The show may be more golden oldie than ground-breaking, but the move of the 1960s musical “Hair” to Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse in West Palm is something of a milestone for the Boca Raton production company staging it. It marks the second summer in a row that producers Michael Lifshitz and Marcie Gorman-Althof have mounted a show in Delray Beach and then taken it on to Kravis.
The pair collaborated in December 2014 with “A Chorus Line” at the Crest Theater at the Delray Beach Center for the Arts, then eight months later took their second show, “Side by Side by Sondheim,” to Kravis’ Rinker Theater. That was a first for the Crest, which normally stages toured shows. And it’s a further sign that South Florida is generating enough work opportunities to get top-quality talent to relocate here.
“Hair” wraps up its run at Kravis June 5.
Some of those aging hippies who loved “Hair” will no doubt head to the Suwannee River this weekend for a huge outdoor musical festival, the 64th annual Florida Folk Festival.
There, they’ll find two Vero folk singers at the top of the ticket, taking the stage along with 300 other performers. The first is the festival’s headliner: the prototypical hippie himself, Arlo Guthrie, whose second home is a converted crab-packing house in Sebastian. He’s performing Saturday night.
Friday night, it’s Vero’s Ben Prestage, much younger but an old soul nonetheless, whose one-man band perpetually bowls people over at venues around Florida and far beyond. After the folk festival, he’s headed off on a European tour with stops in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and Norway.
Prestage, who grew up in Martin County, has roots in Mississippi, his grandfather a sharecropper, and his great-grandmother a Vaudeville musician who toured with Al Jolson. His household was always full of blues music, until he borrowed a friend’s banjo and learned bluegrass. With his cigar-box guitar, dobro and diddly-bow, he may present his music with a backwoods personage – complete with full beard and engineer’s cap. But his sense of humor infuses his songwriting with modern-day sensibilities. There’s a reason he’s played multiple times at the Suwannee festival: He’s a crowd pleaser, and if you miss him this weekend, check his website to catch him locally when he gets back from his tour.
The three-day festival takes place on the 250-acre state park in White Springs, northeast of Gainesville. This year’s focus is on the heritage of Dade County. Other top acts are John McEuen, founding member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; Billy Dean, who hails from Quincy, Florida, and is known for his 1990 hit, “Only Here for a Little While”; Jim Stafford of Winter Haven, whose songs include “The Swamp Witch” and “Spiders and Snakes”; and guitarist Les Dudek from Auburndale, who played with Dickie Betts on “Ramblin’ Man.”
Closer to home, Earl’s Hideaway in Sebastian does Memorial Day up big, with its audience heavy on veterans, especially those arriving on Harleys. Pick an hour, any hour, and you’re likely to find a rowdy crowd this weekend. The fest starts Friday night with the Melbourne-based Motown-Memphis Blues band GT Express, then cranks up Saturday afternoon with the boogie-woogie blues band The Bees; Otis Cadillac and the El Dorados around cocktail hour; and prime time’s Matt Schofield, the 38-year-old Manchester native in the British Blues Hall of Fame.
Sunday features Mike Zito and the Wheels, another blues band but with a strong rock influence.
Following the Wheels is the award-winning J.P. Soars, with his band the Red Hots. Two more bands continue into the night, and then on Monday the cover band Luna Pearl plays all afternoon.
Earl’s boasts that there’s never a cover charge. If your eardrums need a break, it’s an easy stroll to a number of quieter spots along Sebastian’s Riverwalk.
