Q&A: Newport Folk Artists Talk Life, Self-Care, and Pre-Show Rituals

Jeff Gorman (of Illiterate Light): There’s a lot that comes to mind, but the first thing that jumps out is that we just biked 700 miles from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where we formed as a band, all the way up to Newport, Rhode Island, and we played three shows along the way. We hosted some community bike rides along the way. We’re shooting a little mini documentary and we did it as a pilgrimage up to Newport Folk Festival because it’s been a really important place to us over these last 7 or 8 years. We host our own stage at the festival. It’s powered by bikes. So biking all that way and then playing one of the best sets of our lives. That was something that we’re both really proud of.

Public Enemy by Michael Dunaway

Mary Chapin Carpenter: It’s hard not to just default to, you know. Well, I’m most proud of the new record that I put out. That’s good. There’s two records that I put out in 2025 that I’m deeply proud of, but that would be the easiest, right? Yeah. It’s not like I generated this. So it’s not like I’m proud of it for me, but I think maybe a better word would be things I’m grateful for, if that is acceptable to you.

And I have a lot of those in 2025. It’s as if every year that passes and I still get to do what I love, I feel just so grateful and fortunate and I will start crying if I go into this any further. But you know, as a human being, hopefully you never stop learning how to do certain things. And I’m getting better at learning how to ask for help. And I’m getting better at understanding things like, you know, there’s a space between solitude and loneliness, and existing in that space makes me a better friend. Those are the things I’m just thinking about and pondering. And the last thing I’ll say is that I have always, you know, been plagued I think, by, perfectionism and, you know, things like that that really are rigid and difficult. And if I continue to work hard at embracing imperfection, because that way you see so much more beauty in the world and you’re not so hard on yourself. You just can, just be a part of it so much easier than if you’re trying to live up to something that is unreasonable and it comes from you, you know? So those are the things. That’s such a long-winded answer.

When you’re going through hard times, what helps you survive?

Tyler Ballgame: Turbulence and serious depression defined me for a decade of my life. And now that it’s all working out, it feels like another lifetime. I would say the freedom from that came before the success, you know, the success, any worldly thing, any thing you can accomplish is not a salve for that spiritual problem, you know. And what freed me was realizing the fact that we’re not our stories. You know, our ego associates with stories. I’m Tyler, I’m from Rhode Island. I’m a singer. I’m a songwriter. And then if there’s things going wrong within that story, you know, like, I should be here by now or what do they think of me? Or they said this. What does that mean? Like, I feel like 90% of human suffering is self-taught, you know? So it’s just like that little, like, mouse wheel in your brain that just goes and goes and goes.

And because we’re creative, it’s like hyper powerful. Like, we can create whole worlds, you know. And we are doing that. You know, so it’s free. It’s learning ways to access peace underneath personality. So the space between words, the space between notes, the space between thoughts. Some people access it via meditation. Some people just carry a presence with them, you know, and just being like, wow, the only thing that’s real is right now. Right now, you know, that’s it. And everything else is inherently a fiction. You know, obviously you have to plan and you have to make choices to further along your goals and, and make healthful choices and honor yourself and honor the love that binds you together. But the truth is, we are a little point of consciousness, a node amongst billions. And that’s freeing. It frees you from your self-importance and self consumption, which I think is a hard truth to look at it that way. But I think it is true.

Michael Spearman (of SNACKTIME): Family, friends and video games currently. God of War. And, you know, just the idea that to me, life, you know, life is not guaranteed. So life is a privilege. So even when things are going bad, you can look at it and go, okay, but like, I’m alive, it could be worse. I got some, you know what I mean? Take account of your blessings and you just push. You just push, push, push and and get yourself to get yourself out of that situation. Never give up. That’s what I. That’s how it gets me out.

SNACKTIME by Michael Dunaway

Anna Tivel: I think it’s something that I’ve had a hard time accepting, and it’s people. And I think when I’m having a hard time, I want to push everybody away. And I’m learning over and over again that it’s letting people in. And even just getting into the world and going where people are and where people are feeling things and expressing things and having real emotions and showing them to each other. And it’s just like forever a reminder like, oh yeah, we’re okay. This is whatever this is that we’re doing here together. It’s together. And yeah, the urge to shut the whole thing out is like the worst thing I’ve ever done and that I want to do. But yeah, I think it’s just people.

