Lana Del Rey packs Fort Adams as the Newport Folk Festival comes to a close

Note: The original version of this article stated ticket prices for Newport Folk Festival was $500 per day. While initial single day ticket prices sold for a little over $100, reports of secondhand ticket outlets selling tickets for prices of $721 and higher emerged in the days before the festival.

NEWPORT  – Newport Folk Festival is an icon of Newport summers, but the near-immediate sellouts mean most of us don’t get the chance to see what’s going on inside the Fort walls.

The Newport Daily News was in Fort Adams and checked out the scene on the last day, Sunday. The crowd was reportedly less crowded than the previous days, but headliners Lana Del Rey and Billy Strings still brought throngs of fans to the festival that day.

Here’s just a glimpse of moments captured throughout the day.

Lana Del Rey gives a shout-out to her Rhode Island family roots

The crowd to see Lana Del Rey spilled into aisles and walkways and crowded behind fences as the standing-room-only audience at the front stood shoulder to shoulder. The crowd was deafening as they cheered her on. White-clad dancers swirled around her throughout her sets. A set of gold mirrors and a bouquet of white flowers framed her on the stage.

During her set, not only did Lana Del Rey tell the audience she was excited to perform in her father’s hometown, but she called out to her deceased family members, who are all buried in Barrington. The singer herself was born in New York City.

“I’ve only wanted to perform here since I was 14,” the singer said about the Newport Folk Festival.

During her final performance, the song "Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me," she added to one of the lyrics, specifying the location of her family grave.

“Calling from beyond the Barrington grave, I just wanna say, "Hi, Dad".”

Billy Strings wraps up Folk Festival with a bluegrass bang

Lana Del Rey was not the only performer with a captive audience that afternoon. Performers like the Black Opry Revue and Remi Wolf garnered massive crowds of adoring fans as they took the Fort and Quad stages.

While he did not bring on a special guest to help close the show, bluegrass star Billy Strings' finale performance ended the festival with a blast of pure Americana. During his set, he and his band riffed off The Beatles "Daytripper," and Strings later performed a traditional talking blues ballad, a rhythmic spoken word story ala Woody Guthrie about being pulled over with weed in the car.

Kayaking to the Fort: A generational tradition

Just past the fence surrounding the main grounds of the folk festival, standing on the rocky edge of Fort Adams’ shoreline, Claire O’Halloran and her father Tim stood and listened to The Black Opry Revue playing several feet away from them on the Folk Stage. New Yorker-turned-Connecticut resident Tom O’Halloran said he’s been attending Folk Fest since the days of Arlo Guthrie and Ray Charles.

“That was the best show I’ve ever seen, Arlo Guthrie at sunset,” O’Halloran said.

O’Halloran said he was excited to see Billy Strings this year, while his daughter joked she looks forward to seeing a surprise performance from Brandi Carlile every year. Claire O’Halloran and her friends from New York City began regularly attending Newport Folk Fest in 2018. By tradition, they purchase at least one ticket for Folk Festival, typically Saturday, and then travel to Fort Adams by kayak on Sunday to swim and listen to the music on the shore.

Behind them, dozens of boaters anchored in Newport Harbor with the exact same plan in mind. Coming to the folk fest by way of the water is a festival in its own right.

“You can be in the water and drink your own booze, it’s its own scene,” Claire O’Halloran said. “We love Newport, we love the Folk Fest and we love doing boatside.”

Supporting sobriety in a festival setting

Nestled deep within the viewing space for the main Fort Stage, one large white tent advertising mocktails drew a small crowd to shade beneath its canopy. People ate food purchased from nearby trucks on tables and others settled in on the comfortable chairs and couches while sipping colorful mocktails. This is sobriety advocacy nonprofit The Phoenix’s Sober Tent, an initiative in collaboration with the 1 Million Strong campaign and the Stand Together Foundation to provide a safe haven for those wanting an alcohol-free space to hang out at Newport Folk Festival.

“The vision of the campaign is to change the culture in the music business as it relates to how addiction and recovery is celebrated, talked about, and supported in the music space which traditionally can be a very challenging space if you’re in recovery,” said Bill Taylor, the music director for The Phoenix.

From the Fort: These Newport Folk Festival performances served up legendary music, historic events

The tent featured non-alcoholic beverages, and mocktails, courtesy of the company Teas for Torie. The two mixologists behind a table poured drinks like Vagabond Dreamin’, a mix of blackberry, lime, aromatic bitters and sparkling water; La Bomba, a hibiscus tea with orange juice and ginger; and Summertime Sadness, a Lana Del Rey-themed drink with rose, lemon juice, lemon balm and sparkling water.

This is the sober tent’s first time in Newport, but the campaign has stationed the tent at other festivals such as the New Orleans Jazz Festival. Taylor said Newport Folk Festival is actually a better environment for sobriety than some other music venues because there are designated spaces for drinking and the environment is so welcoming.

“Most music environments are not that way, where you walk into them and you’re surrounded by drinking and there’s so few options in many cases for what’s available to you if you’re choosing not to drink alcohol,” Taylor said.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Newport Folk Festival 2023: Lana Del Rey highlights final day