To be published in March, 2027 by The History Press

Bay Area Folk Music – The Acoustic Roots of a Psychedelic City: Folkniks, Tub Thumpers & Crabgrassers

Photo of The Great American Music Band by Nick Viani:

While Greenwich Village in New York City was turning the folk revival of the 1950s into the boom of the ’60s, across the country, California’s Bay Area was planting the seeds of its own unique and vibrant scene.

In San Francisco, the Kingston Trio had put folk music on top of the pop charts with their version of “Tom Dooley” in 1958, the Berkeley Folk Music Festival became one of the foremost events of its kind, and numerous coffeehouses became the destination for nationally touring musicians as well as a home for Janis Joplin and members of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe & The Fish, who were all playing in folk groups before they plugged in to make the Bay Area the nation’s psychedelic rock capital.

Just as Holly Near was celebrating the human spirit through music and Kate Wolf was singing some of her timeless love songs, Suzy Thompson, Laurie Lewis and Molly Tuttle were leading the way in preserving bluegrass and old-time country music, and just north of the city, mandolinist David Grisman created a fusion of bluegrass and jazz he called “Dawg music” which in turn inspired other adventurous artists to bring their own brands of new acoustic music to the world.

This book explores how, with a backdrop of the region’s legendary counterculture, the clubs, coffeehouses, performance halls, festivals, radio programs and record companies provided the foundation for the kaleidoscopic array of singers and songwriters, bluegrass and old-time country musicians, concert promoters and record producers that have successfully navigated the boom, bust and rebound of folk and acoustic music in the Bay Area right through the 21st century…and have had plenty of fun in the process!