An Oral History of Red Dirt As Told by Those Who Live and Love It

It was the mid-1990s when Cody Canada first came to Stillwater, Oklahoma. The then-17-year-old ventured an hour or so north from his native Yukon to the small college town to see country elite Chris LeDoux perform live. What he found there, instead, would kickstart the rest of his life.

Opening for the hitmaker was The Great Divide, a local act that was steadily on the rise. As Canada recalls of their performance that night, “The lead guitar player was playing these Van Halen riffs over a Bob Wills song, and I thought, ‘Either I love this or I hate this, but I haven’t quite decided yet.’” What they were playing was a misfit blend of old-time swing and arena-ready rock and roll that has become known as Red Dirt music.

Following the performance and a spell backstage to meet The Great Divide, Canada knew his direction forward. “I was so excited to meet somebody that was out there doing their own thing,” he remembers. “Man, it changed my whole trajectory. It just changed my life.”

Back home, he went on to forge Cross Canadian Ragweed, eventually relocating the group to the town where he first heard such joyful noise. From 1994 until their disbandment in 2010, Ragweed would become one of the most recognizable names to have sprung from the Stillwater scene.

Beginning Thursday, April 10, Cross Canadian Ragweed will reunite, along with musical peers Turnpike Troubadours, Jason Boland & The Stragglers, Stoney LaRue, and The Great Divide, at Stillwater’s Boone Pickens Stadium in a celebration of the Red Dirt scene and sound. Ahead of the four-night, sold-out run, No Depression is diving deep into the eclectic sound and style of Red Dirt music — what it is and what it isn’t, how it started and where it’s headed — as told by those who have loved and lived it over the last three decades and more.

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“Party at The Farm!” was the rallying cry once the bars of Stillwater had killed the neon and locked their doors for the night. Shortly after the call to arms, a steady flow of car headlights could be seen lancing the darkness, making the pilgrimage toward a certain two-story yellow house.

In 1979, John Cooper, who was attending the nearby Oklahoma State University at the time, rented the house, the grounds of which were known as The Farm. The spot was just far enough from campus while still being accessible to those looking for a good time. There, within the relatively conservative confines of Stillwater, an open and free-thinking atmosphere was quickly fostered, drawing in poets, artists, creators, but mostly, musicians.

John Cooper: There’s no doubt that Red Dirt music started at The Farm. I mean, it’s ground zero.

I think one of the reasons that the Red Dirt scene started was because Stillwater was pretty isolated. Oklahoma City was still two-lane highways out to the interstate, and then it took an hour and a half at least to get down there. Tulsa was still a good hour, as well. You couldn’t just jump in your car and go to town, in other words, so we made our own fun. It just happened to be music.

Before the understood genesis of Red Dirt on The Farm, there were musicians, like Tom Skinner, Jimmy LaFave, Steve Ripley, and Bob Childers, who had nurtured a lively music scene within Stillwater, their music the guiding force for what would eventually become Red Dirt. Many of those pioneering acts, especially Childers — he’s often referred to as the “Father of Red Dirt Music” — would be familiar faces on The Farm, where jamming and song-sharing became a constant. By the late 1980s, Cooper had joined them in their artistic pursuits, forming his own group, the Red Dirt Rangers, and continuing to blaze a trail for the burgeoning scene.

Cooper: We were Red Dirt Rangers before there was a Red Dirt scene … People would always ask us, “What kind of music do you play?” We just got tired of saying blues, rock and roll, country, Cajun, Tex-Mex, swing, jazz, fusion, funk, bluegrass. So instead of just saying that every time, we said, “We play Red Dirt music.” It caught on. The folks that came after us, the Cody Canadas and [Jason] Bolands and Stoney LaRues, all those guys called it Red Dirt music, as well. It just kind of slowly seeped into the vernacular.

