DBT #450 Evanston Folk Festival 2026 Recap

When I saw that James McMurtry and Lucy Wainwright Roche were playing at the Evanston Folk Festival, I quickly cleared adding another fest to our 2026 list with my wife.  Of course seeing the Indigo Girls and Sierra Hull were pretty cool, too.  We had a blast and found out it was only in it’s third year, and funny that was the year we started to attend the Great River Folk Fest too.  They celebrated 50 years this year and that’s the previous blog post. (who know it might be done… I’ve been busy)

So this post too is a work in progress as I edit the videos and post them either in FB or YouTube.  Here’s the YouTube playlist link and as of Sep 23rd all the videos are uploaded.  28 memories that I love to keep for everyone to check out.

Here’s a great song from Tift Merritt that got blocked on YouTube for licensing, and while I could crop it to put it back into YouTube; I love how she swayed and sang this looped a cappella song so it needed to stay vertical.  This would have made it 29 and then it wouldn’t have been even for that picture.  Ha.

Ok as I mentioned earlier, when I was telling people that we were going to the Evanston Folk Festival for the first time, I said I had two bucket list artists I wanted to see James McMurtry and Lucy Wainwright Roche. Right my bucket list is not the same as everyones and mine from July 2024 needs to be updated since I have now seen SIX of the 24 listed. Our luck was that they were both on the Dawes stage so we could get close and listen intently. I didn’t realize that Lucy has been helping the Indigo Girls during Emily’s throat issues, and the Indigo Girls were also on the lineup. We had seen them before so no bucket list there.

Lucy jetted into the fest from NY where she was with her dad Loudon Wainwright III for his 80th birthday celebration. She said she sang this song he wrote for her; and while it’s truly a powerful song, it does seem a little dark for a birthday party. She did say seeing the crowd in front of her was better than the group she was with last night. Yikes.

It was cool that Amy Ray who sitting in the wings all set stopped up and joined her.

The playlist has a few more memory videos, but what I didn’t capture was her warmth and dry humor of her banter.  Ahhhhhh, so well worth the wait and I’m again thankful for getting so close.

Now this blog post is in kind of a random order, BUT the next obvious highlight is James McMurtry.  So, I’ve been asking most of my musician friends if they are familiar with Austin TX music scene if James is still playing downtown once a week.  He confirmed he is and I think he said Tuesday; so if we finally make it there; I’m going to zero in on seeing him again.  Let’s just say the first time was awesome.  Lori and I were amazed at his storytelling in song.  I recorded a lot of snippets of songs to remember which ones he played.  Of course I could have tried to hold my phone steady for 7 minutes, but decided to just grab some verses of his classic “Chocktaw Bingo”

Speaking of Moccasin Creek Festival, we saw two friends we’ve met there every year we’ve been to the fest, Sandra and Kevin.