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Folk musician Jo Wilkinson remembers the day she went to sit with a music producer about breaking into the business in the late 1960s.

"He told me, 'We already have a girl singer, Linda Ronstadt. What's your gimmick?' " Wilkinson recalled. "I thought, 'How about just singing?' Times were certainly different then. It's wonderful to see all these women musicians out there now."

As fate would have it, Wilkinson would eventually find herself in Tucson, Ronstadt's old stomping grounds.

"I guess I'm kind of parading behind Linda," Wilkinson, 61, said with a chuckle. The singer-songwriter will headline KXCI's "Local Folk for Local Folk" concert with her group, Grains of Sand, on Saturday.

The evening is meant to celebrate the community radio station's 25th anniversary and will focus on women performers in Tucson. Amber Norgaard, Sabra Faulk and Roth d'lux, a group featuring Ginette Roth on vocals, round out the bill. Some interesting facts about Jo Wilkinson

Her family is longtime friends with folk icon Pete Seeger. Wilkinson's father, Frank Wilkinson, was an official with the Los Angeles Housing Authority in the 1950s and a proponent of a major public housing project in the Chavez Ravine section of L.A.

Critics of the plan deemed it socialist, and Wilkinson was called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Wilkinson refused. He and his wife were blacklisted, and after a lengthy court battle Frank was sentenced to a year in jail for contempt of Congress. Seeger, whose political folk music had put him in similar circumstances, became a friend of the family around that time.

"I would write Pete and he would write me back," Jo Wilkinson said. "He took us under his wing a couple of times. They moved my dad to South Carolina, as far away as possible so that we couldn't visit. It was so mean. Pete let us stay at his home in New York so we could be closer. We still keep in touch."

Ry Cooder has written a song about her father. While working on an album dedicated to the history of Chavez Ravine, where Dodger Stadium stands today, Cooder tracked down Frank Wilkinson and interviewed him for the track "Don't Call Me Red."

"Ry takes his stuff seriously," Jo said. "He is like a musicologist. He was able to get some history out of my dad. On the song, he imitates my father. Then he actually has my dad's voice speaking. It is very cool. When my dad died (in 2006), Ry came to the memorial in L.A. That was really sweet."

Her son Eligh is a popular underground hip-hop artist in Los Angeles. Eligh, who grew up with his family in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, is a member of the collective Living Legends. The Legends came through in September, and many of its artists, including Murs and Luckyiam, have been to Tucson on solo tours.

"I go to all their concerts when they come through town," Wilkinson said. "They love me. They are so sweet, those boys. Whenever they see me in the crowd, they say, 'Give it up for Eligh's mom.' "

Wilkinson is set to release a hip-ho\n\nfolk collaboration with her son in February.

"I sent a copy to Pete when we had it all mastered," Wilkinson said. "I wondered what he would think of it at this point in time. He was the one who hated it when Bob Dylan played electric at the Newport Folk Festival, and it is hard on certain people to hear rap.

"I was happy when he said he was excited about it. What's better than that? I guess he has come a long way, too."