Tim Easton - Hardcore Troubadour - Conversation from the 2019 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival

Tim Easton, American songwriter and fellow Buckeye, has learned the ways of the hardcore troubadour…making his way around Europe and America by busking in the streets and playing the clubs. Although Rolling Stone Magazine praised him as “having a novelist’s sense of humanity” I believe his education as a Poetry Major at Ohio State University is the not so secret ingredient to his lyrical life. When I saw he was on the roster for the 2019 edition of the Woody Guthrie Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma, I knew I had to try and have a sit down conversation with him. Although my familiarity with his work was on the fringe, I wanted to dig deeper.

As soon as I hit the registration desk at the Okfuskee County Historical Society in Okemah, (incidentally the recording site for Tim’s latest CD “Exposition” )I asked the volunteer staff for help in contacting Tim. Within two hours I had a text. We met shortly thereafter in front of the Crystal Theater but where to record a conversation? There was no media room and no readily available space to sit down and chat. A Woodyfest volunteer AGAIN to the rescue…”I live at the rock house down at the corner of Woody Guthrie Boulevard and Broadway. The back door is open, the air conditioning is on; there’s nothing but two chairs and a table in there but you’re welcome to it.” Tim was game and so was I. We had the following conversation in a virtually empty house sitting in two velveteen rockers facing each other with my lavalier mic attached to my water bottle handle. As you’ll hear, Tim talks about growing up in Japan, opening for the Flatlanders and Townes Van Zandt, busking the streets of Europe, heading his own record company, traveling to Alaska to teach songwriting workshops so you can fish and an upcoming State Department sponsored trip to Russia. Woody Guthrie would have loved Tim Easton. Now THAT’s Americana!