The History of the Walnut Valley Festival
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COMING HOME TO WINFIELD: THE HISTORY OF THE WALNUT VALLEY FESTIVAL A Thesis by Seth Stephen Bate Bachelor of Arts, Southwestern College, 1993 Submitted to the Department of History and the faculty of the Graduate School of Wichita State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 2018 © 2018 by Seth Bate All Rights Reserved COMING HOME TO WINFIELD: THE HISTORY OF THE WALNUT VALLEY FESTIVAL The following faculty members have examined the final copy of this thesis for form and content, and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts with a major in History. _________________________________________ Jay Price, Committee Chair _________________________________________ Jeffrey Hayton, Committee Member _________________________________________ Peter Cohen, Committee Member iii DEDICATION To Emma Eleni and Owen Mathers, who have the Walnut Valley Festival in their blood. iv “You know I’m not traditional and I’ve never claimed to be. But I come from a tradition that others made for me. They’re still alive inside my heart although they’re now long gone; I like to think they trusted me to pass the music on.” — Si Kahn and Tom Chapin v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my colleagues in the Wichita State University Community Engagement Institute for their encouragement and flexibility as I have attempted to balance my professional and scholarly pursuits. In particular, thank you to my fellow WSU leadership facilitators and coaches, including Sonja Armbruster, Kevin Bomhoff, Peter Cohen, Jessica Fiscus, Joyce McEwen Crane, and Teresa Strausz. Andrew Martin, a student staff member in the Center for Leadership Development, provided organizational support, and Libby Heflin assisted with transcription. Jay Price has demonstrated a great belief in this project and modeled the importance of practicing local and community history. The Walnut Valley Association has generously provided access to internal documents and answers to nosy questions. In particular, I am indebted to Kendra Redford, who provided personal insights that could have come from no one else. My mother, Jan Gugeler, is an extraordinary proofreader, as her many past students well know. My spouse, Jennifer Muret Bate, has provided keen insights into the ideas explored in this project—and kept everything else in our lives running in the meantime. She is the amazingest. vi ABSTRACT The Walnut Valley Festival was a multi-day event featuring musical performances, instrument contests, camping, and craft sales held in Winfield, Kansas. The Winfield faithful found solace and certainty in the consistency of the Walnut Valley Festival (WVF) each September. This was one of the ways the event reflected the time of its creation. In 1972, an increasingly skeptical and conservative America sought certainty in popular culture that reclaimed identities that seemed to be lost. When culture that represented such certainty was blended with sounds that were popular on the radio, one result was the rise of bluegrass, particularly bluegrass consumed in a festival setting. At festivals, attendees were consumers, but they were also creators and participants. Settings such as the Walnut Valley Festival were interactive in a way that encouraged personal fulfillment through supportive communities—and had booths to sell participants what they needed to continue seeking that fulfillment. From the start, the WVF was a musician’s festival. Being a “picker’s paradise” was central to the festival’s brand and placed the event squarely in the context of bluegrass music. In order to establish itself as commercially viable, the Walnut Valley Association emphasized that its event was family friendly. To a great extent, this was a response to the new nostalgia that emerged in the 1970s as families tried to soothe their anxieties with entertainment that reflected simplicity and connection. It was also a reflection of the personal values of festival organizers. At the same time, emphasizing family friendliness was a defensive move, designed to ward off bad press and governmental regulation. Most importantly, WVF promoters stressed that the people who came to the Winfield Fairgrounds were not like the people who went to rock music festivals in Pittsburg, Kansas, Sedalia, Missouri, or Woodstock, New York. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page INTRODUCTION THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION FOR ACOUSTIC STRING MUSICIANS…..1 DOWN IN WALNUT VALLEY: THE ORIGINS AND EARLY YEARS OF THE WALNUT VALLEY FESTIVAL…....11 HOW BLUE IS YOUR GRASS?........................................................................................30 PICKER’S PARADISE………………………………………….…………………..........40 MUSIC MADE BY HAND: ART AND COMMERCE MEET AT THE WALNUT VALLEY FESTIVAL………......56 WHERE ARE THE BATHROOMS?: MANAGING THE WALNUT VALLEY FESTIVAL…………………………..