Jim Post wrote Galena, or, more properly, I believe it is Oh Galena. Jim played a lot around Chicago before discovering and moving to Galena. I dunno if he is still there. But when he was in Chicago, so were Prine, Goodman, and the Holstein brothers. Among many others, you could see them at small folk bars around town, just giggin' like anyone else. Acourse then a lot of them folks, wal, they got purty big for they britches!! But they had the talent, that's for sure.

This piece is part of what he has done as a one-man show as well as in a more expanded form, and it is the story of the mining town as it boomed. The songs tell the stories of the characters in the town, from many walks of life, including the native people who had been there, the slaves brought there to work, the ladies coming west to be with husbands, the riverboat people, the army.... Post takes each role on and does them all well.

My tape of this tends to come and go, as my housecleaning is somewhat variable. I may be able to lay hands on it. It's an old tape, and I sure wish I had a CD to see if the lyrics are on the thing. I could almost type a lot of them from memory-- the tape is so good that it is all in my head now and the tape is pretty well used up.

Anne Hills was one of the people who sometimes joined Jim to put this on, and the last I saw him do it was about 12 years ago. I am sure he is still doing it, here and there.

There is another album-length project he did about a boy named Daniel Christmas, and how one town found the Christmas spirit. I think it is called The Heart of Christmas. It has one particularly lovely song where Daniel is singing about getting into his rocking chair which, to him as a small boy, is a magic conveyance to adventure. I think the rocker sits in the kitchen. It's been awhile, but it will turn up I am sure.

Post is quite a character, and I will never forget the sight of this smallish, wiry man on a smallish, old- fashioned opera house stage, dancing up a storm while belting out in a high, manically-energetic, very high tenor, "I wanna be a hammer-down riverboat man!!!!" But the song I will never get out of my mind is the lovely "Oh Galena," which has such a pretty melody, so well wedded to the vowels in the words... That to sing it, to shape those words to those pitches, is to be like unto heaven itself.

~S~