Music Road Trip in North Dakota & South Dakota

Plains, grasslands, rugged hills, wide open spaces -- North Dakota and South Dakota are both all of that, each in their own way. As the Great American Road Trip winds through these states which are both Northern and Western, take a listen to three albums by artists connected to this land.

Celeste Krenz hails from North Dakota. Though her musical career has taken her to Colorado, Nashville, and points beyond, to a partnership in a record company and to a duo project called The Rhythm Angels, it was to North Dakota that her thoughts returned while working on the music for what would become her album My Mother and Me. Her mother, who has made a career in business, had written lyrics years ago and brought them along on a visit to her daughter. At Celeste’s kitchen table, they worked out a batch of songs that contains elements of country, blues, folk, and swing. A tinge of that western sky and wide open prairie thread through he songs, too.



Becky Schlegel grew up on a a farm, but she also spent much of her young years traveling across South Dakota playing in her family band. The love of music stayed with her, as she followed her musical path into bluegrass and a move to Minnesota. She’s won just about every bluegrass and country award the northern plains are have to offer, and is beginning to make her mark on the national scene, both as a songwriter and and singer. Her latest album is called Dandelion. If you enjoy the way Alison Krauss and Lee Ann Womack approach their music, you will want to give Schlegel a listen. Dandelion is a fine place to start, and it’s a good soundtrack for South Dakota, too, as Schlegel opens with Anna, a song inspired by her grandmother, and includes songs such as Colorado Line and I Never Loved You Cowboy.


Tom Peterson puts eloquent words and melody to the landscape and lives lived in the northern plains, as well. He doesn’t sing on Dakota Lullaby: Christine Albert and Chris Gage do that, and a fine job they make of it. Gage grew up in South Dakota and got to know Peterson’s songs, and carried a few of them with him as his music took him on many paths. He’s a fine songwriter himself, as is his wife and duo partner, Christine. When someone gave them an old tape of Peterson’s songs, “I felt as though I’d found gold in the Black Hills,” Christine says. They recorded a whole album Peterson’s songs. The songs range from the funny to the somber to the passionate, all grounded in the heart of the northern plains and yet universal in meaning.


you may also wish to see:
Music Road: now playing: Christine Albert: Paris, Texafrance
Music Road: Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone
more music from the road trip

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.

For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

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Dakota Lullaby: Albert & Gage

Dakota Lullaby


The joyous side of love and the blue side, the thoughtful side, and the funny one, the crazy bits of friendship and the thought provoking ones, the quiet of a northern prairie night and the voices of those who made history there --- you meet all these ideas in Dakota Lullaby, the latest album from Christine Albert and Chris Gage. There are a dozen songs on the disc, varying in melody from swing to folk to country to blues, in tone from raucous to funny to reflective. Though they are outstanding songwriters themselves, Albert and Gage didn’t write the music on this collection. In fact, the songs were written some thirty years ago.

Chris Gage grew up in South Dakota, where he met Tom Peterson and got to know several of his songs. Lives and times and circumstances diverged; Peterson stayed in the Dakotas, while Gage hit the road to play music, first with the Red Willow Band, and later with Roy Clark and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Albert was meanwhile honing her musical chops as a country and folk singer in New Mexico. Albert and Gage both set a course for the music center of Austin, Texas, where they met and formed a musical partnership and a marriage. Their live sets and their albums mix their own folk Americana country style songs along with well chosen covers of music by writers including Erik Moll, Caroline Herring, Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte Marie -- and occasionally Tom Peterson. Last year, circumstances worked out that another friend copied some old tapes of Peterson’s songs on to a CD.

“As we listened in the truck late one night I felt like we had just struck gold in the Black Hills,” Albert says. “Song after song, all written some thirty years ago, flew from the speakers right to my heart, and I was a goner for those words, those melodies, that spirit.” It’s a meeting of singers and songs that seems meant to be. Gage’s high energy take on If I Die Tomorrow brings to life a person we have all known, or been, with hints of a Cajun second line in the background of Peterson's prairie imagination. Albert and Gage join up on Cuttin’ a Rug to create vibrant images that could be real, could be a dream, all set to a swing melody that perfectly matches the words. Albert, who does haunting folk vocals better than just about anyone out there, brings those gifts to Those Who Love, a song which balances a lover’s lament and trust in hope framed in the quiet of a a prairie night sky. Then there’s the title song, Dakota Lullaby. It evokes landscapes and people, making the past present and the present past. It’s a cut and a song which deserve to become country classics.

The fine songs and outstanding singing are backed by a varied and interesting support, including harmonica from Mike Stevens, pedal steel from Lloyd Maines, clarinet from Michael Austin, and fiddle from Kenny Putnam.

Songs to think about long after the record is done -- and to laugh, dance, and sing along with while it plays --songs of Tom Peterson by Albert and Gage make an inspired combination, and a lasting one.

you may also want to see

Christine Albert: Paris, Texafrance

Albert & Gage: One More Christmas

Matt & Shannon & Ian & Sylvia

Wilderness Plots: the dvd

now playing: Albert & Gage: One More Christmas

The first song on this recording, the title cut, came about when Christine Albert learned that her parents were planning to sell their home in New York State and move somewhere to the south. That’s a not so uncommon situation, but the emotions of it are not often spoken of in song. Here, Albert and Chris Gage have made a graceful original Christmas tale out of reflecting on that transition. These two, who are married, each had a thriving independent career before they got together a bit over a decade ago. Together, they make one of the most interesting musical collaborations to come out Texas -- or anywhere, for that matter. The dozen tracks on One more Christmas find them reverent with Must Be Tonight and Un Flambeau Jeanette Isabella, playing with the kids on Little Toy Trains, swingin’ with Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus, thoughtful with River, and sharing a joyous celebration on Go Tell It on the Mountain. Together they make One More Christmas an evergreen presentation of familiar and less well known holiday music. It’s on the couple’s Moonhouse Records label.

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