Thorne Dreyer

Thorne Dreyer howls at demonstration against U.S. Sen. John (Corn Dog) Cronyn in Austin, February 15, 2008.

Thorne Webb Dreyer lives in Austin where he is a writer, editor, broadcaster, activist, and bookseller. He is editor of The Rag Blog, a progressive internet news magazine with a global audience, and is host of Rag Radio, aired Friday afternoons 2-3 p.m. on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin, and streamed live on the internet.

Thorne Dreyer was the first Funnel of The Rag and then was a member of the editorial collective of Liberation News Service in New York City and a founding member of the Space City News (later Space City!) editorial collective in Houston. Later he worked for KPFT-FM, the Pacifica radio station in Houston for which he served a stint as general manager, hosted a long-running interview show, and started and edited KPFT's Mighty Ninety News (And World Report).

His writings in the Sixties and Seventies appeared in dozens of publications around the world, and his work has been cited or excerpted in over 100 books and scholarly papers. He later was a correspondent for Texas Monthly, and through the years he was a freelance writer, published and edited newsletters and other materials for political organizations, for the City of Houston and for arts and civic groups, and wrote reams of advertising and public relations copy.

And that’s just the writing part of the story!

He also owned and operated a successful Houston public relations business and worked as a public information officer for the City of Houston, an actor, a political consultant, an event producer, a union booking agent and personal manager for rock and jazz musicians, and managed a jazz club.


Thorne Dreyer at KOOP studios in Austin, September 29, 2009. Photo by Alan Pogue.


Here's a neat little hodge podge for starters.

Radical returns to Austin for Cornyn protest: Thorne Dreyer back after 40 years. Feature story by Brad Bucholz in the Austin American-Statesman.

This has been in every edition of Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary (plus the unabridged, international, etc.) since the 70s (also here).

The Spies of Texas was an exclusive cover story in the November 17, 2006 issue of The Texas Observer, about surveillance of radicals and iconoclasts in Sixties Austin.

And here is an interview with Texas Public Radio about the publication of the Texas Observer article:



Here is a link to the audio and uncorrected transcript of a one hour and 23 minute oral history inverview with Thorne Dreyer, recorded 7/16/1976, from the Houston Public Library digital archives.

Bio and pic in Next Left Notes, of which Thorne is a Contributing Editor.

Dreyer mini-memoir prepared for The Rag Reunion.

Who's Who in the Sixties listing, from a French anarchist web site.

Max and the Mummy, a dispatch from Harris County Jail.

God Goes to the Astrodome in Texas Monthly. Guru Maharaj Ji ushers in the Millennium, this from the former premie’s own site.

The Movement and the New Media, overview piece on the Underground Press, written with Victoria Smith for Liberation News Service and referenced in a number of scholarly works.

…..and here it is in French!

Thorne Dreyer, with first issue of The Rag, confronted by kampus kop on the campus of UT-Austin in October, 1966.

Dreyer's letter to the Underground Press Syndicate announcing The Rag and its intent to join. Yes, friends, an actual historical document, for your edification and viewing pleasure.

People call for revolution: Pentagon up-tight, article written for The Rag and the Washington Free Press, and distributed by Liberation News Service. It ran in dozens of publications and has been excerpted in a number of books, including Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night.

Translation of an article on commercialization of the Haight Ashbury Summer of Love that ran in papers all over the country, posted here in La Presse Anarchiste.

Video clip from People's History in Texas and another.

The Strangest Neighborhood in Texas, Montrose Lives! Vintage article from Texas Monthly written with Al Reinert. Probably the definitive work on the Montrose, it’s culture and history.

What Ever Happened to the New Generation? In 1976 we revisit Sixties Texas radicals, many of them Ragstaffers. Published by Texas Monthly and reposted on The Rag Blog with a 2008 afterword.

This is the cover of Free Press: Underground & Alternative Publications 1965-1975 by Jean-Francois Bizot, published in 2006. The picture was taken at the initial meeting of the Underground Press Syndicate at Stimson Beach, California. Dreyer (stoned, in hat at left) and Carol Neiman represented The Rag.


Dreyer on News 8

Free Poetry was edited by Thorne Dreyer and John Schonenberg (of the San Francisco Mime Troupe) in San Francisco in 1966. It was published and distributed by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). According to Google Books: "This is a booklet of poems, a forum, an attempt to initiate action & dialogue, propaganda ..."

Books in which Dreyer is quoted or excerpted according to Google. At least those that have been digitized. Includes Congressional reports on subversion from the New Left!

And some searchable ones on Amazon….

Thorne Dreyer with Victoria Smith in the offices of Space City! in Houston circa 1970.