I think it’s been one of the biggest teachers in my life of how to be with people. I don’t think I’ve been historically good at being with people and bringing myself into the room and not shutting down, and I think people at shows are so willing to be emotional with you, and afterwards they tell you their stories. Like this lyric reminded me this about my life, and I want to tell you about this thing that happened to me and that it’s such a teacher to me. And then the more it happens, the more I’m able to be present in the room with people and in front of them. And remember that it’s not about me at all. It’s sort of about making a room that’s human. And then we all get to be there for a minute. And that’s taught me a ton of just like the way I used to hide when I started versus where I had now is so different. And then hopefully when I’m 90, I won’t hide at all!

Anna Tivel by Michael Dunaway

Jeff Gorman (of Illiterate Light): I’ve sort of made it a practice to do this thing called morning pages, which I know a bunch of artists out there do. And it’s basically just a way to every morning sort of dump all of the, you know, whatever, swirling around in my head and my heart onto three pages of paper. And then I can sort of look at what I’m going through, and I can have a little bit of distance from it. And it is one of the best sort of tools in my tool bag for, you know, just handling all the shit that life throws at you. So I’m a huge advocate for the morning pages.

Mon Rovia: I’d say my family helps me a ton, just to be able to come back down and be present. And also, the team that’s around me always gives me a place to be able to be honest and truthful and relaxed with what I’m going through. So I couldn’t do this work without the good people around my life.

Tom Odell: I’ve gotten really into running over the last few years. I do it pretty much every day and I find when I’m stressed it’s the perfect antidote to getting stuck in one of those vicious thought loops which I am a little prone to. When I was on tour in my early twenties, I used to discover cities by visiting bars with my band, but these days I do it by rivers! I head for the river and I almost always find a decent path to run down. That or a park. It’s really quite exhilarating to get up early, put my running shoes on and go get lost whilst the city is waking up. This morning I ran along the river in Boise, Idaho and found Table Rock Mountain, which I ran up, and the views were incredible.

Jack Antonoff by Michael Dunaway

Holly Laessig (of Lucius): Oh, man, it’s hard for me. I think it’d be being close to nature. So, like, if we’re on tour, finding a walk that’s near trees or, you know, some feeling of, like, groundedness, or if we’re at home, that’s like gardening or something like that. Just feeling close to the earth helps me feel grounded. I guess that would be mine. Yeah, I try to always literally stop and smell the roses or stop and smell the flowers. Try and do that with my kids too. And I think it’s important.

Jess Wolfe (of Lucius): The thing that comes to mind in addition to that is community. And I think we’ve been really blessed with having such a strong just, you know, creative family and having both within our band and like other artists surrounding us. And I think having that, knowing that wherever we go, it’s likely that we have someone to call to check in with that, you know, and sometimes it’s unexpected. Sometimes it’s somebody you talk to twice a year, and sometimes it’s somebody you talk to every week. But knowing that you have that community around you makes the challenging moments that feel very isolating more manageable. And, I mean, I feel blessed that we have that in spades. I know that’s not the case for everyone, but finding a way to connect to people around you and, you know, finding your people.

Hayes Carll: I’m trying to figure that out for myself every day on the road. I’ve had to learn to not treat it like the enemy. Like my job as some burden. You know, I love it. It’s my dream. But after a certain number of years and a certain number of shows and it can start to – you can get burned out and, and then if you keep going out when you’re burned out that’s, to me, a dangerous place to be. So I’ve tried to cultivate an appreciation for what I get to do. And when I can look at it as an opportunity and something I’m grateful for, it helps me a lot. Which reminds me of my friend Ray Wylie Hubbard’s quote, which is, “The days I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, those are good days.” I find that to be very true. It’s not always easy, to remember or to practice. But every time I do, I’m better for it in that moment. So that’s a quick fix.

