The Village Trip Returns to NYC With Expansive 2021 Lineup

Following a year off due to the coronavirus pandemic that put the globe on pause in 2020, The Village Trip returns in the fall of 2021 for its third annual iteration. The nine-day celebration of Greenwich Village’s enduring cultural impact and continuing relevance starts Sept. 18 and runs through Sept. 26, and includes a wide swath of concerts, tours and events.

Kicking off Saturday (Sept. 18), the fest opens with a free concert on the corners of West Eighth and MacDougal streets featuring 90-year-old Greenwich legend/composer David Amram (the festival’s artist emeritus) and others. The following Saturday (Sept. 25), Latin jazz drummer Bobby Sanabria and His Multiverse Big Band play a free concert in Washington Square Park that features Grammy winner Janis Siegel of the Manhattan Transfer. That same night, Bodies Electric – an electric guitar quartet founded by John Chang – performs the music of avant pioneers Edgard Varèse and Frank Zappa at iconic venue The Bitter End. The next day (Sept. 26), the Village Trip wraps with its traditional hootenanny finale at The Bitter End, which finds Christine Lavin, David Buskin, Robin Batteau, David Massengill, Hannah Reimann, Michele Temple and Amram bringing the rich Greenwich musical tradition to life.

The nine-day festival includes many more events. To name a few, on Sunday (Sept. 19), The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel production designer Bill Groom will host a talk about how he and his team turn back the clock on Greenwich Village for the hit TV series; on Sept. 18, music historian Jesse Rifkin will lead a walking tour of the locations associated with the ’60s New York folk revival; also on Sept. 18, Kamau Ware, founder of the Black Gotham Experience, will give a walking tour focused on the Black cultural impact that’s often erased from the Village; and on Sept. 21, Ken Lustbader and Jay Shockley of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project will host a walking tour of the LGBTQ presence in Greenwich Village, from the 1890s waterfront scene to the Stonewall Riot in 1969 and beyond.

The Village Trip is co-founded by journalist and historian Liz Thomson, author of Joan Baez: The Last Leaf and the revising editor of a recent revised and illustrated edition of the Bob Dylan tome No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan by late scribe Robert Shelton.