Performances

(For a more detailed list of performances, please click here. )

Kendall has read poetry and told stories to diverse audiences across the United States for more than 20 years. He first performed his work in 1985 at the Caravan of Dreams Theater in downtown, Fort Worth – a slide presentation and reading of “Comin’ Home,” from This Land, his first published book of stories. The piece has become a signature performance at several venues, expressing the human condition of and giving life to hard working turn-of-the-century Americans.

Through his stories, McCook steeps himself into the lore of the cowboy – the real Western men and women, not just the rancher, but especially the working men and women who train the horses and work the cattle. The stories include cowboy tales passed down from his uncles, Rex and Eph, his mother’s brothers who learned to cowboy in the Panhandle of Texas in the 1930s and early 1940s. There are also published stories told by Ronnie Rossen, two-time world champion bullrider in the 1960s – published in the 1995 edition of Kell Robertson’s Desperado.

McCook continued to read from his work at The Hop, The Caravan of Dreams, in Fort Worth, and in Bluff Dale, Paluxy and Granbury area venues during the 1980s and early 1990s.

While tending the fields of his organic farm, McCook also performed at various venues in his home state of New Mexico throughout the 1990s, including Martinez Hall, Café Tazza and the Taos Poetry Circus, all in Taos, the Reading Bridge Street Books in Las Vegas, and to a well received audience at the Shulter Theater in Raton with Katie Lee.

During this time McCook continued to travel and perform, most notably at the Austin Poetry Festival and Alternate Current Gallery, in Austin, Texas, in 1999, and in San Francisco, California, where he read stories and poetry at Vesuvio’s, one of North Beach’s fabled Beat Poetry venues with legendary poet and longtime friend Kell Robertson. He also performed at the Berkley Folk Festival with Utah Phillips, Jason Eklund, Mike Good and Jan Bell.

In the early 2000s, McCook returned to live and perform in Fort Worth, Texas. While teaching English and writing periodic columns for the Fort Worth Weekly and Judy Gordon’s online literally publication Picking up the Tempo, he performed at Fort Worth area clubs, such as the Black Dog, 7^th Haven and Arts Fifth Avenue, and several coffee shops, poetry readings and public library storytelling events. In the summers, he continued to give historical readings to homestead celebrations and museums in northern New Mexico and compiled a proposal to create homestead farm festivals.

Working in conjunction with the state agricultural department, McCook also promoted organic farming in northern New Mexico. In May of 2005, McCook was a featured speaker on organic farming for the United Nations Association in Washington D.C.

McCook performed at the Center for Big Bend Studies’ annual conference in 2007 at Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas, reading his Gran’pa Graef and friend Olan George stories.

In July 2008, McCook helped organize and performed at a benefit for the late Utah Phillips in Santa Fe, NM. In August 2008, he performed and was included in an  “Open Letter to the DNC” at the Mercury Café in Denver during the Democratic National Convention. In January 2009, he traveled to Washington D.C. for the Inauguration of Barack Obama, and published his experiences in the Fort Worth Weekly.