Strum Along: South Florida Folk Music Festival Quietly Returns

Folk music has a long and vibrant history in South Florida, from Coconut Grove's Gaslight Café, where David Crosby discovered Joni Mitchell, to Fred Neil writing songs about dolphins. To continue this proud tradition, every year, the South Florida Folk & Acoustic Music Festival serves as a three-day meeting point for local lovers of protest songs, quiet guitar strums, and the occasional ukulele.

Local folkie Grant Livingston remembers when the festival started in the early '90s. "That first year, it was pretty small — just one stage, just one day. I remember there being a pretty good size audience and perfect weather," he tells New Times. For many years, it was held at Easterlin Park in Oakland Park. "Right next to the train tracks. At some point in the festival every year, the sound of a train would drown out the music onstage. Savvy performers knew to vamp until the train passed, or they broke into some train-themed folk song which you could barely hear over the noise."

This year's edition will be held at the Bergeron Rodeo Grounds in Davie. More than 40 local and national artists will perform, and there will be singer-songwriting contests, jam sessions, camping, and music and writing workshops.

Festival co-director Elyse Brunt is part of the committee that selects the bill of performers. "We wanted to make sure that we had a diversity of music genres as well as top quality. We wanted to make sure there were not just singer-songwriters with a guitar on stage all day," Brunt says. "There will be youth performers like the JECC-Jazz Education Community Coalition, who have performed for the past three years under the direction of Nicole Yarling, bluegrass like the Killbillies and Holt & Cabe, blues, world music, roots, and humor. We also want to try to have a solid headliner with some name recognition, so we reached out to Sarah Lee Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie's daughter and Woody Guthrie's granddaughter, to be our big name for this year."

Livingston will perform on Sunday. He describes his music as "original songs about animals, nature, and the occasional human being, with an offbeat sense of humor and swing-influenced guitar. I might ask you to sing along; it's a folk festival, after all."

As a local folk performer for more than 30 years, Livingston is grateful for the durability and consistency of this festival. "I've seen a lot of great venues come and go since the 1990s, like Our Place and Stephen Talkhouse on Miami Beach, the Main Street Cafe in Homestead, and several ambitious concert series."

He credits Michael Stock, the longtime folk DJ at WLRN, for putting together the first South Florida Folk Festival and what has now become the South Florida Folk & Acoustic Music Club, which puts on the festival.

While the festival is the club's cornerstone event, it frequently hosts folk concerts and gatherings throughout the year. "We have a monthly acoustic underground music series run by Lou Dominguez at Luna Star Cafe on the first Saturday of every month except February due to the festival. We have two monthly song swaps the second Sunday of every month at a rotating member's house and every third Sunday at Together We Stand in Hollywood," Brunt explains.

But if you are a folk music lover, Livingston encourages you to move heaven and earth to ensure you make it to the Rodeo Grounds. "It's always great to hear the new songs in the songwriter competition. There are too many great friends and great performers playing to mention them all, but I always discover at least one artist I haven't heard of before," he adds.

South Florida Folk and Acoustic Music Festival. 3 p.m. Friday, January 31; 10 a.m. Saturday, February 1; and 11:30 a.m. Sunday, February 2; at Bergeron Rodeo Grounds, 4201 SW 65th Way, Davie; sffolk.org. Tickets cost $16 to $105.