade in the Water.”

It was somewhere between the first and second standing ovation that Kathleen Edwards seemed to choke up. Making her debut at the festival (23 years after her first record, as she reminded the audience), Edwards treated her set as a no-frills survey of her career, playing at least one song from each of her studio albums. “Asking for Flowers,” “In State,” and “Glenfern” were all gorgeous renditions that featured Edwards’ Dylanesque, inventive tweaks to the phrasing of her most well-known songs. But the highlight came during “Soft Place to Land,” a devastating breakup ballad presented here as a duet between special guest Madi Diaz and Edwards (or “Kathleen queen,” as Diaz called her). Diaz isn’t alone in being influenced by Edwards: Before her penultimate “Six O’Clock News,” Edwards showed her gratitude to the second life the song has received as of late thanks to Waxahatchee, yet another full-circle moment during this long overdue triumph of a showcase.

Out of all the officially billed artists, no one this year had a more storied history with the festival (or, frankly, with roots music) than Peter Rowan, the 84-year-old bluegrass luminary who convened an all-star cast of musicians (Sierra Hull, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, and Sam Grisman) for an old-fashioned revue of traditional music. The artists took turn singing lead, and the highlights were plentiful: Rowan being joined by David Rawlings and Gillian Welch for his song “Walls of Time” (which Hull called “one of the best bluegrass tunes of all time”), Campbell’s take on “Deep Elem Blues” (the second time in as many days that song was performed), Rowan’s gorgeous rendering of “Mississippi Moon,” Williams’ stunning vocal performance on the standard (but never more relevant) “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning,” and Hull’s musicianship on “Old Dangerfield.” It was a multi-generational master class that honored the festival’s origins while nodding to its future.