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Iris DeMent joins Wilco, Jason Isbell, Nick Lowe at Solid Sound fest next weekend
“I would like folks to show up and listen to each other … Sometimes, there can be a lot of healing in a human just to know that somebody heard them.”
A music industry vet, American singer-songwriter Iris DeMent loves performing at music festivals for their outdoor quality.
“I feel like part of the whole natural order of things,” she said, describing the mingling of her music with the other sounds of birds, cicadas, and wind. “And I love that.”
At the end of June, she’ll headline one of New England’s larger outdoor music festivals — Wilco’s Solid Sound, which runs from June 28 through 30 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) out in North Adams. Inaugurated in 2010, the festival is hosted and curated by Chicago indie rock band Wilco, and once again returns to MASS MoCA this year for a summer weekend of music and arts programming that could draw over 8,000 attendees each day.
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DeMent headlines the festival alongside Wilco, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, and Nick Lowe & Los Straightjackets, and noted that she’s especially excited to see Courtney Marie Andrews, Jeff Tweedy, and Nick Lowe perform.
Music is far from the only entertainment on the docket at Solid Sound, part of what sets the festival apart from other indie rock festivals in the region, like Green River Festival, Levitate Music Festival, and Beach Road Weekend. Festival goers can find non-musical programming like John Hodgman’s Comedy Cabaret, various Substack pop-up interviews, live painting by Steve Keene (who’s painted album covers for bands like Pavement), and a live presentation of Hrishikesh Hirway’s Song Exploder podcast.
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And, in the spirit of the Berkshires, the festival also features free nature hikes for all festival goers, plenty of local food and craft beer and cider vendors, and kid-friendly activities galore. The festival has official campsites, too, and free, off-site parking lots with shuttles for those commuting.
“It just looks like a really great, well-rounded, human, ‘let the humans hang out and be humans’ kind of weekend,” said DeMent. “And I’m all for that.”
The 63-year-old folk musician plays her set from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 30, and she’ll perform mainly from her most recent studio album, “Workin’ on a World,” which came out last year, while “squeezing in a few other” songs, too.
Her seventh studio album, “Workin’ on a World” is a “a batch of songs for its time,” said DeMent, full of modern-day references, both political and otherwise, but grounded in her country-folk sound.
“I love everything about this record. I love the way it’s produced, I love the people I worked with,” she said, shouting out Richard Bennett and Pieta Brown (DeMent’s step-daughter), who co-produced the record alongside her and Jim Rooney.
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“These last eight years or so, I’ve had a really intense sense of urgency to figure out what I can do to contribute to keeping the human race afoot and specifically democracy on the table,” she said of the specificity behind this record. “When I think about my grandchildren, it depends on that. It’s all riding on that.”
Family comes up a lot when DeMent speaks about her creative inspirations. She called her mother, Pat DeMent, her number one influence. She had what DeMent referred to as the “holy spirit” — any time a musician or creative performs with such urgency that you have no choice but to stay quiet and listen.
“I didn’t have that language for it as a kid, but I knew when mom was hanging up the clothes and singing she was not fooling around,” said DeMent. “This wasn’t ‘oh, listen to how pretty I sound’ and that kind of crap. She was reaching for something.”
DeMent said she feels that “holy spirit” feeling listening to Mavis Staples, Bob Dylan, and her husband, Greg Brown. “Sometimes I turn on the radio and bam, there’s the holy spirit.”
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At her June 30 set, she’ll be joined on stage by Ana Egge, another folk singer-songwriter, and bassist Liz Draper. “We will be there together and enjoying each other and enjoying the audience and hoping they’re enjoying us.” But she wants fans (and non-fans) who see her show to take away more than just enjoyment.
“I think there’s so much brokenness right now,” said DeMent. “I’d like to think that when I go out to play and people come to my shows, I’d hope that we all make an agreement that we’re there to try to counter that.”
“In a nutshell,” she said, “I would like folks to show up and listen to each other. Sometimes there can be a lot of healing in a human just to know that somebody heard them … I think we stand a chance to get through some of this horror show if we can implement some of those practices. And then go take the corporate capitalist monster machine all the way to the ground, to get right to the point,” she chuckled.
For both single-day and three-day tickets to Solid Sound, along with the weekend’s full schedule of sets and events, head to solidsoundfestival.com.
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