“Keep a movin’ Dan, don’t you listen to him Dan, He’s the devil not a man, and he spreads the burnin’ sand, with water.” Our young sons sat transfixed by the musicians in ten-gallon hats performing on-stage in front of them. The plaintive melody continued, under-girded by guitar, fiddle, and string bass, “Oh Dan can’t you see, that big green tree, where the water’s runnin’ free, and it’s waitin’ there for me and you?” One of the best-known of all trail songs–Cool Water.
We were the only family with young children in the audience of about 200. These six men of varying ages, The Sons of The Pioneers, seemed thrilled to have a young family in attendance, and we garnered personal attention during this performance. At their winter venue in Tucson, Arizona, they no doubt were accustomed to playing to mostly silver-haired audiences. While our boys may not have known the words as well as the older audience (perhaps learned from all those 33’s spinning in decades past), the cowboys seemed genuinely touched that a younger crowd, in the year 2005, was happily basking in the traditions of the Old West.
There is no formal definition of a cowboy or the Wild West; I don’t know what constitutes “real” when considering legend and reality of life in the 1800s. I do know this, the Grand Canyon Railway show wasn’t it. As I wrote previously … there was no harm in it, but it simply was myth. The Sons of the Pioneers, however, that’s a different proposition. Certainly, still a show, made famous in the Western movie craze of the mid-1900s–still performers on a stage, but hewing closer to its source. This musical tradition sprang from something unique, the songs of the trail. The world moved on, technology changed, and settlers swept over the plains like a slow-rising tide, but there are things worth preserving–the culture and music of the trail is one of those traditions we should hold on to.
Keep on tumblin’, fair tumbleweeds.
