The Kerrville Folk Festival

Richard Lawrence Cohen, a novelist/blogger, has been visiting the Kerrville Folk Festival the last few years and reports in from this year's version of the long-running musical gathering.

Cohen has a good eye. He doesn't write about the music, but the people who show up to hear the music.

The unofficial mayor of the festival is Hippie Karl, a trim middleaged man with Custer–length blond hair and beard who is an ordained Baptist minister, a graduate of a Bible seminary long, long ago. He occasionally performs weddings at the festival, and he keeps an organic garden, and he visits campsites tirelessly -- in part to arrange that leftover food find its way to hungry hippies who have traveled here on slim resources -- and he greets every newcomer with a hug. He has, in fact, hugged me, and I him. Our friend Randy, who is Camp Slightly More Modest’s prime mover, tells me that Hippie Karl’s speaking voice has three discernible levels of severity. At the lowest level, he simply tells you his request: “Could you dump those coffee grounds in the compost heap instead of on the trail?” The intermediate level is the “man” level: “Man, could you dump those coffee grounds in the compost heap instead of on the trail?” But when he gets really serious, “man” turns to “dude”: “Dude, could you dump those coffee grounds in the compost heap instead of on the trail?” The authority in Hippie Karl’s voice at the dude level is practically patriarchal.

[richard lawrence cohen]