……......79 “NO ALCOHOL, PLEASE. IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR!”: A FAMILY FRIENDLY FOLK FESTIVAL..……………………………………….........99 BOBBY REDFORD’S WINFIELD BAND………………………………………………122 CONCLUSION “WINFIELD—THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE ALL THE TIME”…………...…….……145 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………...………………………………………….153 viii INTRODUCTION THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION FOR ACOUSTIC STRING MUSICIANS It takes a year to recover from Winfield. It takes Winfield to recover from a year. This memorable summation appeared in the 1990s in “Winfield-l,” an online community for fans of the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. While it may have been counterintuitive for people who loved acoustic music, traditional crafts, and camping to connect by computer and modem, the community was lively, often with multiple posts per day. Members were only half joking when they referred to attending the annual festival each September as part of their mental health regimen. Many of them built their calendars and vacations around their pilgrimages to Winfield. The Winfield faithful found solace and certainty in the consistency of the Walnut Valley Festival each September. This was one of the ways the event reflected the time of its creation. In 1972, an increasingly skeptical and conservative America sought popular culture that reclaimed identities that seemed to be lost. The experience of loss sent some people looking for certainty. When culture that represented such certainty was blended with sounds that were popular on the radio, one result was the rise of bluegrass, particularly bluegrass consumed in a festival setting. At festivals, attendees were consumers, but they were also creators and participants. Settings such as the Walnut Valley Festival (WVF) were interactive in a way that encouraged personal 1 fulfillment through supportive communities—and had booths to sell you what you needed to continue seeking that fulfillment, whether it was hot sauce or a new Mossman guitar. The WVF was a multi-day music festival sometimes billed as the “International Convention for Acoustic String Musicians.” Professional and amateur musicians gathered in a primarily outdoor setting for concerts, contests, workshops, and informal jam sessions. While virtually every musical style that did not require electrical distortion was represented somewhere at the festival, the WVF was best-known for virtuosic solo guitar performances and lively bluegrass. Concerts took place on four official stages, one longtime officially unofficial stage, a few more recent semi-official stages, and countless camp sites. Sharing the space was a juried craft show. Some participants lived close by and drove in or stayed in area hotels, but during the festival, the campground became its own community—some would say communities—with residents temporarily living in conditions ranging from rustic to ritzy. The WVF was staged each year by the Walnut Valley Association—and at the time of this writing continues with plans for its 47th year. From 1972 through 2016, the WVA’s president was Bob Redford, a community-minded businessperson who relied on a network of family members, friends, staff members, and city employees to pull off the feat of producing the festival. Although it grew in length, scope, and sophistication, under Redford the WVF remained fundamentally the same event throughout the years. Its anchor was its first instrumental contest, the National Flat-Picking Championship, which honored the guitar style most associated with bluegrass music. More than an annual event, the WVF—known to most attendees who come from outside Cowley County, Kansas, as “Winfield”—became an icon.1 Its yellow bumper stickers were on 1. “Its proper name may be the Walnut Valley Festival, . but everyone except longhaired engineer types who don’t know better than to make a washtub bass with two washtubs just calls it WINFIELD,” according to one online 2 cars and campers around the country. At its entrance each year starting in 1985 was an Avenue of Flags, an attempt by festival worker Bob Flottman to display a flag representing the home state or nation of every festival visitor. In 2017, all 50 United States were represented as well as an additional 50 countries.2 For many community members in Winfield, the iconic festival was a source of pride and identity but also of anxiety at times when the festival’s future seemed in doubt. From the beginning, the WVF was a musician’s festival. Being a “picker’s paradise” was central to the festival’s brand. That feature placed the event squarely in the context of bluegrass music. Historian Robert Cantwell underscores the importance of musical virtuosity to bluegrass, suggesting