Kerrville Folk Festival

Variant names

Dates:

1972

History notes:

The Kerrville Folk Festival was founded in 1972 by husband-wife team Rod Kennedy and Nancylee Davis and has been run annually since then.

Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers performed at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 1983, notable for it being his last performance before his death. He then boarded Air Canada Flight 797 out of Dallas/Fort Worth, which caught fire over Kentucky and lead to the deaths of half the passengers on board, including Rogers.

In 2002, Kennedy retired and the non-profit Texas Folk Music Foundation took over Festival management. The new board hired Dalis Allen as producer. In November 2008, the Kerrville Folk Festival and Kerrville Wine & Music Festival were acquired by the Texas Folk Music Foundation, a 501(c)3 Texas Non-profit Corporation.

In 2020, the music festival's events were moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event returned to an in-person festival in its usual location, Quiet Valley Ranch, the following year.

In past years the event has featured well-known artists such as Peter, Paul and Mary, Lyle Lovett (1980), Emmylou Harris (2015), Willie Nelson (1973), Mary Chapin Carpenter, Robert Earl Keen (1983), Lucinda Williams (1974), Bill Davis, David Crosby (2015), and Nanci Griffith (1978).