Loretta Lynn, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Billy Joe Shaver, Todd Snider, Swell Season, Samantha Crain, Woody Pines and more make the weekend of May 15 and 16 in Nelsonville Ohio one to remember.

By Steven Rosen

(From Blurt, www.blurt-online.com, May 21, 2010)

The Nelsonville Music Festival in rural, hilly southeast Ohio isn’t one of the summer’s big ones (though it’s growing; this year it stretched over three days, May 14-16), but it can lay claim to being one of the more relaxed and charming.

Further, its adventurous, eclectic streak – Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings following Loretta Lynn – shows the potential to be more than just another safe, comfortable, formulaically programmed regional folk/bluegrass fest. It has a wild streak.

I made it for the last two of the three days and also saw, besides the aforementioned, Billy Joe Shaver, Todd Snider with Great American Taxi, Samantha Crain, Michael Hurley, Swell Season, Woody Pines, Lydia Loveless and – worth a special shout-out – an odd singer-songwriter named JD Hutchison who did an amusing imitation of both Dylan and Johnny Cash warbling “Girl From North Country.”

The event, now in its sixth year, occurs at Robbins Crossing Living History Site on the grounds of pretty Hocking College, just outside the small town of Nelsonville. Besides a field area for the main stage, the site has a series of old log cabins that can be used as atmospheric settings for secondary shows. Just outside festival grounds – people were free to come and go – were a walking trail, small lake and an area set aside for camping. Trying to be green, the festival offered free water and didn’t sell plastic bottles – a reusable bottle was available for sale. Volunteers even picked up cigarette butts off the grass, which begs the question why not just ban smoking? (Of cigarettes, that is.)

The festival is put on by the non-profit Stuart’s Opera House, which operates a restored opera house in downtown Nelsonville’s town square. Since the area is part of Appalachia, with a gritty past of coal mining and brick-making, parts of Nelsonville look pretty beaten-down and worn-out. But it’s also in the Hocking Hills, a recreational area, so tourism is important. And it’s near Athens, home of Ohio University and its fairly large back-to-nature counterculture.

So the outdoor festival has good community support. A consortium of 18 local businesses and individuals even underwrites it against losses from weather or other problems – the festival claims this is the only such arrangement in the country.

I’d be surprised if they need that backup after this year. The weather was gorgeous – and the main stage area packed with thousands on the Saturday night that Loretta Lynn and her band played.

It was quite moving to see the crowd; maybe more moving than seeing Lynn, herself, who despite a strong voice (which she rested by letting her male back-up singers and son Ernie have some solos) and spectacularly pleated red sequined gown, did a fairly show-biz-slick, hit-heavy set. That was a shame, because the many young tattooed alt-rockers in the crowd would have loved to hear her and her band get all robust and scruffy like her Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose.

But this is coal-mining territory, and the coal miner’s daughter is a hero to a lot of older people who came from all over for the chance to hear her on home turf. As I stood near a makeshift passageway on the outskirts of the crowd, I watched one middle-aged woman lead her elderly mother through, trying to get close. I’m sure that was happening all over. And everyone begged for “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” which they got.

Many of those people left by the time Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings took the stage around 11 p.m. on Saturday night, but a couple thousand younger, soul-loving rockers were still left and did they ever dance! Jones, who is 54 and five-foot-one, is an incredible dynamo on stage – recalling Tina Turner in her “Proud Mary” days – who is able to move frenetically about the stage while singing long medleys with a voice that never loses clarity or strength.

And the band, which featured songs from the new I Learned the Hard Way album, had worked out strong arrangements (with female back-up singers) and segues for the live show. The demand by the crowd for an after-midnight encore seemed to catch the band by surprise. They took a long time to come back for a surprisingly soft, tender version of the Jan Bradley-like “Mama Don’t Like My Man,” followed by a climactic rave-up on “100 Days, 100 Nights.” A fitting end to a beautiful night.

There were, however, plenty of other highlights during the two days:

Ø Samantha Crain, whose voice has the easy melodic airiness of Natalie Merchant or Edie Brickell but also a dramatic dimension that recalls Bjork, did a solo, intimate acoustic set inside a small log cabin that had listeners singing along to fine, thoughtful songs like “Santa Fe” and her foreboding yet oddly reassuring “The Dam Song.” Judging from the people crowded outside the cabin trying to get in, or just wanting to hear, Crain has developed a very keen audience for her music.

Ø A North Carolina singer/National steel guitarist/harmonicist/kazooist named Woody Pines, who plays rousing roots music that skitters between country, jazz, jug band and folk, worked the audience toward ecstasy during his Saturday night set on a secondary outdoor stage. He was helped immensely by (I think) guest player Nate Allen, who alternated between saxophone and a driving, exciting clarinet – an instrument every band like this should have! They did Cab Calloway’s “Reefer Man,” and could easily become a rootsier version of Squirrel Nut Zippers.

Ø Todd Snider already has one of the more devoted followings in Americana for his wit, on-stage charm, genially presented populist politics, and songwriting skills. But while no disrespect intended to his previous albums, solo appearances and touring aggregations, the chemistry between him and Great American Taxi (led by Leftover Salmon’s Vince Herman) was so strong you couldn’t help thinking as you listened, “This is it. This is the ticket to stardom.”

On tunes like ‘The Devil You Know” “I Think I’m an All Right Guy,” “Song 10,” and “Easy Money,” they combined the soaring quality of “Take It Easy” with the sweetly shambolic edginess of The Replacements. It’s amazing how many hits Snider has for a guy who’s never had an official hit – the crowd was roaring out each song’s catch phrases and choruses. And the music rocked and soared without a hint of bombast.

Ø I think the singer’s name was Caitlin Kraus, from an Athens band called the Love Ins (their set was unexpected; only their leader Adam Torres was scheduled to play), but her song about small-town love had some daringly successful, unexpected poetry to go with its introspective melody and her strong voice. Pleading with a lover to stay by her side, she sang, “Come over here, blow your nose on my sleeve/I won’t mind, it’s already dirty.” I’d like to hear more – whoever she is.

Ø The Swell Season, which closed the festival as the late-afternoon skies slowly darkened before rain, gave the crowd a powerful, pleasingly melancholy send-off. Pianist Marketa Irglova serves basically as a harmony singer for Irish folk-rocker Glen Hansard, getting an occasional chance to do one of her solo numbers and play guitar. She’s a shy presence compared to him – but her songs and voice are good.

Hansard’s many years with the Frames have prepared him for handling large crowds, and his band was well-prepared, with Frames’ violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire at times sounding like he was weaving tears into a mournful ballad. Hansard is as much a rocker as a folk busker, despite the image created by “Once.” He played the loudest acoustic guitar ever on a version of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” – reminding me of how Alejandro Escovedo takes “I Wanna Be Your Dog” into the freak-out stratosphere. His more thought-provoking songs, from the film as well as last year’s Strict Joy album, have the power of scruffy, elegiac Irish rock – like Waterboys or Black 47′s Larry Kirwan.

The show closed with a 17th Century Irish folk song, Hansard’s voice bearing a pronounced brogue as he sang from the point of view of a corpse: “So raise to me a parting glass/Goodnight and joy be with you.” People sang along as he introduced new verses, slowly building in his listeners a revelatory sense that something beautiful was ending.

And it was. Until next year.