This weekend our region boasts a huge festival of American roots music, a reading by a major American poet, a comedy festival headlined by a living legend, and a conversation with one of our best essayists and observers of the ways and mores of contemporary American life.
Trad-country-rocker Dwight Yoakam, bluegrass legend Del McCoury, Indiana alt-country rockers Houndmouth, Malian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Vieux Farka Touré, jam-band avatars Leftover Salmon, acoustic roots band Cat and The Moon, and The Man in Grass, an all-star tribute to Johnny Cash, headline Freshgrass, the annual three-day bluegrass and roots music festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams that takes place today through Sunday. Highlights of the festival include The Man in Grass, featuring FreshGrass favorite Alison Brown leading a celebration of the music of Johnny Cash — featuring a stellar band of festival All-Stars convened for the occasion, including the exceptional guitarist and singer Trey Hensley — who once shared the stage with Johnny and June Carter Cash — and special guests from all over the festival lineup who dive into grassy reworks of the Cash songbook.
FreshGrass veteran Del McCoury will be returning to the festival for the third time. For fifty years, Del McCoury’s music has set the bluegrass standard of authenticity while maintaining its relevance: In addition to concerts, contests, workshops, and the festival’s legendary jam sessions — during which professional musicians pick and play among the crowd, many of whom bring their own instruments — festival events include camping and children’s programming.
Tonight at the Mount in Lenox, poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg will deliver the annual Amy Clampitt Memorial Poetry Reading at 5pm. Schnackenberg, a pillar of American poetry, was born in Tacoma, Washington. Her work has been described as “a gift of diction on scientific wonderments, the horrors of history, and on the religious and philosophical texts of the past,” .). Praised by The Yale Review, Slate Magazine, and The New York Times, Schnackenberg’s poems have appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s. She has written six previous collections, and among her many honors, she has received the 2011 Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Rome Prize in Creative Literature, and the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin.
Next Thursday at the Mount, Meghan Daum, one of the premiere essayists of contemporary letters, and one of my favorite writers, will discuss the necessity of authentic personal writing in a world that prefers sentiment over truth, with author Kate Bolick, as part of Touchstones: Conversations at The Mount, on Thursday at 7:30pm. The ostensible subjects of Daum’s essays range from her dogs, her mother, Joni Mitchell, ex-boyfriends, the decision not to have a child, the tedium of foodie culture, the definition of "romance" and Meghan's own near death from a freak illness. Daum handles all her explorations with a dollop of self-deprecation and a keen and incisive wit, as well as dazzling writing that never draws attention to itself.
Legendary stand-up comic Robert Klein will headline the 2015 Woodstock Comedy Festival, which will be held today through Sunday. The Grammy-, Tony-, and Emmy Award-nominated comedian and actor Klein, along with a world-class lineup of comedians and comedy filmmakers, will appear during festival weekend at venues throughout the town of Woodstock. The third annual Woodstock Comedy Festival continues its mission of “comedy for a cause,” donating its net profits to charities that aid survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkshire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com