Spirits of Kerrville

Day 2 - May 23

There’s obviously one big thing that’s different about this year’s Folk Festival. Our founder, Ron Kennedy, is no longer with us.

Rod passed away April 11. He was 84. He was 51 when I spent my first evening at Kerrville; at that point, he’d already been in this gig for ten years. Producer Dalis Allen has organized a memorial concert, scheduled for Saturday night, but there was a brief observance when Main Stage opened last night. Dalis stepped out to introduce those first performers, doing what Rod did night after night for all those years, and broke up.

“I swear I was fine until 10 minutes ago,” she protested through her tears.

I’m sure it feels really different to Dalis. Rod was her mentor. She worked with him for decades in various capacities, eventually taking his place as producer and emcee of this festical. Even then, Rod was usually around somewhere: watching from the VIP seats at stage right or riding a golf cart to Threadgill Theater to make an appearance at the New Folk concerts. Now Dalis casts her eyes at all those places and doesn’t see him.

It feels strange to say this, but to me things don’t feel so different. It feels like Rod is still here. And why not? He built this festival, kept it going through torrential rain and financial drought, made it his mission in life for 30 years and more. Where else would he hang out?

Ghosts are nothing new at Kerrville. Antler Dave passed two years before I ever set foot on this ranch, but his spirit hung around the Energy Tree for years and we still sing his story on closing night. Back in the ‘90s, I played in a washtub band with a guy named Glenn Allen Schulze. He died, but his ghost stopped by to see Javier one festival and they had a conversation in our tipi. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see Glenn. But I could swear I saw the late Malcolm Smith one afternoon at a camp music jam, and heard his Gypsy fiddle.

Merrilu Park wrote a poem about Rod’s final days. She said that as he prepared to move on to the next plane of existence, he had visits from Allen Damron, Tim Henderson, Steve Fromholz and others that have gone before. (Yeah, Fromholz also left us this past year, killed in a hunting accident.) He saw them, talked with them. And when she called the festival office to report that Rod had crossed over, the staff said he’d just been seen on the ranch, “looking fortyish and flirty.”

Even the ones we don’t see are still here. I’m writing this late at night Fat Jack’s Domino Parlor, with Schmidty’s memorial tree over my right shoulder. Rod’s legacy lives on, built on the contributions of all who’ve been with us over the years. And it won’t surprise me at all if he comes to the party now and then.