Ahead of his first ever performance at Newport Folk Festival, music legend John Oates, of Hall & Oates fame, joined GBH News to talk about his journey to playing at the historic music festival. Excerpts from the interview are below.
Haley Lerner: How have you been enjoying Newport?
John Oates: This is my first experience. It's fantastic. What an amazing setting. It's something I’ve always wanted to do. It's a festival I’ve always wanted to play, and I know a lot about the history of the festival. It's just one of those things where I’m finally here and I’m excited to play.
Lerner: What does playing the festival for the first time after all these years mean to you?
Oates: It kind of completes the circle for me. I was very involved and very much a part of the early days of folk revivals in the early '60s. I saw a lot of the same performers who would perform in Newport, they would come to Philadelphia and play the Philadelphia Folk Festival, which has also been going on forever. I saw all the greats.
I actually own Mississippi John Hurt’s guitar that he played here in 1964 — and he was a big influence on me, one of my childhood musical heroes. So just the fact that I’m going to play the same festival he played, it's pretty cool.
Lerner: Are there any other iconic performances at Newport Folk that have inspired you?
Oates: I always think of the early days when Bob Dylan was basically discovered here. Joan Baez brought him on stage — Joan Baez being the queen of folk at the time. Her blessing kind of put Bob Dylan on the map. And then you know, he went electric here and freaked everybody out.
There are so many great traditions here. What I love about it is that in the early days, they celebrated a lot of these amazing roots performers who were previously forgotten and introduced them to a young crowd in the Northeast, around colleges and things like that, and really paved the way for what we know today as Americana.
Lerner: Is there any performance by a fellow musician here that you are excited about?
Oates: My Morning Jacket, those guys are good friends. Jim James and I did Bonnaroo SuperJam in 2013. I played and jammed with those guys, so they asked me to come on stage today with Margo [Price] and maybe just sing a little bit.
I want to see Maggie Rogers because I’ve seen her a lot on Youtube. And of course Aimee Mann, when she was with her group in the '80s, they opened for me on tour, so we go back a long way.
Lerner: What can people expect from your performance at Newport Folk Fest?
Oates: I hope they're not expecting a lot of Hall & Oates hits, because they're not going to hear them. I’m playing a lot of roots music. In fact, what we're doing in the set is paying tribute to some of those people I just spoke of. So I'm going to start off with some Mississippi John Hurt, a Doc Watson song, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Play a few songs by the guys who were so important to me back in the early '60s.
Lerner: You've released a few new digital singles recently. Can you tell me about them?
Oates: I started a series of streaming singles last November. I’m on number seven, I believe. It's been great. I've never done a project that didn't have a physical component. So this is the first time I'm doing digital-only streaming. It's been an education to see how it works to make it work and how to reach out to an entirely different group of fans. It's really a matter of making enough impact, letting people know what you're doing so they find you among the millions of songs that are out there.
Lerner: This is your first time at Newport Folk Festival, but do you have a favorite memory playing live at a festival or concert?
Oates: Should I go back to headlining Live Aid in 1985? That was pretty crazy, that was the biggest concert in the world at the time.
I like playing little theaters, I like playing little old small theaters where you can really connect with the audience.
Lerner: When performing, what makes for a perfect crowd?
Oates: You mean if they don't throw s**t at me? That's a start!
A crowd that's willing to listen, that's open minded musically, that wants to maybe be musically surprised.
