One big damn band: an introduction to the Red Dirt musical scene

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ONE BIG DAMN BAND:
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE RED DIRT MUSICAL SCENE

by

Richard O’Bannon

__________________________________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM: THE ARTS)

August 2013

Copyright 2013 Richard O’Bannon

ii

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my thesis chairman Tim Page for helping me in this process and
encouraging and guiding me along the road to finding my voice as a writer. I also would
like to thank committee members Sasha Anawalt and Ken Lopez for working with me
during the past year to develop the way I think about music and journalism. Lastly, my
deepest gratitude to my longtime mentor Elizabeth Brixey for always being there through
highs and lows, JB Bittner for giving me a shot when others didn’t and all the members
of the Red Dirt Family for allowing me to take up their time and trusting me to share
some of their story.

iii

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iv
One Big Damn Band: An Introduction to the Red Dirt Musical Scene 1
The Farm 4
The Godfather 12
The Song Remains the Same 17
References 23

iv

Abstract

Red Dirt music is a hard-to-define, I-know-it-when-I-hear-it subgenre of country music
that was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma in the early 1970s. Musically it combines
influences from country, blues, rock, folk, bluegrass and any other number of styles
depending on the band. What defines the genre more is a focus on songwriting that
expresses the shared history and culture of people in Stillwater and the region.

For more than two decades starting in 1979, a farmhouse — known locally as “the Farm”
— just outside of Stillwater city limits provided a gathering place and a nearly communal
living experience where musicians and other artists could trade ideas, share their craft,
party and build the Red Dirt sound. Named for the color of the earth in the region, Red
Dirt music is a self-describe brotherhood, where elder musicians pass down what they
know to those coming up and one-time students are expected to help teach the generation
behind them.

Bob Childers is known as the godfather of Red Dirt music. Part Woody Guthrie and part
Willie Nelson, Childers wrote more than 1,500 songs covered by 200 artists, and he
collaborated and influenced many singer/songwriters who came to see him on the Farm.
The Farm eventually shut down, but the philosophy and music that took root there in the
scene are being carried on by a new generation of Red Dirt musicians.

1

One Big Damn Band:
An Introduction to the Red Dirt Musical Scene

John Cooper sat in the office of a powerful man in Nashville beside the rest of the Red
Dirt Rangers. After being courted by record labels, the band was on its third trip to the
capital city of country music, and they found themselves on the receiving end of a less-
than-friendly lecture (Cooper 2013).

“Are you a blues band? Are you a country band? What are you?” Cooper recalled the
man telling him. “You need to go home and decide what kind of band you are.”

Home was a 10-hour drive away for the Rangers in Stillwater, Oklahoma. A few years
earlier, Cooper and a childhood friend moved to the college town where they rented an
old farmhouse that dated back to the state’s settling in the Land Run. Part party house and
part Okie artist commune, “the Farm” was a gathering place for Red Dirt musicians in the
’80s and ’90s to work on their craft and trade ideas.

The man in Nashville could be forgiven in part for his confusion because Red Dirt as a
musical genre is hard to define. Cooper, too, is hard to lock down. He plays mandolin, an
instrument out of the bluegrass tradition, but with a red bandana tied around his head like
a biker outlaw, he peppers his speech with “man” more like a west coast surfer than a
country musician. Red Dirt is country, but not just country. Folk and blues flow in like

2

tributaries to a larger stream. Depending on the group, funk, reggae, Tex-Mex, and rock
parts psychedelic, indie, British and Southern color the Red Dirt sound.

More than anything, the plumb line that binds all Red Dirt musicians is an emphasis on
songwriting and a shared attitude. Born in Stillwater, the music expresses something of
the experience, history and way of life of the people in one of the last-settled and seldom-
coveted corners of America known for tornadoes, droughts and a Dust Bowl.

It was on the Farm in Stillwater that Cooper decided to pick up a mandolin and join a
band with his buddies, and that ultimately led him to this meeting with a man questioning
the music they made. Halfway through, a secretary walked in with a phone call for a John
Cooper.

“That’s me,” he said and left the office.

On the other end of the phone was a man named Kevin Welch. Welch was a fellow Okie,
friend of the band and a songwriter who had moved from Oklahoma to Nashville for
work.

“So how do you like the speech?” Welch asked of the lecture.