Named for the ruddy loam that blankets much of Oklahoma, Red Dirt music is difficult to pin down. The songwriting, however, is what sets the style apart from every other country subgenre. Early on, Red Dirt forebears drew inspiration from some of music’s greatest pens, looking to bandleader Bob Wills, with his Depression Era brand of good timin’ tunes, and folk titan Woody Guthrie, his lyrics so full of awareness and empathy, for the right words and the right way to sing them.

Cooper: I’ve always contended that the scene itself started as a singer-songwriter scene … The song is the most important thing. It always has been in our scene. Without it, you got nothing.

When Mike McClure, who went on to form The Great Divide, arrived in Stillwater in 1990, he quickly recognized the power within the Red Dirt words. The young musician, by happenstance, heard someone playing a couple of songs by Tom Skinner and Bob Childers. When asked what that was…

Mike McClure: He said, “It’s Red Dirt music.” I never heard that term before … What drew me in was just the lyrics. They really resonated with me.

The Great Divide photo by Sierra Haney

Intrigued by this new music, McClure soon found himself on The Farm where he was indoctrinated into the Red Dirt way of life.

McClure: You could stop in there anytime and there’d be different people sitting in the yard playing music and people painting, writers and everybody just kind of hung out there and that was a real big education to me … I started calling our music Red Dirt, just because I wanted to belong to that group that was coming out of there — Tom Skinner, Bob Childers, Red Dirt Rangers. I liked all those guys, and I liked what they were doing.

The Great Divide formed in Stillwater in1992. By refusing to cover what was dominating Top 40 country radio at the time and opting instead for original songs or those of genre outliers like Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, and Jerry Jeff Walker, they turned the scene upside down. In 1998, after having independently released two albums, the group signed a major label deal with Atlantic Records (the first Red Dirt band to accomplish such a feat) and begin cropping up on the Hot Country charts. This success outside of Stillwater was a success for the entire Red Dirt community.

McClure: I think it showed that anything was possible … It busted out of the region, and then, the bands that came after us just built on top of that and reached more and more at a wider swath.

While the Nashville subsect of Atlantic folded by the turn of the millennium, ultimately ending the band’s major label run after two albums, The Great Divide’s achievements helped to get Red Dirt music onto nation-spanning airwaves and garner wider recognition for the style. A new chapter of Red Dirt soon spawned from this moment in the spotlight, with the likes of Jason Boland & The Stragglers, Stoney LaRue, and Cross Canadian Ragweed keeping up the momentum into the 2000s.

At the same time, the nearby Texas music scene was experiencing a shift. The capital city of Austin, especially, was moving out of a blues-heavy era led by the likes of guitar great Stevie Ray Vaughan and into a period drenched in alt-country and its many variations. Reckless Kelly – formed by Idaho-bred brothers Willy and Cody Braun – was among the leaders of this changing musical landscape. What emerged was a sound not unlike that of Red Dirt music. As a result, many Texas-based groups like Reckless Kelly have since been lumped into the Oklahoma-grown movement.

Willy Braun: Those two scenes really just kind of merged … We don’t consider ourselves Red Dirt just because we’re not from Oklahoma. We don’t mind being in that company, but when somebody asks, we usually just say we’re Americana or country rock … It’s kind of like a family tree. They’re our cousins, I guess.

Since day one, the Red Dirt community has seemed to be just that, a community. A spirit of collaboration and camaraderie has always permeated the scene, making for something truly singular. It’s that spirit that spoke to Cody Canada when he, alongside the rest of Ragweed, first put down roots in Stillwater.

Cody Canada courtesy of the artist

Cody Canada: It was like the scene in The Wizard of Oz. I felt like living in Oklahoma was black and white, and then, when I opened that door to Stillwater, everything was in color. I found what I had been looking for. I started going out to The Farm and hanging out with the Rangers and Bob Childers and all those guys and learned how to do it. I learned that this is not a competition. We can all get further down the pike if we embrace each other’s music.

