It's Apple Pickin' Time

Greetings,

I just got back from the local apple orchard on this picture-postcard, perfect afternoon. The sunlight that cast its golden glow over the rows of Jonathan and McIntosh, as well as many other apple trees, reminded me of another time, when afternoons were spent in the branches of the trees of my youth.

Folk songs can give you a similar feeling, a window into a world of long ago or far away.  Like a fragrance can help you remember where you were the last time you encountered it, an old ballad can transform your thoroughly modern existence into a smokey, dim lit campfire gathering. Songs like "Oh, Susanna," or "Sweet Betsey From Pike" give one a sense of crossing the Great Divide in the Rocky Mountains and traveling into California in 1849 in search of golden dreams. "The Greenland Whale Fisheries," and "New Bedford Whalers" takes us out on the high seas, harpoon in hand; you can almost smell the salt air!

It is, also, a lot of fun to try to recreate that sense of time and place through new songs. Stan Rogers was well known for his gift of language and melody that created new "old folk songs". My favorite is "Harris and the Mare", a dramatic barroom scene that erupts into the tragic story of the death of  "young Clary" at the hands of a conscientious objector from World War II. No one expected that.

With those thoughts in mind, this weekend I will be performing on Saturday evening at The Foundry, in South Haven, Michigan and on Sunday afternoon at Blackberry Farm in Aurora, Illinois. The Foundry is a very intimate setting for a concert set in downtown South Haven, not far from where the topsail schooner Friends Good Will, a reproduction of an 1812-era naval vessel, is docked. It will be great fun to sing songs about that time, when Great Britain and the United States were engaged in a struggle that had a profound impact on the future of Canada and North America.

Consequently, Blackberry Farm is a wonderful stroll into yesteryear, where the family farm and midwestern values mingle amid the sun-dappled tree branches surrounding the town square. It's a perfect place for old folk songs to drift over the grounds and create new memories of the "good old days."

So get out and enjoy these wonderful September days and sing an old song, even if it is just to yourself.

Fair Winds!

Lee Murdock

www.michiganmartimemuseum.org
www.foxvalleyparkdistrict.org
www.foundryhall.com

Copyright 2012 by Lee Murdock