Written by historian and journalist Rick Massimo, I Got A Song: A History of The Newport Folk Festival explores the festival's complex 58-year history. Massimo's research included many interviews and first-person testimonials from artists, producers and audience members across different generations. A few of the most notable interviewees include Pete Seeger, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Judy ... Read moreCollins, Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary) and The Decemberists' Colin Meloy.
EC Flamming, Paste Magazine Our final verdict, yes, this is a fantastic book for us ... we came into I Got a Song expecting a light beach read, and left with a heady brew of history and excitement in the country's premier music festival.
Matthew Keefer, Music Ravings Rhode Island's Newport Folk Festival is the place where Bob Dylan famously decided to buck the all-acoustic rules and go 'electric' in 1965. But there's so much more history and heritage to the Newport festival than that, as author Rick Massimo details in I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival...filled with interviews and photos of the many performers who've been a part of the event over the past six decades, including Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary.
Neil Pond, Parade Vibrantly tells good stories that bring to life the personalities involved in the festival, as well as stories that offer perspectives on the significance and endurance of a folk festival
Henry Carrigan, No Depression Massimo, who covered the Folk Festival for nine years with The Providence Journal, is an old school reporter ... but the Dylan-Goes-Electric chapter reads like deconstructed poetry. Eschewing editorial in favor of juxtaposition, Massimo tells the story of [the] folk fest.
Fallon Masterson, Vanyaland Massimo grapples with the 'what is folk' question throughout the book, contextualizing it against the original folk boom, counterculture rock, the songwriting '70s and the eventual near-death of the genre as electronically informed genres popped up in the '80s.
Gillian Turnbull, National Post Massimo covers the Newport years well, if uncritically, recognizing the changing nature of the folk music scene in America.
Derek Shofield, Folk Music Journal [Massimo] tells a story that's not just about one festival in the smallest state of the country, but about folk music as a whole.
Ben Kaye, Consequence of Sound [A] treasure trove for music fans ... the first complete account of the legendary festival, describing its many successes and occasional blunders
Ken Abrams, No Depression Originally from Providence, and a longtime staff writer at the Providence Journal, Massimo brings a Rhode Island perspective and accessible prose. He seamlessly interweaves his own interviews of participants with oral histories from repositories such as the Library of Congress, as well as news coverage of the festival from the Providence Journal.
Rebecca Brenner, Oral History Review Show Less