Look for Deer Tick on the third stage Sunday at 3:30 at the folk festival in Newport.

George Wein’s Folk Festival 50 is bringing singers, songwriters and indie-rockers from all over the country to Newport, and among the 30 acts on the bill are Rhode Island-based groups The Low Anthem and Deer Tick. Along with hailing from our state, both put out records in June, both slayed ’em at the big-deal SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, in March, and both look like they aren’t stopping there, even though this weekend they’re stopping here.

AT LAST YEAR’S folk festival in Newport, Ben Knox Miller and the rest of The Low Anthem weren’t on stage — they were backstage, helping out with the recycling.

Festival organizer Jay Sweet recalls that they weren’t just picking up a bottle here and there either: Miller and the band were “putting on muck boots and getting ready to climb into the real dirty stuff.”

They were helping with the environment, but of course they had an ulterior motive too.

“We were running around with pockets full of demo CDs … completely shameless,” singer and songwriter Miller recalls. They handed them out to as many people as they could find. And while the band was filling up six Dumpsters worth of recycling, one of their discs ended up with Jay Sweet; another with Paste magazine, where Sweet works.

Sweet listened to it and later spoke with another of Paste’s editors: “We were both chatting — ‘Did you listen to this?’ ‘Did YOU listen to this?’ ‘I think it’s amazing.’ ‘So do I!’ ”

So do a lot of people. The disc was a pre-release version of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, the band’s second recording, on which the band — Miller, Jeff Prystowsky and Jocie Adams — combined a classic Americana songwriting approach with lovely group vocals and the ability of the three members to play about 20 instruments between them. Paste put a song on one of their sampler discs and gave it a glowing review (“gorgeous chamber folk”).

Not too long after releasing it themselves the band were signed to Nonesuch Records, who remastered and re-released the disc. Popmatters called it “nuanced, prescient, melodic and stirring” and Rolling Stone gave it three stars.

In addition to the American re-release of Charlie Darwin, the disc got its first U.K. release, so this summer has been “a crazy blitz of everything at once,” Miller says. “A lot of frequent-flyer miles logged. It’s been great traveling over there and seeing completely different people speaking completely different languages enjoying the music.”

It’s been all touring all the time, including slots on festivals such as Bonaroo and the upcoming Philadelphia Folk Festival. But Newport is “the one I’m probably most looking forward to,” Miller says — Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan was “the music that I grew up listening to in the back of my parents’ car.”

After Newport, it’s back on the road, Miller says: Their first coast-to-coast U.S. swing is on tap, including a Midwest swing with Joe Pug and Langhorne Slim (who will also be at Newport this weekend), and their first West Coast dates. Then another month headlining in Europe.

But Miller says the band, which plays on the third stage on Saturday at 2:10 p.m., won’t forget its roots.

“My girlfriend works for Clean Water Action, and they run the recycling there, so she’ll probably have me volunteering [Sunday].”

When first reached on the phone, Deer Tick singer and songwriter John McCauley is in the middle of buying a bed.

“I’m domesticating myself,” he explains, and he’s got some catching up to do. The band just got back from a seven-week nationwide tour following the release of Born on Flag Day, and “I’m just kind of getting used to being back.”

He shouldn’t get too comfortable. The record got 3½ stars from Rolling Stone, who said that McCauley “comes on like a stampede” and that “Friday XIII” and the band’s acoustic cover of “Goodnight Irene” “suggest that well-composed misery still loves company.” With bandmates Andrew Tobiassen, Christopher Ryan and Dennis Ryan providing a kick of ’70s electric-acoustic rock and McCauley’s nasal sneer on top, the overall effect on Flag Day is a classic, well-worn humanism that’s earnest without being mawkish.

“Of course we got a bad review in Pitchfork,” McCauley says, “but we knew that was gonna happen. … The response from the fans has been really strong. That’s what I think is most important — what any musician thinks is most important.”

Deer Tick’s highest-profile media appearance was their slot on the inaugural segment of Brian Williams’ “BriTunes” Internet music-interview series.

Yeah, that Brian Williams. “He’s a music nut,” McCauley says of the NBC Nightly News anchor, who supposedly downloads all new iTunes releases every Monday at midnight, when the new music comes out. Williams did an interview backstage at the Rachael Ray show and mentioned his love of Deer Tick’s song “Dirty Dishes,” from their first record, War Elephant.

McCauley and the band got a call within a week to head to New York for a sit-down.

“It was awkward at first — we’d never done anything quite like that before,” McCauley says. “It went well, but it was heavily edited, and they kept some of the most boring parts.”

Still, McCauley says, it was a good conversation: “He’s no joke.”

McCauley, a native Rhode Islander, is psyched to play at Newport. “It’s a legendary kind of thing that happens in our own backyard. And to be invited to be a part of it is an honor.”

There’s an acoustic element to the music, and Deer Tick has done some acoustic sessions that are available on the Internet. As for Newport, where they play the third stage on Sunday at 3:30, McCauley says, “We’ll probably at least try to look traditional, with an acoustic guitar. But we’ll probably end up plugging in.”

Afterward, the schedule calls for a few regional shows for the rest of the summer, and then back on the road in September for the rest of the year.

“We couldn’t be — well, I guess I could be happier,” McCauley says. “But it’s all good stuff.”

The George Wein Folk Festival 50 is Saturday and Sunday at Fort Adams State Park, Harrison Avenue, Newport, 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tickets are $69 in advance, $75 on festival weekend, $125 for a two-day pass, $15 for children 3-15 and free for children under 3. Call (800) 514-3849 or go to www.folkfestival50.com.

rmassimo@projo.com