Like Helm, Tom Rush, Jorma Kaukonen, Arlo Guthrie, and Tom Paxton, Bromberg is a longtime veteran of the Folk Festival who will be returning to the Old Pool Farm in Upper Salford Township for the fest's 50th anniversary celebration, which runs Thursday through Sunday.
Bromberg, who has lived in Wilmington above his David Bromberg & Associates Fine Violins shop since 2002, will play the Folk Fest's main stage on Saturday afternoon, where his 11-piece Big Band will co-headline with party-starters Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue.
It was as an accompanist for Jerry Jeff Walker that Bromberg first played the festival in the late 1960s. The guitarist, who studied musicology at Columbia University and was further schooled by blues great Rev. Gary Davis, also was playing studio sessions with Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, and John Prine, and wrote songs with George Harrison.
Hanging out at the Old Pool Farm back in the day, Bromberg enjoyed the collaborative spirit of the festival, where he'll be back in the swing when he takes part in an acoustic blues workshop with Jorma Kaukonen, Roy Bookbinder, and others on Sunday afternoon.
Later that day, he'll be part of a husband-and-wife workshop with his wife, artist Nancy Josephson, who will perform with her sweetly harmonizing Angel Band.
Those workshops and other impromptu jam sessions are a key part of the folk-fest ethos, says WXPN radio host Gene Shay, who will be emceeing and telling jokes at the festival for the 50th consecutive year.
(A sample groaner from the 76-year-old Shay, who was once mock-arrested on stage for "impersonating a comedian": "How many folksingers does it take to change a lightbulb? Eighteen. One to change it, and 17 to ask to be on the guest list.")
