The Rag Blog :
METRO EVENT | ‘Celebrating The Rag’ at Half Price Books North Lamar on June 9

The event will feature editors Thorne Dreyer, Alice Embree and Richard Croxdale, with live music by Bill Kirchen and comments by artists Jim Franklin and Kerry Awn.

Celebrating The Rag book cover with editors Thorne Dreyer (top), Alice Embree, and Richard Croxdale.

AUSTIN — Join us Saturday, June 9, 2018, 2-4 p.m. at Half Price Books North Lamar for a presentation and booksigning featuring Thorne Dreyer, Alice Embree, and Richard Croxdale, editors of the nationally-acclaimed book, Celebrating The Rag: Austin’s Iconic Underground Newspaper.

The event will include musical performance by legendary Commander Cody guitarist Bill Kirchen. Plus a few tales (some tall!) from famed Armadillo artist Jim Franklin and “Funniest Person in Austin” Kerry Awn, both of whom contributed signature art to the original Rag, and are featured prominently in the book. Franklin, Awn, and book designer Carlos Lowry will also be available to sign copies of the book.

Kirkus Reviews calls Celebrating The Rag, “A raucous, absorbing excursion back to the 1960s and ’70s.

The book tells the remarkable story of the legendary underground newspaper that sparked a political and cultural revolution and helped make Austin weird.

It features more than 100 articles from The Rag’s 11-year history, plus contemporary essays and eye-popping vintage art and photography. This collection captures the radical politics and subversive humor that marked the pages of this upstart newspaper between 1966 and 1977.

Thorne Dreyer was the original “funnel” of The Rag in 1966. He now edits The Rag Blog and hosts Rag Radio. Peace and justice activist Alice Embree, a leader in the women’s liberation movement, worked with The Rag from its beginning. Richard Croxdale, an economics professor and educational filmmaker, was a Rag staffer in the paper’s later days.

From left: Bill Kirchen, Kerry Awn, and Jim Franklin.

Virtuoso guitarist Bill Kirchen is known as the “Titan of the Telecaster.” He gained fame with the ’70s band, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen.

Surrealist artist Jim Franklin turned the lowly armadillo into a symbol for the Texas counterculture. Kerry Awn is an artist, muralist, comic, and leader of the band, Uranium Savages.

Both paperback and hardcover editions of Celebrating The Rag will be available for purchase at the event. The book was published by the New Journalism Project.

Half Price Books North Lamar is located at 5555 N. Lamar Blvd, Austin 78751.

Learn more about Celebrating The Rag here.

Let us know you’re coming at the Facebook Event Page.