Red Dirt Rangers, Mike McClure Band and The Smokin' Oaks play Block 34 Friday
Red Dirt Roots Fest brings three generations of the scene's music downtown for a free concert
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Four names are honored at the Music Walk along the west side of Block 34: Jimmy LaFave, Bob Childers, Steve Ripley and Tom Skinner. They are icons of the Red Dirt music scene, songwriters who set its tone early and gave more to it than they ever took out. What they planted on The Farm decades ago is still growing today.
John Cooper, a member of the Red Dirt Rangers, said those four deserved a day of their own, and that the music they started deserved to be heard on a stage a few steps from where their names are set in the ground.
Red Dirt Roots Fest opens Friday at Block 34 in downtown Stillwater, a free event featuring the Red Dirt Rangers, Mike McClure Band and The Smokin' Oaks. Organizers recommend arriving early and bringing a lawn chair or a picnic blanket.
The Smokin' Oaks open the show at 6:30 p.m., the Red Dirt Rangers take the stage at 7:30 p.m., and the Mike McClure Band closes the night at 8:45 p.m. Food trucks will be on site, including Stonecloud and Iron Monk Brewing. An after-party follows at Velvet Fudge, located at 916 S. Lewis St., featuring Maddox Ross and Dylan Moss and The Middle Class.
During the show, people will speak about each of the four memorialized musicians. According to Cooper each band plans to perform songs by all four.
Cooper said Red Dirt is best understood as a scene, not a single musical style.
"Red Dirt is a scene more than musical style," Cooper said. "It's a group of like-minded musicians who are after strong, honest songwriting and performance. While there's plenty of overlap musically, stylistically the bands are different.
"But there's a commonality, a brother and sisterhood, among the bands themselves and the fans that follow our scene. It's all for one and one for all."
The Red Dirt Rangers
The Red Dirt Rangers formed in Stillwater in 1988 and were among the first bands from the scene to tour nationally. Friday's set will draw on decades of material along with songs from "Red Dirt Town," the band's newest album, released in October, 2025.
Cooper co-wrote the title track with bandmate Brad Piccolo and songwriter Brandon Jenkins. Turnpike Troubadours frontman Evan Felker sings a verse and plays harmonica on the recording.
"It's a story of a kid looking for the bright lights and realizing that they're not quite what you might have thought they were and that you can still go home again," Cooper said. "It's more of the continuity thing. It's the family aspect of Red Dirt."
Another track came to the band by a longer route. Rangers guitarist Ben Han, who grew up in Malaysia, brought in "Midday Sun," a song he knew from a Malaysian psychedelic record. Research turned up an earlier origin: an Irish psychedelic band wrote it decades before.
"The song went from Ireland to Borneo to Oklahoma," Cooper said. "I mean, that's crazy, isn't it? Like Red Dirt music, world music, we got your world music right here."
Mike McClure Band
Mike McClure got his start in Stillwater at the Wormy Dog Saloon before founding The Great Divide in 1992. He has since produced records for Cross Canadian Ragweed, the Turnpike Troubadours and Stoney LaRue, among others.
Friday's set will lean into the rock end of his catalog, Cooper said.
"When he steps out of that (his role fronting The Great Divide) and becomes the Mike McClure Band, it is a full-on rock and roll show," Cooper said.
The Smokin' Oaks
The Smokin' Oaks are the youngest act on the bill. The band formed in 2023 in Yukon. Lead guitarist Slaid Cross is the son of Grady Cross of Cross Canadian Ragweed, and lead singer Colton Blake is Grady Cross' nephew.
"(The Smokin' Oaks) is a rock and roll band," Cooper said. "I mean, they flat out are. They're in the Cross Canadian Ragweed tradition. But the lyrics are really good, man, you have to listen."
A scene, not a genre
The scene Cooper describes began as a Stillwater singer-songwriter circle in the 1970s and '80s, when Childers, LaFave, Ripley, Skinner and others set the standard for original material. The songwriters' bands gave way to Cooper's generation, then to McClure and the musicians he brought into Stillwater in the 1990s, including Cross Canadian Ragweed's Cody Canada.
Cooper recalled meeting Canada and asking what classes he was taking at Oklahoma State University.
"He goes, 'oh, I didn't come here to go to school. I'm here for the music,'" Cooper said. "It was like, wow, a little bit of an epiphany."
That same approach shaped how Grady Cross brought The Smokin' Oaks along, Cooper said, sending the young band out in a van with a PA system rather than starting them with management and a tour bus.
"Nobody cares about being a star, per se," Cooper said. "Of course, we all want to play good venues and shows in front of as many people as possible, sell records and merchandise and receive radio play. You have to do those things to survive as a band. But the main goal is writing and performing quality songs and music that have real meaning and intention to you as an artist, your musician friends, and the fans. That's the real mark, and that's what gives you longevity in this crazy business."
A guitar hangs in the rafters near a corner at The Farm honoring the late Bob Childers, whose photo hangs above a mural of a white buffalo, a nod to his album "Bob Childers and the White Buffalo Road Show," alongside a sign reading "Red Dirt isn't just music — it's a lifestyle." – Photos by Chris Peters
Cooper said playing to real rooms still counts for more than an online following.
"How does that translate on ticket sales when you go to a town somewhere?" Cooper said. "How many butts can you put in the seats when you show up? And you only get to do that by getting out there and winning them one fan at a time, one city at a time, one bar at a time."
He pointed to Stillwater area native Wyatt Flores as an artist whose viral success followed years of work rather than replacing it.
"I consider him authentic because he did put in the time as a kid," Cooper said. "He wasn't just an internet creation. He had already created himself and it just picked up on what he was doing."
The scene's scale became hard to miss during the sold-out Boys From Oklahoma concerts at Boone Pickens Stadium, which drew about 180,000 people over four nights in 2025 and returned for a single show in April.
"The bands from our scene filled up Boone Pickens Stadium with five sold-out shows the past two years," Cooper said. "Then they took it on the road and sold out shows in Texas and Nebraska. How many Nashville acts could come together and do that? I can tell you, there's not any."
Cooper said the size of the city makes that reach unusual.
"How many towns in America can say, well, we had a music scene that started in our town that has gone statewide, regionally, across the country and around the world?" Cooper said. "That number is very small, but one of them is Stillwater, Oklahoma."
Stillwater has recognized that history before. As The Stillwegian reported in April 2025, Mayor Will Joyce proclaimed a Red Dirt Music Week honoring the scene's roots, with Cooper and members of Cross Canadian Ragweed on hand. Block 34 opened in 2025 as a roughly 115,000-square-foot downtown park anchored by the Kicker Soundstage.
Depending on how this first year goes, Cooper said he hopes Red Dirt Roots Fest grows into a full weekend music event and expands beyond Block 34 into venues around town.
Sponsors for the event include the Stillwater Community Foundation, The Hideaway, Chris' University Spirit, Stillwater Building Center, Stillwater Medical Center, District Bicycles, Stonecloud Brewing, Kicker, Simmons Bank and Visit Stillwater. Chris' University Spirit also designed the event poster.
Cooper said he built that list by going to businesses with long histories in town.
"I wanted to go out and get sponsors from town, people that I know, businesses that have been here a long time," Cooper said. "These are businesses that have track records that show they love this community."
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