The What Cheer? Brigade is a twenty piece art-punk brass band from Providence, Rhode Island. I’ve said it several times already, but they made the Newport Folk Festival exciting. I spent much of Sunday afternoon tracking them down one by one to get profile shots. Here are nineteen pictures of twenty people responsible for making the Folk Fest a party.

The What Cheer? Brigade, pictured in part above, pretty much made the festival for me. They ended the day by leading a parade through the festival grounds with Elvis Perkins at the head. Totally epic. More on them later.

We stayed at a friends house close to the festival ground. What probably would have been a thirty minute walk turned into an hour long car ride due to traffic in downtown Newport and we missed Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.

Taking a breather fro the sounds of the 51st annual Newport Folk Festival, here’s a quick roundup of @BostonMusicBlog’s various Twipics from Sunday. Let’s roll ghetto style before the official photos and slideshows get posted later on…

Down below check out sneak peeks at Punch Brothers, Sharon Jones, April Smith and the Great Picture Show, What Cheer? Brigade — posing for Phoenix cameras and in glorious brass intermission action on the Quad lawn — and Pokey Lafarge and the South City Three.

The above “hawties” wanted to party. I said, ‘naw gurl, I gotta work.’ So I turned around and took more pictures from the pit on the main stage. Day one of the Boston Phoenix’s Newport Folk Festival experience. Anyway.

Above we see the bassist from O’Death, who looks eerily similar to the late Jay Reatard.

Los Angeles indie-folk dudes Dawes just pulled in a standing ovation, maybe two if you’re being technical, at their show on the Quad stage at Newport Folk Festival. But a greater find was that pretty much every pretty girl here in Newport loves herself some Dawes. Maybe there’s something about that whole Laurel Canyon thing after all.

Checking in from the Newport Folk Festival, where I’m asking the tough questions, like why Dawes brought Kirsten Dunst to Great Scott a few years ago and if anyone recognizes AA Bondy from his days in Verbena. Stay tuned for video interviews with those cats, as well as live footage of O’Death, who have put on the best show of Day 1 so far.

The Phoenix team arrived at 2:55, five minutes before our scheduled interview with A.A. Bondy. None of us knew quite what he looked like, so after wading through a crowd of gangly, flanneled folkies Marrota was fortunate enough to find him. He’s a nice dude, digs festivals. Video to come.

From my periphery during the interview I saw a drummer perched on his throne karate kid style, stalking his high hat ready to strike, across the festival ground in a small covered tent.