A Storyteller I Almost Missed
Some people introduce themselves with titles.
Others introduce themselves with stories.
I first met Colin Guerra at a Sit with Sylvia gathering in Bastrop in September 2025. At the time, he was serving in his role as a Public Information Manager for the city—moving through the room with a camera, recording moments, listening more than speaking.
After that evening, our paths crossed at a number of community events. Bastrop is like that. The same faces reappear wherever stories are unfolding.
It wasn’t until later—after he had already walked away from a brief conversation to leave for the night—that I looked down at his business card and noticed something unexpected. Beneath his name was another description entirely.
Storyteller.
But late one night in March 2026—around 11:38 p.m., while scrolling Facebook from bed—I realized that description was only part of the story.
Colin Guerra isn’t just a Public Information Manager.
He’s a storyteller who sings.
A Festival with Its Own Story
The Smithville Folk Music Festival has a history of its own—one that reads like a community ballad.
According to the festival’s biography posted on its Facebook page, the event began in 2014 under the leadership of musician Daniel Pacheco, then owner of the Olde World Bakery in Smithville. When Pacheco later relocated, stewardship of the festival passed to Don Jellison, who continued organizing the event through the 2015 and 2016 seasons.
Plans for a 2017 festival were underway when Jellison unexpectedly passed away in May of that year, bringing the festival to a halt.
For several years, the music paused.
Then in 2024, the festival returned under the leadership of Letha Mignon, who had previously organized the Sounds of Smithville event and worked with local traditions like Music in the Park and the Festival of Lights. After another brief break in 2025, the festival came back again in March 2026.
Originally held in October at the gazebo in Railroad Park, organizers moved the festival to March to avoid overlapping with other Smithville events. The venue also shifted to Quinto Patio, at the corner of Olive and Second Street, offering a covered stage and an intimate courtyard that protects both musicians and listeners from the unpredictable Texas spring weather.
On this particular morning, the setting felt less like a formal festival and more like a front-porch gathering where stories happened to be sung.
The Storyteller Takes the Stage
The music he brought to the Smithville Folk Music Festival was something else entirely.
Story songs.
Cowboy ballads. Murder ballads. Old folk songs whose authors have been forgotten but whose stories survived.
In a Facebook announcement promoting the event, Colin Guerra shared that he would deliver:
“Cowboy songs full of treachery, deceit, corn dodgers, and sometimes murder.
Like true crime… before Hulu came around.”
As he took the stage and began his set, the description proved to be right on point.
Where Music Becomes Memory
Between songs, Guerra paused to explain something he has clearly thought about for a long time—the nature of stories themselves.
He described how someone once misheard the name of a video project he had worked on. Instead of hearing “Bastrop Stories,” they thought he said “Bastrop Storage.”
At first it seemed like a simple mistake.
But the more he thought about it, the more the idea stayed with him.
Stories, he suggested, are a kind of storage unit for human experience.
Inside them we keep:
family memories
lessons learned
heartbreak
humor
wisdom we don’t want to lose
Like boxes tucked away in an attic or a storage locker, stories hold the things that matter most—even when we don’t open them for years.
Listening to Guerra perform, it became clear that the songs he chooses do exactly that.
Some were centuries old.
Some were written by modern songwriters.
But each carried a fragment of human life—love, betrayal, regret, redemption.
The Music of Bastrop’s Storyteller
The set moved effortlessly across eras:
traditional ballads like “Black Jack Davy”
haunting murder ballads such as “Frankie and Johnny”
poetic works by Tom Waits
protest songs by Bob Dylan
and folk standards written by Woody Guthrie
Each piece arrived with a story attached—sometimes humorous, sometimes reflective, sometimes deeply human.
At one point Guerra reflected on the difference between performing art and working behind the scenes running sound for other artists, something he has done for years at The Bugle Boy.
On stage, he joked, art can never really be wrong.
But if a sound technician forgets to turn on a microphone, everyone notices immediately.
The audience laughed.
That easy mixture of humility, humor, and thoughtful reflection is part of what makes Guerra’s performances feel less like concerts and more like conversations.
Field Notes from a Folk Morning
Watching the set unfold, one thing became clear.
The business card had been right all along.
Colin Guerra is a storyteller.
He just happens to tell those stories through music.
And in a county where so many of our histories live in memory—passed through conversations, songs, and community gatherings—that kind of storytelling feels right at home.
Sometimes the stories are written.
Sometimes they are archived.
And sometimes they are sung on a small stage in Smithville on a Saturday morning while a courtyard of neighbors listens quietly.
