Rice’s Houston Folk Music Archive concert captivates campus

On the eve of homecoming, a group of storied Texas folk music artists took to the stage in Rice Memorial Center’s Ray Courtyard Nov. 9 to celebrate the university’s growing Houston Folk Music Archive and the city’s folk music history. Housed in Fondren Library’s Woodson Research Center, the archive was the brainchild of Norie Guthrie, an archivist and special collections librarian at Fondren. The archive has set out to document Houston’s lively folk scene of the 1960s to 1980s. Through archival collections, oral histories and an online exhibit, Guthrie and colleagues are documenting the people, places and music that made Houston a folk mecca. Among the musicians who performed were The Banded Geckos, Richard Dobson with Franci Jarrard, Dogtooth Violet, George Ensle, Danny Everitt, Linda Lowe and Jack Saunders. John Lomax III served as emcee. The concert was co-hosted by the Woodson and Friends of Fondren Library.

Pictured above are Craig Calvert and Connie Mims; pictured below is Leti Garza.

(Photos by Jeff Fitlow)