My parents bought me my first guitar when I was thirteen or fourteen years old, and I’ve been playing ever since. Other than taking a few lessons very early on to learn basic chords and scales, I’m self-taught. In high school I began writing my own songs in earnest and through that process forged a friendship that led in college to the formation of my first band, Sable Days.
After college, music took on new meaning as I began to integrate it into my teaching and research. Rather than just have students listen to music, I often perform it in class. This has included Freedom Songs and protest music from the 1960s and especially songs that provide windows into American Indian history.
Since 2010, I have also regularly performed folk songs from the 1930s to 1960s with my colleague Allan Winkler (emeritus professor of history at Miami University), who has written a biography on Pete Seeger. We’ve done hybrid performance/presentations in a wide variety of settings, from local public libraries and universities to Freedom Summer reunions and international academic conferences.
During my tenure as Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in American Studies at the University of Helsinki, I’ve elaborated even more on the integration of music into my teaching and research. I’ve given performance/presentations on music as a window into the 1960s and Native America at the University of Turku, the Finland American Studies Association in Helsinki, in my own and as a guest in others’ classrooms, and at the Association of Teachers of English in Finland annual American Studies Seminar.
This link will take you to a video recording of “The Sound and The Fury: Remembering the Poor People’s Campaign,” a performance/presentation I gave at the University of Turku Department of Cultural History’s annual seminar on 1968: A Year of Hope and Rage on April 20, 2018. I suggested ways we might re-remember the Poor People’s Campaign and highlighted those themes primarily through songs drawn from Bob Dylan’s 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin’. Here are a few time stamps that might be helpful: Introduction (15:30), “Ballad of Hollis Brown” (21:52), “Only A Pawn In Their Game” (32:00), “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” (39:30), “Masters of War” (48:28), “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” (56:03), and “When The Ship Comes In” (1:01:00).
Here’s a link to my SoundCloud page, which features a variety of recordings that I’ve made over the past few years. It includes solo works, songs recorded with colleagues, friends, and family, and even a few tunes born of a reunion of Sable Days. As someone still learning the art of recording and mixing, they are works in progress, but a what a rewarding undertaking it is!