Kerrville Folk Festival

Eighteen days of folk and Americana music on a riverside ranch each May and June

The Kerrville Folk Festival has been running since 1972 on the Quiet Valley Ranch, a property along the Guadalupe River south of town. It lasts eighteen days across late May and early June — one of the longest-running and most beloved folk and Americana gatherings in the United States. The lineup ranges from established singer-songwriters to emerging artists competing in the New Folk contest, with late-night campfire sessions that often outlast the official programming.

The setting matters as much as the music. The ranch has a permanent outdoor stage, a grove of live oaks for camping, and the river running alongside. Many attendees come for the full run and treat it as a kind of seasonal migration. If you are in the Hill Country in late May and have any fondness for American roots music, it is worth planning around.

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A story
The festival was founded in 1972 by Rod Kennedy, a local promoter who booked acts for the Kerrville Municipal Auditorium and wanted to create something more ambitious. The first year drew around 3,000 people to a ranch outside town. Over the following decades it became one of the most important incubators of American folk and singer-songwriter music — Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Robert Earl Keen, and Townes Van Zandt all played early sets here. The "New Folk" competition, established in 1977, has launched dozens of careers.

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