Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival--Okemah Oklahoma

Four days of love, friendship, family, and generosity.  Oh yeah, and the music too.  This was my ninth year attending this festival.  The performers are not paid, and the festival is free except for a $15 charge per car for parking.  This year started with David Crosby and Graham Nash and ended (technically) with Jimmy LaFave.  There are 50 or so performances in between.  What makes Jimmy LaFave's ending unofficial, is the Hootenanny Sunday morning.  Twenty-two of the performers were there this year.  Musicians who could have been on the road to paying gigs, sleeping in after staying up until the wee hours in song circles, and as one said "making my liver employee of the month," roll out and show up one more time.  They each play a single song, and the hat is passed to raise money to assist families affected by Huntington's Disease and support research and education.  It is hot as blazes (to put it politely), and every year I wonder how I am going to survive the 110's every day.  However, July rolls around and I know there is no place else on the planet I would rather have my feet than in that Oklahoma red dirt.

The musicians have fun with each other...you see folks inviting people they just met the night before up on stage to accompany them.  You just never know when an amazingly magical moment is going to happen.  I initially went for three of my favorites:  Ellis Paul, Don Conoscenti, and Vance Gilbert.  I continued to go for the ones that have become favorites:  Sam Baker, Audrey Auld, John Fullbright, Joel Rafael and too many others to count.   I look forward every year to the new favorites I will add to the list.  For me this year it was Emma's Revolution, Gretchen Peters, Peyton Tochterman.  If you don't know Sam Baker, please go to his website and read his bio at the very least.  His story is brilliant and inspiring.  John Fullbright is an Okemah native who first amazed and awed me with his lyrical wisdom at age 19.  Keep an eye on him.  He is the definition of an old soul if there ever was one.  

I got home this afternoon, and I am still bleary-eyed, feet-hurting and set the a/c on "arctic" for the foreseeable future.  I am a pale chick who wilts in the heat.  But when the situation is such that one year I got to shake Pete Seeger's hand as he roamed to crowd eating an ice cream cone???  Sign me up for #10.