[1] In this usage, it was synonymous with doohickey, thingamajig or whatchamacallit, as in: "That hootenanny that she shovels her bread with—that long-handled majigger, you know" (from Sim Greene: A Narrative of the Whisky Insurrection [1906]).
Seeger, Woody Guthrie and other members of the Almanac Singers later used the word in New York City to describe their weekly rent parties, which featured many notable folksingers of the time.
[5] In a 1962 interview in Time, Joan Baez made the analogy that a hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz.
[10] The Hootenanny was an annual one-day rockabilly music festival held on July 4th weekends from 1995 to 2013 at the Oak Canyon Ranch in Irvine, California.
It featured rockabilly bands like the Reverend Horton Heat, The Derailers, Mike Ness, and the Royal Crown Revue.