Thomas D. Isern's Blog: Willow Creek: A Writing Journal, page 14

No Sunbeams Rest on a Prairie Grave

This week on Prairie Public - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcast/plains-folk/2022-05-28/no-sunbeams-rest-on-a-prairie-grave

Ballads with Dialog

Cold open for this week's Willow Creek Folk School, #103: "Billy Grimes, the Drover" - a popular nineteenth-century ballad everyone seems to have forgotten. This is a dialog ballad, and so our theme for the program is "Talking Back" - folksongs with dialog. Here's a look at the (developing) program - https://docs.google.com/document/d/13vLbgd08g5arlPduTtpx9ycvaq7SFiGVGDUeLhsxoLs/edit?usp=sharing

Rhubarb Challence

This week on Prairie Public - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcas...

WCFS #102

Last night's Willow Creek Folk School - https://fb.watch/d8Tbk9qvfd/

This is Big! Maybe.

I should know better than to go down a rabbithole like this late at night. Now I won't be able to sleep. But I have just discovered the first-ever author attribution for "The Dying Cowboy," a.k.a. "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie." Not by my brilliant research strategy, but by dumb luck. This is an early text (1887) with a specific "written by" attribution to a fellow from southwest Kansas. Could this be the real deal? Might this fellow be the writer of the greatest of all dying-cowboy ballads? There are problems with the attribution, I need to sort things out, but right now, I am too excited to think straight. I'll give some details during Willow Creek Folk School #102 on Friday night.

Staking a Claim

Since this Friday is the anniversary of the Homestead Act, we're singing the theme of "Staking a Claim." Including the obvious sense, as in a homestead claim, as in "The Lane County Bachelor" - which may or may not be about a lonely homesteader in Lane County, Kansas. Or was it North Dakota? Or maybe Nebraska? - https://www.facebook.com/events/48339...

Whose Song Is This, Anyway?

Last Friday's Willow Creek Folk School, #101 - https://fb.watch/d0Fm2IFb7L/

Whose Song Is This, Anyway?

Willow Creek Folk School #101 coming up Friday the 13th at 8pm CDT, on the Facebook timeline of Plains Folk: "Whose Song Is This, Anyway?"

One Hundred

Last Friday's Willow Creek Folk School, #100 - https://fb.watch/cTDTK6t4Jh/

The Bachelors of Mt. Carmel

Last week on Prairie Public - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcas...