Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Devil Makes Three: Newport Folk 2014

Pete Bernhard (right) and Cooper McBean of The Devil Makes Three perform at the 2014 Newport Folk Festival.
Adam Kissick for NPR
Pete Bernhard (right) and Cooper McBean of The Devil Makes Three perform at the 2014 Newport Folk Festival.

A thumbnail description of The Devil Makes Three — "acoustic string-band music with no drummer" — makes its music seem old-fashioned, even quaint. But the California trio plays with boozy aggression and unhinged intensity. If there were a Newport Punk Festival (and, really, why shouldn't there be?), The Devil Makes Three wouldn't be out of place in its lineup, amplification be damned.

Hear the group perform as part of the 2014 Newport Folk Festival, recorded live on Friday, July 25 in Newport, R.I.

Set List

  • "Beneath The Piano"
  • "Hallelu"
  • "Walk On Boy"
  • "Statesboro Blues"
  • "Forty Days"
  • "Gracefully Facedown"
  • "Johnson Family"
  • "A Moment's Rest"
  • "Graveyard"
  • "Spinning Like A Top"
  • "Worse Or Better"
  • "Do Wrong Right"
  • "St. James Infirmary"
  • Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)