Watkins Family Hour will play its own set with Fiona Apple, then lead various singers through Bob Dylan’s HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED
ROOTS OF AMERICAN MUSIC
Damrosch Park Bandshell
Amsterdam Ave. between 62nd & 63rd Sts.
Saturday, August 8, free, 7:00
lcoutofdoors.org
The annual Roots of American Music festival, part of Lincoln Center Out of Doors, is always among the highlights of the free summer music season, and this year is certainly no exception. Things get going on August 8 at 2:00 on Hearst Plaza with Kasey Chambers, Sam Outlaw, and the Quebe Sisters. At 7:00, Justin Townes Earle will get the evening show going in Damrosch Park, highlighting songs from his latest album, Absent Fathers (Vagrant, January 2015), the companion piece to 2014’s Single Mothers. The wiry Earle is an excellent storyteller, following in the tradition of his father, singer-songwriter and activist Steve Earle. Up next is Watkins Family Hour, founded by Nickel Creek guitarist Sean Watkins and his sister, fiddle player Sara Watkins, who have finally taken their popular monthly LA show on the road while self-releasing their debut, eponymous record; the all-covers album features such songs as the Grateful Dead’s “Brokedown Palace,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain,” Skeeter Davis’s “Where I Ought to Be,” and Lindsey Buckingham’s “Steal Your Heart Away.” At Lincoln Center, WFH will be joined by Fiona Apple and other local folk and bluegrass musicians. The evening then concludes in grand style with WFH serving as the house band for a fiftieth-anniversary performance of Bob Dylan’s August 1965 masterpiece, Highway 61 Revisited, which consists of such genre-redefining classics as “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Queen Jane Approximately,” “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” and “Desolation Row.” Among those taking the mic will be Shawn Colvin, Pokey LaFarge, Aimee Mann, and Ted Leo. AmericanaFest continues August 9 with Iris DeMent on Heart Plaza at 3:00, followed by Lyle Lovett and His Large Band in Damrosch Park at 7:00.