Oklahoma Artists to Perform at Kansas City Folk Festival

by Austin Burwell

Oklahomans take pride in the state’s thriving folk music scene and the born-and-bred Okie artists that have helped to create it. Oklahoma music is so influential that it will be filling its own area, The Oklahoma Room, at the Folk Alliance Kansas City Folk Festival.  The Folk Alliance International is an organization dedicated to nurture, engage, and empower the international folk music community — traditional and contemporary, amateur and professional — through education, advocacy and performance. One way to complete this goal is the Kansas City Folk Festival held in Kansas City, Missouri. The festival will be held on Sunday, February 19^th as part of the 29th annual Folk Alliance International Conference, held February 15^th-19^th. The Oklahoma Room will be in Room 718 of the Westin Crown Center. To buy tickets to this event, visit the festival website or call 816-221-3655 at extension 1.

Among the artists representing Oklahoma at the Kansas City Folk Festival will be Paul Benjaman, Wink Burcham, Kierston White, Beau Roberson, Chris Lee Becker, Lauren Barth, Jared Tyler, Robert Hoefling, Dylan Stewart, Jacob Tovar, Kalyn Fay, Don White, Andy Adams, Erin O’Dowd, and Dylan Golden Aycock, and others. Many of these artists are well-known Tulsa natives and frequent performers at venues like Mercury Lounge, The Colony, The Hunt Club, and Soul City.

In order to raise funds to help send Oklahoma’s own to the festival, The Colony will be hosting The Oklahoma Room Folk Alliance Fundraiser show on Saturday, February 11. The fundraiser will be a final send off before the artists head to Missouri to spread Oklahoma’s sound at the Kansas City Folk Festival. The funds collected by this event will help these artists cover registration fees and travel expenses. The fundraiser will be held at The Colony at 2809 S Harvard in Tulsa beginning at 7pm on Saturday, February 11. This is 21+ show and the suggested donation is $10, but larger donations are appreciated to help keep Oklahoma folk music thriving and well. Reserve a seat by email or Paypal to: hortonrecords@gmail.com or call 918-645-0058.

Check out John Moreland performing in The Oklahoma Room in 2015: