30A Songwriters Festival
Who doesn’t love folk music? Don’t answer that — it was a rhetorical question, plus, if you did answer, I wouldn’t have heard your response anyway. I don’t have super hearing. I’m not Superman. Just a super man.
But I am the one writing this, so perhaps I’ll take a stab at answering that question I just posed to the void: no one — I am convinced there is not a single person alive who wouldn’t enjoy folk music, should they give it a chance. And there are not many genres I truly feel that way about.
MAYBE people who have been deaf their entire lives would at the very least be indifferent about it, but even then, I am aware that the deaf have their own special relationship with music — and that is an entirely different can of worms I will not get into at this time, or probably ever. I have never even seen a can of worms, let alone opened one. So the odds are very slim, to put it lightly.
I came to the aforementioned hypothesis while in the throws of a spirited performance by one of America’s great songwriters. Who was it, you ask? Well, let me counter with this: why on earth would I give that away so early on in the piece? And yes, I recognize calling this a ‘piece’ is generous, but it’s the word I chose.
In fact, short of taking a shot in the dark, such an inquiry is impossible to answer upon studying the laundry list of artists who performed this year at the country’s “largest gathering of nationally recognized songwriters,” because: I might as well have been speaking of any of them.
I was fortunate enough to attend the 30A Songwriters Festival in its 15th year. Every January since 2009, some of the country’s most prolific songwriters and musicians have traveled to Florida’s gulf coast to support a weekend of acoustic awe. For better or worse, 30A is not your standard music festival. Much like the traditional, largely outdoor fest, there is a main stage, headliners and thousands of attendees. But its plethora of secondary performance spaces makes this festival unlike any other I have attended.
I say “for better or worse” because if you do not arrive at this festival with a car, a full tank of gas and the readiness to drive up to 40 minutes between venues (only to then spend another 30 minutes searching for adequate parking at times), then you are completely out of luck. Yes, this festival’s inherent and total lack of accessibility poses a major flaw holding it back from being truly great, but more on that later.
I began the journey down the road to Santa Rosa Beach on Friday afternoon (in my car, which had a full tank of gas, mind you). I was excited to get in early enough to catch a full evening of performances, but the moment I ascended the on-ramp to the highway, I was overtaken by the worst rain storm I have ever witnessed. The wipers stood absolutely no chance, even on the highest setting.
The storm resulted in a massive accident, which blocked both sides of the highway just 20 minutes away from festival headquarters. Needless to say (but I’m saying anyway), I missed a show I had been hoping to attend.
But let us not dwell on the negatives — Steve Poltz was my actual first show of the festival, and he set a high bar for the rest of the weekend. Tracking sand through the door of the venue (I’m convinced this festival was held together by sand. So, so much sand), I scanned the tables and chairs for an empty spot. I got myself situated and continued scanning, this time for people.
I had anticipated an older crowd, for a number of reasons: the median age of the artists performing, the geographic location of the festival, the fact that a car and an expensive place to stay was more or less required to get any sort of lasting impression of this event, and lastly, because the press coordinator told me to expect a more senior demographic — and she was spot on. I do not exclusively characterize an older crowd as a bad thing — I am merely stating a fact.
It did mean however that I overheard a higher concentration of prejudiced comments. One man who found himself angry that a younger, long-haired gentleman with a press badge and camera was allowed to enter a venue ahead of him, leaned over and said to the woman at his side, “is that a man or a woman?” And even felt the need to repeat himself louder when his first attempt elicited a completely unamused response from his sole listener. The irony of that entire interaction was that they were in line to see Matthew Sweet, who sports long hair himself.
ANYWAY, night one, Steve Poltz. I took a gander at the audience, was not surprised at what I saw, and focused my attention to Mr. Poltz, who was carefully and animatedly setting up his performance space with the help of his partner. The instant he was finished and began speaking to the audience, the room fell silent, save for the excited meandering of Steve’s words and stories — Steve Poltz is the definition of an entertainer. Now, if you looked up “entertainer” in the dictionary, would you see a picture of Steve Poltz? No, that would be completely ridiculous. But you would find the definition of entertainer, which would describe this man quite well.
In fact, Poltz was equal parts musician and storyteller. His words captivated all of us in the crowd, which hung on his every word. Or at least I did, and the lady to my left, who let out visceral squeals throughout the concert.
