The Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center will be hosting the ‘Ruth Ellen Lynch & Jazz Plus’ on Thursday, June 22nd at 6 pm. The show is part of the music center’s monthly shows that they do in part with the HPPR Ambassador Tour.
“The HPPR Ambassador Tour is an organization that has bands from all over that travel,” Director Michael Sinks said. “Ruth works for that organization but also has a band in it. She is their underwriter but also performs. I found out about her band from the Buffalo Grass Music Hall in Panhandle after she performed there.”
The band will be playing standard songs that most listeners will recognize. The band will have a bass, guitar, drummer, and horn player in addition to Ruth. The music center tries to put on donation-based shows monthly, but for the month of June, they will have two.
“We try to do one monthly, but in June we lucked out to have two,” Sinks said. “June 1st we have Gold Pine out of Nashville. It’s a husband and wife duo that came and performed for us, and it was amazing. The wife performed a version of ‘Crazy’ that I would say rivaled Patsy Cline. Which I don’t say lightly.”
Performers from all over the world come to perform in Pampa through the HPPR tour, the shows are from 6 till roughly 8:30.
“We have a good turn out to these shows,” Sinks said. “Our building can hold 40 people and we typically have around 25 or 30. It’s a small environment with good music. You get to meet the artists and talk with them when they take their break, it’s just a fun time and a good experience.”
The shows are donation based, but there is no obligation to give anything. The music center works out an agreement with the bands to pay them a set price and use the donations to offset the cost the center has.
“I book shows up through the year, so sometimes we end up with more than one in a month or an off month,” Sinks said. “We have a lot of people that want to play here, but I try to keep variety in the shows because I don’t want anyone to get burnt out when they come. When I started this, nearly 10 years ago, we didn’t have as much funding to get as many performances but in recent years we’ve gotten more support and more ability to book more acts.”
Coming up in August, the music center will host a band from Australia and a performance from Italy in October. They’ve hosted bands in the past from all over the world, places like New Zealand, Germany, France, Cambodia and China.
“We have all kinds of music, not just folk music,” Sinks said. “Most may think that because it’s a folk music center, that’s all we have, but we have all genres. It’s very personal and the acts explain their songs.
The Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center is located at 320 S. Cuyler. For more information, contact them at (806)665-0883.
