The Lomax legacy will take the stage at Tarleton State University this fall. Texas Folklore Society (TFS) and the Department of English and Languages are excited to welcome John Lomax III, grandson of TFS co-founder and pioneering musicologist John Avery Lomax, to the university’s Stephenville campus on Thursday, October 10. “The Lomax on Lomax Show” features Lomax III and tells the story of four generations of Lomaxes, who have found, recorded, preserved, promoted, and presented unique American Music for over 140 years.
“I sing some of the best known of the cowboy songs John Avery Lomax discovered as well as selections by my father, John Avery Lomax Jr., Uncle Alan, and Aunt Bess Lomax Hawes,” Lomax III, 80, says of his solo, acapella show. “I talk about the songs, the circumstances of their discovery, and I mention the work of some of the lesser-known Lomaxes.”
John Avery Lomax and his son Alan obtained more than 17,000 field recordings of American Songs, stories, church services, narratives, and children’s play-party games that became the basis of the American Folk Song Archive at the Library of Congress. Collectively, the Lomax family has produced fifty-two books, dating from John Avery Lomax’s 1910 Cowboy Songs & Other Frontier Ballads to Anna Lomax Wood’s Songs of Earth published in June 2021.
The performance will bring Lomax III close to the old family homestead in Bosque County, near Meridian. The Lomax family arrived in Texas from Mississippi by covered wagon in 1869 and settled on a small farm near the Chisolm (cattle) Trail.
“Texas Folklore Society is thrilled to honor the Lomax legacy by bringing John Lomax III and the family’s story to Stephenville,” Executive Director Kristina Downs said. “Theirs is a story rich with folklore and history and at the heart of our mission to collect, preserve, and share the customs and traditions of the people of Texas and the Southwest.”
“The Lomax on Lomax Show,” which will be held on the first floor of the O.A. Grant Humanities Building at Tarleton State, is free and open to the public. The performance begins at 6 p.m. on October 10.