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Mark Matson/FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN

When aspiring singer-songwriters, folkies or Americana mavens move to Austin, Cash Edwards is, without a doubt, the first person they should call. Having spent more than 20 years as a booking agent, informal consiglieri to new artists and publicist to everyone from Arlo Guthrie to the national Folk Alliance, there isn't much in the acoustic music business she doesn't know about, and there are few Texas folk scenesters she doesn't know. 'I'm a facilitator,' Edwards says over lunch at Shoreline Grill. 'I bring people together.' In graduate school at Texas A&M in the mid-1970s, she started out as a fan of the College Station guitar pulls that included Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen. But she's quick to credit her tireless parents and Air Force brat upbringing for exposing her to all sorts of culture. 'We lived in Japan, Germany, England, all over the place,' Edwards says. 'They took us everywhere, always to the local museums, churches, the London symphony, flamenco. So my two sisters and I grew up to be art appreciators, and being exposed to all these cultures developed for me a huge interest in my own culture. All this music that I'm into — bluegrass, Cajun, blues, the singer-songwriters — is American music. It's our culture.' Edwards split Austin after the early 1980s real estate bust and headed west, first as a publicist with the Freight & Salvage Coffee House, then with her own Under the Hat booking agency, which lasted from 1986 to 2000. These days, she's the publicist for the Folk Alliance and was instrumental in bringing the yearly folk conference to Austin and adding local touches. For example, Guy Juke designed the logo and a lyric from Townes Van Zandt ('For the sake of the song') served as the theme. 'It was a huge learning experience,' Edwards says. 'Holding it in one hotel (here, the downtown Hilton) puts such a fun spin on things. Everyone has better access to everyone else.' She also runs a music services company that handles publicity for a variety of clients and offers business consulting for younger artists. A trained yogi, she also wrote a book, 'Yoga Between Two Beds: A Guide for Touring Musicians.' But she says there's always room for more. 'I wish Austin would build more on our artist service industries — booking agents, music publishers; these are the industries that we really lack,' she says. 'We have all these songwriters and we need people in this town selling them.'

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