The ceiling dripped just in front of the stage from the rain earlier in the day as Steve glissaded from song to story to song again, barreling excitedly through a performance that is best classified as one entity, rather than a broken-up collection of individual songs. From start to finish, there was never any silence — it was always either music or storytelling of some sort. At one point, after Steve had finished reading a poem he had written about his parents wrestling (I know), Steve dropped his glasses as he was trying to put them back into his pocket. But he continued speaking as he bent down to retrieve them, all the way to the floor and all the way back up. Most of the audience couldn’t even hear him — he was just that dedicated to his performance.
Quite a poor photo of Steve Poltz (compliant with the festival’s “no flash photography” rule).
In fact, Steve Poltz moved about the stage so much, I am convinced that wireless amplification systems were made for him and his guitar. He is a ball of energy that cannot be contained by simple wires and cables.
The man has played an average of 180 shows per year for most of his life. Before the encore, he said to the audience, “Right now, this is the best show I’ve ever played.” Everyone laughed of course, because he presumably says that at every show, but in some strange way, I get the sense that he truly means it every time he says it.
At the conclusion of the Steve Poltz extravaganza, I drove to what I expected to be my next show of the evening, but that is where I encountered the disgruntled man doing his best to put the “baby” in baby boomer — I just wanted to see Matthew Sweet! But that brings up another great strength of this festival: although not a feature unique to 30A, many of the artists put on additional performances at other venues over the course of the weekend. So I resolved to see Matthew Sweet the next night rather than bother with the overcrowded performance space, and arrived early to the next show on my agenda — David Lowery.
I was stoked to see David Lowery (of the legends Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker), mostly because I wanted to hear acoustic versions of his bands’ music. There were no such renditions, however.
Unlike his songwriting for his bands, Lowery has now written a number of very literal, autobiographical albums, each song a vignette of a different moment in his life — some happy, some sad, some outlandish and funny, others simple, flash-in-the-pan memories of a peculiar childhood I was happy to get lost in.
The big caveat — Lowery’s stories prior to each song often stretched to more than twice as long as the songs themselves, not only providing general context, but also going further to explain the entire story behind what we were about to hear.
The practice of storytelling is inherent in folk music, and as such, many of the weekend’s performers told stories around the music they wrote. But Lowery was a bit of an over-explainer, and by the time he finally got around to playing his songs, much of the excitement had gone, as the audience knew exactly what to expect each time.
Lackluster performance aside, it was still an incredible opportunity to see Lowery and many other prolific songwriters up close and personal — the very experience for which the 30A Songwriters Festival has come to be known. I have also seen both Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven in the past, and at the same show too, so perhaps my expectations were a bit high.
The next day, I traveled to the main stage at Grand Boulevard, which sat in a fenced-off, grassy area in the middle of an upscale shopping center, a staple of coastal Florida. Parking was tight however, so I followed directions to overflow parking in — you guessed it — another upscale shopping center on the same road. I was strangely the only person on the shuttle both to and from the main stage, which was surprising considering the amount of people packed onto the lawn.
I arrived at around 2:30 to see Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco fame) at 3:00, but I quickly got the idea that all main stage set times were pretty soft — he was about a half an hour late taking the stage. Seeing a performance at the main stage only made me appreciate the smaller, intimate spaces that much more — every performance started on time, the artists were more personable (not to say Jeff Tweedy wasn’t; it’s just difficult to interact with a crowd that sits 50 feet away from the stage), and each of them were generally more enjoyable. Maybe I just prefer sitting in a cozy bar to wet grass, I don’t know.
Anyway, I was really hoping to hear a Wilco song or two, and especially a Golden Smog deep cut, and boy did he deliver. Although just a man and his guitar, Tweedy’s setlist consisted of mostly Wilco songs from across the band’s catalogue, and also featured a smattering of his other work to include his solo career, a song from Wilco’s time with Billy Bragg, a couple covers, and yes, one Golden Smog song. I had admittedly set my expectations low (because I just didn’t know what to expect), and as a result, I was pleasantly surprised. Tweedy’s performance had been well worth the wait, and I shuttled back to the secondary lot excited to see what the rest of the day had to offer.
Jeff Tweedy mixed up the lyrics to “Remember the Mountain Bed,” and said to the audience through laughter: “You try doing a song with nine verses!”
