I had access to a car yesterday afternoon, so I decided to take a ride out to the 3rd annual Brooklyn Folk Festival out in Red Hook, which was held this year in the old warehouses of the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. (I went to the first festival at Jalopy back in 2009.) The new location was right on the harbor, which made possible the first annual Banjo Toss, where contestants tried to toss a skinless banjo as far as they could into the water. (High mark: 61 feet.) Providing the musical accompaniment was Veveritse: a Balkan brass band cut from the same cloth as Slavic Soul Party and other Eastern European party bands.
Upstairs, a small stage was set up in the back corner of BWAC's gallery space, where the Pearly Snaps – Rosie Newton, fiddle and Stephanie Jenkins, banjo – played a pretty set of old-time music that went from fast, to slow, to fast again. Just the right thing to take the chill off an unusually cool June Sunday.
More pics on Flickr.
