Road Trip Music: Ohio

A place of change and challenge, testing and opportunity, successful experiments and failed ones, exploring new ways of living and seeing how familiar ones would work beyond the edges of civilization: this was the Ohio River Valley in the early years of the American republic. As the Great American Road Trip winds through the state of Ohio, the soundtrack comprises a set of songs about the people who ventured to that frontier, and how they faced the challenges the found there. It is an album called Wilderness Plots..


Tim Grimm was in a bookstore one day, and came across a pocket sized book called Wilderness Plots, by Scott Russell Sanders. It was a series of short one and two page vignettes of moments in people’s lives from the early days of the Ohio Valley which Sanders had created from his notes from research for a novel set in the Ohio county where he was born. Drawn by the vivid stories, Grimm started hearing songs in them. He took the idea to a group of songwriters he knew, a group who met regularly to exchange ideas and share progress in their writing. Tom Roznowski, Michael White, Carrie Newcomer, and Krista Detor were the other songwriters in the group.

All of them live in the Ohio Valley, in southern Indiana, so both place and story resonated with each of them. Each is a professional musician, a songwriter who values both word and melody, but their styles and interests are varied. They decided to use stories in the book as workshop challenge, at first. Over time, that evolved into the idea of an album.

In the songs, Roznowski tells of the dreams of a man who looks at the wilderness and sees bustling cities rising; White sees people both afraid and intrigued as they marvel over recent inexplicable discoveries; Detor tells of a couple finding their way and testing their marriage at the edge of the wilderness, and, in another song, gives voice to a woman’s hopes for her children in a time of great change; Grimm looks at the life of an itinerant preacher who struggles with mending his own faith while he mends shoes to make a living; Newcomer, in two very different songs, finds a woman caught in the hard changes frontier life sometimes brings, and another who risks standing up to make a things different.

It’s a project filled with memorable people, situations both serious and funny, and connections of history and present day, in styles which move across the range of Americana music . The nineteen cuts on the album make a fine bit of listening for travels through Ohio, and chances are, you’ll remember the characters and the songs long after the album ends.

Though their schedules do not often permit them to perform together, the songwriters have done concerts based on the material on the album. Seeing one of these, producer Susanne Schwibs at WTIU at Indiana University had the idea to make a television program. It’s framed loosely as a songwriters in the round session, filled with interesting music, great ideas on songwriting process, and thoughts on the intersections of landscape and history in the Ohio Valley. It is available as a dvd.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

video of an ensemble piece from Wilderness Plots



This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering 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’ll find there. Stop by and see A Traveler’s Library what has in mind to inspire travels through Ohio.
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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holiday gift list: American harvest

From the California coastline to the Arizona deserts to the Rockies in Montana, from the Kansas plains to the Texas hill country to the lakes of Minnesota, from the apple orchards of Michigan to the peach trees of South Carolina, from the Gulf Coast to the Maine Coast. the United States is a beautiful and varied country, with people, landscapes, and music to match. Here are several suggestions about music which reveals parts of that, for your holiday gift list, and for gifts to yourself as well.


Albert & Gage Dakota Lullaby

Christine Albert and Chris Gage call Austin, Texas, home these days, and they are fine singers and songwriters, together and separately, so they know a good song when the find one. Recently the pair came across an an old tape made by Tom Peterson, a writer Gage used to know in his native South Dakota, and decided to do a whole album of his work “As we listened to the tape in the truck one night, I felt like we had just struck gold in the Black Hills,” Albert says. Find out what she’s talking about in the haunting past and present of the west in the title track, the funny dash of Louisiana spice If I Die Tomorrow, the affirmation of hope after loss In Tender Loving Care, and the happy swing of Does She Have a Future with Me?

Gretchen Peters One To The Heart, One To The Head

Another take on the American west comes from Gretchen Peters, also a top notch songwriter who decided to lend her gifts to others’songs . Notable tracks include Ian Tyson’s Blue Mountains of Mexico and Stephanie Davis’s Wolves, and an original instrumental by Barry Walsh, North Platte. Tom Russell sits in too.