In a word, I was thrilled to see that Grant-Lee Phillips would play 30A. I took an open seat a table near a gentleman halfway through eating a hamburger with a fork, a spectacle I internally scoffed at, but later changed my tune as I noticed how efficiently and cleanly he managed to deliver his meal to his mouth. That dude was onto something.
Grant-Lee stepped up to the microphone and promptly announced that it was his ten-year anniversary at 30A — not that he had played there every year for the past ten years, just that his 2024 appearance marked ten years since he first played there in 2014. Much like Poltz, Phillips has risen enthusiastically into his role as a performer, and he has lived nearly his entire life as such. In high school, he played a gunfighter at the Pollardville Ghost Town, a tourist attraction near his hometown. Later, he was of course a recurring character on Gilmore Girls — the Troubadour, an experience he spoke of fondly whenever he played a song from the show.
In fact, the tales he spun before each song were rich and colorful, brought to life through his inflection and genuine interest in each story; each song was like a personalized gift to all those watching. I would have seen him many more times if my packed weekend schedule had allowed for it.
Next, I drove to the Matthew Sweet performance I had vowed to see. I arrived a few minutes early — enough to catch part of John Fullbright’s last song. I had not heard of John Fullbright prior to the festival, but the level of soul he managed to pack into his blissfully bright pairing of harmonica and guitar was incredible. Even after the long performance that followed, what stuck in my head was the fragment I heard of “Satan and St. Paul.”
Matthew Sweet took the stage with a couple of backing musicians, along with Tommy Stinson, a vaguely familiar name I noticed on the bill, but one I could not quite place until I heard him play — his sound was unmistakable: The Replacements. Stinson is a founding member of the legendary indie outfit, having played bass for the entire lifetime of the band. He had such a similar style that I felt compelled to check the liner notes in my Replacements albums when I returned home, but only Paul Westerberg is credited with writing the vast majority of their repertoire. Regardless, it makes perfect sense that after having played in the band across their 30-something year on-and-off lifespan, Stinson’s music bears a similar quality.
Matthew Sweet similarly exuded the confidence and prowess of a seasoned musician. And that is because he is one. Obviously. Anyone who listened to music in the 1990s (not me, so this next bit might as well be true) more than likely heard Matthew Sweet at one time or another, whether it was a song of his own, or one by the countless other famed musicians he played with. But I will say that waiting for him to tune a 12-string guitar sucked a bit of magic out of the show pretty early on. I know how guitars work, it was just a very slow process — one that he acknowledged, but amounted to very little aside from a brief, unison chuckle from the audience.
But how sweet (pun!) is it that all the happy songs on Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend were about his wife-to-be? They have now been married for 30 years. Lovely.
At a later performance, and after a set of making jokes about being too old to get on the bar, Tommy Stinson actually climbed onto the bar for his encore, all to the sheer delight of this enchanted crowd.
Prior to my second Tommy Stinson show (above), I was lucky to see another dual performance, this time featuring Grace Pettis and David Childers, both of whom keeping with the old folk custom of building their setlists as they went — which I will say works extraordinarily well when two performers are trading songs back and forth. This practice allows each to adapt to the other’s last song, and choose to follow with something complimentary of their own.
Pettis harmonized with Childers where she felt appropriate, and Childers occasionally backed her on guitar in return. It is this display of personality and vulnerability that so quickly wins over a crowd, no matter the genre.
The shows I’ve catalogued here were the ones that I felt best captured the spirit of the 30A Songwriters Festival — a solo staple in the nation’s vast, vibrant and deceptively tight-knit songwriting community that is sure to live on well past its 15th birthday.
As I mentioned earlier, my primary complaint of the entire festival was its complete lack of accessibility. The 30A Songwriters Festival is painfully car-centric, and takes place in a stretched-out, expensive nook of Florida’s Gulf Coast, meaning its primary demographic is older, well-to-do folks. But I have racked my brain, and I simply see no other way to pack over 175 artists across 225 performances into just three days and some change. This is the way it’s been done for 15 years, and there is no indication that the 30A institution is struggling, so this is how it will stay.
Glaring inconveniences aside, the 30A Songwriters Festival is a unique experience, sure to open attendees’ eyes to the intricate and enduring world of American folk music.
A massive thank you to Angie Carlson at Propeller Publicity for her support of this journal’s coverage!
SUPPORT all artists mentioned in this article. Support all artists.