But on a day to day basis and creatively I do some of what you talked about. For me, meditating, journaling, setting an intention, and just calming my nervous system so that I don’t get overwhelmed and spin out is vital, and quite a bit of what my record is about. It’s just trying to recognize what’s worked for me and what hasn’t, and mostly what hasn’t. And, and in the last few years really taking some time to try and figure out how to prevent repeating that over and over. I don’t want to have these same conversations with myself 10 or 20 years from now or whatever. So I was tired of running into the wall. And for me, a way to be able to process that and be still enough to be present enough, to do any of that work was I had to get still. I had to calm down. And so for me, meditating and journaling is a major, major part of that.

Hayes Carll by Michael Dunaway

Lukas Nelson: Being clearheaded is helpful when you’re going through dark times, because at least you know which thoughts are real and which thoughts aren’t artificially induced. I think when I was drinking and smoking a lot of weed, a lot of my emotions were up and down because of chemical imbalances. You know, there’s a lot of dysregulation that happens from not getting proper rest. So just understanding which thoughts were my own was really helpful. And then I was able to really then look at what I was trying to run away from and realize it wasn’t that scary. And then I think, I do think that, like, once a year, I’ll go with a therapist and I’ll check in with myself, I’ll do a psychedelic check in. And I think I actually think. Not everybody can do it, but I think that if you can, it’s really helpful.

I always look at it like regular therapy helps you to figure out what your hangups are like. You can really kind of talk about it and you can feel it. It’s almost like getting a massage for your soul. And then you figure out where the knots are, and psychedelics help you to release those knots. They help you to go in there and actually untie those knots and let them fall away. They let you get deeper. They let you go in. They let you confront it because your brain and your body protect you from the most painful things. And sometimes those psychedelics, will it bring those things right up to the forefront? So that kind of like a really deep, painful knot in massage.

Lukas Nelson by Ali Patterson

Larry Monroe (of SNACKTIME): I just want to say, like, definitely prayer. But aside from prayer, just believing in something other than yourself, having a support system and ultimately, that’s it. Just believing in something out of yourself. You can’t do anything by yourself. So if you have people around you who support you, who can lift you up, you’re a lot closer to your goal.

Mary Chapin Carpenter: I’m learning how to ask for help, which is, you’d think it wouldn’t be so hard. But, you know, I’m 67 years old. I’ve always been independent. I live on my own and, you know, this kind of thing. And it’s hard to ask for help because.For all the reasons. Yeah. But when I am going through something hard, I like, I try to reach out to the people who know me best and who make me feel accepted and seen and heard on all those things.

And to remember I’m not alone because they are with me. And also. But then don’t try another thing which I was thinking about that when I get really fearful and, you know, afraid and down and all those things, I try to remember that feeling, those, that fear. It reminds me that I also know how to be brave. You know, it just flips because I’ve gotten this far right? And it’s not been without, it’s not been all smooth sailing. But I got this far. So I have to remind myself, you can do this. You know how to be brave. And it may not feel, you know, automatic. But if you meditate on it a bit and sort of sit up a little straighter and you can, you can feel that in yourself. So I hope that makes sense.

Tyler James Kelly: I wrote a song on Dreamweaver called “Going Strong,” and it’s kind of my reminder to myself that pretty much no matter what’s going on in my life, all I really do need is my six string guitar.

S.G. Goodman by Michael Dunaway

Do you have any special tradition or ritual before you go onstage?

Devon Vonballson (of Flipturn): We have a really quirky preshow ritual that started in Gainesville Florida a few years ago. It was a show outdoors that was getting rained out pretty bad, and I think everybody was pretty bummed about it in the moment. I just wanted to kind of boost morale, and I was brainstorming artists that have done, like, really cool performances in the rain. And the first performance that came to mind was Prince performing “Purple Rain” in the rain. So we huddled and jokingly I started praying to Prince before this show, and literally like the second we took the stage the sun started to come through the clouds and since that moment we were like okay before every single show we have to pray to Prince. So we have a Prince Prayer before every single show. Sometimes we call it “PP” for short. That’s our little ritual.