“Wow, man. We’re getting it,” Cooper replied.

3

Welch told him to come grab lunch with him once the meeting was done, and the band
met up with the songwriter later that day.

"You know, man. If you want to do the Nashville thing, you could probably come here
and probably do something,” Cooper said Welch told him. “But if you really want to
have a good time, have a good life and a career, go home. Be the most popular band in
Oklahoma. You can still choose to go anywhere you want. But if you move here, you're
going to have to jump through all these hoops to play this Nashville game."

As Cooper is recalling the meeting, he’s leaning forward on a table in a bar slash
restaurant called Eskimo Joe’s. It’s a Stillwater institution and where Cooper — “Coop”
to his friends — will play a show in less than an hour. His hands are scuffed from
building a porch that morning with the help of a band mate, and Cooper is sipping on an
Irish coffee — the favorite drink of a now-gone Red Dirt mentor and collaborator named
Bob Childers. The Red Dirt Rangers did go back to Oklahoma, and they carved out a
career traveling the world making the music they wanted.

4

The Farm

There is no sign or marker for the Farm. Like the music it was host to, the Farm’s history
exists largely in oral history bordering on legend and mythos. In town, many Stillwater
residents who have their own stories about days-long parties and fireside guitar picking
can tell the curious how to get there. West on Highway 51 out of city limits; right turn on
the dirt road that can prove a challenge post rain without four-wheel drive; first left after
the age-worn and narrow wooden bridge.

The six-bedroom farmhouse burned down in 2003, but echoes of the Farm’s heyday
remain on the property. A fire pit in the front yard shows signs of recent life. Makeshift
seating encircles the site of raging bonfires that once burned all night and into the early
morning. Still standing beyond the circle is a weathered frontier-era carriage house that
was converted into a homemade concert stage called the “Gypsy Café.” Many years ago
the building hosted impromptu performances where music wafted across pasturelands for
miles on a clear night. A sign now hangs above the structure from a reunion benefit that
was sponsored by Red Bull a few years back.

Across two decades, the Farm was a musical mecca and training ground for a host of Red
Dirt musicians. But when Cooper and Danny Pierce first pulled up the gravel driveway in
1979 as college students, they were just looking for a place to live and have a good time.

5

Rent was a hundred bucks a month for a six-bedroom farmhouse with seven outbuildings
sitting on 160 acres. Split four ways or at times more, the price never went up in 20 years
(Pierce 2013; Cooper 2013). As roommates changed, Pierce was the constant and
caretaker of the Farm until 1998 when he moved with his wife to Tennessee to become a
college professor. Over the years, Pierce estimates he had 100 different roommates, and
many more who crashed on a couch or lawn chair for a few nights.

In those early days, the Farm was more a destination for a party than music.

“It was a college guys place,” Cooper said. “It was a place to live and party. And being
just far enough out of town, the cops left us alone.”

The Farm started to gain a reputation for croquet tournaments, the brainchild of a
roommate nicknamed “Taco Bob.”

“We'd have 10-12 kegs or whatever and just play all day,” Pierce said. “At a croquet
party, occasionally you'd have a band. … It never was like croquet and music necessarily
together. It was more like it's a croquet party and if we want to come play some music for
everybody, sure, why not? Come on out.”

Despite some unsure looks from first-time invitees — Croquet? Really? — he said they
soon had NCAA basketball-style brackets for tournaments numbering in the 70s, where
people wore costumes or on at least a few occasions no clothes at all.

6

“That was definitely a fun activity,” Cooper said. “You had to wait till dawn though,
couldn't play at night. Once the sun started coming up it was off with your clothes and
let’s set up the croquet.”

Slowly, the Farm became a well known but unofficial gathering place for students from
Oklahoma State University, which draws kids both from rural outposts and cities like
Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Dallas. In town, bars would announce at closing “Time to
leave; Party at the Farm.”

That mix of rural and urban is essential to what both the town and Red Dirt music is. As
of the 2010 census, Stillwater looks up enviously at the 50,000-population mark and the
radars of new business such a number could bring. Like the state in general, the city is
fixated on growth, and not without good reason. Boomtowns gone bust are easy to find in
Oklahoma. Oil dries up, and the children of farmers often want a different life free of the
uncertainty of their fathers. The only hints there was ever something more in some of
these towns that dot the state map are the shuttered up storefronts in what somebody at a
chamber of commerce decided to rebrand a “historic downtown” as a last ditch effort.
These are the places more people are from than presently reside.

