The Kerrville Folk Festival has been held every year since 1972, and since 1974 at Quiet Valley Ranch, about nine miles south of Kerrville on State Highway 16. Rod Kennedy, an Austin promoter who had run the Chequered Flag folk club, founded it with Nancylee Davis to provide evening music for the first Texas State Arts and Crafts Fair. The first festival, June 1 to 3, 1972, drew 2,800 people to the 1,200-seat Kerrville Municipal Auditorium. The festival moved to the 60-acre ranch in 1974, and the first festival there, in May 1974, ran four nights with Townes Van Zandt, Willis Alan Ramsey, Flaco Jiménez and Asleep at the Wheel. Volunteers built the cantilevered main stage in three weeks in 1981. Since 1987 the festival has run for 18 days over three weekends, with camping on the ranch, and it draws tens of thousands of people. Its New Folk songwriting competition has been judged since 1975. Winners include Robert Earl Keen in 1983, Hal Ketchum in 1986 and James McMurtry in 1987, and Lucinda Williams, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett all reached the finals. Kennedy stepped back from running it in the early 2000s, and a nonprofit foundation has owned it since 2008. He died in Kerrville in 2014, aged 84. The 2020 festival was held online, and it returned to the ranch in the fall of 2021.
Getting there
29.9580, -99.2172
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
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