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Cowboy Americana Liner Notes |
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This album is a mixture of real & mythic cowboy & Americana songs. The cowboy is many things to our culture & collective consciousness - adventurer, dreamer, loner, rugged sage. The West is still such a mythic spiritual frontier full of limitless opportunity - just as it was a physical frontier to our forebears. I offer up this celebration of the Old West to your inner frontiersman. May you dream big dreams full of spirit & fire.
Many thanks. Don Richmond for his attention to detail & excellence & friendship which saw this project through. All those I had the honor to sing to at countless campfires. My Mom & Dad & family who instilled in me a love for history & the outdoors. My beautiful wife who encourages me & keeps me from making a fool of myself. What would I do without my better half?
1 GARY MORTON LAMENT R.W. Hampton CIMARRON SOUND I heard R.W. Hampton sing this at Philmont Scout Ranch back in the early '80s. It captures the spirit of cowboys everywhere that cowboying is not gone. He talks about the Sangre de Cristos which are very near to my heart. R.W. graciously allowed me to use this song as long as I spelled his name right. This is the first time this song has been recorded.
2 SONG OF WYOMING Kent Lewis CHERRY LANE MUSIC PUB OBO WINDSTAR MUSIC I have sung this song at many cowboy campfires. I dedicate this to the many fine folks at the Don K Guest Ranch & to Rough Rider Dick Kools with whom I had the pleasure of singing many times. The harmonica says it all on this one.
3 STRAWBERRY ROAN Curly Fletcher 1915 The classic cowboy story complete with more colloquial phrases than you can shake a stick at. ;-)
4 RIDIN' DOWN THE CANYON Gene Autrey, Smiley Burnett GENE AUTRY DBA GENE AUTRY MUSIC COMPANY SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. Nice & easy-going. We tried to do an evening ride at the Don K Guest Ranch once, but the horses wouldn't have any of it.
5 MARIAH Lerner & Loewe CHAPPELL & CO. This song has resurfaced many times in my life in many different forms. I even used Mariah in my first song at 15. Don added some beautiful harmonies.
6 STREETS OF LAREDO (THE COWBOY'S LAMENT) Francis Henry Maynard 1876 This song has all the pathos & wisdom of the Old West. There is something very real & kind of mystical in this. I find a distinct joy in reconnecting with the past in this kind of song.
7 DON'T FENCE ME IN Cole Porter WB MUSIC CORP This is a happy little tune full of the romanticism of all those Western movies of the '30s & '40s. You can sing harmony on it if you'd like.
8 OVER YONDER (HE'S GONE AWAY) Unknown "Lass of Roch Royal" Additional words by Tom Munch & Don Richmond This tune has haunted me ever since I first heard it as a child in a melody from the movie "How the West Was Won". I first put a name to it a few months ago when I saw a video of Lily Munster singing it on YouTube & then found that the Serendipity Singers had sung it at a concert when I was young. I still didn't know the actual name of it until I heard an interview with Charlie Haydn in which his daughter sang it & connected it to a version called "He's Gone Away" by Jo Stafford. Finally I found this melody that I had so loved all my life. I then found historic versions of this & decided it had to be included on this album. Don & I wrote additional words. I have a sneaking suspicion that my ancestor Xavier Munch was humming this as he came west in the 1850s.
9 GHOST RIDERS IN THE SKY Stan Jones MPL MUSIC PUBLISHING, INC. OBO H. MORRIS & CO. Don's rambling banjo tames my out-of-control steel string flattop a few times as we lope along through the menacing skies on this one. The fiddle sounds very mournful & possessed.
10 OLD PAINT Unknown 1870s Another favorite from the trail. The last verse has always been a favorite. May we all be so fortunate.
11 PONIES Jeffrey Bullock LICHELLE MUSIC OBO WELK MUSIC/SONY ATV TUNES LLC DBA ATV A great song I learned from Michael Johnson. It's definitely from the myth column of cowboy lore, but what an expression of that myth!
12 GOODNIGHT LOVING TRAIL Utah Phillips ON STRIKE MUSIC Utah Phillips really understood the cookie's role on the trail drive. The eldest member of the drive, the cook was expected to be mother, doctor, guide, & many other things to the cow "boys" so far away from home. "God-damn stew" is what many cowboys really called the watery grub-in-a-bowl that they ate on the trail - my apologies if it offends some, but sometimes you just gotta be true to the history.
13 SHENANDOAH Unknown One of my personal anthems. We even bought a house on Shenandoah Drive just because of this song.
14 EL PASO Marty Robbins MARIPOSA MUSIC INC. This is probably the most commercial song on the album, but it is so full of the cowboy way that I couldn't help myself.
15 HOME ON THE RANGE Dr. Brewster M. Higley 1873 This was written by a doctor in Smith County, Kansas, in the early 1870s. The last verse is especially poignant & true.
16 NIGHT RIDER'S LAMENT Michael Burton MICHAEL BURTON MUSIC, GROPER MUSIC INC. Always the last song at my campfire. Rod Taylor is an old friend who achieved legend status at Philmont Scout Ranch at a young age. We always gave this to Rod at the last chorus, & so I do here as well. A fitting ending to a fitting group of fine songs.
Tom Munch: vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica, melodica Don Richmond: harmony vocals, mandolin, fiddle, upright & electric bass, nylon-string guitar, Weissenborn, accordion, banjo, dobro
Recorded at Howlin' Dog Records, Alamosa, Colorado Produced by Tom Munch Engineered & Mastered by Don Richmond Photography, Design, & Layout by Tom & Jennifer Munch |