Oklahoma has produced countless notable artists and more than a few artistic styles and movements that we can claim as our own, but there may be no sound or style more synonymous with our state than Red Dirt, the hybrid of country, rock, folk, and electric blues that was born from the Oklahoma soil and that grew into a musical animal all its own largely in the bars and clubs of Stillwater.
But while acts like Cross Canadian Ragweed or Stoney LaRue may have helped to promote and popularize the loosely defined sound and its name, the actual history of Red Dirt runs much deeper and much further back than many know.
That was the realization that came to Midwest City-based journalist and author Tonya Little as she was developing her new book “Dirt & Spirit: A History of the Red Dirt Music Scene – Volume 1.”
Describing herself as more of a straightforward rock fan for most of her life, Little said that she came to Red Dirt quite a bit later and became enamored with the gritty, homegrown honesty of the songwriting, but also with the sense of community and support that she saw in the scene.
Tonya Little: I didn't even know Oklahoma had this cool Red Dirt scene. I don't even know if I'd ever heard the term Red Dirt, really, other than in passing, and so I just fell in love with it.
And I don't know, but once I was in, I was in. I was just like, the community, the people, they became like, really good friends.
So while it was definitely the music that started it and brought me in, it became the people, and like all this, you know, the same fans that I saw at every show, you know, became like this family.
Brett Fieldcamp: But when she began to explore the roots and figures behind the style - and began to field the inevitable question of just what “Red Dirt” is - Little found that there had been a surprisingly sparse amount of writing or recordkeeping about the scene.
Tonya Little: I decided, because I still had a bunch of friends that were like, “What is Red Dirt music?” And I was like, well, instead of just educating this one person, you know, I'm going to write an article: “What is Red Dirt music?”
And so I was like, well, you got to have history if you're going to tell people what Red Dirt is, and so I was looking it up and there was nothing. There was maybe an article here, an article there. And I was like, Well, how am I gonna find out?
And so I was like, well, one, I'm gonna have to find the people that were in it, and then I'm just gonna have to get their story. So that's what led to the book, is because there was no history, and I wanted to know it, first of all, and then I wanted to make sure they didn't get lost in time.
Brett Fieldcamp: That meant getting deeper into the scene and into the history of Stillwater itself and its particularly rich musical history with country-folk artists and Red Dirt forebears like Bob Childers, Steve Ripley, and Chuck Dunlap.
Tonya Little: Every time I interviewed somebody, they would give me like four or five different other names. These really older generation guys and gals started this thing, and they didn't even realize they started it.
But nobody knows who they are, because they came up in a time where there was no social media, there was no big media presence, but they created it. So that's how I decided to write the book.
Brett Fieldcamp: The goal of this first volume, she said, was to not only capture the origins and milestones of the Red Dirt scene from its earliest rumblings to the beginning of wider popularity in the early 90s, but to also honor the attitude and raw spirit of these formative figures, building sections into the text for the surviving Red Dirt luminaries and their families to speak to the scene from their own words and their own memories.
But Little also wanted to pay tribute to the fiercely independent ethos of the original Red Dirt community by keeping the book’s presentation as raw and humble as possible, even declining some local publishers that expressed interest in favor of releasing the book through her own brand new Little Okieland Publishing.
Tonya Little: The whole thing with the Red Dirt scene is they didn't want to be a part of Nashville music, necessarily. They didn't. They wanted to be genuine, authentic, and sing about their lives.
And so I was like, well, I need it to be genuine and authentic. That's the whole reason I put a real picture on the cover and kept the graphics really simple, because I'm like, I don't want to be hokey. I don't want to market it up. I just want it to be real.
Brett Fieldcamp: With this first volume in the world now and the second already in the works, Little is still searching for a definitive answer to that same, burning question: what is Red Dirt?
But the answer that she’s come to for herself isn’t a specific sound or style, it’s just an attitude, and more than anything, it’s a place.
Tonya Little: Red Dirt to me - and there's a lot of controversy on what is Red Dirt and what isn't - my opinion is Red Dirt is a regional moniker. That's all it is.
It doesn't describe music. It doesn't describe a sound. It describes a community, and that's Oklahoma.
Period.
Brett Fieldcamp: “Dirt & Spirit: A History of the Red Dirt Music Scene – Volume 1” is available now at local bookstores and online retailers. For more, visit Tonya Little’s official site at littleokieland.com.
Now for a taste of Stillwater’s Red Dirt sound, here’s Chad Sullins and the Last Call Coalition with “Couple 1000 Miles.”
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