Posted in: Uncategorized | No Comments | Posted on December 20, 2011 by Rod

About three years ago I discovered that my dad’s grandparents were born in the Ozarks, quite possibly right here in the county I’ve been living in for the past 25 years. This was a surprise since I was born about 150 miles away in Southeast Kansas. I started having these visions of my great-grandmother in her later days thinking back on her life in the Ozarks, even tho she may have been living in Kansas durring her latter years. Further, we found out her maiden name was Martha Evaline Branson, the exact name of one of the daughters of Reuben Branson, for whom the town of Branson (where I live) was named, but twenty years earlier than Reuben’s daughter… with the possibility that my g-grandmother was an ancestor of those who founded Branson, Missouri. I announce this every night at my job at Presley’s Country Music Jubilee, and show those gathered for my pre-show, often over 100 souls, a photo of my great grandmother Eva. The song is in the mountain music or bluegrass ballad style, and features traditional bluegrass instrumentation of guitars, banjo, mandolin, upright bass, and fiddle (low-strung)… also the non-traditional cello. I wanted to add the dulcimer (which I do not play in this entire double album of 25 songs) and harmonica, but the texture was already thick enough… I taught this song to my friends “WestWind” (see photo page) and we played it at Michael Hearne’s Big Barndance Music Festival in Taos, New Mexico this past September (2011)…embarrassingly, I forgot the entire 2nd verse and so just played an instrumental…bummer. Regardless, I think the lyrics are some of my best and I believe this song will live on way past my own life… and I can’t say that I think that about much of my music. I like the imagery of the song, the use of key words like “sarsaparilla” and the short-cut phrase “washed away like Jesus”…sometimes you just use a phrase even if it is not correct grammatically, just because it works, and also serves to connect in this case with the rather fundamental religious traditions of this area. I also am happy with the inclusion of the apron image, since it was a big part of my memories as a child of my older women relatives, who always wore aprons much of the day. Would love some feedback on what you think of the lyrics and general production of this song, since it is the only truly bluegrass sound (except for my voice) of my 25 tunes on “Rosalias 1 & 2″…