OKEMAH — My pilgrimage to Okfuskee County happens this week.
I meet up with several hundred like-minded people to share the hottest days of summer in Okemah, a small town on Interstate 40 that is often just a gas stop for OKC boaters headed for Lake Eufaula.
But for a week every July, Okemah becomes the folk music mecca. It is where my kindred souls get our heads cleansed of life’s irritants and trivia — whether it be the deskload of paperwork at the office or weathering another barrage of nasty TV ads by politicians clamoring to see who can be more conservative.
We get rejuvenation of thought through music at this thing called WoodyFest. We hear the sounds of optimism, of purpose, and of caring for other human beings. All things our world of social media rarely delivers.
In keeping with the inspiring messages of the singer-songwriter born in Okemah on July 14, 1912, the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival offers three days of continuous music, beginning Thursday this year. With a core of folk, the festival offers country music and blues with a dash of Americana, with red dirt ballads as icing on the cake.
Labels aside, musicians like the Red Dirt Rangers consider this week in Okemah as their family reunion.
The rest of us are invited cousins.
Volunteers make it happen, some changes ahead
WoodyFest happens thanks to a group of local volunteers who work year-round to make the annual event possible. Thursday’s daytime performances are free, while tickets for night time shows and Friday and Saturday performances can be purchased on the WoodyFest website.
“WoodyFest cannot happen without volunteers,” said Gary Hart, the festival’s vice president. “From those setting up the Pastures of Plenty (stage venue) to the all-volunteer board of directors, to those working the gates, setting up venues, working merchandise, hospitality and ticket sales. We are talking well over 1,000 hours of volunteer work.”
For those returning to WoodyFest, they can anticipate some changes this year. The Crystal Theatre in downtown Okemah will not be a venue. Instead, the Okemah Middle School auditorium, at 204 W. Date St., will host performances.
“The ‘Ain’t Got No Home’ stage at the middle school auditorium is a great venue and quite comparable in size to the theatre,” said Hart.
The Bound For Glory stage will be at South 2nd Street and Ash Street, a block from where Guthrie’s childhood home once stood. There will be seating and shade with mist stands and an air conditioned cooling tent. The main stage nighttime performances will continue to be at the permanent “Pastures of Plenty” outdoor stage built in Okemah’s industrial park.
Talent from all corners and beyond
Unlike many who make this week’s pilgrimage, I don’t have far to go to reach Okemah. I’ll drive in from Norman, just like multi-talented musician T.Z. Wright. He and his close friend, legendary sideman Terry “Buffalo” Ware, have been fixtures of the WoodyFest house band for years. They have delivered countless hours of enjoyment to me at WoodyFest and numerous live shows around Norman.
Just last month, “Buffalo” published his memoir, Man with Guitar and Amp, which includes a chapter on his experiences at WoodyFest, beginning with the first festival in 1998 and concluding with his stint as leader of the house band in 2024.
Unfortunately, Ware has been battling cancer the past 14 months. He let his fans know on Facebook that he was bowing out of the festival this year, and I know everyone’s thoughts will be with him all week.
Meanwhile, the festival’s unofficial philosopher, country singer-songwriter Butch Hancock, will drive from Terlingua, Texas, a remote spot in scenic Big Bend country where the federal government is trying to wall off the Rio Grande to keep immigrants from crossing the border.
I expect Butch, whose Zen-flavored West Texas lyrics express his observations of the world, may have a song or two to sing about that. (Hancock is set to appear on the “Ain’t Got No Home” stage at 3 p.m. Saturday.)
Joel Rafael, whose songs pay homage to Guthrie’s folk music style more than any other, will travel from San Diego. He has performed at WoodyFest since its 1998 beginning.
My first time seeing Rafael at WoodyFest, I heard him sing Deportee, the song set to Guthrie’s 1948 poem written about the plane crash of deported migrant workers in California, dehumanized by the media of the time as merely “deportees.”
The song, thoughtfully sung by Rafael and many others over the years, seems timelessly appropriate for today’s America. So much of what happens at WoodyFest is like that.
Tom Breiding will make the trip from Pittsburgh. He plays on the Ain’t Got No Home stage at noon on Friday. From him, I have learned about the continuing struggles of coal miners who have fought the battle of labor for generations in his native West Virginia.
Breiding’s songs tell their stories. They are very much like the stories Guthrie sang, when American industry weathered the Depression on the backs of workers. I guess some things haven’t changed.
Folk musician Radoslav Lorkovic will cross the pond from Croatia. He will bring his accordion, delivering a blended reed sound accompaniment for other bands playing the festival. He is also set to perform solo at 1:30 p.m. Saturday on the Bound for Glory stage. After hearing Lorkovic play, you will think Croatia was a village in Appalachia.
WoodyFest master and legendary American conductor and composer David Amram will make his umpteenth trip from New York. He performs his songs, with an added lesson of music theory, on the Ain’t Got No Home stage at 6 p.m. Friday. Amram, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of WoodyFest, may also bring along his pennywhistle to add a patriotic trill when all the musicians gather on the Pastures of Plenty stage to close things out at midnight on Saturday to honor the festival’s namesake with his famous tune, This Land is Your Land.
Amram is 96 years old, but with the heart and energy of a teen. If he can weather a hot summer afternoon in Okemah and stay up for a late hour of music — including the impromptu early morning jam session in the Okemah Days Inn parking lot — then I can, too.
The musical Okies come to Okemah
I look forward to seeing my friends, like RT Valine, whose musical path led him from native Ohio to east Los Angeles and then to a goat farm outside of Allen, Oklahoma. His booming baritone voice is matched only by his kind soul. Valine is set to play on the Bound for Glory stage at 12:30 p.m. Friday.
And there will be fiery musician/advocate Peggy Johnson, whom I profiled for NonDoc in 2019. She is set to play at 2:30 p.m. Saturday on the Bound for Glory stage. You haven’t experienced motivation until you’ve heard “Sock Puppet” from Peggy at WoodyFest.
I will see Miss Brown to You, the melodic duo of Mary Reynolds and Louise Goldberg, viewed by many in the Oklahoma folk music ranks as the finest musicians in the state.
Who could miss the fiddle playing of red dirt icon Randy Crouch, who will come over from the Cookson Hills. And there are others, musicians like Kyle Reid, Susan Herndon and Casii Stephan, who alone would justify a drive to Okemah.
A full schedule of the lineup can be reviewed here.
I’ve learned much in my recent years attending WoodyFest. Barry Ollman is the history and sociology
teacher of the festival. He is set to host a panel discussion, “Collecting and Connecting Woody, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger and The Weavers and Bob Dylan, 2026 — In Their Own Words,” at 2 p.m. Friday in the Okemah Middle School venue.
I had heard about WoodyFest years before my initial attendance from fellow lawyer and friend Cindy Viol, who witnessed the emergence of singer-songwriter John Fullbright when he was an Okemah-area teenager showing up to jam with the late Jimmy LaFave. (Of course, LaFave’s red dirt music mark on this festival remains strong.)
Guaranteed to draw a large crowd, Fulbright is now a Grammy-nominated star of Oklahoma music. He is set to play on the Pastures of Plenty main stage at 10:30 p.m. Friday.
At least one day of the festival you will see me having a lunch of a burger and fries on the back porch of Buford Lee’s Rocky Road Tavern, where an unfurled parachute canopy will shield patrons from the Okemah sun. Pickers and singers are set to perform from noon to 6 p.m. each day on the outdoor open mic stage hosted by my friend, Josh Polaschek, a mainstay of Norman’s Bluebonnet Bar music scene (and also a visual artist).
The Rocky Road Tavern is where I first saw Serena Guthrie, the youngest musical performer in the Guthrie clan, sing one of her great grandpa Woody’s songs. The Guthrie connection is the string that has tied all this together since 1998.
I could go on and on about the musical personalities who populate WoodyFest. They return each year to remind us what is important. They are the reason I return.
When I head home Saturday night, I expect I will be mumbling along and recalling Rafael’s rendition of Guthrie’s lyrics to Way Over Yonder in The Minor Key.
And thinking, as Butch Hancock would say, “What a planet.”