Stillwater has seen slow-but-steady growth in recent decades, insulated by the emigration
seen elsewhere by being home to the state’s land grant university. Today, newly built
suburban-style neighborhoods have popped up in the city’s southwest, which house
university employees, workers from a growing aerospace foothold and other

7

professionals. Still, drive a few minutes in any direction and the asphalt runs out, and the
red dirt roads that pass by winter wheat and grazing cattle begin.

In town, a trained eye can spot those who still make their living from the crimson clay by
the thick layer of rust-colored dust coating the bottom half of their vehicle — like
stubborn grease under a mechanic’s fingernails. During the annual dorm move in, it’s the
same two-toned trucks hauling futons in horse trailers that distinguish the freshmen who
grew up on farms and ranches from their classmates who hail from cities where a regular
car wash is seen as a worthwhile investment rather than an unwinnable fight against the
inevitable.

“I think the thing about Stillwater, in particular, is ... its geography,” said Cooper. “It’s
over an hour to Tulsa, over an hour to Oklahoma City. You couldn't just jump in your car
and go. We always called it ‘creating our own fun.’”

Students who grew up listening to Merle Haggard mixed with those who brought Rolling
Stones records to school with them. That mix of people, isolated from the options of big
cities, helped created what Cooper and others call “a weird musical vortex.” Out of that
vortex, actor Gary Busey played in a popular Stillwater-based country group in the ’60s.
Garth Brooks cut his teeth in local venues before heading to Nashville. The All-American
Rejects called Stillwater home, and more recently, the indie group Other Lives from
Stillwater spent part of 2012 opening for Radiohead.

8

As the reputation of the Farm grew in the early ’80s, musicians and songwriters from the
locally grown Red Dirt scene started gravitating to the farmhouse.

“Tons of bands got formed from there; songs got written there. It was just a place to build
a fire, get out the beer and whatever else you had and the party was on. It started to
evolve around music,” Cooper said. “It got to the point where when bands would come to
town, they'd stay at the Farm.”

Jimmy LaFave was one of the early creators of what became called Red Dirt music in the
’70s who frequented the Farm in the early-80s. The Farm, he said, gave him and others a
place to stay with like minds and create (LaFave 2013).

“We were pretty much the odd bunch of hippies in a farmhouse on the edge of town: part
Woody Guthrie, part Jack Kerouac, part Bob Dylan,” LaFave said. “We were all out
there, almost like the counter-counter culture just doing our thing out there in the
farmhouse. It was just a magical era and time of creativity.”

The Red Dirt sound usually centered on a man and his guitar, singing songs he wrote or
borrowed about love and heartache, putting lives back together after disaster or
commenting on a wrong he saw. To LaFave, the sound was a reflection of life in
Stillwater and to some extent Oklahoma as a whole, evoking the Okie Western Swing
influence of Bob Wills, the folk songwriter mold of Woody Guthrie and some of the
outlaw country attitude of neighboring Texans like Willie Nelson or Waylon Jennings.

9

When LaFave sings he brings some of Bob Dylan’s vocal color and syntax, flavored with
occasional blue-yodel grace notes of early country and western.

The first usage of “Red Dirt” as a genre was by Steve Ripley, who like LaFave was one
of the early musicians in the scene. Ripley headed a Stillwater band called Moses, and the
group chose the label name “Red Dirt Records” when they self-published a 1972 live
album. The genre title “Red Dirt” saved time for Ripley who has explained himself at
other times as “neo-traditionalist, retro-whatever, country-something.”

LaFave still has the record in his archive and remembers when he first read the liner notes
that described the music as “a hue of funk, a shade of sound, a basic spirit” drawing on
“the color of the earth” surrounding the band’s Stillwater base.

“That's when it sort of jumped out to me that there was a certain melting pot of a little bit
of blues and blue grass and folk and rock and roll, that kind of had a special sound that
was Red Dirt music,” he said.

When LaFave started touring Europe and had to describe the songs he wrote, he adopted
the phrase: “Just call my music Red Dirt.”

As Red Dirt founders and new musicians started hanging around the Farm, the property
became more musically focused. The parties never died, but music was now central. A
drummer who worked with LaFave before playing with Robert Earl Keen helped guide

10

Keen’s tour bus onto the Farm’s lawn. Texas songwriter Guy Clark paid a visit, and
Cooper said he remembers a young Garth Brooks watching older guys ply their craft at
the Farm.

“I stopped even going into town,” Pierce said. “Everybody would be out there, warming
up and playing songs, and they'd be like ‘Oh shit, it's 8 o’clock, we gotta go play our gig.
We'll be back out here at 2 o’clock.’”

Pierce remembers near constant music. He’d go to bed while three or four guys were
swapping songs around the fire and wake up to find a different two or three still going.
Co-writes became standard. If you weren’t sure about a verse, you could take it to the fire
circle and get offered a line from someone there. Elder musicians advised those starting
out how to tour, where to play, how to deal with money and most importantly how to
write a song. And as new musicians got on their feet, they were expected to return the
favor to those that came after them.

What the Farm provided in the early ’80s through the ’90s was companionship, space to
create through a simple way of life. In the winter, Cooper said they would pick 20 to 50
pounds of pecans from a grove on the Farm to give away as Christmas gifts that didn’t
cost them money they didn’t have. Fresh garlic and vegetables grew in a garden that kept
the kitchen stocked. Cooper said they exchanged cherries from their orchard for
homemade pies from an older woman who lived down the road.

11

“It was just about living life at a really basic level. Not trying to get anything over on
anyone or be ahead of anyone,” Cooper said. “It was communal living. It was a modern
Okie commune.”

He added that spirit drew not only musicians but artists of all kinds to the Farm. Poets,
writers and painters started to intermingle with guitar pickers. Cooper said artists would
set up easels and either paint or sketch musicians in charcoal. Almost anyone was
welcome, and in two decades the farmhouse that had no locks never had one theft. In
central Oklahoma, they created a Bohemian lifestyle.

Pierce said Red Dirt became the philosophy of how Farm residents lived their lives —
simple and collaborative.

“Living together in a mindful manner, long before ‘mindfulness’ became hip,” he said.
“This was teaching us how to live our lives with integrity ... in ways that made sense.”

12

The Godfather

A curious thing happens when Red Dirt musicians talk. Their stories are laced with praise
for others in their scene and deference to the ones that came before them. However, no
name comes up more often than Bob Childers.

Across a three-decade career, Childers wrote more than 1,500 songs. The Tulsa World
reported that at least 200 artists had covered his catalog (Conner 1999). Childers died at
age 61 of lung-related illness in 2008 (Stillwater NewsPress 2008).

Childers was a West Virginia native who grew up about an hour north of Stillwater in
Ponca City. He studied music at University of California-Berkeley, made stops in Austin
and Nashville, but he always gravitated back to Stillwater and the Farm. After returning
to Stillwater one more time in the ’90s, Childers started living at the Farm in a modest
trailer filled with mementos inside and two pink lawn flamingos outside.

“That was definitely a turning point in the musical scene out at the Farm when Bob
moved out there,” Pierce said. “We’d been having parties, been having music, now Bob's
there. So the songwriters are coming out more to pick songs and swap ideas.”

“Cross-pollination,” Pierce said, was one of Childers’ favorite words to describe how
music was made. This was both in terms of types of music and how the musicians at the
Farm and in the scene collaborated (Pierce 2013).

13

“‘It's all just one big damn band. It's like 50 guys all in the same band,’” Pierce said,
quoting Childers. “Who's got the gig tonight? We'll show up, maybe we'll get on stage
with ya, maybe we won't. That was just the community and the philosophy of it. I think
people still feel that way. It's still one big fucking band.”

Singer Monica Taylor remembers her first encounter with the prolific songwriter. A
native of nearby Perkins, Taylor moved to Stillwater at age 19 or 20 for school and joined
a bluegrass group. The band was practicing for a show later that night, and Childers came
by to listen. When asked to play something, Childers sang a song called “Restless Spirits”
(Taylor 2013).

“It blew me away that such simple words like ‘blue eyes crying in the rain’ — a simple
song, very few words — can spark so much emotion, picture (and) story in my mind,”
Taylor said.

When he finished, Taylor said he remarked it was nice to have a guitar back in his hands.
Childers had just recently pawned his.

“I needed to get some money to my boy,” she said he told them.