Nova One: Right when we get on stage, we have a ritual where we spray each other with pink tinted rose water. It’s super refreshing and feels like an intimate moment between the four of us that we share with the audience.

Tom Odell: I have done 20 minutes of transcendental meditation before every single show I’ve done for the last decade. I can’t imagine doing a gig without it now. I learnt how to meditate through the David Lynch Foundation back in 2016. It honestly changed my life and allows me to clear my mind and my heart before I walk on stage.

Anna Tivel: I just get really quiet and I try to be very alone for a minute. And just maybe remember, sometimes I listen to a song that feels like what music is to me, someone else’s song. Or just kind of try to let go and open up and, yeah, get ready to go. Be a person with people and remember what being a person is, I think.

The Swell Season by Michael Dunaway

Mon Rovia: Honestly, right now, David Gray’s “As I’m Leaving” has been my calm song before shows and having moments of silence right before I go onstage. Those are some things I do, just listen to music and have moments of silence.

Maggie Rose: I would say that the ritual is the show itself. Just knowing that for that moment in time, with all the distractions in our life, that’s the most present I will likely be all day. You’re just there to establish that connection with the audience and serve the music, and there aren’t a whole lot of things like that, that just demand your attention. So it’s a really beautiful exercise to just kind of put everything to the side for a second and go play the show.

Maggie Rose by Michael Dunaway

Jeff Gorman (of Illiterate Light): The biggest and simplest one I could point to is that we just get together. We say you know, attitude is God. And that really comes from the, you know, ten years of touring. Things always go wrong on stage. You know, strings break, drumsticks break, monitors, you know, that kind of stuff. Sometimes the P.A. breaks, sometimes there’s weather. Just there’s all these things that you can’t really control, and they’re going to come in and impact the show. And at the end of the day, none of that really matters. What matters is attitude.

Dan Reeder: One of the sound guys told me there’s a Chinese breathing method where you pull your tongue back, you breathe in. And then you hold it for three, and you let it out at seven, and then you wait, and then you start that over and you can seriously practically stop your heart doing that. But the minute you go on stage and the minute you quit doing it, it’s back to so it doesn’t work. But there is one thing that works and that is and that’s what we do before we go on stage. If you go out there with the intention of loving them up then it’s no longer about your fear. It’s like I’m going to give you something. I’m going to try to make you happy. And it makes it completely better. And okay not. We still get five minutes before you go on. We still got what we call cardio where your heart goes like (pounds on chest and makes quick, rhythmic thumping sound) because you don’t know what’s going to happen. But that’s what works for me. And we’ve been doing that.

Mary Chapin Carpenter: My band and I, we don’t have a regular ritual, but there is always that moment on the side of the stage when everyone has sort of emerged and got your gear on and you’re, you know, you’re dressed and you’re ready to go. And we, we like to do a little, you know, fist bumps and all that kind of thing. But being with them reminds me, first of all, that I have a family out here and that is comforting. It doesn’t feel so, so lonely. And it can at times feel lonely. And so it’s the good sense of connection with each other. That in and of itself is a ritual. I think feeling that connection and then something that’s been important to us recently in terms of articulating it to ourselves, to each other, sort of late nights on the bus, we sort of talk about, you know, how the show went or whatever. It’s not so much before the show, but it’s almost like an after show kind of wrap up.

But we’ve been talking a lot lately, the times that we were living in the, the hardships of being in this world now of wearing really tough armor because it can be so painful that there are some days you don’t want to get out of bed. And we we say this not from a it’s not coming from an ego place, but we want to be really assured with each other that we’re out there, not just because it’s another gig and that’s what we do, but rather we feel it’s really important to believe that we’re on a mission to bring something good to people and to and and to and to hope that for Tucson, you know, two hours plus whatever, that we can transport people on a on a journey together. And that being together in that live music situation, you know, our phones and our tablets and all those things, it’s never going to take the place of being together in a live situation. And that’s our chance to make each other feel connected. And that’s that just that’s it’s it’s sort of it’s not a ritual. So much is just a mindset that that we hold close to us.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs by Ali Patterson

Check out our Newport Folk Festival 2025 photo gallery here.