Outings: Down to the River!

Forty years ago, aghast at the condition of the Hudson River, singer, musician, and political activist Pete Seeger resolved to “build a boat to save a river.”Given that musicians often have to sing for their suppers,a concert to raise money for the project seemed a natural.The first Folk Picnic on the Hudson was held in 1966.Three years later, the boat, a replica of the sort of sloop that sailed the Hudson carrying cargo in the 18th and 19th centuries, was launched and christened the Clearwater.

This Father’s Day weekend (June 17-18) marks the 40th anniversary of what has become “Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival”, or just the Clearwater Festival to regulars.Dozens of musicians, entertainers, artists/artisans and political activists will converge on Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson, supported by an army of some one thousand volunteers.Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004 for the role that it has played in the history of the American Environmental Movement, the sloop Clearwater will be there as well.

While the festival was born of a series of Folk Picnics, it has grown in scope as well as size.Folk, as a musical genre, is broadly construed at Clearwater. Typical acts over the years have run the gamut from politically rooted singer/songwriters like Tom Paxton, Holly Near and Arlo Guthrie, to Native American drumming and chanting, to the Canadian band Moxy Fruvous whose music has sometimes been referred to as Trip Hop Bluegrass — all spiced with a good helping of Blues, Zydeco, Appalachian fiddle music, and a little Rock, Jazz, and Funk on the side. This year’s lineup includes Peter Seeger himself, Janis Ian, The Mammals, Michelle Shocked, Dan Bern, Black 47, Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka, Guy Davis, Holly Near and Vance Gilbert.

The festival runs from 10am to dusk on both Saturday and Sunday; single day or full weekend passes are available, and there is on-site camping available for festival volunteers.There are six performance venues, spread throughout the park, including a dance tent and, with a little down time here and there for setting up and re-tuning the sound systems, entertainment is pretty much continuous in all of them.

The music and entertainment are supplemented by a food court, a crafts and folk arts bazaar, an activist area (disproportionately populated, as one would expect, with environmental activists), educational displays (many focused on the Hudson River and related watersheds and ecosystems), and a Green Living Expo.In keeping with the latter two sections, and with the larger mission of the Clearwater organization, the festival runs — literally — on renewable energy: for several years now, the performance stages have all been powered by a combination of solar power and biodiesel generators.