Taylor had an extra guitar and asked him if he wanted to use it for a while.

14

“You know, that's a real nice offer, but guitars are just things,” she said Childers told her.
“They don't mean anything if you don't have love for somebody else. Guitars are just
things.”

After leaving Oklahoma for a while, Taylor moved back to Stillwater where she lived
next to Childers’ trailer in a tent she’d cover with a tarp when temperatures dropped. She
remembers musicians knocking on Childers’ trailer door at all hours wanting to get his
blessing or guidance on a new song they were working on.

“He'd pull out a cigarette and sit down and cross his legs, and he'd say ‘Alright, whatcha
got?’ And then he'd listen, and he'd lean back,” she said. “I could always tell when he
really liked a song. He'd lean back and his eyes would get kind of squinty and there'd be
that smile, that toothy smile, and there'd be a glint in his eye, and he'd lean forward after
the song.”

If Childers leaned the other direction when the song ended, arm thrown over the back of
the chair, she said that usually signaled there was still more work to be done.

Last April, an assortment of about a dozen Red Dirt artists gathered in Stillwater to play a
tribute show to Childers. It had been almost five years to the day since his death, but all
the musicians on stage talked about him as if his passing was only a few months
removed.

15

Chuck Dunlap collaborated with Childers in ’70s and drove from Washington to play at
the concert (Dunlap 2013).

“I would have walked, I would have found a stick and walked,” he said at the tribute
show. “I would never miss it.”

Dunlap, Childers and other Oklahoma musicians were among those who successfully
protested and halted the Black Fox Nuclear Plant in 1979. The tradition of commentary
of Okies like Woody Guthrie or Will Rogers is still evident in one of the songs Dunlap
chose to pay his respects to Childers.

The song is called “Corporations Aren’t People,” and Dunlap tells the crowd that it’s one
“Bob inspired me to write.” It’s a send up of corporate excess from a workingman and
farmer’s perspective, decrying policies that result in lost employee pensions and pointing
out that something must be wrong with the state of patent law “when it’s illegal for a
farmer to save his own seed.”

Dunlap vamps on guitar and talks to the crowd before his last verse. He tells them the last
verse will invoke religion and that while he knows he’s in the buckle of the Bible belt
where that can be sensitive territory, “God gave me a brain, so I’m going to use it.”

16

Red Dirt isn’t about playing to the perceived loyalties political or otherwise of an
audience. As LaFave put it, it’s about telling the truth and speaking out when needed, the
way Guthrie did.

Dunlap finishes the song with the line “Jesus only got mad once, and it was over money
and greed.” In the home state of men named Woody, Will and Bob, Dunlap’s tune is a hit
with the crowd.

17

The Song Remains the Same

It’s New Year’s Eve in Stillwater. Fat snowflakes melt within moments of resting on the
rust-color dirt that is still too warm to receive them. Like most occasions, the start of
2013 will be celebrated with Red Dirt. Outside the Tumbleweed Ballroom, a spray-
painted plywood sign hoisted in the bed of a weathered pickup truck advertises the night's
lineup. Inside, a few hundred start to pack in front of the stage, and a cloud of cigarette
smoke grows thicker.

The Tumbleweed is the largest venue in Stillwater. Its biggest weekend is its annual
spring Calf Fry, when the lonely byproduct of what turns bulls into steers is served up as
good eating with a healthy side of beer and music. The event is known by law
enforcement as the weekend for all hands on deck, known colloquially by college
students as the “testicle festival” and known by the newspaper as the time to leave extra
space for Monday’s police blotter.

Entertainment on New Year’s Eve is two bands headed by Cody Canada and Jason
Boland, each Farm alumni from the ’90s. Canada greets the crowd and gives a toast to the
Mayans before his band, the Departed, kicks off a distorted guitar, riff-driven jam. Now
in his mid-30s, Canada exudes rocker in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, well-tailored leather
jacket and porkpie hat holding back shoulder-length black hair. But his twang and
savoring of certain vowels shows Okie through and through.

18

Boland and his group The Stragglers follow with a sound that could be more easily
recognized as country. Wearing a cowboy hat and jeans and backed up with fiddle and
steel guitar, Boland sings with that impossibly booming low resonant voice that country
music leading men seem to have. Somehow, each of these sounds is Red Dirt, but it’s not
immediately obvious why.

