Just how much is the Oklahoma music scene worth to the folks at the Red Dirt Relief Fund?
The answer: At least a million bucks.
That’s how much the Tulsa-based nonprofit organization has provided in emergency financial assistance to the state’s music-industry pros since 2012, when it all began.
“I think we started with $10,000,” says Katie Dale, the group’s co-founder and executive director. “And we just gave that away until we needed to raise some more money to help people. It’s kind of wild to think of where we are now.”
Indeed. Where they are, 13 years later, is 100 times that start-up figure – and counting.
“At one point, I was like, ‘Do we really want to celebrate the fact, as a milestone, that we’ve spent a million dollars trying to help people who were really struggling? That seems kind of strange,’” she says. “But the flip side of it is that there are enough people — volunteers, artists, board members, venue owners, sponsors — who want to support these efforts at taking care of our music community. And I figure that’s worth celebrating.”
Dale was living in Tulsa and working for Red Bull when, she recalls, “they gave me the assignment to tell a roots-music story that was local to our market. I’m not from Oklahoma; I grew up in Arkansas. But I thought that the story would be the story of Red Dirt music. And that’s how I met John Cooper.”
Cooper, of the long-lived Stillwater band the Red Dirt Rangers, picks up the narrative.
“Katie knew the Red Dirt scene was a really strong singer-songwriter scene, and she said, ‘I want to do a singer-songwriter festival,’” he recalls. “Red Bull would be allowed to film it and use what they shot in their promotions, which they did all around the world. Katie contacted Tim Holland, who runs the entertainment at Eskimo Joe’s [in Stillwater], and said, ‘Hey, I want to do this festival. Who do I talk to?’ And Tim said, ‘You need to talk to John Cooper. He knows everybody.’”
Cooper chuckles self-effacingly when he says that, but indeed, as a pioneering figure in the Red Dirt scene, Cooper does know virtually everyone involved in that Stillwater-born musical genre, a down-to-earth style that combines elements of rock, country, folk and blues with strong and honest lyrical content. He, Dale and Holland arranged a meeting out at the Farm, a venerable landmark that for years was the epicenter of the Red Dirt movement, and the first Gypsy Cafe event, taking place in a number of Stillwater venues, was born.
“I worked with Coop to put together the lineup that first year, which was pretty much a who’s-who of Red Dirt,” she says. “We had Jimmy LaFave, Evan Felker, Stoney LaRue, Cody Canada, Jason Boland, Tom Skinner — the whole list. Red Bull said that we could take the ticket proceeds and give it to a charity that the musicians respected and supported, and Coop said, ‘Let’s start our own.’
“That’s when he told me the story of their helicopter crash, and how MusiCares helped them.”
In 2004, Cooper and his bandmates, Brad Piccolo and Ben Han, had been involved in a horrendous accident when the helicopter they were riding in clipped some power lines and plunged into the Cimarron River outside of Cushing. The pilot and a passenger died, and all three Rangers sustained life-threatening injuries.
“The old saying is that when musicians get hurt, their insurance policies are other musicians throwing benefits for ‘em,” Cooper notes with another chuckle. “We got help from all over the country — benefits for us, money coming in, it was amazing. It was humbling.
“During that period, Dave Sanger, who was the drummer for Asleep at the Wheel, told us about MusiCares, which is a national [musicians’ support] organization that’s run out of NARAS [the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc.] He said, ‘You guys should apply.’ We did, and we got the funding, and we were like, ‘Wow. There’s somebody who can really help.’ Then, when Bob Childers’ trailer caught on fire, in 2006 or 2007, we put on a benefit for him, and I’m standing there with Mike McClure [of the Red Dirt band the Great Divide] and batting around the idea of how we needed something for our own people, some kind of fund.”
A few years later, the opportunity came along, and Katie Dale got wholeheartedly behind the creation of what would be dubbed the Red Dirt Relief Fund.
“I had access to a law firm that would help us with a 501(c)3, and we had the money to start a bank account,” she remembers, “so that’s what we did.”
Red Bull came back the next year to sponsor a second Gypsy Cafe event, and then, explains Dale, “They wanted to tell some different stories. And because I was on the board of the Red Dirt Relief Fund, I said, ‘We’d like to take over this event.’ And they said, ‘Sure.’
Since then, Bob Childers’ Gypsy Cafe, named for one of Red Dirt’s godfathers, and Skinnerfest (honoring the late Tom Skinner, another Red Dirt pioneer) have come along in the spring and fall, respectively, to help fill the RDRF coffers. Other major support has come from the likes of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, the Kirkpatrick Foundation, the Albert & Hete Barthelmes Foundation, the Kerr Foundation, and the Mervin Bovaird Foundation — in addition to individual contributions, many made by some of the 900-plus Oklahoma music figures who have themselves been helped by RDRF.
“If you have a job with a corporation and you get sick, you might get some paid time off,” says Dale. “If you’re a musician and you get sick, or something else bad happens, all the gigs on your calendar are canceled. And that’s not just for the artist. It’s for everyone else associated with that tour or that event. If you wipe out a month’s worth of gigs, rent money is nowhere to be found.
“So that’s where I think we’ve made a big impact, and it’s why when we help people they generally become pretty big supporters — they’re honestly often surprised that we can do what we say we’ll do. It’s within our board’s mission to get funds into someone’s hands within five business days from the time we receive the application and whatever documentation is required. We understand that it’s an emergency. Their phone bill’s due, they need food, they need to pay rent. So they can’t sustain a six-week waiting period.”
The Red Dirt Relief Fund — which, incidentally, is set up to help all music-industry Oklahomans, not just those affiliated with Red Dirt music — has provided financial assistance to people experiencing everything from blown-up vans and burned-down homes to major surgeries and other medical emergencies. Its biggest challenge to date, notes Cooper, was the COVID-19 pandemic, when music professionals in every genre found themselves unable to perform for audiences.
“The music industry stopped,” says Cooper, who’s also a longtime RDRF board member. “We [the Red Dirt Rangers] had a year’s worth of bookings completely fall off, and so did everyone else. So we gave grants to more than 550 people, just gave all we had away. We got rid of everything — and it came storming back. All these different foundations contacted us, asking, ‘What can we do to help?’
“Giving all our money away was the biggest thing we ever did to help the fund,” he adds. “But that’s how it works, you know. In this world, you get what you give.”
To be eligible for RDRF’s emergency assistance, a person has to have worked in the music industry for at least five years and be an Oklahoma resident. For more information, visit reddirtrelieffund.org.
