Alaska - Songs on this theme needed

Subject: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: MickyMan
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 09:29 PM

I'm putting together a set with songs that would loosely fall under an Alaska heading. Anyone with some song ideas for me? Traditional or contemporary folk music is fine. I need songs which I can sing solo with guitar accompaniment or accapella. Even poetry or quick excerpts of the written word suitable for reciting would be appropriate. Come on Mudcatters ... put on your thinking caps! Thanx

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Peace
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 09:38 PM

Big Mick, Alaska Mike, Ebbie. Message them.

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Zany Mouse
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:15 PM

John Denver used to write songs about Alaska. I can't remember the title but I remember one starts off: "Going up to Alaska, going up to the Land of the Midnight Sun... "

Rhiannon

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Peace
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:19 PM

American Child (Denver/Henry)

Going up to Alaska, up to the land of the midnight sun,
where the whale and polar bear run over the icy blue sea.
Going up to Alaska, up to the north and the pioneer life,
where courage and strength still survive and a man can be free.

American child, does the call of the wild ever sing through the mist of your dreams?
Does it fly with the wind when you waken again?
When it's gone do you know what it means?

Can you picture the time when a man
had to find his own way through an unbroken land?
Before the machine changed the blue and the green
to something you can't understand?

American child there's a burning inside you that calls you away through the cold.
To come back again to all that you've been,
can't you see that it's time to come home?
To the flowers and the trees and the rivers and the seas
and the earth who's the mother of all?
A promise once made will it shine, will it fade, will we rise with the vision or fall?

Going up to Alaska, up to the land of the midnight sun,
where the whale and polar bear run over the icy blue sea.
Going up to Alaska, up to the north and the pioneer life
where courage and strength still survive and a man can be free, men can be free.

Going up to Alaska, going up to Alaska, going up to Alaska.

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: GUEST,Nanart
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:21 PM

Maybe I can come up with something alone the poetry line that can be set to music. Let me give it a few days to mull over.

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: MickyMan
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:22 PM

This is great. Many thanks to all.   Keep them coming. I'll be looking these up and would appreciate many more. MickyMan

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Peace
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:23 PM

Johnny Horton's "North to Alaska".

and

Springtime in Alaska

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: NanArt
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:24 PM

Sorry, I wasn't logged in when I posted that.
I've been to Alaska (only once alas!)so I'll pull out my photo's
and memories and see what I come up with.

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Peace
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:25 PM

North to Alaska link

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: open mike
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:29 PM

here is Alaska Mike's web site.:
http://www.arctic.net/~mooseman
http://www.arctic.net/~mooseman/links.htm

by the way Alaska Mike, if you read this
do you know a fellow who now
lives near here "Doc" Shultz? He plays
banjo and has played with Matt Hammer.
He lived in Alaska for a few years
recently, and before that for another
period of time.

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Peace
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 10:30 PM

http://www.robinhopper.com/record.html

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 27 Feb 05 - 11:15 PM

Several Robert Service poems have been put to music.
A particularly good one is Ballad of Blasphemous Bill,
put to music & recorded by Debbie McClatchy.

Technically, I think it's about Yukon Territory, Canada,
not Alaska, but maybe it's close enough, Juneau what
I mean?

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 12:12 AM

Sunday, and it's rainin' in Alaska
Seven days, I haven't seen the sun
Flyin bush, flyin low along the shoreline
Doin' everything I can to make it home

I can't wait to see the Wrangel Mountains
I can't wait to do what I will do
Honey, did I never say how time goes by so slowly
When I can't wait to get back home to you

Three years from the war I've settled down now
I did my time and served my country well
In the freedom I defended I fly beneath the North Star
And I just don't know a better way to feel

I can't wait to see the Wrangel Mountains
I can't wait to do what I will do
Honey, did I never say how time goes by so slowly
When I can't wait to get back home to you

Its a quiet life out here among the mountains
In a cabin that was built with these two hands
McCarthy lies asleep beside the Glacier
It's colder now, winter's in the air
If you think they're wild it's just because they can't be broken
Its a strong and gentle people living there

I can't wait to see the Wrangel Mountains
I can't wait to do what I will do
Honey, did I never say how time goes by so slowly
When I can't wait to get back home to you

Words and music by John Denver

Alaska Mike writes many wonderful songs about Alaska, and so does Robin Hopper. They're the ones I'd check out.

