Big Muddy Folk Festival
Boonville, Missouri
April 4—5, 2003

The muddy waters of the Missouri run low. The rocks of wing dams and jetties stand high and dry, as if calibrating the right bank, and at spots the river is less than half its normal width. Some skeletons of old river vessels long sunken have emerged again to taste the cold air. The north winds have occasioned us with some Yuletide snow. Winter has taken hold.

Thespian Hall proudly bears the weather over at Main and Vine, looking better perhaps than ever. Patrons last year were treated to a newly renovated interior with some of that work finished only a few days before the Big Muddy Folk Festival started -- a week and a half after the festival sold out. Even after our celebration there was still some gilding to be completed, and now the hall glistens like the jewel it is with a patina of nearly 150 years.

For this, our 12th Big Muddy Folk Festival, we are happy to present a fine collection of folk music with songs old and new and instruments of every hue; from the northern Arkansas to Chicago’s south side, from eastern Europe to western Illinois. We have a good collection of groups this year representing some of the diversity of American folk traditions, all of whom present the variety and dynamics a working collaboration can offer – and a few soloists who can focus the attention all on their own.