Thirty-eight years in, the Red Dirt Rangers are still on the road

The album is "Red Dirt Town," out since October 2025 and now on vinyl. Tulsa's News On 6 caught up with the band this month about the milestone, and the band has said Red Dirt Roots Fest at Block 34 on Sept. 11 would be the first release show for the record, with LPs and CDs on hand.

John Cooper co-wrote the title track with bandmate Brad Piccolo and songwriter Brandon Jenkins. Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours sings a verse and plays harmonica on it. Cooper describes the song as a story about a kid chasing the bright lights, finding out they're not what he expected, and learning "you can still go home again."

Another track took the long way around. Guitarist Ben Han grew up in Malaysia and brought in "Midday Sun," a song he knew from a Malaysian psychedelic record. When the band looked into where it came from, they found an Irish psychedelic band had written it decades earlier. "The song went from Ireland to Borneo to Oklahoma," Cooper said.

Look at where the Rangers played this summer and you get a picture of a working band. Four Saturdays in June and July, 4 to 6 p.m., they held a "Red Dirt Roundup" at Mercury Lounge in Tulsa. They were booked at the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, July 8 through 11, and at Park Grove Community Church in Tulsa on July 17.

Then they headed west. A Colorado run started at Denver's Star Bar on July 23 and rolled through Evergreen, Divide, Littleton, Pagosa Springs, Buena Vista and Creede before ending in Taos, New Mexico, on Aug. 1. That's eight dates in ten days.

Cooper's answer isn't complicated. Yes, you want good venues, big crowds, records and radio play, he told The Stillwegian, and you have to do those things to survive. But the real mark, in his words, is "writing and performing quality songs and music that have real meaning and intention."

The other half is plain work. You win people over "one fan at a time, one city at a time, one bar at a time."

Stillwater, and the Rangers are one reason the town keeps saying so. Visit Stillwater's history of Red Dirt music credits OSU students John Cooper and Danny Pierce with renting a farmhouse on 149 acres outside town in 1979, a place called The Farm where musicians jammed for more than 20 years, and it shows members of the Rangers playing there. In April 2025, the mayor proclaimed Red Dirt Music Week. The scene's bands have since filled Boone Pickens Stadium with sold-out shows, Cooper says, and then sold out dates in Texas and Nebraska.

The News On 6 story also touches the next generation, and the Rangers' part in Season 2 of "The Lowdown." On Sept. 11 it's visible from the stage: they share the Block 34 bill with The Smokin' Oaks, a band that formed in 2023.