Who will be the surprise guest at this year's Newport Folk Festival? Here are some guesses

The Newport Folk Festival is this weekend, and fans are already speculating as to who the special guest performer (or performers!) could be.

Special guest performers have graced the stage many times over the years, with the most recent being Joni Mitchell, who came out of retirement in 2022 to perform a set that included "Carey," "Big Yellow Taxi," "Amelia," "Shine" and more, in what some called the greatest moment in the history of the festival. Mitchell's shocker overshadowed 2022's other surprise performer, Paul Simon.

A year later in 2023 James Taylor surprised concert-goers as a late fill-in when Noah Kahan fell ill.

In 2019, Dolly Parton performed with Amanda Shires, Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby, even singing "I Will Always Love You" and "Jolene."

Special guests: These Newport Folk Festival performances served up legendary music, historic events

This year's lineup includes some big names: Dropkick Murphys, Killer Mike, Guster, Taj Mahal and even Joan Baez, who will do some poetry readings. Perhaps the best indicator of a special performance comes from podcaster, comedian and former talk show host Conan O'Brien, who is performing on July 28, the last day of the festival, and is billed as "Conan O'Brien and Real Musicians," featuring Dawes and Jimmy Vivino, the band leader of O'Brien's TBS show "Conan," and a member of The Tonight Show Band, as well as "very special guests."

With that clue in mind, here are some possibilities.

Bruce Springsteen

Max Weinberg, founder and leader of The Tonight Show Band, which was the house band for O'Brien's late night TV show, is a drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Could this connection bring "The Boss" to Newport? Well, Springsteen is performing at Wembley Stadium in London on July 25 and 27 – superstar musicians can and do fly in superfast jets, so it's not entirely impossible.

Slipknot

The heavy metal band is not your typical Folk Fest performer, but playing off the Weinberg connection, Max Weinberg's son, Jay Weinberg, is a former drummer with the band. That said, Slipknot posted to social media that they had parted ways with Jay Weinberg in November 2023.

Patton Oswalt

Comedian Oswalt has been a guest both on O'Brien's talk shows and podcast, and he performed July 20 at the Vets – it's possible he could still be in Rhode Island.

More: Newport Folk Festival 2024: Get ready for this year and relive the past

Lisa Kudrow

Kudrow, known to most as Phoebe Buffay on the TV show "Friends," and O'Brien dated in the late '80s and early '90s, and on his podcast, O'Brien recently admitted he was jealous when his ex would talk about how funny her late co-star Matthew Perry was. Kudrow is no stranger to guest performances – in 2015 she joined Taylor Swift on stage at the Staples Center in Los Angeles to perform a duet of "Smelly Cat," which Kudrow first sang on "Friends."

Jay Leno

So O'Brien hosted The Tonight Show for two years, until he was essentially fired when the show's former host, Jay Leno, decided to return. Instead of accepting NBC's offer to push his own show back to a later slot, O'Brien chose to move to TBS, where he hosted his own show for 11 years. The unceremonious exit has been the subject of jokes among comedians and late-night TV hosts for years, with David Letterman questioning O'Brien's relationship with Leno and Steven Colbert joking that he "had to fire" O'Brien after allowing him to crash the stage during the 2021 Emmys.

Leno famously owns a mansion in Newport. Could the Folk Festival stage be the place where these two comedy greats bury the hatchet?

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The White Stripes

Speaking of The Tonight Show, Conan got The White Stripes – "our good friends for many years" – to perform on the last episode of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," before he moved over to The Tonight Show. The band had been on hiatus for a couple years at that point.

Now, Jack White has continued to perform, both as a solo act but also as a member of the Raconteurs and Dead Weather, but Meg White, who has said she suffers from anxiety, has not performed since. The White Stripes may not have performed in over a decade, but they are still on people's minds: They were among the nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023, the first year they were eligible. A reunion performance on the Folk Festival stage would truly be "very special."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Newport Folk Festival 2024: Predicting the special surprise performers