The 2009 Newport Folk Festival in Newport, R.I., reportedly enjoyed its highest attendance in years with 9,200 visitors.

Sara Cox doesn't wait for the question she has been asked so many times before _ how, as a mother of three, is she able to function as a singer-songwriter, find the time to chat up the media about her music and tour the country? During the first five minutes of a conversation from her home in the Portland suburb of Windham, Maine, Cox, 34, volunteers one of her secrets: She has time to talk this day "because the boys (Avery, 9, and Caleb, 7) are hanging out reading and my daughter (Lila, 2) is at day care." A few minutes later, she discloses another of her time-management tricks: "If I have 20 minutes, I write a song." Then she reveals the reason that she can take her act on the road _ the "divide and conquer" strategy to problem-solving developed by Cox and her 46-year-old musician husband, guitarist-keyboardist-producer Nate Schrock.