News

Dear Friends in Music,

I am excited to head to the Pacific Northwest for several concerts in Washington State.

5-28-26 ~ Bellingham UU ~ Bellingham, WA

5-29-26 ~ Vashon Concerts ~ Vashon Island, WA

5-31-26 ~ St. Stephen’s Coffeehouse - Longview, WA

6-5-26 ~ The Royal Room - Seattle, WA (w/ Deidre McCalla)

6-6-26 ~ QUUF Port Townsend, WA (2 PM All-Ages show, 6 PM Full Concert)

***As always more concerts are listed on the website: https://joejencks.com/calendar/

I am also grateful to be bringing some music back to the Labor Notes conference in Chicago June 11-14. And to be returning to the Old Songs Festival in Altamont, NY at the end of June.

June 20th - I will be back at the amazing Soup & Song Concerts in Marriottsville, MD.

June 21st - I am delighted to return to the Middleburg (NY) Library hosted by Sonny Ochs.

Please check the website regularly, as new dates are added regularly.

And please also read the reflections below about the Kerrville Folk Festival, Vern Crawford and “Pro-Active Hospitality,” and the Festival’s annual Memorial Day concert, this past Monday.

I hope to see you out there, somewhere, soon!

In Gratitude & Song,

~ Joe

Essay: Vern Crawford, Kerrville, and “Pro-Active Hospitality”

I am freshly returned from the Kerrville Folk Festival. It is ongoing of course - but I could only stay for a few days. On Memorial Day, there was a concert honoring the 2025 flood victims and their families, as well as 37 people from the festival community who have passed for one reason or another, in the last year. I was grateful to have the privilege of speaking and singing on behalf of Vern Crawford, his wife Lenore, and his family. But it was all overwhelming. So many losses. So many stewards of time and place, gone.

And yet - the joy of community persists. And we stand on the shoulders of so many good people. Many of those honored in the concert and in the eulogies, parables, and narratives were also active in the broader Folk music community via Folk Alliance International, the SW Regional Folk Alliance, and dozens of other festivals and venues. And all of whom spent time sharing what they had learned, making sure that the torch would have new generations of hands to receive it, and carry it onward.

For my part, as I try to balance losses inside and outside of the Folk community with the inherent hope that arises from our efforts toward building healthy intentional communities and chosen families - I do my best to focus on gratitude. I try to remember that the sadness I feel is in direct and inverse proportion to the joy I felt at knowing many of these people. And the joy I experience from making music with friends and colleagues. And by remembering that when the sadness holds me for a moment, it is indeed my gratitude that is underneath. I will likely best honor those good people by choosing gratitude as a foundation for how I relate to others I meet along the way.

Every eulogy and witnessing to a life well-lived was fundamentally an expression of gratitude. Gratitude for kindness rendered, friendships honored, and valuable lessons learned.

It is easy somedays, to focus on the negative, the losses, and the sensationalism of tragedy.

But there is in every loss, in every change, in every transition the opportunity to see what was good. What is still good. We have the opportunity to share what we have learned about how to make something better, or to hold space as facilitators and stewards ourselves, of good community.

When I was first hired to play at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 2005, I had no idea how significant that community would become to me. I had no idea how many enduring friends I would make. Or the ways in which we could become indispensable touchstones for each other - even if only annually.

Vern Crawford and Lenore Langsdorf tried to get me to come to the Kerrville Festival for more than five years. And when my path finally organically led me there, Vern said, “Joe, your future is here. There are people here you have not met yet, who will change your life. There is love here that could exist in the rest of the world. It really could be this way, always! Welcome Home, brother!”

Two years later I was at the festival for almost three weeks volunteering for Festival & Theater security as a Peacekeeper. When Vern was offering a bit of orientation, he said something that has indeed changed my life.

Vern said in his always-gentle but strong and musical Texas accent, “Now Joe, don’t think of yourself as festival security. Think of yourself as Pro-Active Hospitality.”

I ponder regularly what that means. And how I can find more opportunities to be that way, in all of the places that my travels and music take me. I think about Vern saying, “It can be this way, ALWAYS.” And I think of the ways I witnessed Vern live that value everywhere he want, over the 27 years that I was privileged to know him.

It is an invitation expressed over a lifetime. It is a practice that we can learn to inhabit more effectively over time. An intention that we sometimes forget, and then remember again. And an invitation that I now pass on to you.

It is an invitation to expand our understanding of how to move through our lives and routines, and indeed through the world as people who choose to see our calling as one of, “Pro-Active Hospitality.”

Imagine what could be made better, if even just a little, by deciding to enter the world every day with that notion of Vern’s as a mantra, as a guiding purpose… “Pro-Active Hospitality.”

In Gratitude & Song,

~ Joe Jencks (5-27-26)

Vern Crawford & Lenore Langsdorf 2024, Medina, TX. Photo by Joe Jencks