Greetings Wide Awake Citizens!
 
Wide Awake Citizens! Fifty years ago in, 1976, I was living up in the Colorado mountains. It was the Bi-Centennial of the US. I was thinking I could write an historical musical about the US. Too impossible. It hit me I should write one for my hometown Fairmont, Minnesota. I titled it Selections from Lost and Found Fairmont Histories: A Martin County Hornpipe. It was a new concept. Here’s a quote-from my journal, “Combine your interests in history and writing songs and create an historical musical with projected photographs with a large band of musicians and singers.”

It happened. I began researching in Fairmont at the Martin County Historical Society, reading and copying photographs to slides. To make this long story short, it was a great success, performed at the Fairmont High School Performance Center on the Memorial Day weekend. 1976. There was magic. It was by happenstance I met fiddler Bruce Bowers, fiddler Joe Weed and cellist Jeff Gilkinson. Bruce ten years later was with me when I founded Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua in 1986. The Hornpipe cast included fifteen singers and musicians, many of them Fairmont natives. Betty Ferris was the projectionist.

Seven years later in 1983 Souvenir Views, the centennial musical history of Washburn was produced. It was another Hornpipe type show. Then Riding the Wind for Bayfield which led to my founding of Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua. Many other historical musicals followed. The complete history of these shows can be found in my autobiography, Showtime available for purchase on this website.

This year celebrates the 250th year of our democracy. Our first performance this fall at the Harbor Table in Washburn on Friday September 25 is entitled Happy Birthday America and includes stories and songs of the US as well as Wisconsin and our home here on the Bayfield Peninsula. Hope to see you there.

Warren