OKEMAH -- The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival has grown substantially in its four years, so much so that the experience involves much more than the evening headliners in the pasture. Music and other activities continue throughout the day, especially on the weekend. Here's a round-up of some of the magic moments from around Woody Guthries hometown this weekend:

It's not in the brochure

This festival offers an awful lot of music for the hungry folk fan, but there's even more available than fans find printed in the official schedule. Sometimes the best shows of the week occur at about 4 in the morning in the parking lot of the OK Motor Lodge. That's the only motel in town, and during the festival it's full of musicians and concert organizers. Musicians often live by the slogan, "I'll sleep when I'm dead," so when they get home after the night's gigs, many of them pull lawn chairs into a corner of the parking lot and swap songs until dawn.

Friday night (er, Saturday morning), for instance, found Jimmy LaFave, Bill Erickson, Bob Childers, Terry Ware, Emily Kaitz, members of Xavier and scattered Red Dirt Rangers camped out with several fans and budding musicians softly strumming tunes in the cool July night. Kaitz had her stand-up bass on the blacktop and lightened the mood early on with a song about bass players taking over the world and righting its fret-ful wrongs.

Erickson tried unsuccessfully to lead a sing-along ("I guess they're too tired," he later muttered; of course, he actually said tarred), and LaFave coursed the group through "You Ain't Going Nowhere." Dawn usually found a handful of these desperados still fumbling through "Sweet Home Alabama."

Coffee, black as night

Those all-night parking-lot sessions take their toll, though, when you're scheduled to perform the next morning. Of course, 12:40 p.m. isn't morning to most of us, but it's the crack of dawn to most guitar-slingers. Bob Childers needed a lot of coffee Friday morning.

His early afternoon set at the Brick Street Cafi may have been slow going at first, but Green Country native Childers is armed with a wily charm that squeezed through his own squinting eyes. Thanks to a Brick Street waitress who kept his coffee mug topped off on stage ("I'm loving you right now," Childers said as she poured him coffee at the microphone, "I'm gonna write a song about you"), the early-bird crowd learned or was reminded of Childer's tall talents as a songwriter. He muddled his way through original classics such as "Sweet Okie Girl," "Restless Spirit" and his appropriate finale, the eloquent "Woody's Road." Just when he thought he was off to bed, the crowd hooted for an encore, a rarity on the afternoon indoor stages.

Can I see some I.D.?

At this or any other music festival, the surest way to find great performers is to follow the performers. See the shows the musicians see, and your eyes and ears will rarely be sore. Case in point: the crowd for Dustin Pittsley was practically half the festival roster.

Pittsley is another hot blues phenom, a teenager fresh out of Chandler High School. He recently placed third in the "Jam With Kenny Wayne Shepherd" contest, and his looks and licks are dead ringers for that blues guitar upper classman. He wailed on an acoustic guitar Saturday afternoon inside the Brick Street Cafi while pal Smiley Dry den huffed on harmonica and main-stage star Kevin Bowe sat in on a few of Pittsley's groove- jammed originals. A name to know.

A harp with no strings

"We got accused once of being a bluegrass band," said DoublNotSpyz singer John Williams midway through the band's Friday set at the Brick Street Cafi. "We had all the instruments. It was an easy mistake."

He then launches into a song with a Jew's harp solo. Easy mistake, indeed.

The DoublNotSpyz (ask a "Beverly Hillbillies" fan to explain the name) are more than mere bluegrass, though, and Williams is often the proof. He was tapped as a favorite harmonica player throughout the festival, especially during Wednesday night's tribute concert and that's the instrument through which he rocks the hardest.

He's more interesting to listen to than big-shots like Blues Traveler's John Popper because Williams wailing isn't just self- aggrandizing improvisation; Williams sticks by the melody being steered by singer and co-songwriter Larry Spears and keeps his audience in the song, not the spotlight. His harp-heaving alone received a standing ovation Friday.

Coming into his own

Austin-based singer-songwriter Michael Fracasso started his set Saturday afternoon in the Crystal Theater with his poignant, droning reflection on the 1950s, and he ended with a song called "1962." The timespan framed him well: his naked, honest songs are deeply rooted in that era of folk music's second great revival, the same era that inspired a young Dylan.

In white T-shirt and cuffed blue jeans, Fracasso's rugged Rust Belt looks belied his sensitive nature. It's that sensitivity that produces such beautifully crafted original songs ("Wise Blood," inspired by the novel "The Last Temptation of Christ," was enormously uplifting) and is able to tap into vast new realms of emotion buried deep within old songs.

His reading of Guthrie's "1913 Massacre," for instance, is a masterpiece of vocal and acoustic dynamics. I've heard that song and even his rendition of it dozens of times, but I must confess: Saturday's performance of it flooded my eyelids more than a bit. That's how folk songs stay alive in the hearts of the people.

Everything's new, again

This happens every year, and Friday afternoon was no different. A young guy or his girlfriend stumble wide-eyed down Okemah's bustling Main Street. They're brand new to the festival, no doubt, and they stop a stranger to ask about the goings- on. Then one of them asks, from a well of perfect innocence, "So when does Woody Guthrie perform?"

Woody, we hardly knew ye.

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Thomas Conner, World entertainment writer, can be reached at 581-8473 or via e-mail at thomas.conner@tulsaworld.com.