Woody’s legacy still sings

Justin Scrimshire
Okemah News Leader

When 17-year-old Woody Guthrie left Okemah in 1929, it’s hard to know whether he realized it would be the last time he would see his hometown. For the rest of his life, he traveled across America, collecting stories wherever the road carried him. He turned those stories into songs that gave voice to ordinary people from coast to coast.
For one weekend each July, that journey runs in reverse. Songwriters from across the nation come to Okemah, bringing with them the stories they’ve gathered along the way. In the town that first inspired Woody Guthrie, they share stories through songs of their own.
Woody Guthrie’s music may not resonate with every listener, but the imprint he left on America’s conscience is impossible to ignore. The same could be said of WoodyFest. In an era when community festivals often struggle to survive, celebrating 29 consecutive years is an accomplishment in itself.
The volunteers and organizers behind the festival have reached that milestone despite financial challenges, logistical hurdles, and, at times, outright opposition to the name of Woody Guthrie. Their resilience has ensured that Guthrie’s legacy continues to echo through the streets of Okemah, where it began.
For Tim Easton and Casii Stephan, two of the songwriters featured at WoodyFest this year, that legacy matters. Both carry on Guthrie’s tradition of writing extraordinary lyrics from ordinary experiences, giving voice to love, hope, insecurity, and frustration alike.
Easton has become a familiar face at WoodyFest in recent years. This year marked his ninth appearance in the last 12 years. Born in New York, raised in Japan and Ohio, and now based in Nashville, Easton’s varied upbringing has given him an uncommon perspective. Like Guthrie before him, he has turned his journeys into songs rooted in universal and deeply rooted emotions.
Performing on the Ain’t Got No Home Stage inside the Okemah Middle School Auditorium, Easton turned his performance into an intimate conversation between singer and listener. So connected was he to the audience that he crumpled his set list and tossed it behind him, allowing the show to unfold naturally.
Singing his commercially successful Next to You, Easton smiled down at a couple holding hands in the front row, singing an entire verse as though they were the only two people in the room.
Asked what keeps drawing him back to WoodyFest, Easton didn’t hesitate: “The people.” He described the festival as both “familiar and familial,” adding, “What remains the same is what I like most about it, the people and the quality of the songwriting.”
Easton called WoodyFest a “cauldron of empathy,” and said his hope for the festival is, “That it would grow to include people that might not think it is for them, but when they show up and hear a song and identify with the lyrics. We all think we know each other, that we understand the workings of the other side, but we forget how much we have in common and how lucky we are to have each other.”
When asked what WoodyFest could do to carry the festival into the next 29 years, Easton suggested featuring younger artists. Enter Casii Stephan.
While Easton crooned in the air conditioning on the Ain’t Got No Home Stage, Casii Stephan left both her heart and sweat on the Okemah Main Street Bound for Glory stage, beneath the relentless July sun.
Making her WoodyFest debut, Stephan commanded the stage with a raw, unfiltered style that told the audience who she was from the first note and had them believing her before the final chord. Though only about a hundred people were brave enough to venture into the heat, Stephan performed as though thousands had gathered at the pavilion.
If you haven’t met Casii Stephan, imagine honesty with the volume turned all the way up.
The Minnesota native, now based in Tulsa, performed songs from her upcoming debut album, which is set to be released in March 2027. King in America, Average Man and Law & Order were performed with a conviction that belied the self-doubt Stephan later admitted she often carries.
“There’s always the perfectionist in me that says it’s not good enough,” says Stephan of her own criticism. But through the encouragement of her family and best friend/manager Amira Al-Jiboori, that uncertainty has slowly evolved into the confidence the WoodyFest audiences witnessed on stage. “It’s slowly just taking one step after another,” said Stephan, describing a career built more on consistency than meteoric success. “There hasn’t been one rocket ship moment, it’s been moving forward one step at a time.”
Stephan said signing with TRO Essex Music Group, which also administers Woody Guthrie’s catalog, has given her a greater appreciation for Guthrie’s impact on American music and a deeper understanding of his legacy.
“He wasn’t a moneymaker for the company,” Stephan said, noting that the publishers also represents artists including The Who and Black Sabbath. Instead, Stephan calls Woody Guthrie “the heart,” of modern songwriting, saying, “Pete Seeger isn’t Pete Seeger without Woody Guthrie. Bob Dylan isn’t Bob Dylan without Woody Guthrie.”
That influence, Stephan believes, extends far beyond the artists she named.
“I see so many musicians influenced by (Guthrie) just because they want to create art that is for the people and not for money.”
Reflecting on her first WoodyFest experience, Stephan said the community within the organizers made a big impression on her. “A lot of people talk community, but I really think this festival means it.”
For Stephan, Woodyfest is both a celebration of music and a platform for meaningful storytelling.
“Some artists lean more toward the message, some artists lean more toward the entertainment, and to have it interwoven like that is important.”
For 29 years WoodyFest has proven to be a music festival that accomplishes both things. Woody Guthrie told stories through music but beneath every song was a message for those willing to listen. The festival remains a place where stories matter, where strangers become neighbors and where the ordinary moments of life are still considered worthy of a song. That may be Woody Guthrie’s greatest legacy of all.
Of the thousands of songs that Guthrie wrote in his lifetime, one thread continues to weave its way through the verses of the troubadours who make the pilgrimage to Okemah each July: a belief that a song can reach farther than a fist.
Whether through empathy, community or simple storytelling, WoodyFest continues the work Woody Guthrie began nearly a century ago by reminding us to see one another. One verse, one chorus at a time.
For 29 years, WoodyFest has given songwriters a place to tell their stories. Here’s to 29 more.