Dancers at the Kerrville Folk Festival.Photograph by David Johnson
The Kerrville Folk Festival, which celebrates its forty-ninth anniversary in October, is one of the longest continuously running music festivals in the United States. Over eighteen days each year, as many as thirty thousand people gather at Quiet Valley Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, an hour’s drive northwest of San Antonio, to immerse themselves in live music. Loyal festivalgoers often return for years, viewing the place as a second home. They live in camps that function through a barter economy, hold fireside jam sessions into the wee hours of the morning, and attend shows by big-name artists such as the Indigo Girls, Willie Nelson, and David Crosby. Up-and-comers participate in the New Folk Competition, which counts Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, and Steve Earle among its alumni.
The festival, which will return in person from October 1 to 11 after a virtual celebration in 2020, comes to life in the pages of photographer David Johnson’s It Can Be This Way Always, a University of Texas Press book that highlights a decade’s worth of photographs from the festival. Johnson’s black and white photography centers attendees and volunteers instead of the musicians, capturing the spur-of-the-moment campfires, hazy summer fashion, and communal living that define Kerrville.
Johnson, who’s from Austin, has attended the festival since 2004; he describes the experience as “Burning Man for the three-generation Texas hippie family.” He went to his first festival with his parents after returning to the United States from a semester abroad in Italy during his time at Texas Christian University. Four years later, he began photographing Kerrville with a four-by-five-inch film camera. He continued the project for twelve consecutive years, studying the community, landscape, and people that make the event so special. It was a turning point for Johnson, who had just finished his MFA thesis on a very different theme: images of corporate offices that had emptied during the great recession of 2007 to 2009. He saw commonalities between the two subjects, however. Johnson says he has always been interested in “thinking about the ways in which places form personality, and then how personality affects space.” Where better to study that than at a utopian music festival?
Johnson’s favorite memories from Kerrville aren’t of watching big-name bands, though he did feel a special connection when he got to see the Indigo Girls, a band his sister introduced him to. Instead, the best moments, he says, come from small groups singing together at campfires amid miles of makeshift tents. These are the images he shares in It Can Be This Way Always. “All the things that were behind the stage were more interesting to me,” Johnson says. “I can think of times hearing my favorite Austin musician in the distance, and through the darkness I find the path up the hill, and then all of a sudden there’s a hundred people sitting on the side of the hill listening to somebody play by flashlight. It’s magical.”
It Can Be This Way Always takes its name from the festival’s unofficial catchphrase, which nods to both nostalgia and hope, two themes explored in essays that are peppered between Johnson’s photographs. The photos have a timeless quality, with no iPhones or computers in sight. We see revelers in cowboy boots and jeans, long skirts and bohemian blouses, dancing on porches or perching on the edges of Winnebago vans. These portraits could just as easily be from the seventies as the aughts, and that’s part of the appeal. While Johnson is now wrapping up this photography project, he still plans to attend Kerrville with a camera in tow. It’s become his home.
Families with small children are a common sight at Kerrville, as are twentysomethings and older adults. For the most part, everyone mingles harmoniously, as in this juggling scene near the main stage.
Photograph by David Johnson
Under the branches of an old oak called the Council Tree, the Moontower Stage hosts magical after-hours performances. “The Moontower features the best music on the ranch after the main-stage shows end, and it lasts well into the early mornings,” Johnson says. “It’s a sweet party for the serious music listeners.”
Photograph by David Johnson
The festival’s scrappy, hand-painted ticket booth is a symbol of what the Kerrville Folk Festival is all about. “It’s not Club Med, but it doesn’t need to be,” Johnson says.
Photograph by David Johnson
Guitars belonging to residents of Camp Bungee await their owners’ return. “Greg and Sherry Moe would set up Camp Bungee and call it ‘the premier hippie retirement community,’” Johnson says. “Hundreds of bungee cords would hold down a monumental tarp in the Texas breeze.”
Photograph by David Johnson
Song circles are a common sight. “Almost everyone has a song to play at Kerrville,” Johnson says. “Beginners to national touring acts are always swapping chord progressions, lyrics, and ideas. You’d be surprised how many songs you’ve heard that started at Kerrville.”
Photograph by David Johnson
Longtime attendee Brian Cutean strums his guitar on a riverbank. “During the daytime, many folkies head to the area’s spring-fed rivers,” Johnson says. “The crisp waters are a respite from the Texas heat and rejuvenation from last night’s party.”
Photograph by David Johnson
The Honky Tonk camp is known for bringing the party. “They’ve got pickup trucks and trees adorned with Jameson-bottle ornaments, louder music, and late nights, and”—for some reason—“you may find a pig or a beaver in camp.”
Photograph by David Johnson
Kidsville is a place where children and their parents can play during the festival. Johnson had wanted to photograph it for a long time, and when the right moment came, he didn’t realize it at first. “The young man at the center of the frame stood directly in front of the lens,” he says. “While I debated asking him to move, a couple [on the left] walked up and clearly was interested in dancing. The young man very astutely looked at the couple and said, ‘If y’all want to dance, I’ll hold your baby.’ I’m not sure if they knew each other.”
Photograph by David Johnson
Frank Hill is a festival fixture and “a cosmic cowboy filled with songs and stories.” Johnson snapped this portrait while Hill was practicing a tune next to the Kerrtry Store. “He immediately and gracefully struck a pose and then played a song for me.”
Photograph by David Johnson
Winners of the New Folk Competition often go on to illustrious careers in folk, roots, and bluegrass music. From left, 2016 winners Emily Scott Robinson, Rachel Laven, and Justin Farren hang out behind the main stage.
Photograph by David Johnson
Denizens of the Whiskey Ridge camp attempt to collectively drink a bottle of whiskey on each of the festival’s eighteen days. The revelers string the empty bottles up along the ranch’s fence line.
Photograph by David Johnson
The quirky homes that pop up around the ranch, such as this Shasta trailer, are part of Kerrville’s allure. “There are vintage trailers and sixties Volkswagen buses next to six-figure RV rigs, geodesic domes, tepees, and brand-new REI tents—everyone has a different way to set up camp.”
Photograph by David Johnson
Amy Sue Berlin, left, and Dana Louise Idlet are second-generation Kerrville attendees and musicians who have performed on the main stage and organized late-night shows. “They’re younger Kerrville mainstays carving a path for a new generation on the ranch,” Johnson says.
