Red Dirt (music)

Red Dirt Music is a music genre that gets its name from the color of soil found in Oklahoma. Although Stillwater, Oklahoma is considered to be the center of Red Dirt music, there is a separate Texas Red Dirt subgenre as well. Outlaw Country legends Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson have been associated with the distinctive Texas sound while the late Oklahoma singer/songwriter Bob Childers is widely recognized as the Father of Oklahoma Red Dirt music. At one time, the distinction between the two genres was sonically obvious, but by 2008, that gap had diminished.

History

Oklahoma has been the source of several pop music movements that can be traced not only to a specific city, but a specific location within the city. Those music scenes include Western swing (attributed to Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa), and Leon Russell's Tulsa Sound from his Tulsa church-turned-into-studio. Like those two, Red Dirt music grew from a specific place in Stillwater. The place was an old two-story, five-bedroom house called "The Farm" - for two decades the center of what evolved into the Red Dirt scene. The house, located on the outskirts of Stillwater, was the country home of Bob Childers. Eventually Childers left The Farm, but the Red Dirt scene continued to grow and thrive. Childers said, "I found something in Stillwater that I just didn't find anywhere else. And I looked everywhere from Nashville to Austin. I always came back to Stillwater - it's like a fountainhead for folks trying to get their vision." The first usage of Red Dirt was by Steve Ripley band Moses when the group chose the label name Red Dirt Records for their 1972 self-published live album.

Red Dirt

Red dirt may refer to:

Red Dirt (film)

Red Dirt is a 2000 American film written and directed by Tag Purvis. The film starred Dan Montgomery, Jr., Aleksa Palladino, Walton Goggins, and Karen Black.

Plot

The film centers on Griffith (Dan Montgomery, Jr.) who has lived all his life in the fictional town of Pine Apple, Mississippi. He spends most of his time barefoot on the red dirt and has a hobby of tracing the epitaphs on headstones. He was orphaned as a child when his parents drowned inside their car in the river under mysterious circumstances. He was raised by his eccentric Aunt Summer (Karen Black) and his Uncle Charlie.

Summer is mentally unstable and agoraphobic, apparently a result of the death of Griffith's parents. She and her only other living sister, Lynn Thomas (Peg O'Keef), have avoided each other for years for unknown reasons. Charlie (who died of cancer when Griffith was 14) once regularly sent Summer off to a mental asylum, being unable to deal with her eccentric behavior. She resumed living in the house after Charlie's death, cared for by Griffith and the family matriarch, Lily Mae.