~~~~ Bod Library’s AUDIO ARCHIVES Listening Room
In keeping with the library’s more or less homegrown mandate, Yours Crudely had a hand (as well as a voice) in each of the following.
# ROLLING ON: the wagon years (1821-1880), words & music of the Santa Fe Trail
# LIKE WATER: northern New Mexico Suites for guitar & poetry (1994)
# TRAVELING ON: words & music of the (pre) Santa Fe Trail–Origins; Streams running together (1995-97)
ROLLING ON: words & music of the Santa Fe Trail–the wagon years (1821-1880) produced by KUNM public radio, with Rachel Kaub director & Yours Crudely arranger-composer, it was presented & recorded live at Albuquerque’s South Broadway Cultural Center, March 19, 2003, sweetened by Rachel & staff & broadcast various times after.
[Tracks must be individually clicked to play. Ones with * stars are recommended for condensed listening (3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14), with #9, “Night on the Prairie,” one of the most re-played favorites.]
- pre-show warm-up:
2. intro, welcome:
*3. connecting (starting out from Franklin…):
4. newspapers, survey, politics…:
*5. prairie life, little things:
*6. fandango!
7. (annexation):
8. sometimes a hard trail:
*9. night on the prairie:
*10. loose beads:
11. war-path:
12. tracks of dreams/ jornada wind:
*13. garden…:
*14. at journey’s end (yee ha!):
15. page by page…:
16. credits:
With a cast & crew of more than fifty, Rolling On: the wagon years completed a project begun more than a decade earlier, scouting words & music of the Santa Fe Trail on the trail itself, in advance of the classic trail’s 175th anniversary in 1996, for which the first two radio programs were made (Origins & Streams Running Together). Roughly a half-hour each, these were primarily funded by the New Mexico Humanities Council, & directed by guitarist-composer Carl Bernstein, who lived along the trail at the time & hadproposed the effort.
Although it came out of that project, Rolling On had a life of its own, thanks in good part to a city grant, the station’s crew & Rachel’s casting, for which our diverse voices sought to mirror to some small degree the original variety. To do this, we used more than one narrator from each of the broad cultural streams, each of which contained its own variety.
With the exception of Yours Crudely’s completely original Ballad of the Santa Fe Trail tying segments together, the words are from actual trail travelers & newspaper accounts, the music from historically documented sources via actively practicing musicians.
Here are a few notes on cast, crew & sources. (Alas, unreadable –sorry, will try to re-do.)
[Before our trail-related adventures led to the two radio programs that follow below, Carl Bernstein & I had done many live performances together & produced LIKE WATER, under the Leaky Buckets Music label, in 1994. In either a strictly chronological, genre- or theme-based order, this would go last. I put it here instead, being far easier to re-listen to, with more to offer, & for the change in pace.]
LIKE WATER: in spring runoff; with gifts from everywhere;
suites for guitar & poetry, 1994, Carl Bernstein & Richard Bodner;
(sound of the river)
side a: in spring runoff, a land of enchantment (northern new mexico) suite for poetry & guitar…
[In spring runoff was named NM’s “best original classical composition of the year (1995)” at what was then called the annual MicLine (later NM Music) Awards.]
(sound of the mountain)
side b: gifts from here, there, & everywhere…, offerings from old masters--Tagore, Rumi, Rilke, Basho, etc.–, newly rendered, along with an original “Dragon Mountain Suite” inspired by ‘the land.’
The album was recorded at Dead Horse Studio, with Jon Gold, recording engineer, and produced as a cassette. The bi-directional cover photo, “Sound of the Mountain, Sound of the River” more or less represent side b & side a, respectively, though the two flow together as poetry & music, voice & guitar.
Wallace Stevens famously claimed, Music is feeling, then, not sound. Not to quibble, but without the sound as medium of transmission, where’s the feeling? And what is poetry without its sound, its music, its play? Granted, sound is not its only sense, but it’s still meant to be heard in the reader’s mind.
Inspired by beat haiku with jazz, in high school Yours Crudely became convinced that poetry, like music, was meant to be heard to be felt (& felt to be heard), with qualities in nuances of tone & flow otherwise lost, especially for newcomers. As a college instructor in the early 70s, it seemed clear that hardly anyone would care for music if it were mainly shared the way poetry usually was in classes–score on the page, as basis for discussion, ideas & analysis, with only trained experts “listening” (i.e., analyzing wave-patterns on scopes).
There were a few exceptions back in the day–albums featuring the likes of Dylan Thomas, T. S. Elliot & eventually Jack Kerouac. Joan Baez made one of the best, an anti-war album classic in the 1960s (with limited air-time, if any, & deservedly forgettable title, maybe Baptism?).
Like Water aimed to bring words & music more closely together, each composed to some degree in response to the other. At times a little too breathless, a bit overdone in the voice department, the guitar makes up for most deficiencies. One technical mistake was not having kept the voice & guitar tracks on two separate channels, so listeners could choose levels of each independently (including zero, for MPR/ Mime Private Radio).
[I’m told that more recent technology makes a re-separation now possible, though whether worth the effort or not for an experiment of so long ago an open question.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~TRAVELING ON~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~WORDS & MUSIC OF THE SANTA FE TRAIL
side a: Origins. side b: Streams running together
two half-hour radio programs; with funding from the New Mexico Humanities Council, Leaky Buckets Music, a chapter of the Santa Fe Trail Association & Land of Enchantment Poetry Theater, they aired on New Mexico public radio station KUNM (& elsewhere), 1996-97 & again in 2003 as lead-up to Rolling On; they were under the musical direction of Carl Bernstein; script composed & arranged by R. Bodner; cast featuring Sara Harris, Anne Bradford, George ‘Deer Tracks’ Tyler, Chicken River String Band…; some recording at Dead Horse Studio, & finished at Jack Loeffler’s Peregrine Studio under his supervision.
side a: Origins
side b: Streams running together
…ending in 1821, where it was time for Rolling On: the wagon years, & the classic trail period to begin…which came to an end with the arrival of the RR…, which remains, although superseded by personal vehicles & roads….
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At the time, Carl lived in Ocaté, NM, close to the trail, and wanted to help celebrate the 175th anniversary of the classic trail period with a program of words & music. He enlisted me for the words, knowing I had long had an interest in “trail studies”–including close relationship with Basho’s oku no hosomichi, “Backcountry Ways” (mis-translated Narrow Road to the Deep North).
In the fall of 1995, after a 10-day arts residency at the beautiful NMH school in up-country New England, & stops to wet my feet along the coast (Revere & Rhode Island), I drove from the Atlantic over the Cumberland Gap, meeting up with Carl at my old teacher Gar Allen’s house in St. Louis, from which we explored the trail route west together, stopping in towns along the way to meet & jam with local musicians, especially any fluent in the trail legacy.
It turns out I had far too much to learn to finish the project for the anniversary, for which we delivered the first two programs, as intended. I went back to the trail many times thereafter, especially the wilder parts, developing a sense of its wildlife, land, and weather, while delving more thoroughly into the historical & contemporary cultural streams from the classic period 1821-1881 on.
When KUNM put out a call for scripts in 2002, I submitted a version of Rolling On, after which Rachel Kaub took charge of the collaboration & all aspects of production. Working with a grant from the City of Albuquerque, the program was presented as a live performance at that city’s South Broadway Cultural Center, March 19, 2003, in the midst of an ice storm (& launch of the Iraqi war).
Although presented somewhat “on the fly,” with minimal rehearsal, & various places I’d have adjusted a presenter’s delivery, Rolling On has a life I prefer to the earlier trail programs…..
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