The Brooklyn Folk Festival returns to St. Ann's Church at 157 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights this weekend, Friday, November 6, through Sunday, November 8. Presented by the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, the three-day festival fills the church's Main Stage, its Parish Hall and a Coffeehouse Stage with more than 30 acts, plus film screenings, workshops, square dances and its Sunday tradition, the Banjo Toss.

Friday night: Lonnie Holley and The Deslondes

The festival opens Friday evening at 7 p.m. On the Main Stage, Feral Foster starts the night, followed by the ensemble Gamelan Yowana Sari at 7:50, Lonnie Holley at 8:40, Mama's Broke at 9:30 and The Deslondes at 10:20. Across the building, the Parish Hall runs a square dance with The Bodega Buddies at 7:50, then The Slide Stops and Guachinangos, while the Coffeehouse Stage has four singer-songwriter sets beginning at 7:15.

Saturday: films, oral history and a Jalopy anniversary

Saturday's music starts at noon and runs through the evening. The afternoon Main Stage lineup includes Fatboy Wilson and Old Viejo Bones, The Binoculars, Elijah Wald, a tribute to Steve James with Ana Egge and friends, The Down Hill Strugglers, the fiddle and banjo duo Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves, the Leonie Evans Trio, and JP Harris' Dreadful Wind and Rain at 6 p.m.

The Workshop Room spends Saturday on film and history. At 1 p.m. there is a screening and Q&A of I Snuck Off the Slave Ship, a 20-minute film by Lonnie Holley and Cyrus Moussavi. At 2 p.m., an oral history marks 20 years of Free Dirt Records. At 3:15, Steve Winick presents 50 years of the American Folklife Center, and at 4:15 a feature-length documentary about the Fugs screens with a Q&A with its director, Chuck Smith. The Parish Hall has a Delmore Brothers centennial sing-along at 1 p.m. and Cajun music from Eric and Suzy Thompson at 5.

Saturday evening opens at 7:15 with a celebration of Jalopy's 20th anniversary featuring the Boxcutter Collective. Bruce Molsky, Tony Trischka and Michael Daves follow at 7:50, then Agalisiga Chuj Mackey, Louis Cato at 9:30 and the Mohamed Araki Band at 10:20.

Sunday: the Banjo Toss, workshops and Bonnie Prince Billy

Sunday begins on the Main Stage at 1 p.m. with the Banjo Toss contest. The afternoon continues with the Clover Valley Boys, a set from the Starvation Army with Sing in Solidarity presented by Free Dirt, Twain, Justin Robinson, and Sheila Kay Adams with Donna Ray Norton at 5:20.

Sunday is also the day to pick up an instrument. A country blues slide guitar workshop on the music of Steve James runs in the Parish Hall at 2:40, and Justin Robinson leads a fiddle workshop in the Workshop Room at 2:50. Sheila Kay Adams tells American folk tales at 4 p.m., and at 5:20 Ian Nagoski presents a program on Arabic, Armenian, Greek and Turkish-speaking musicians who recorded in Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey between about 1924 and 1959. The Queens County Rat Club calls a square dance in the Parish Hall at 4:30.

The festival closes Sunday evening with a Judee Sill memorial set led by Lily Talmers at 6:30, Kiki Cavazos at 7:40, Bonnie Prince Billy at 8:30 and Dolunay, presented by Brooklyn Maqam, at 9:20.

After hours, and a coat drive

Each night after the church program ends, the festival moves to Jalopy Tavern at 317 Columbia Street for an afterparty. All three days, the Parish Hall is collecting clean coats and warm clothing for migrant communities and Red Hook residents through Red Hook Mutual Aid.

How to go

St. Ann's Church is at 157 Montague Street, between Clinton and Henry Streets. The Court St station (R) and the Borough Hall station (2, 3, 4, 5) are each a short walk away. Tickets are sold online through the link on the festival's website, which also has the full schedule by stage and room.

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