Cox to headline folk fest
After 65 years, folk music fans in the Ozarks can lay claim to having one of the oldest festivals — period — in the nation. Eureka Springs is the place, and the compact tourist mecca’s annual Ozark Folk Festival has been bringing together fans of music, dance and crafts since 1947.
Events began Monday and continue through Sunday. At 7 p.m. today, town historian June Westphal, who has been writing about her city for more than 40 years, will speak about the history of the festival at the Carnegie Library Annex, 192 Spring St.
On Wednesday — also known as Halloween — the Barefoot Ball at 7:30 p.m. will feature The Carper Family in the Barefoot Ballroom atop the Basin Park Hotel, 12 Spring St. Melissa Carper, who lived in Eureka Springs for more than 10 years, now lives in
Austin, Texas, with her two band mates. Tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the door. The event will be a hillbilly costume ball and there will be prizes for best costume, best hillbilly zombie and best beard (real and fake).
On Thursday, festival headliner Ronny Cox will be at the Library Annex for a screening of his first movie, Deliverance, and he will sign copies of his new book, Dueling Banjos: The Deliverance of Drew. Admission is free, but seating is limited and donations will be accepted.
Cox may be best remembered for playing guitar alongside a young boy playing banjo in the early scenes of the 1972 movie, in which his character later perishes on a canoe journey down a wild Georgia river.
“Of all the films I’ve done there are more myths and legends about that one than anything else,” Cox says in an interview from his home in Southern California, where he has lived since that film launched a career that has included acting in movies and TV, as well as music. “So I’ll be doing the talk on Thursday, along with a show on Saturday night.” (He will have a backing band that includes Karen Mal on mandolin, bass and vocals, and Radoslaw Lorkovic on accordion.)
Born and raised in New Mexico, Cox did his early recording in Clovis, at the studio where rock ’n’ roll legends, including Buddy Holly, Jimmy Gilmer & the Fireballs and Buddy Knox, made their records.
“Of all the films I’ve done there are more myths
and legends about that one than anything
else.”
“I grew up playing music,” Cox, 74, says. “I was calling square dances when I was age 10.”
Other film roles have been
in Bound for Glory, Beverly Hills Cop, RoboCop and Total Recall, plus roles on the TV shows St. Elsewhere, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stargate SG-1, Desperate Housewives and Dexter.
“Most of my time is spent playing music, about 100 shows a year,” he says. “I turn down most of the acting jobs I’m offered.”
His work on Deliverance taught him all he needs to know about white-water canoeing.
“I don’t care if I ever see white water again,” he says. “Of the four of us that were in that movie, only Ned Beatty had ever been in a canoe, but overall, we were all pretty good athletes, and we had two weeks of canoe practice. There were no stunt players. Jon Voight and I broke a couple of canoes in half and it was 12 weeks of living on the edge.”
OTHER FESTIVAL FUN
At 9 p.m. Thursday, a Hillbilly Hootenanny will be held at Chelsea’s Corner Cafe, 10 Mountain St. The Hee-Hawstyle production will feature local musicians/impersonators singing the songs of Conway Twitty, Patsy Cline and Grandpa Jones. There will also be square dancing, a pie-baking contest, chicken splat bingo and corny jokes.
On Friday, noted Northwest Arkansas duo Trout Fishing in America will perform at The Auditorium, 36 S. Main St. The show will open at 7:30 p.m. with Karen Mal and Jack Williams. Seating is reserved and tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door.
On Saturday, the festival begins with an 11 a.m. competition between six singersongwriters in Basin Park, followed at 1 p.m. by a show by Trout Fishing in America, who will be among the contest judges. At 2 p.m., there will be a folk festival parade down Spring Street.
Cox will headline the festival at The Auditorium, with Jack Williams and last year’s winner of the singer/ songwriter contest, Michael Cockram, opening the show at 7:30 p.m. Seating is reserved, and tickets are $25 in advance or $30 at the door. A combo ticket for Friday and Saturday’s auditorium shows will be $35.
On Sunday, there will be a 1 p.m. show in Basin Park, “Voices of Reason, Voices of Change,” featuring Northwest Arkansas musicians Still on the Hill, Dave Rosengarden Baer, Arkansas Red and Bossa Screwnova singing political songs.
The final event of the festival will be a Sunday night house concert at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 17 Elk St., with a meet-and-greet potluck at 6 p.m., followed by music by Jones Van Jones and then by singer Laurie McClain.
Admission is $15.