Canada and Boland were part of a generation of musicians who arrived on the Farm
scene in the mid-90s and learned from people like Childers, LaFave and the Red Dirt
Rangers. Just out of high school, Canada moved to Stillwater in 1994 and rode his
bicycle to the Farm (Canada 2013).

“I was at the perfect age where everyone thought I was going to college. I wasn't. I got
kicked out of high school. Everybody asked if I'd gone up to Stillwater to learn,” he said.
“I always just told them ‘yeah,’ because I did. I moved up there because of the music, and
I didn't leave until I really felt like I'd learned enough … and I could go out and do it on
my own.”

Groups like Canada’s first band, Cross Canadian Ragweed, and Boland’s Stragglers went
on from the Farm to leave their dusty red fingerprints on mainstream country charts when
in the early 2000s. Eventually the term “Red Dirt/Texas Country” emerged as a genre
term to describe a regional scene apart from what was happening in Nashville. The
phrase indicates a cross-pollination and migration between Red Dirt artists and Texans
from scenes in Stillwater and Austin. The entire state of Oklahoma has a population

19

smaller than the Dallas metroplex, and as musicians got on their feet, they often went
south of the Red River to find gigs and spread their music. The new term also indicated
that for Texas — a neighbor separated by rivalries both personal and college football —
the Okies were too big to ignore.

On a groggy New Year’s Day, Canada and the Departed load up their tour bus and head
to the Wormy Dog Saloon in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown. The night before in Stillwater,
the Departed offered up plugged in rock followed by Boland and the Stragglers fiddle-
driven country. Today is the Hangover Ball, a fully acoustic show where singer-
songwriters stand on stage three or four at a time and take turns playing their stripped
down tracks. It’s in this distillation that an observer can see what ties together the Red
Dirt electric guitar and fiddle.

“It always comes back to the acoustic,” Canada said. “(For) 99 percent of the people from
that scene, that's where it starts. It starts with just sitting around either by yourself or
sitting together with somebody.”

No matter what else happens when the full band is on stage, songwriting is still the main
ingredient that makes up Red Dirt. Keyboard or mandolin solos are fine, but the song is
the final measurement by which the music is judged. When a singer is alone on stage
with a guitar, free from distractions, they better have something to say.

20

“I think what it really boils down to is the actual lyrics of the song and the meaning of it.
That's really what counts in this genre of music … because lyrics touch people's soul,”
Canada said. “You can have a song you can dance to all night long, but if the lyrics aren't
good, most of the people that listen to this kind of music don't give a shit.”

Taylor describes it as grittiness. Cooper said it boils down to honesty. Pierce said it is
about telling the story of a real experience.

“There are broken hearts in those songs,” he said (Pierce 2013).

Red Dirt musicians often look back to the guys who they learned from, carrying on the
collaborative tradition of the Farm. After the Departed formed in 2010, the band released
This is Indian Land, an album made up of covers of old songs from Red Dirt and
Oklahoma musicians. In 2011, Boland recorded “Farmer’s Luck,” a song by Greg Jacobs
who is one of the early Red Dirt songwriters. The song is the story of the damming of
Oklahoma’s Canadian River, which created a recreational lake at the expense of farmland
taken by eminent domain.

“It used to be that a country artist would sing about the farmer that lost his land,” a
statement about the song on Boland’s website reads (Rancho Alto 2013). “Now they
glorify that party at the lake.”

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Despite some flirtations, friends and crossovers, most in Red Dirt see themselves as a
little out-of-step with contemporary country music. The word “authentic” is rarely if ever
mentioned because it’s assumed that you are. There’s not enough money or fame in this
scene to put on airs. Canada said there’s a good side of Nashville, but the bad side clouds
up everything by focusing too much on what might be a radio hit. Red Dirt offers its fair
share of songs of humor and sing-alongs, but Canada said it also harkens back to
country’s roots, which often dealt with difficult subjects.

“You know, once upon a time, Merle Haggard … would sing about prison and losing,
and he never won. That's what country music was,” Canada said. “And now you don't
hear that stuff anymore because they want the consumer to be happy, you know? But
country music was based on blues, and the blues are sad.”

