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Folkwax Review Wilderness Plots
May 17th, 2007
by Arthur Wood
Wilderness Plots Feature in FolkWax !!
"Is it too much to dream that what is currently being debuted on Indiana stages will soon tour the nation?"
This article originally ran in FolkWax's Front Porch
May 17, 2007
Click here to download the entire article as PDF
Wilderness Plots features nineteen thematic compositions penned by a Bloomington, Indiana-based group of songwriters. Alphabetical by surname they are Krista Detor, Tim Grimm, Carrie Newcomer, Tom Roznowski, and Michael White. Detor, Grimm, and Newcomer should be familiar names to FolkWax readers since we've reviewed many of their solo albums over the past six years. The inspiration for this recording is Scott Russell Sanders' debut work Wilderness Plots, subtitled "Tales About The Settlement Of The American Land." Published during 1983, this collection of fifty short stories related episodes from the settling of the Ohio River Valley and a revised edition of Sanders' book was published earlier this year by The Wooster Book Company [ISBN 9781590981801]. The contents of Sanders' work can best described as folklore, featuring factually based tales (I hesitate to use the word historic) from this Northern Ohio/Southern Indiana region. Set during the period 1780 through 1860, the stories transport the reader from the closing years of the American Revolutionary War through to the onset of the American Civil War.
Scott Russell Sanders was born in Memphis, Tennessee, during 1945. His parents moved to Ohio when he was aged five, and he went on to study physics and English at Brown University and in 1971 gained his Ph. D. in English from Cambridge University. For the past thirty-six years he has held the position of Professor of English at Indiana University in Bloomington. To date, Sanders has written eighteen other works of fiction and non-fiction, including a number of children's storybooks.
This recording was produced, mixed, and mastered by David Weber at his Airtime Studio in Bloomington, a facility with which this quartet of songwriters was already thoroughly familiar. Newcomer, Detor, White, and Grimm each furnish four original songs, while Roznowski contributes three. Based on the credits presented in the fold-over, eco-card liner, seven of the nineteen songs are based specifically on stories that appear in Sanders' Wilderness Plots (each story title is quoted) while the remainder were inspired by his richly textured character of the settlers and the pioneering spirit they displayed, the "untamed" landscape and its original inhabitants, man and beast, and more; all of life…nothing less.
Roznowski opens the collection with "Whenever I Look At Trees" wherein his narrator, an early settler, contemplates the cities that will be constructed using the trees that he is felling – in the closing verse he dreams that those buildings will include a "two-room schoolhouse." Residing in a one-room cabin he built, his only companions appear to be hogs and dogs, and at that specific moment in time, in terms of the North American continent, he literally stands "On this solitary island/Surrounded by an ocean of trees."
"Biscuits And Butter" reflects on the hardship endured by pioneer women, particularly when their nearest and dearest journey to some far place in search of work that pays "good money" – essential to improving a family's lot in life. At the outset, the narrator's husband and eldest son leave home; months later, when they fail to return, she sends her second eldest male child to search for them. "Biscuits And Butter" is the sustenance with which she dispatches her kin, but as time passes and they fail to return, sadly, she reflects "I packed them biscuits and butter/And never saw them again" (the quote relates to dispatching her husband and oldest child – "them," when she sends her second child those same lines reference him as "him") and goes on to vow that she'll never bake another biscuit.
As they cleared their land, frontier farmers became, by default, archaeologists. Michael White's "Bones" reflects on Jeremiah Needham's experiences after he unearths a large skeleton with silver teeth, bedecked with copper wrist bracelets and other jewelry. Hoping to profit by his discovery, after travelling to town to consult the local doctor his find becomes public knowledge. As a result, Needham's land is soon visited, nightly, by neighbours in search of their share of the buried riches possessed by these slumbering ancient, giant homo sapiens. On the latter cut White supports his vocal with his banjo and there's some fine hammered dulcimer playing by Malcolm Dalglish.
"More Than I Dare Say" is set during the weeks leading up to Christmas and at the outset composer Krista Detor alludes to the vastness of the starlit northern sky then names a number of the constellations (a winter swan - Cygnus, a horse with wings – Pegasus). Detor's vocal has been recorded with echo such that it perfectly evokes the aforementioned vastness and it becomes apparent as the verses unfold that the narrator is a young person learning her letters and numbers - "The shapes so curious, still such a mystery." While each verse closes with the words "And I am wishing for more than I dare say," Detor's narrator indulges in a little ambiguity in the lines "So many things that I would tell you if I knew/So I sit quiet as a church mouse while I think of you," leaving the listener to muse on the identity of "you."
