Did you know that some historians claim Austin, Texas, might not have its famous live music scene without Red River? The New Mexico Tourism Department repeats the claim with a smile, and the story behind it starts in the 1960s, when young Texas folk singers began spending their summers in this mountain valley. Ray Wylie Hubbard, fresh out of Dallas's Adamson High School in 1965, played folk music in hootenannies here with Rick Fowler and Wayne Kidd, in a trio called Three Faces West. By night they sang, and by day, as D Magazine later recalled, they worked the Jaycee information booth, staged fake gunfights, and drove tourists around to see the sights.
Click to see more photos of Michael Martin Murphey — on stage over the years and his 1960 Martin guitar at the Country Music Hall of Fame
Those summers left a permanent mark. While he was in New Mexico, Hubbard wrote "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother," the song Jerry Jeff Walker made famous with his 1973 recording. Locals will tell you that the Red River Folk Festival dates back to 1963, when Fowler, Kidd, and Hubbard came to town, and the festival still carries the motto "of the folk, by the folk, and for the folk." In its modern form it spreads music through venues all around town for four days each September, at the same time as the Aspencade Arts and Crafts Fair fills Brandenburg Park.
Hubbard's old schoolmate Michael Martin Murphey became another pillar of the tradition. More than three decades ago, Murphey started his Westfest in Red River, a three-day celebration of the arts, culture, and music of the Old and New West, mixing country and Western music with Western swing, Americana, bluegrass, old-time folk, and gospel. September alone stacks the calendar: the Southwest Pickers bluegrass and traditional music festival has been an annual tradition for more than 40 years, with workshops, dancing, and contests, and the Dulcimer Festival fills the first week of September with free concerts and workshops where visitors can even borrow an instrument and learn to play.
The tradition keeps renewing itself. The Red River Songwriters' Festival was founded in 2012 by six songwriters and musicians — Drew Kennedy, Josh Grider, Walt Wilkins, Susan Gibson, Brandy Zdan, and Kelley Mickwee — and it now regularly sells out each January, in the heart of ski season. It is built on solo shows, duos, impromptu collaborations, and late-night jams, and it closes with a grand finale by the founders themselves. The next edition is set for January 21 to 23, 2027, and the founders also carry the town's name on the road, touring together as the Traveling Red River Songwriters.
Mining built Red River and skiing remade it, but music may be the thread that ties its generations together. The Tourism Department notes that visitors can find live music at one of the town's historic venues just about any day of the week. That is what living history means here: not a song preserved behind glass, but a song sung again last weekend, and another one already being written for next season.