Red Dirt Rangers

As their name suggests, alt-country upstarts the Red Dirt Rangers are practitioners of the hard-to-define blend known as "red dirt music" (named for the reddish-brown soil of central Oklahoma and pioneered by folks such as Jimmy LaFave and Bob Childers). The group met at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, and their country-rock-folk sound can fuse the disparate strands of Texas swing, Woody Guthrie, Bakersfield country, and the Grateful Dead during one performance. The Red Dirt Rangers released their debut, Red Dirt, in 1993, and throughout that decade exhaustively crisscrossed their home state. They have also released a children's album, Blue Shoe, and have appeared on the compilations Pastures of Plenty: An Austin Celebration of Woody Guthrie and The Songs of Route 66. With production help from veteran Lloyd Maines, the albums Oklahoma Territory and Ranger's Command followed in 1996 and 1999, respectively.