Where the lyrics to the opening quartet of songs are fiction based on fact, Tim Grimm's "Fruit" lyric is the first to embrace a historic event and character. General Wayne, aka "Mad Anthony," successfully led the campaign against the Indian Confederacy of the Ohio River Valley and Grimm's "Fruit" describes an episode which involved "stabbing the enemy hard and fast in their soft belly," sufficient that "Their will to resist the white man's advance/Would bleed away." Having been captured by the enemy then dispatched as a messenger who could well describe their strength, on his return Wayne's "faithful ragged spy" bears witness to the enemy's "acres of peaches, apples, beans, and maize." Wayne, nevertheless, decides to attack the enemy, the first move being to secure those precious, life-sustaining crops, his strategy approximating that of siege.
Having offered an insight into the first composition on Wilderness Plots penned by each of the contributing musicians, pursuit of such a detailed approach across the fourteen other cuts would amount to little more than a shopping list. What follows is a précis of the remaining contents of this multi-faceted lyrical and melodic delight. Newcomer's "One Woman And A Shovel" portrays another strong woman while, musically speaking, at the outset, Slats Klug's accordion injects a Cajun feel into the melody. The beauty inherent in the unspoiled natural world and the magic that accompanies the arrival of a child are embraced in Michael White's "The Moon Is Forgetting," while Grimm's water-bound talking Blues "Zenas Carter" is a hokey, rib-tickling delight.
The five songwriters each take a lead vocal during Detor's waltz-paced "Ice Mountains & Hairy Elephants," wherein the participants discuss whether those phenomenons were a result of ice age weathering or one that was heaven sent. Since Wilderness Plots seeks to portray a one-time boundary of civilisation, it would not have been unusual in that locale for a person to chose to live alone. Because the "The Hermit" has adopted a lifestyle outside the norm, in the mind of ordinary, simple folks who live nearby, he poses a threat - "Some say he has evil powers that possess the soul unawares." While we are not privy to the method of the hermit's demise, we are informed that on arrival "their stumbling scent fills his home." The evil these ordinary folks perpetrate and condone for the common good is inferred as Michael White's creation closes.
Grimm's "Squaw," which immediately follows (clever sequencing no less!), depicts the other side of the coin, wherein a lone "red" woman renders care and more to an injured white male hunter. Already married with children, during his recovery period the man gains a second wife, albeit one that at times appears possessed by spirits.
Mose Byxbe's travelling medicine show is the focus of Newcomer's "Healing Waters" - "The rich, poor, desperate, crowded round him like a prophet." With the passage of the decades Byxbe succumbs to a conscience pricked, plus there's the suggestion of his experiencing a true spiritual calling. As a result this prophet forsakes his profit and proceeds to give away his "sulphured elixir." That is, until the day he, curiously, disappears…or did he?
Roznowski's "Living Things" portrays a once wild place where mankind encountered numerous untamed beasts, their existence, in the settler's eyes, being a practical gift from above.
Motivated by the promise of a better life, wave upon wave of settlers tore up long established roots and travelled to a faraway frontier place. One such couple (given voice by Grimm and Detor) duet on the latter's "Aurora Means Dawn." Grimm's "Frostbite On The Soul" is the portrait of a travelling preacher and part-time cobbler whose horse perishes in the January snows leavening him stranded in the wilds. Forced to hike to the nearest settlement, his feet become frostbitten. While winter's bitter, biting cold features in the penultimate cut, Newcomer's album closer "Jug Whiskey" is a caution on imbibing excessive amounts of firewater, particularly the illicitly brewed variety.
I'm always a little wary of thematic recordings since they are restricted, literally from the outset, by the scope of the subject matter. A concept that may have appeared a multi-faceted winner during the planning stage often loses that magic somewhere in execution. Sanders' Wilderness Plots has furnished this group of songwriters with an infinite canvas that literally encompassed every aspect of life. These lyrically engaging, often melodically beautiful, songs, composed individually, portray simple people making their way in a less sophisticated age. Nevertheless, the joy and sorrow, successes and setbacks experienced on the frontier centuries ago possess a parallel with present day life. The frontier is now an urban one. What needs to be said is succinctly stated lyrically by each quartet member in less than one-minute or, where necessary, over a duration of up to six minutes.
Public performances of Wilderness Plots featuring Sanders and the five songwriters are planned for the coming months. Thinking outside the box for a moment, as a performance piece Wilderness Plots embraces the human experience as validly as that narrative and music show Ribbon Of Highway, Endless Skyway, which is based on the writings of Woody Guthrie. Featuring a rotating cast of performers, the Guthrie show has toured Folk venues across the United States for the past four years. While only privy to recordings of the Guthrie presentation, it appears to my ears that Wilderness Plots connects with and informs the listener on at least an equal footing.
Is it too much to dream that what is currently being debuted on Indiana stages will soon tour the nation?
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Arthur Wood is a founding editor of FolkWax. You may contact him at folkwax@visnat.com.