Music for musicians
Bob Childers’ Gypsy Cafe songwriters festival raises money for nonprofit Red Dirt Relief Fund.
Brandon Jenkins was always a “yes” when the Red Dirt Relief Fund came calling. “Brandon was always there for us. He played every Gypsy Cafe, and he would always call, ‘Hey I want to be on the bill. … What can I do to help?’ He was always there to lend a hand, so we wanted to honor him. Nobody exemplifies the Restless Spirit Award better than Brandon Jenkins,” said John Cooper, a member of the board of directors of the Red Dirt Relief Fund.
When the nonprofit organization hosts its seventh Bob Childers’ Gypsy Cafe songwriters festival May 2 at three venerable Stillwater music venues, Jenkins will be posthumously honored as the second recipient of the annual Restless Spirit Award. A Tulsa native based in Nashville, Tennessee, Jenkins died in March after suffering complications during a heart operation. He was 48.
“He was just the most approachable, humble (person), and he really represented the Oklahoma music community to me, because he was always happy to meet a friend, meet a fan, meet another musician,” said Katie Dale, the executive director of the Red Dirt Relief Fund. “The Restless Spirit Award is supposed to go to someone who embodies what Bob Childers was for the (red dirt music) scene, and we couldn’t really have found a better candidate than Brandon Jenkins.”
More than 50 Oklahoma songwriters will come together to perform at the May 2 Bob Childers’ Gypsy Cafe in Stillwater, and Cooper said several are expected to play songs Jenkins wrote or co-wrote during the festival.
“Brandon exemplifies what I think our scene is, and there’s not a better songwriter from our scene ever than Brandon Jenkins,” said Cooper, who is also a member of the respected Payne Country band the Red Dirt Rangers. “It is sad, but you just honor those that have gone before you. That’s all you can do.”
Fundraising event
Named for the late Bob Childers, the Oklahoma songwriter known as the “godfather of red dirt music,” and the fanciful nickname for a shed on the grounds of The Farm, the Stillwater homestead recognized as the birthplace of red dirt music, the Bob Childers’ Gypsy Cafe is Oklahoma’s largest songwriters festival.
But it’s also the biggest annual fundraiser for the Red Dirt Relief Fund, which provides a safety net of critical assistance for Oklahomans in the music business in times of need. The 2017 event raised $20,000, Dale said, funding the full grant load for last year.
Operated by an allvolunteer board, the fund has granted more than $80,000 to Oklahomabased music people since its inception in 2012. Recipients range from those who have lost their property to wildfires or tornadoes to those who have been forced to take time off work because of accidents or medical emergencies.
Six of the musicians on this year’s festival lineup have received assistance from the Red Dirt Relief Fund.
“It’s great to have those people come up, and it’s great that they want to give back,” Cooper said.
The Gypsy Cafe has grown to the point that organizers can’t accommodate all the musicians who want to perform there, he said. The organization has started a fall event, Tom Skinner’s Skyline Music Festival, in Tulsa and hopes to eventually start another musical fundraiser in the Oklahoma City area.
“We want to involve as many people as we possibly can,” Cooper said. “My band, Red Dirt Rangers, we’re hosting a stage, but we’re not playing this year at Gypsy Cafe. We wanted to leave those slots open. We’ll participate in the Skinner event. Next year, we’ll probably play Gypsy Cafe and just kind of bounce back and forth.”
Emerging talent
This year’s Bob Childers’ Gypsy Cafe will showcase perennial favorites like Stoney LaRue, Kaitlin Butts, Mike McClure, Randy Crouch, Monica Taylor, Read Southall, Bo Phillips, Dustin Pittsley, Dylan Stewart, Gabe Marshall, Gene Collier, Gene Williams, Buffalo Rogers, Cale Lester, Chad Sullins, Chuck Dunlap, Jacob Tovar and more.
Along with the Red Dirt Rangers, Mike Hosty and “Tequila” Kim Reynolds will host this year’s stages.
Organizers again partnered with the Oklahoma Film + Music Office to bring in 12 new musicians for the event.
“We feel like it’s important to continue to bring in new acts just because that’s kind of what the thing is about. That’s what Childers did. That’s what Bob did for us. … You help out the new upand-comers. Music is not a competition. It is an art, and for it to thrive, you need to constantly have new blood. So, we feel like it’s important to do for others what was done for us. And that’s just how our scene works — and it always has,” Cooper said.
The festival features groups of three or four songwriters performing 45-minute acoustic sets staggered across three Stillwater venues: Eskimo Joe’s, George’s Stables and Stonewall Tavern. Along with swapping stories and songs, the performers will play at least one Childers tune.
The event will culminate in the presentation of the Restless Spirit Award, followed by the all-artist finale at 11 p.m. on the main stage at Eskimo Joe’s.
The festival is continuing to honor last year’s recipient of the first Restless Spirit Award, red dirt pioneer Jimmy LaFave, who died of cancer just a few weeks after the 2017 Gypsy Cafe. In March, organizers started taking submissions for the inaugural Jimmy LaFave Songwriting Contest for unsigned Oklahoma songwriters.
“That was really a gift brought to us by some friends of Jimmy’s in
Austin (Texas) who have underwritten the whole thing and provided the prize money. Now that the judges have selected these finalists, it’s so exciting,” Dale said. “To involve that kind of rising talent, it’s something that we’ve always tried to do in this event, and having the songwriting contest just really solidifies that. Now it’s a tradition moving forward that will be built into the festival.”
A panel of judges recently narrowed a field of more than 40 songs down to four finalists: Jason Scott’s “She Good to Me”; Sophia Babb’s “If I Were a Ghost”; Ken Pomeroy’s “The Sidewalk Song”; and Emily Faith’s “Silver Bullets.”
The finalists will play their songs for a live audience at a special showcase from 6 to 9 p.m. May 1 at Willies Saloon in Stillwater. The winner will get a spot in the Gypsy Cafe lineup and $500. The event at Willie’s is free and open to the public.
“I think it’s a great way to honor Jimmy, to keep his legacy as a songwriter going. He was real big in wanting to help out the Red Dirt Relief Fund. Since he lived in Texas for so long, he wasn’t actually eligible for the funding because one of the rules — and we only have two — is that you must live in the state of Oklahoma. But he was real into the fund and really thought what we were doing was a great thing,” Cooper said. “It just continues his legacy not only of great songwriting but of lending a hand to others.”