BridgeFest: Newport's Summer Snowball

Last year the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Newport County decided to do something about the conspicuously quiet gap between George Wein's Newport Folk Festival and the CareFusion Newport Jazz Festival.

"The city's dead for the week between, then it resurrects itself," said John Hirschboeck of the Arts and Cultural Alliance.

He remembers fellow Alliance member Lois Vaughan, a full-time Newport musician, pointing out that the city's local musicians were getting lost in the festival shuffle. So the home grown BridgeFest, in addition to bridging a gap between the fests, supports local musicians. And according to BridgeFest co-chair Mary Wall, the event benefits local Newport residents.

It offers the people who live here, she said, a chance "just to get out of their homes and enjoy some of these festivals without having to fork over the money."

The schedule of events, packed with music, children's shows and even a lecture series, runs from Monday through Thursday of this week, carefully avoiding any conflict with the bookend festivals. For their part, the bigger festivals are whole-heartedly behind BridgeFest, mentioning it on their websites. And George Wein, founder of the other two festivals, will be a guest speaker in the BridgeFest lecture series.

Those in the Alliance who were in on the planning admit that the "first annual" BridgeFest was pretty much an ad hoc event.

"We kind of started late," Hirschboeck remembered, "and all we did was figure out what venues were doing live music and put that together on a rack card and promoted it as BridgeFest."

When the fest was over, the volunteer-based Cultural Alliance had only a vague notion of the event's success.

"We didn't do a whole lot of follow-up," Vaughan admits.

Success stories were anecdotal.

"I have a regular job at the Rhumbline, and my boss put in a couple of extra nights [of live music]," Vaughan said. She judged this as a measure of success.

It wasn't until this year, with, again, a late start in the planning, that the event's snowballing momentum took everyone by surprise.

"To be honest with you," Hirschboeck said, "it's a lot bigger than we anticipated."

As of Friday, last week, Vaughan was still hearing from venues that wanted to jump on board with live music. The phenomenon is wreaking havoc with the printed schedule of events.

"We'll keep the website updated," Vaughan said. So if local residents don't see anything on the printed schedule that inspires them, there's probably something online.

Still, it's hard to imagine anyone not finding something to like at BridgeFest. The tone ranges from laid back Jimmy Buffet, in the concert film "Jimmy Buffet Live at Wrigley Field" (at Jane Pickens Theater, 9 p.m., Monday night) to the regimental pomp of the "RI Sound" Navy Band at Washington Square (Monday at 6 p.m.).

Kids' shows include the boy band Bloody Knuckles at the Newport Yachting Center on Tuesday evening at 6 p.m.(Wall says this may be their last concert for a while as older members start college), and a children's interactive musical performance by Chris Carbone at the Redwood Library (10:30 a.m., Tuesday). In addition to George Wein speaking at Salve Regina at 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon, local residents Jack and Barbara Renner will talk about the founding and highlights of their legendary, multi-Grammy-winning record label, Telarc, at 6 p.m. same day at the Newport Art Museum.

In addition, Motif Magazine, in conjunction with the City of Newport and Narragansett beer, has rounded up a series of popular local bands for the parks, like the Celtic band Pendragon for King Park on Thursday and the campy Miss Wensday on Wednesday at Washington Square.

"They [Motif] came with four very, what I call 'big in Rhode Island acts,'" Hirschboeck said.

"We just couldn't have made it what it is this year without them," Wall added. In fact, Motif's signing on to the event was one of those synchronous surprises that contributed to the event's snowball effect this year.

For Motif editor Jim Vickers, the BridgeFest collaboration was a natural extension of the magazine's mission to promote local bands.

"If we can come together and fill the gap between Folk and Jazz Fest and turn it into a Rhode Island Mardi Gras-like music fest," Vickers said, "then we have an opportunity to showcase the greatness of local music to people traveling here from all over the world."

He's not the only one thinking big.

Hirschboeck speaks boldly about how BridgeFest can help put Newport on everyone's list of "towns that have great music reputations," like Nashville and Austin. According to Vickers, Rhode Island has already begun to put itself on the national map.

"Recently Deer Tick, Low Anthem, and Sage Francis have made their marks nationally and internationally," he noted. "There are many other [Rhode Island] acts just as talented that could benefit from BridgeFest."

Already looking optimistically towards next year, Vickers says he could fill up the entire week with quality bands.

"We could have a 100 great local bands perform all over Newport and Aquidneck Island," he said.

For the many local jazz musicians Vaughan works with in wedding, function and club acts, she is hoping BridgeFest's success will encourage venues to hire more musical acts year-round. She's excited by the way the fest energizes the local jazz community.

"Maybe next year," she said, "we should have a giant jam session."