birchblazephotography.com » Music

2011 Newport Folk Festival feat. Civil Wars & Pete Seeger

birch — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:20:41 +0000

Better late than never, right? Last summer Taylor and I experienced our first Newport Folk Festival together, together with my Daughter Maddie and my Son Dylan. Sometimes in the hustle and bustle of our wedding photography some of our personal imagery gets pushed aside. Seeing how the lineup for the 2012 Newport Folk Festival was recently announced, we thought this would be a good time to share our photologue of last year’s Festival. I have to say, that despite the heat both days (man, were those frozen lemonade vendors busy!), the Festival was phenomenal with MANY standouts such as The Civil Wars (check out their work on their Grammy-winning Barton Hollow album and the Hunger Games soundtrack), Brown Bird, Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three, Mountain Man, legend Earl Scruggs (who, sadly, passed away recently) and SO many more! If you’re a music lover, the Newport Folk Fest is a must-see. And there are many genres of music represented, not just folk. One of the highlights was getting to see a folk legend, Pete Seeger, who at age 92, closed out the Festival late Sunday afternoon with 2 songs he wrote/co-wrote, Turn, Turn, Turn and Where Have All The Flowers Gone? I was able to sneak my way up fairly close to the stage for this and came away with a pretty decent video, which you can view below. Of course, you could barely turn around at the Festival without bumping into a photographer and most were, as you might expect, vying for the best vantage point around all 3 stages. We took a few shots of performers doing their thing, but besides soaking up all the incredible music and talent, we mostly enjoyed shooting some of the offstage happenings. For 2012, we hope to make it for Sunday of the Festival—we have a wedding on Saturday—but even if we can’t, we’ll never forget the wonderful time we had last summer and I know we’ll be back…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dar Williams in Freeport

birch — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:18:53 +0000

After a great wedding client meeting in North Conway, Taylor and I drove up to Freeport, Maine this past Saturday to see Dar Williams appearing at the LL Bean summer concert series. We love Dar Williams—she’s a very funny modern folk singer-songwriter—and were thrilled to get to see her at this very cool venue. It also gave me a chance to put our new 70-200 Canon L lens through it’s paces. That is one sharp lens! Check it out…

Sun setting behind the stage, how cool was that? And this was pretty cool… there was a deaf interpreter onstage for the entire show. We think it might be an arrangement by LL Bean because we’ve seen this at other shows here. Oh, and LOVED the accordian! I really want to play some of my originals with an accordian player!

So there you have it. What a great way to spend a summer Saturday night in New England! Here’s the video to one of our favorite Dar Songs, “As Cool As I Am.” See ya next time! –K&Tay

Peter’s Rig of Mild Concern

birch — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:51:08 +0000

Ok, a little background…Taylor’s Father, Peter (aka Petey Pajamas, in some circles…you didn’t hear that from us, ok?), besides being an ace builder/carpenter, is also a pretty fantastic bass player (I should know because we’re bandmates). We were hangin’ with the folks-n-law last night, and Pete asked me about posting some photos of some of his bass equipment on his favorite bass forum. The forum thread he wanted to post on was entitled, “Rigs of Doom.” (a ‘rig’ being your amplifier and processing gear setup) So, we thought, with a name like Rigs of Doom (which is an awesome name for anything, especially if you’re a bass player!), you’ve got to have a photo worthy of that title. Tay and I were up for the challenge, so here’s what we came up with (Petey Pajamas was pretty pleased…):