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 12:33 AM

Dan Bern has a nice song he wrote in Alaska, "Alaska Highway". It's more a free running riff on the road, but the locals always like hearing him do it.

More trad. numbers are:
perhaps the greatest of the US State songs, "The Alaska Flag" which begins: "Eight stars of gold on a field of blue
Alaska's flag, may it mean to you
The blue of the sea, the evening sky the mountain lakes and the flow'rs nearby"

A good more traditional song may be: "The 30 US on the wall"

There's the song about the frozen logger: "my lover was a logger, there's none like him today, why if you'd pour syrup on it, he would eat a bale of hay..."

Stan Rogers had a great country western tune about a Northern trucker who gets permanent case of cabin fever in "Canol Road". This is more BC/ Yukon Territory stuff but it counts IMNSHO in that it involves the cold, alcohol, violence, and a bad ending. Too Tres Alaskan.

If you have access to the net, buy the CDs advertized by "Mr. Whitekeys" of the Fly By Night CLub. They do a wonderful performance set in a sleazy Spenard joint which captures Alaska better'n most.

There's a lot of homegrown bluegrass and folk as well.

good luck.

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 06:19 PM

Hi folks, I already PM'd Mickyman my list of websites to look up. Some of the ones that haven't been mentioned yet in this thread are Lou Nathanson, Paul Roseland, Matt Hammer, Mike McDonald, Will Putnam, and many more. The list I gave him should keep him busy for awhile. Micky, be sure and let me know if you need any additional help finding material.

OpenMike, I've known Doc Shultz for many years. He still comes up to Alaska periodically and performs around the state. His buddy Matt Hammer has sung harmonies on my last 2 CD's and has been one of my good friends for the last couple decades. Lots of nice people come to Alaska.

Robert Service is loved and enjoyed in Alaska even though he was Canadian. All five of my children graduated from Robert Service High School. There are performers up here that actually make a living reciting Service poems to the tourists that flock to our fair state throughout the year.

Mike

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 06:23 PM

"When it's Springtime in Alaska (its 40 below)"
by Johnny Cash
Orange Blossom Special LP (I think)

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Dani
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 06:30 PM

Hey, Mike, I just found out there's a volunteer from my tiny town in NC heading your way to work at the Iditarod. She does it every year! Will you be playing somewhere I can point her? I thought I remembered you mentioning that you do that.

Dani

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 08:15 PM

Hi Dani, the Iditarod starts next Saturday, March 5th. I will be playing at Cyrano's in downtown Anchorage at about 1:30 pm after the last musher takes off down 4th Avenue. Have her ask around for Cyrano's, everyone here knows it. Be sure and tell her to say hello. I might also be performing at the post office mall in downtown Anchorage later that afternoon. I haven't heard back yet.

Mike

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Barry T
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 08:43 PM

Here's When the Ice Worms Nest Again... one of the Robert Service songs Guest Gerry mentioned...

http://members.shaw.ca/tunebook/iceworms.htm

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 01:16 AM

Hey Micky, if you tune your web radio in to Whole Wheat Radio, you can hear many Alaska songs along with a good selection of other fine folkies. If there is a song from an Alaskan artist that you would like to listen to, Whole Wheat Radio probably has their CD and will play your request just by asking them to.

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: rich-joy
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 01:55 AM

I thought I had an Alaskan recording, but it turns out it was from Yellowknife in the NW Territories, by a group called The Gumboots ("Spirit of the North") ...
Well, what's a mountain range between friends?!
From where I'm sitting (in a pool of sub-tropical sweat) it's all just COLD, COLD - and MORE COLD, up that way!!!

Cheers! R-J

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Ernest
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 01:59 AM

Klondike - it is in the DT
Regards
Ernest

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: open mike
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 03:26 AM

Doc was in the folk society that i am in for several years..
we used to jam and play in our Homegrown Music festival!
He is back in town now..I saw him a while back. I remember
hearing a recording of Matt Hammer singing North to Alaska.
I thought you might know him or know of him...