Tim Grimm, Michael White, Krista Detor, Tom Roznowski, Carrie Newcomer
Wilderness Plots
These five artists look at a different sort of frontier, building their songs around a time where the Ohio Valley, where they all live, was just beyond the edge of civilization. There are songs of hardships, imagination, joy, sorrow, distances, and choices, all framed in the stories that time and place, set in time yet timeless. .

Claire Lynch Whatcha Gonna Do

Claire Lynch’s music is rooted in bluegrass, a bluegrass that lends itself to crossing borders into swing, country, and folk without ever losing its bedrock authenticity. Lynch, who has won a number of awards and been nominated for a Grammy, has a warm, engaging soprano, and she chooses songs of substance that often include a dash of humor, and are just as likely to include a dash of faith. A train song, a song about false lovers, a meditation on love’s hardships and the strength it takes to learn from them, and really fine road song are just a few of the gems she shares here,. accompanied most of the time by her road band, and with a guest shot from Jesse Winchester.

Steve Wariner c.g.p. My Tribute to Chet Atkins

If you’re looking for excellent guitar work on tunes you may know and others you won’t have heard before, then this is the recording for you. You get some history along the way, too: Atkins was a legendary Nashville guitarist and producer who worked with artists ranging from The Carter Family to Mark O’Connor, to a young guy from Indian, Steve Wariner, who became a close friend ( and certified guitar player -- thats’ what the c.g.p stands for). Wariner decide to frame this tribute to his friend, who died several years ago, as a sort of chronology of Atkins’s life, with some original pieces to mark certain times and places mixed in with music Atkins played, composed, and produced. The result is a flowing set of music that’ll keep you engaged and interested through many listenings, . If you’ve a guitar player on you holiday list, be sure to consider this one..



you may also want to see

Music Road: holiday gift list: music of Canada

Music Road: holiday gift list: Irish music

Music Road: Robin & Linda Williams: The First Christmas Gift

if you are looking for non musical gifts
here's a roundup with ideas for pet lovers, readers, travelers. lovers of Hawaii. Martha Stewart fans...and the list goes on

Fourth of july and music, 2009

It’s the fourth of July. Whether that’s your holiday or not -- about half of those who join us along the music road come from the United States, and about half from other parts of the world -- I hope you’ll join in a mood of celebration and reflection, and while you are doing that, take a look at these thoughts:

from the fourth of July last year
Music Road: now playing: Angels Unaware

music and politics
Music Road: listening through the changes

music and connection
Music Road: creative practice: being there


take guess...
Music Road: creative practice: laughter

celebrate! Wilderness Plots has been nominated for an Emmy. congratulations and good wishes to all involved
Music Road: Wilderness Plots: the dvd

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Wilderness Plots: the dvd

Wilderness Plots DVD

History, sense of place, music, and story all intersect in Wilderness Plots. First, the stories were sparked by fragments of idea and description author and professor Scott Russell Sanders came on while on his way to writing other things. He turned them into short stories, and they became a small book called Wilderness Plots. Seventeen years later, songwriter Tim Grimm came across a copy of Wilderness Plots on a bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana, read several of the stories, and standing there in the bookstore, he knew they were songs. Not just songs for him to write, though -- he thought it’d be a fine thing to bring to the song writing group he’d formed along with four friends several years before.

Grimm was right. For one thing, his song writing friends were Tom Roznowski, Michael White, Krista Detor, and Carrie Newcomer, as varied and variously gifted group as you could wish. For another, the stories were set in the Ohio Valley at the time when that was the frontier, and that was where these writers lived and worked. They also been tossing writing ideas and prompts back and forth with each other on a regular basis over the months and years. This exercise, however, went beyond that, and became an album of music, a stage how, individual songs the musicians recorded on their own albums, and a dvd.