Over time, student musicians become teachers charged with passing on the tradition.
Canada said he was used to pointing the finger at guys Childers, LaFave and others when
asked why he got into this, but he never expected the roles to be reversed. While at a
recent festival in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, he sat down for an interview beside
Boland, Farm peer Stoney LaRue and a newer Red Dirt band called the Turnpike
Troubadours.

“This Texas radio station wanted to interview all the Okies at once, and I … always
considered myself a student. I'd never ever, ever, put myself in the teacher category,”
Canada said. “I remember they asked Evan (Felker), who is the lead singer for the

22

Troubadours, ‘what made you do this for a living?’ He looked at the three of us … and
said ‘these guys did.’”

The Farm closed down, and the Red Dirt sound is less centralized than it once was as new
musicians make it their own across Oklahoma and Texas. Still, the Red Dirt philosophy
that the Farm instilled of collaboration, songwriting and helping others come up carries
on with those who bear the Red Dirt name. Make no mistake; it’s still one big damn
band.

“I've done so many interviews for Nashville papers or (radio), … and people (ask) ‘do
you think this scene is going to last forever?’ And some of those people are being kind of
smartasses about it,” he said. “And yeah, I do. As long as everybody keeps looking out
for each other, then this scene will be here forever.”

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References

Canada, Cody (singer/guitar for Cross Canadian Ragweed and The Departed). Telephone
interview with author, January 15, 2013.

Conner, Thomas. "The nominees for Spot Music Award `Best Oklahoma Sound Act'
are...." Tulsa World, October 15, 1999.

Cooper, John (singer/mandolin for Red Dirt Rangers). Interview with author, Stillwater,
Oklahoma, January 9, 2013.

Dunlap, Chuck (Red Dirt singer/songwriter). Interview with author, Stillwater,
Oklahoma, April 24, 2013.

LaFave, Jimmy (Red Dirt singer/songwriter). Telephone interview with author, May 29,
2013.

McClure, Mike (singer/guitar for Great Divide and Mike McClure Band). Telephone
interview with author, June 6, 2013.

Morris, Don (Red Dirt singer/songwriter). Interview with author, Stillwater, Oklahoma,
April 24, 2013.

Neilson, Kurt (Red Dirt musician). Interview with author, Stillwater, Oklahoma, April
24, 2013.

Piccolo, Brad (singer/guitar Red Dirt Rangers). Interview with author, Stillwater,
Oklahoma, April 24, 2013.

Pierce, Danny (longtime resident and caretaker of “the Farm”), Email correspondence
and telephone interview with author, March 28, 2013.

"Rancho Alto." Jason Boland & The Stragglers Band website.
http://www.thestragglers.com/?pg=band (accessed June 23, 2013).

Stillwater NewsPress, "Robert Wayne “Bob” Childers," April 24, 2008.

Taylor, Monica (Red Dirt singer/songwriter). Telephone interview with author, May 29,
2013.

Asset Metadata

Creator O'Bannon, Richard (author)

Core Title One big damn band: an introduction to the Red Dirt musical scene

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Publication Date 01/16/2014

Defense Date 06/24/2013

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Bob Childers,Cody Canada,countries,Jimmy LaFave,John Cooper,Journalism,Monica Taylor,Music,OAI-PMH Harvest,Oklahoma,Red Dirt,Stillwater,The Farm

Language English

Advisor Page, Tim (committee chair), Anawalt, Sasha (committee member), Lopez, Ken (committee member)

Creator Email obannon.ricky@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-290002

Unique identifier UC11288035

Identifier etd-OBannonRic-1785.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-290002 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-OBannonRic-1785.pdf

Dmrecord 290002

Document Type Thesis

Rights O'Bannon, Richard

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Red Dirt music is a hard-to-define, I-know-it-when-I-hear-it subgenre of country music that was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma in the early 1970s. Musically it combines influences from country, blues, rock, folk, bluegrass and any other number of styles depending on the band. What defines the genre more is a focus on songwriting that expresses the shared history and culture of people in Stillwater and the region. ❧ For more than two decades starting in 1979, a farmhouse — known locally as “the Farm” — just outside of Stillwater city limits provided a gathering place and a nearly communal living experience where musicians and other artists could trade ideas, share their craft, party and build the Red Dirt sound. Named for the color of the earth in the region, Red Dirt music is a self-describe brotherhood, where elder musicians pass down what they know to those coming up and one-time students are expected to help teach the generation behind them.