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: GUEST,Bad Cuilionn, no biscuit
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 07:29 PM

Lived there for five years (1989-1994)while working my way through college. I have several near-worn-out cassette tapes recorded off of the Public Radio program, "Acousticity" which was broadcast from Anchorage & featured a fair amount of local music. My favourite "Alaska" song is actually called "Yukon Women." (Can't make out the group name on my old tape, but maybe someone knows...) It's a pretty accurate description of several folks I met during my time up there: a strange blend of capability, cleverness, pioneer spirit and substance abuse. Every time I hear the song, I'm moved to laughter by its unvarnished honesty and boisterousness.

Here's how the song starts, if I recollect correctly:

"Well, I ain't seen any green since last September,
I ain't tooken off my boots since last July,
I ain't been messin' up my mind -- more than half the time --
Ah, but Honey, don't you bet that I didn't try.

...

CHORUS:
'Cause I'm one of them rough, loose, raw & rugged
Yukon women are we;
We wear plaid jackets & we build our own cabins & we all drink rose-hip tea --
independently!



The remaining verses expand on the hazards and joys of North-country life, such as itchy woolen clothing, bears, saunas, etc.

Dreadful place-- I miss it. Especially in February. Even though I now live in Maine, which has the same sort of climate & social problems! I miss the wonderful coffeehouses and all the fine music-making Alaskan folks... and fresh fish without so much mercury!

Sigh.

--Cuilionn

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 03:49 AM

There's a folk/pop song called 'Anchored down in Anchorage' but I don't think it's what you're after!

There is a verse in a song I've done occasionally by Jehosophat and Jones on their LP. I think it's called 'We knew what she meant'... and has a verse that goes:

(something about the subject meeting a young man...)
So they rushed off to Alaska for a quick love affair
She returned on her own with a cold and a cough..
'We were both frozen stiff and I just broke it off'.

One day I'll find the file that has all the words in!

LTS

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Kitty
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 04:40 AM

I can't resist--no it' not a song, but a poem (which you said would be ok...), and a rather lengthy one at that, but it is my favorite. It's known if not well-known. My dad could recite it from memory:

The Cremation of Sam McGee
by Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ''round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he''d often say in his homely way that ""he''d sooner live in hell.""

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka''s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we''d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn''t see;
It wasn''t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o''erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and ""Cap,"" says he, ""I''ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I''m asking that you won''t refuse my last request.""

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn''t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
""It''s the cursed cold, and it''s got right hold till I''m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ''taint being dead--it''s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you''ll cremate my last remains.""

A pal''s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn''t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn''t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: ""You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it''s up to you to cremate those last remains.""

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows——O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I''d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the ""Alice May.""
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then ""Here,"" said I, with a sudden cry, ""is my cre-ma-tor-eum.""

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared——such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn''t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don''t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: ""I''ll just take a peep inside.I guess he''s cooked, and it''s time I looked;"" . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: ""Please close that door.
It''s fine in here, but I greatly fear you''ll let in the cold and storm——
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it''s the first time I''ve been warm.""


There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: MickyMan
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 03:17 PM

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: MickyMan
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 03:29 PM

Wow .... once again I'm back and thanking you all for this fine stuff. Ain't Mudcat just the right place for a song search project like this! I started this up about a week ago and it seems that lots of others are also getting some info and great chatting from this thread. Just for the record, my intended audience will probably contain very few purist folkies and so I appreciate all kinds of songs that would appeal to a wide variety of listeners. The poetry is also very helpful.   Please ... I once again encourage everyone to keep adding their ideas. Many thanks, Mickyman

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 06:58 PM

Anchorage - Michelle Shocked
What did Delaware? Perry Como

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: Ferrara
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 10:32 PM

Barry T, Bill and I spent about an hour and a half this evening with the Great Canadian Tunebook. What a good time -- wonderful songs. Thank you for a great link.

And Kitty, thank you for reminding me about the Cremation of Dan McGee. My 7th grade teacher used to read us Service's poems and this one was our favorite. There was a time when I could recite the whole thing, and I'm going to try to learn it again because it brings back such good memories.

Rita F

Subject: RE: Alaska - Songs on this theme needed
From: GUEST,Doodah Dan
Date: 23 Feb 06 - 01:57 AM

Stumbled by.I don't have time to help but I can tell you Michelle Shocked did a song about Texas being the 2nd biggest state. I believe there was reference to Alaska. (The largest US state. Have fun.
Doodah Dan