Ol' Yonder by Forrest VanTuyl

It was a bleak winter and the inauguration of a bleak chapter in American politics, and I was unemployed thanks to the historic snowfall here in Wallowa County, Northeast Oregon. My roommate brought home a thrift store cassette player with one microphone input, and another friend loaned me a very small 1960s Stella guitar under the condition that I give him a copy of anything I recorded on it. So I started recording in the kitchen, on cold mornings, newly written songs I thought would never make a public appearance. There's a song about riding a horse in the dark, songs about “fightin' the good fights,” working in the mountains, traditional folk tunes, and befitting the political climate, a Woody Guthrie song about migrant workers. I had no song list to follow, no rehearsal, and no intention of ever releasing the recordings. I borrowed a banjo and played all (both) of the banjo chords I knew.

Winter finally cleared, and I moved into the basement of the OK Theatre. It was quiet down there. I dug an old 4-track cassette machine out of storage and started recording every night. Instrumentals. Love songs. New songs. Songs I’d forget having written.

It’s about a year since I started these recordings, and I don’t quite know why they’re coming out at all. It’s winter again, and work’s slow again, so that’s got to have something to do with it. But maybe, really, I feel that putting out something flawed, fucked up, mistake-ridden, and ultimately, cathartic is the best artistic statement I can make right now. I’ll leave you with a favorite parting of Woody Guthrie’s: “Take it easy- but take it!”

-Forrest

Forrest VanTuyl is a Western songwriter, poet, and working cowboy based in the Inland Northwest. His work has been featured in the New York Times, at The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and he has written music for the US Forest Service.

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