April 11, 2024
David DelPoio/USA TODAY NETWORK
John Oates will perform at the 2024 Philadlephia Folk Festival, which is returning in August after the event was canceled last year for the first time in its 62-year history.
The Philadelphia Folk Festival will return to the Old Pool Farm campground in Upper Salford Township this summer with headliners John Oates and Gangstagrass. The event's 62-year-old tradition is resuming after financial troubles caused its cancelation last year.
Oates, the cofounder of the Philly power pop duo Hall & Oates, will have top billing on the second night of the three-day festival, which will be held Aug. 16-18. Brooklyn's Gangstagrass, who will headline the first night, are known for their fusion of blue grass and hip-hop.
Other artists slated to perform at this year's festival include Aaron Nathans & Michael G. Ronstadt, Adam Ezra Band, Angelique Francis Band and the Great Groove Band.
Oates, 76, has lately been embroiled in a public legal dispute with his longtime collaborator, Daryl Hall, who's now embarking on a tour with Elvis Costello & The Imposters that will play at the Mann Center on July 10. Hall sued Oates in December to prevent the sale of Oates' share of a business partnership between them without his permission. Court documents revealed there had been a long-simmering rift between the two musicians, who met one another while attending Temple University in the late 1960s.
Oates is slated to release a new solo album in May curiously named "Reunion." He released a video for the album's title track this week.
In February 2023, the Philadelphia Folksong Society (PFS), which has run the festival since 1962, canceled last year's event because the organization was on the brink of financial collapse. It had been the oldest, continuously running outdoor music festival in the country.
The cost to stage the 60th anniversary festival two years ago was about $1.2 million, leaving PFS with limited reserves entering 2023. The concerts in 2020 and 2021 were streamed during the COVID-19 pandemic. PFS founder and radio DJ Gene Shay, known as the "Godfather of Philadelphia Folk Music," died in 2020 at 85.
Instead of entering bankruptcy or shutting down, PFS reevaluated its festival planning and mission to position itself as a more sustainable organization. A new management team announced in December includes the group that formerly ran the Spring Gulch Folk Festival in New Holland.
The festival scene in the region has been inconsistent in recent years. Delaware's Firefly Music Festival and Philadelphia's Made in America Festival each have now been canceled two years in a row.
Tickets to the 2024 Philadelphia Folk Festival can be purchased at the festival's website.