Many players frequently guested on each other’s albums and McClure would go on to produce records for a number of subsequent Red Dirt acts, with one band’s success always equaling a triumph for the scene as a whole. That mentality hasn’t changed, even as Red Dirt has evolved with the rise of social media.

By the 2010s, the house at The Farm had burned down, Bob Childers had passed away, Cross Canadian Ragweed would soon go their separate ways, and Red Dirt was no longer solely bound by Stillwater. Still, the scene would find new life in rookie groups like Turnpike Troubadours, while continuing to be steered by stalwart acts like Jason Boland, just in time for Red Dirt to contend with the dawn of bro-country.

Jason Boland: There kind of got to be this split [like], “Are you going to go modern bro-country, or are you going to do throwback-y cowboy music or something?”

We were always like, “Where’s the middle ground?” We’ve always just tried to say what we defined as relevant, which was just playing high-powered honky-tonk music that discusses some social issues. Then, you know, we talk about weed a lot too. We try to keep it all mixed in there.

As surface-level songs about lifted trucks and tan lines littered country consciousness, Jason Boland & The Stragglers, alongside Turnpike Troubadours and others, faithfully preserved Red Dirt in this rapidly evolving time, redefining the style for the modern age. Against a soundtrack that echoed their many influences, they stayed true to the song-above-all ethos of their peers, writing honest and relatable words about hard work, hard living, and the winding roads we must travel to find a little peace in this life.

The scene was undoubtedly kept alive, with Turnpike Troubadours having, in that time, become synonymous with the term Red Dirt. However, today, with the arrival of bands like Southall, Stillwater’s own Wyatt Flores, and singer Kaitlin Butts from Tulsa, there have been talks of a Red Dirt Renaissance.

Boland: It’s a restocking of the flames … It’s always good. I would joke every time a new band came out, I would say, “Good, at least we didn’t break the thing. At least we didn’t screw it up.” And the bands, they just keep coming from there.

These young acts are doggedly elbowing their way into the industry armed with a staunch pride for their home state’s musical heritage, as well as songs that resound with the style that raised them. Read Southall remembers listening to a friend’s dad’s Great Divide CDs and attending Red Dirt-fueled festivals with his older sister, but when he came to Stillwater in the 2010s to attend college, he found few remnants of the grassroots scene that had formed there all those years ago.

Southall: There were a few people playing around town and stuff, but no stand-out bands that were blowing and going. I think that was something that we yearned for, that camaraderie in the community of bands coming together and playing shows.

His band, Southall, would ultimately attempt to remedy that, challenging the local bar scene’s now-regular karaoke nights and DJ slots with open mic showcases. People could come together and share their songs again, perhaps nurturing an atmosphere like that that once swirled throughout The Farm.

Southall: That’s what I’ve always loved about this genre of music, it was always about the song and the songwriter, not necessarily about how you can make a hit. It was more about telling stories and getting down to earth with people.

The students and the Stillwater natives really just helped us out and propped us up and filled the seats and supported a band of rag-tags.

Hopefully, [Red Dirt] inspires more people…and they put a band together and take a risk and write from the heart, not for a paycheck.

Even now, with three decades of history and artistry in the rearview and even more on the horizon, Red Dirt music seems impossible to define. Its sound is not quite precise; its many themes are topical, but universal. No two acts are alike, yet they all coexist as one.

Cooper: Jason Boland sounds nothing like Cross Canadian Ragweed, which sounds nothing like Stoney LaRue, which sounds nothing like Red Dirt Rangers, which sounds nothing like Great Divide, which sounds nothing like Wyatt Flores or Turnpike Troubadours. The list can go on and on. We’re all different. That’s why it’s hard to say what it is because it’s all of those.

McClure: It’s hard to explain, and it may not even be tangible, but there’s a spirit there.

Check out a corresponding Red Dirt playlist courtesy of author Alli Patton: