80 Artists, One RV, Zero Algorithms
Inside Newport Folk's new coast-to-coast storytelling and listening project.
A few weeks ago, some good, mysterious music content started bubbling up on my feeds from the Newport Folk Festival team. They’d launched a new handle, @seatoshiningseaproject, and begun sharing what looked like a road trip, or maybe a pilgrimage. Just enough music, RVs, rest stops and barbecue joints to pique my interest.
Fast-forward to the beginning of July, and those BTS Instagram stories turned into polished little vignettes teasing all kinds of American musicians. Some of my favorites: Sierra Ferrell, Tyler Childers, the Black Crowes. And also Chuck D.
What was this Sea To Shining Sea project all about?
So I texted Newport Folk Executive Director Jay Sweet to find out. What are you making? What is this thing going to be? Is this a documentary? This obviously wasn’t just Newport Folk Festival promo, especially with the fest weeks behind us and everyone on that team slammed. This had to be something else. Too many questions for text, so we took it to the phone, and I got the full lowdown.
The Sea To Shining Sea project was born out of a conversation about getting out of the algorithm and hitting the American highways to rediscover music and share narratives about America and music that we just aren’t getting elsewhere. There’s a long history here, dating back to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Jay Sweet’s predecessor and mentor at Newport Folk. Pete Seeger’s half-brother Mike famously went out to record musicians like Elizabeth Cotten for Folkways Records. The tradition stretches into other art forms too. Not just Jack Kerouac, but also photographer Robert Frank, who hit the road to make his seminal work, The Americans. Hitting the road in search of art and artists and a desire to understand this country is one of the great American traditions, and Sea To Shining Sea is the next chapter.
“A song ain’t nothing but a conversation fixed up to where you can talk it over and over without getting tired of it. And it’s this repeating the idea over and over that makes it take hold. If the conversation is about good crops or bad, good politics or bad, good news or bad, good anything else or bad, the best way to circulate it amongst the people is by way of singing it.” — Woody Guthrie
The Hearthland Foundation awarded the Newport Folk Festival team a grant to help produce the project, as part of a larger US 250 series, and the whole thing came together fast. Sweet told me they were literally dialing up artists, agents, anyone they could reach, saying they’d be in Nashville tomorrow, or Charlottesville, could they get 30 minutes to make a video? The team crisscrossed the country, stopping wherever they could to grab time with artists.
“We met people where they are, in their neighborhood or wherever,” says Sweet. “We wanted to try and recreate the road trips that Pete and Woody had to take to find music.”
For Jay and the team, this trip felt different from Woody and Pete’s, and that difference comes down to the algorithm. “Algorithms have taken over all of our lives, but mine in particular,” says Sweet, whose whole job is finding new musicians to platform at Newport. Sea To Shining Sea was a way out. Back to the roots, back to rediscovering the music of America where it’s actually being strummed, sung, tapped and played.
To do this, a small team armed with a couple of cameras hit the road in an RV in search of music and music stories. They filmed some 80 interviews. “A lot of people you do know, and a lot of people you don’t know,” says Sweet.
Those you do know? Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Chuck D, Jackson Browne, Sierra Ferrell, Tyler Childers, Joan Baez, Kamasi Washington, Fred Armisen, Julien Baker, Louis Cato, Anaïs Mitchell, Guster, Allison Russell, Lizzy McAlpine, Sean Watkins, Medium Build, Molly Tuttle, Ketch Secor, Leon Bridges, Eggy, Cautious Clay, Lee Ranaldo, Joy Oladokun, Clover County, Andrew Bird, Charlie Worsham, The Black Crowes, Rufus Wainwright, BJ Barham, Jack Coyne, SNACKTIME, Adam Granduciel, Brothers Osborne, Beau Bedford, Danny Clinch, Susto, Mon Rovîa, S.G. Goodman, Flipturn, Hamilton Leithauser, Jesse Welles, Sunny War, Jake Minch, and more.
What we’re seeing right now on Instagram and YouTube is, thankfully, just the beginning. There are so many more videos to come. For now, they’ll live online as shorts, but who knows, maybe a longer-form piece could come. I know I’d love to see it.
America finds itself divided these days, no doubt about that. I truly believe music is one of the great unifiers. Doesn’t matter if you’re listening to country, hip hop, or house. If you’re in a room with a bunch of strangers, feeling the same beat, you come together. Maybe it’s magic. Maybe it’s just music.
“It’s the social glue, more than sports, more than food,” says Sweet. “The easiest way to get to people is by music.”
***Psst if you’re at Newport Folk, Sea to Shining Sea is also taking the stage: