Story and photos by Mary Jane Farmer — Click on the links below for many photos.

WoodyFest, short for Woody Guthrie Festival, 2016… what a great experience. Three daytime stages — indoors at The Crystal Theater and Brick Street Tavern, and the outdoors CIA tent. Also, several outreach sites, including a church, a senior lunch center, and a nursing home. It all centered around songwriting, as Woody Guthrie was a songwriter himself, and surrounding them were numerous fine musicians.

The Red Dirt Rangers led a tribute to Red Dirt originator, the late Bob Childers and

Johnsmith at The Crystal Theater

to Oklahoma Music Hall of Famer Tom Skinner, who passed away only recently. The Crystal Theater was packed with musicians who wanted to participate, including Okemah native John Fullbright, who actually sat in or had his own set each night, and for whom the city has named a street — John Fullbright Loop — near the new night-time stage.

Impressive to this photographer — one of five involved in the festival — was how friendly the townspeople were. The three daytime stages were all situation on the same street, obviously a major thoroughfare through the town with angle parking on both sides and with no traffic lights in those several blocks. Drivers were patient and considerate when festival goers were crossing the street; business owners brought their wares out onto the sidewalk, but were considerate when people had to walk past them; and store clerks were helpful when asked. And, the other volunteers and organizers were equally helpful and easy to work with.

Each of the five photographers were assigned specific musicians to cover, and so none

SteelWind at the CIA tent

of us got to see or hear all the music. That also meant none of us could get photos of all the musicians, but we all got a lot of photographs. Here’s mine…

Now, feel free to upload any that you want to, I would just appreciate it if the credit line stayed with the picture. These are separated by the three days of the festivals, but in no particular order during those individual days. If you were a performer, pick the day of your concert, and others, too, if you sat in a lot.

Some have two photos, others have several more. Again, no particular reason, except that sometimes ‘more’ turned out than other times.

Enjoy, and BTW, next year’s festival is already being scheduled for July 12-16, 2017, again, of course in Woody Guthrie’s hometown, Okemah, Okla. There’s a sign-up place on the Website so you can get information as it is released. www. WoodyFest.org

Ellis Paul at outreach kids concert, Methodist Church

Thursday photos, click here:

Friday photos, click here:

Saturday photos, click here:

A few other photos, click here:

by Billy Keith Bucher

Now it’s summertime in East Texas and that means one thing. It’s time for the Marshmallow Jam on June 24 through 26. There will be about 42 groups and individual acts involved in this event.

“But it didn’t start like a Woodstock take off,” said Chaz West recently. He is the bass player for Porter’s Bluff, one of the bands being featured, and his son, Daniel Westmoreland, plays outstanding guitar, for them as well. “Rather, it started as a series of parties in the 60s. We used to be just kids out here having our parties and my dad bought 25 acres and also found a house that we moved (onto the acreage). He turned it into our jam house and we covered our window so we didn’t know if it was day or night. And with the jam house, we started to have even bigger parties. We would just party all night because, back then, it was a time when I could stay up all night and party.”

One big of the biggest attraction of the music site, (6981 CR 3901, Eustase, and that’s near Athens, Texas), is a crystal lake, which contains true Ozark mountain drinking water running free but cold, on the spread. It was made when they dammed up a stream.

“One time, my dad, Daniel’s granddad, was out here when he started to chuckle. Someone asks him what he was laughing about and he said, ‘I don’t guess any of you have stopped to think about the fact that the ticks are just waiting for everyone to get on their swimming suits so they can come falling down out of the trees like rain.’

“He gave another quick chuckle and said, ‘I think we should have just name it for what it is. ‘Tick Stock!!!’

“One of the best things about having the jams going on,” added Chaz, “is that I’ve been kind of anti cutting down trees. That’s why it’s so overgrown out here. Now that I’m older and I have the grandkids, I’m trying to clear the land again. The people camping here help me clear it by cutting up wood and using it as firewood. This really is Woodstock, though on a very small scale; but we do have a wonderful time putting on the shows! There is the acoustic jam in the spring and the electric jam in the fall.

“Right now, my son Daniel is in the process of clearing more of the land for parking and he is better

at organizing the bands that are supposed to play and the schedule that they appear on stage. I just don’t have the mind for all of that, so I just turn it over to him. The Marshmallow Jam is getting bigger every year and we have a lot of new acts this year to showcase.”

“One thing,” said Daniel, “is that when you cross to the other side of the lake, people will call it ‘going to Europe.’ It’s like going ‘across the pond’ in another sense of the words. One thing about it is that it is more primitive over there. It’s like being in another world. And we’ve already doubled the parking area. And we’ve done some work at making the road coming down from the highway to be a little smoother and not quite as bumpy.”

Porter’s Bluff is a strong band and when the jam was postponed a month from its originally scheduled date, due to the rain and a need for road work, they continued to practice and put on a well-received show at The Brewery in downtown Athens. The group is rounded out by Shane Rendon on stunning guitar who intertwines some creative quitar work with Daniel and a highly talented drummer named Josh Emsoff. He was explosive on his drum solo towards the end of the set. And, among other things, this writer will be filling in on percussion in the background with congas and bongos and hand instruments. Aw, my San Francisco days are calling me back.

Good times were had by all at The Brewery and that should spill over into the Marshmallow Jam. And everyone is hoping for a good run after that.

Others playing will be A Tiger Lily, Straw Hat Society, Joe-E and Jim-L and many others. There will also be crafts including jewelry and wood carving.

A hint on finding the actual location once you get coast is, Chaz added, looked for the “Family Reunion’ sign on the road going down from a yellow house to the campgrounds. When you see a sign that says “No Glass Allowed,” you are there.

Photos and story by Mary Jane Farmer — First appeared in the June 2016 issue of Buddy Magazine.

“The thing about writing songs is, everything is songwriting. All you have to do is remember.” — Guy Clark

Guy Charles Clark
November 6, 1941 – May 17, 2016

Considered by most to be the first man to meet when one got to Nashville, Guy Clark and his wife, Susanna, kept their door ajar for 40 years to all who wanted to pick a few tunes or write a few songs. During these years, they became best friends with the also-great Townes Van Zandt, and considered Ray Wylie Hubbard, Rodney Crowell, Mickey Newbury, and dozens upon dozens more among their most intimate friends.

Texan by birth and Tennessean by choice, Guy Clark left his image permanently in the hearts and minds of many Kerrville Folk Festival longtimers. During this 45th-annual festival, memories are blowing like the winds through the oak trees of Quiet Valley Ranch.

Buddy Mondlock, singer/songwriter still a regular at the Kerrville Folk Festivals, told this story about meeting Mr. Clark there.

“I went to the Kerrville Folk Festival (the first time) mostly because I saw on the schedule that he was going to host this thing called the Ballad Tree one day and that anyone could sign up to sing a song. I might get a chance to shake his hand. That was my whole ambition. Somehow, after the whole thing was over, he was walking toward me. ‘Hey, I like that song you did. Got any more?’

“And then he went right on and changed my life. ‘Let’s see if we can get you in the music business,’ he said a few weeks later on the phone. He took the demo I gave him and started passing copies around to his friends in Nashville. When Guy Clark gives you a tape, you listen to it. And so everything changed. He just went on and kicked the door open. That was the most generous thing anybody ever did for me.”

Guy Clark (it’s almost impossible just to say ‘Guy’ — it almost demands both names be used.) taught in the songwriter school at Kerrville Festivals. Davis, the festival Corn Dog King, said he remembers Guy Clark as a mentor to budding songwriters at one of those early festivals. “He was such a mentor to all of these guys. It may not have been an organized songwriting class, but it could have been. They all wrote a song together with Guy Clark and performed it together on stage.

And Sue Medley, another longtime volunteer and now on the Quiet Valley Ranch Board of Directors, laughed when she remembered Mr. Clark as a true “homegrown tomato. He was the salt of the Earth. He never had a big head about his fame, he was just a good ol’ boy. That’s what I loved about him.”

Susan Roads, photographer, said one of her greatest satisfactions was learning that her work had helped Susanna Clark during her final years after Susanna’s health and despair made her a one-room hermit. Years previously, Roads had presented Townes Van Zandt with a photo she took of him at one of those late 1970s festivals. She said that, after Van Zandt’s death, she learned the photo then hung on the wall inside Susanna’s bedroom, where, she was told, it gave her much comfort. “It’s the ultimate fulfillment knowing something you created gives someone else peace and joy,” Roads said.

“Guy could take the simplest thing and show you what was profound about it. He knew that it’s all profound. And he knew better than anyone how to recognize it when he got it right. He also knew not to let it go until he got it right. Any one of his songs will tell you that,” remembered Mondlock.

The Monahans man, Guy Clark, split his childhood time there and on the southern Gulf Coast town of Rockport. During the past decade, while he could still tour, his Texas gigs included the Wildflower! Festival, Hank’s Texas Grill, and Poor David’s Pub. Even after his physical condition prevented him from going on the road any more, he kept going with his songwriting, and only a few short years ago released his last CD, My Favorite Picture of You. The title song, as explained in several articles, is about Susanna and many consider it his best song ever. But, this reviewer’s favorites are others in the collection, songs that show he was, even toward the end, the world’s premier songwriter. “El Coyote,” “Cornmeal Waltz,” and “The Waltzing Fool” are examples of just how Mr. Clark understood and captured people’s intrinsic pains and joys. An understanding of life on life’s terms that he took with him on May 17, along with the rogue’s charm that was Guy Clark.

For many photos, click here.

Chuck Pyle

Keegan Pyle

Producers of two other festivals came to the Kerrville Folk Festival to help pay tribute to the late singer/songwriter/Zen Cowboy Chuck Pyle, who passed away on Nov. 6, 2015, near his home in Colorado. This country-folk singer-songwriter and master fingerstyle guitarist had songs recorded first by Jerry Jeff Walker in the 1970s (Jaded Lover), and through the years by John Denver, Chris LeDoux, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Michael Martin Murphy, and Suzy Bogguss.

Keegan Pyle, Chuck’s son, reminiscenced about his dad stating he was just going to enjoy his music and not try to be a major star. Keegan said he was totally stunned by that statement, because in his eyes, and the eyes of half the music world, Chuck Pyle was a star.

For this tribute, organizer Butch Morgan gathered 13 of Chuck’s fellow musicians. Some sang one song, some sang two. Some sang Chuck’s songs, some songs that reminded them of Chuck. This list is of the performers and the names of the songs they sang.

1. Butch Morgan — A specific original about Chuck Pyle
2. Michael Hearne — Producer of the annual Big Barn Dance in Taos, N.M. “Angels’ Share,” and “Endless Sky”
3. Ken Gaines — “Take Your Favors”
4. Daniel Boling – “Other Side of the Hill”
5. Owen Temple — “Days” and “Jaded Lover”
6. Karen Mal — (Unknown title of her song)
7. Larry Joe Taylor — Producer of the annual Larry Joe Taylor Texas Music Festival and others. “Down On The Coast Tonight” and “Hold On”
8. Mike Williams — an instrumental on his 12-string guitar
9. The Whipples — “Chickadee”
10. Kristin DeWitt – “Affected by the Moon”
11. Mary and Bill Muse — “Step By Step”
12. Walt Wilkins — “Blanco River Meditation No. 2” and a Kent Finlay song that Chuck recorded “I’m Up and On My Way.”
13. Susan Gibson — “A Star Lighting Up The Universe”

Some of these titles may be a bit off, but are nearly right if they aren’t exactly right.

Susan Gibson, along with all the artists who got back on stage, led the standing crowd in the finale song, “Keeping Time By The River.”

They missed performing one of this writer’s very favorites — “Here Comes The Water” taken from the radio dispatch of a lawman who had been trying to save lives in a Colorado canyon flash flood.

Another of Chuck Pyle’s favorite activities on the road was noticing bumper stickers. Butch Morgan mentioned several, including the mantra “Be sure to take the high road — It’s the road less traveled.’