At the 2009 Kerrville Folk Festival at the Quiet Valley Ranch, Rod Kennedy, who founded the event in 1972 and retired 30 years later, was seen standing in front of the empty stage in the middle of the day. “He didn’t know anyone was watching,” said Lloyd Maines, who was sitting under the trees, waiting to teach a songwriters class. “He just stopped and stood there looking toward the stage for a long while.”
In the silence, no doubt, the veteran promoter heard music. Kennedy could look back on his five-plus decades in the music business, during which he produced more than 1,500 shows, with great satisfaction. In a town full of talkers, Kennedy, who passed away in 2014 at age 84, was a do-er.
When the ex-Marine turned 80, the event was celebrated with a three-hour concert at the Paramount Theatre featuring such Kerrville favorites as Robert Earl Keen, Ruthie Foster, the Flatlanders, Eliza Gilkyson, Bobby Bridger, Randy Rogers, Terri Hendrix and more. For that milestone I visited Kennedy at his house in Kerrvile and talked about a career that began as the 16-year-old “boy singer” for the Bill Creighton Orchestra in Kennedy’s native Buffalo, N.Y. Kennedy didn’t have to haul an instrument, so he was drafted to handle stagehand chores, and within a matter of months he was booking the band.
“I was hooked from that point on,” said Kennedy, who loved to sing in barbershop quartets but found early on that his place was behind the scenes. He moved to Texas in the late 1940s with his mother Dorne when she got a job as a buyer for Sakowitz, an upscale clothier based in Houston. After serving in the Marines during the Korean War, Kennedy moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas. After graduation, he stayed and booked jazz, gospel, country, classical, rock, Tejano, Broadway shows – you name it – in addition to the singer-songwriters in Kerrville, where the main stage bears his name. Under Kennedy’s stewardship, Kerrville grew from an indoor event that attracted 2,800 people (including a longhaired Lyndon Baines Johnson) over three days into the world’s longest-running folk festival, which annually draws more than 30,000 fans. That is, when it doesn’t rain. Downpours limited seven of the first 19 outdoor festivals, leading to the “Kerrville Flood Fest” nickname.
Kennedy was well-established as an Austin promoter in 1972 when organizers of the Kerrville-based Texas State Arts & Crafts Fair asked him to put on a music festival at night to keep the crowds in town. Knowing that Jimmie Rodgers, “the Father of Country Music,” lived in Kerrville before his 1933 passing, Kennedy christened the event by booking Rodgers acolyte Kenneth Threadgill to sing “Blue Yodel # 1 (T For Texas)” the first night.
The Kerrville Folk Festival, which moved outdoors in 1974, when Kennedy bought 60 acres nine miles from town, was the crowning achievement of a career that impacted not only live music in Central Texas, but radio.
As a 24-year-old freshman at UT in 1954, Kennedy used a school project to spearhead efforts to raise money for a campus radio station that would become a reality four years later when KUT-FM went on the air. Weeks after graduating from UT in 1957, Kennedy and then-wife Nancylee bought the KHFI classical music station he had managed for $21,000. Austin’s first FM station, KHFI switched to an adult contemporary format in 1965 and donated all its classical records to KMFA-FM, which went on the air in 1967.
The roots of Kerrville were planted at the Zilker Hillside Theater in 1964, when Kennedy began booking and hosting the KHFI-FM Summer Music Festival over six nights in July. Monday was Folk Night and included such acts as Bob Dylan mentor Carolyn Hester and Texas country bluesmen Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb.
Teaming up with Newport jazz and folk festivals founder George Wein, Kennedy co-promoted the Longhorn Jazz Festival at Disch Field in 1966 and inside at Municipal Auditorium (later renamed Palmer Auditorium) the next year when it rained. The jaw-dropping lineups included Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Jerry Mulligan and Nina Simone, plus homecoming sets from Austin-born Teddy Wilson and Kenny Dorham. John Coltrane was booked for the first LJF, but had to cancel due to ongoing gum problems. His last-minute replacement, the Miles Davis Quintet, with Herbie Hancock on piano and Tony Williams on drums, practically stole the show.
“Thelonious Monk trashed his hotel room,” said Kennedy, whose behind-the-scenes recollections – including some huge monetary losses at Kerrville when it rained and the Jazz Festival when it didn’t– filled his 1999 autobiography Music From the Heart (Eakin Press). Monk admitted swinging from the light fixtures and paid the Downtowner Hotel $400.
Kennedy, who’s never had children because, he said, his work schedule wouldn’t be fair to them, opened the Chequered Flag folk club, named after his passion for race car driving, at 15th and Lavaca streets in 1967. He put the Speed Museum next door in 1968 to display his collection of vintage Porsches, Ferraris and Maseratis. A conservative owner of sports cars owning a folk club in the ’60s seemed incongruous for the times. But then, Kennedy has always been a model of duality. He could be “a crusty old bird,” as musician Bob Livingston led a memorial piece, but he also selflessly helped hundreds of singer-songwriters. His best friend of 40 years was the liberal singer Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul & Mary, yet, until switching parties in 2008 to back Barack Obama for President, Kennedy was an avowed Republican. “A Marine doesn’t fail” was his motto.
“Rod is that rare combination of sensitive listener and a former Marine who has the determination to just plow through when things get tough,” said Gary Hartman, then-director of Texas State University’s Center for Texas Music History. Preserving music history is a cause dear to Kennedy, who donated 43 boxes of papers and memorabilia from Rod Kennedy Presents to UT’s Briscoe Center for American History when he retired.
“Just having him around and watching a show sort of raises the bar just a bit,” said Maines, who led the backing band for the 80th birthday event. “I think his passion and persona is what helps make the Kerrville festival a special-feeling place.” Taking his cue from his military training, Kennedy laid down the rules that kept Kerrville unique: no talking in the audience during a performance, no recorded music between sets, and get that drum circle the fuck out of the campgrounds!
Kennedy worked hard and expected the same of those in his employ. He also demanded respect for musicians. There was that infamous night at emmajoe’s in the early ‘80s when Kennedy flattened a drunk Blaze Foley, who was causing a ruckus during a folksinger’s set. There had already been bad blood between the two, with Kennedy banning Foley from Kerrville for liberal use of profanity onstage, then the 6’4” singer-songwriter crashing the festival in drag the next year.
“I was pretty intimidated by Rod when I met him in 1981,” said musician Robert Earl Keen. “Not just because of his reputation, but because he ran something that I very much wanted to be a part of.” Keen said that when he won Kerrville’s New Folk competition in 1983, “it validated music as a career choice for me.”
Kennedy retired from Kerrville in 2002, leaving the producer’s seat to his longtime protégé, Dalis Allen. He still got a check every month from the Kerrville nonprofit (“My title is consultant, but nobody listens to me anymore.”) and sold Enlyten dietary supplements. He mellowed out and traveled, with nine time shares around the world. Above all, though, he still listened for great songs until the very end. “Music changed my life,” said Kennedy. “When I was in the Marines, I had a mission that had nothing to do with feelings. You’re just not aware of anything else. But I’ve heard songs that made me cry.”
Austin became known as a town of free spirits and cheap living in the ’70s and ’80s, but it took a lot of hard work from people like Rod Kennedy to build the Groover’s Paradise that became the Slacker’s Playground.