Each part of that creative product is very different from the other. This dvd finds the five songwriters in the round, by themselves on stage at a historic theater in southern Indiana. As they pass songs around, the music is interspersed with interview and commentary that adds insight into the song writing process and to the work of the musicians. They talk about the midwest, history, the creative process, about living where they do, and about the songs themselves. As they share the music, they really share it, taking parts and singing harmonies and adding instruments and appreciation to each others’ songs.

There’s a lot of great music here, and it’s very well supported by the production, shooting, editing, and sound of the show, all of which are done in completely in service to the music. It’s a quiet gem, really, on all levels. If you’re at all interested in song writing, history, Indiana, or the sort on music found here along the Music Road, it’s worth seeking out.

Bonus features include an interview with Sanders, artist bios, complete performances of the songs (so you can see the parts the interviews covered), and additional material



you may also want to see


Music Road: now playing: Carrie Newcomer: One Woman and a Shovel

now playing:: Wilderness Plots: the CD

A quck way to support: you could

If you enjoy what you are reading here, check out my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it.

now playing: Carrie Newcomer: One Woman and a Shovel

One woman and a shovel. Doesn't seem like much, does it? Have you ever wondered if one person can really make a difference? This is a song Carrie Newcomer wrote, inspired by a story in Scott Russell Sanders' book Wilderness Plots, about a woman in the days when the Ohio Valley was the frontier, who took action, and inspired others.

The video is an excerpt from a dvd about the writing of songs based on Wilderness Plots, with comments from Newcomer, Sanders, and four other songwriters: Tom Roznowski, Tim Grimm, Michael White, and Krista Detor.

Newcomer has also put the song on her album The Geography of Light.
about which more to come here on Music Road. There will also be more on the Wilderness Plots dvd.
If you like Newcomer's work, you may also want to
see this post about laughter,
and this one called late summer: two for the road

Update: You may also wish to see
Music and Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer
India to Indiana in song and image
Ireland's Music: The Small Hours: Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Ireland's Music: Cara Dillon: A Thousand Hearts

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

creative practice: generosity

Diversities of gifts but the same spirit, Saint Paul said, and I think that’s true.
And we are called to give, out of the gifts we have been given.

All the music you read about here would work with that idea, I suppose. here are three for you to consider, two you’ve heard about before, and one you’ve not.

from a Scottish harp player and composer
Corrina Hewat

from an Indiana folk singer and songwriter
The Geography of Light

from five songwriters, about the spirit of the people who settled the Ohio Valley
Wilderness Plots

wilderness plots: the album

One man looks at a forested wilderness and sees the future of people who might live there; one woman sees those forests as the places which have taken her man and her children from her and yet she must keep on walking through them, looking for a home; then there’s the evolution controversy, the effect of whiskey, the persistence of family, the preacher, the hunter, the squaw... “We all must find a road that takes us to our destiny -- all know is that I want you there with me. We will go a long long way, what will come no one can say,” Krista Detor’s writes of a family’s journey.

It is history told in stories and visions, from bones of ancients unearthed to visions of futures yet unknown to connections not yet made.

The setting and subject of all this is southern Indiana and northern Ohio at the time when those places were still unknown frontier. The intrepid people who. each for their own reasons, set out to make a life and a living there were what inspired the short stories in Scott Russell Sanders' book Wilderness Plots In his stories, musician Tim Grimm heard songs yet unsung. He brought the book to his song writing friends Tom Roznowski, Krista Detor, Michael White, and Carrie Newcomer.

They each created their own stories, some directly inspired by Sanders’ work, others sparked by thinking about that frontier life and the people who lived it. Enough detail to set their visions and their hopes in time and place; enough of that vision to make real connections to today. Five great voices, dashes of humor, faith, and harmony, creating history that goes far beyond the reading of the page and yet is true to that vision, and to the lives lived out before the stories were written.

Wilderness Plots

A way to support Music Road: you could

If you enjoy what you are reading here, I've begun publishing an occasional newsletter at Substack with more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it. Come visit...