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Songs from the Tallgrass Prairie
by Dan Gunderson, Minnesota Public Radio
August 15, 2003

Songs of the Tallgrass is a collection of songs from the early prairie settler era. (MPR Photo/Dan Gunderson)

A bit of Americana is on stage at a Center for the Arts in Fergus Falls. Songs From the Tallgrass Prairie is a musical created by Los Angeles songwriter Randy Hale.

Fergus Falls, Minn. — Randy Hale made a career of composing music for film and video games.

Then, a few years ago he got to thinking about songs his grandmother sang when he was a child in Kansas. He took his family on a two month odessey through the midwest looking for music of the prairie sodbuster era. In dusty archives he found hundreds of forgotten songs.

Hale says he was captured by the lyrics, so he put the old songs to music. He added some pioneer journal entries and put on a show in Los Angeles. He was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic audience response.

"The message in the songs, the words people sang to each other a hundred years ago, before recorded music was amazing, says Hale. "I'm not just talking about 'Amazing Grace', I'm talking about 'Be Kind to the Loved Ones at Home', or 'It Never Pays to Fret and Growl.'"

Randy Hale says he was intrigued by the positive message in many of the songs despite the hardships faced by prairie pioneers.

"Ballads today are very much, 'Oh I feel so sorry for myself', 'I lost my love, my heart's breaking', 'I feel terrible'," says Hale. "Ballads a hundred years ago, they didn't feel sorry for themselves. There was never self pity, self pity wasn't in the culture."

'Songs from the Tall Grass' opened at the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C in the spring of 2001. A Fergus Falls resident who saw the show thought it would be a perfect fit on the Minnesota prairie. Randy Hale jumped at the chance to stage songs from the tallgrass in the midwest.

"To bring it on the prairie is where the show should live," says Hale. I've always said if I can get it to Branson Missouri, they'll build a theatre for the show. Because it just speaks so loudly, I mean it speaks to the cynical people of LA. It'll speak to the people here."

The message in the songs, the words people sang to each other a hundred years ago, before recorded music was amazing." - Songwriter Randy Hale

The songs Randy Hale discovered were written before there was radio or recorded music. Hale says most homes had a piano, an organ or a fiddle. People created their own entertainment.

Many of the songs were stories of the time. Some were romantic, others realistic, like a ballad about the dangers of a mortgage. Randy Hale says he's never quite felt the same attachment to music as he does to the Songs from the Tallgrass. It's become something of a personal mission to expose people to the music.

"I never saw myself as an evangelical before, but I kinda feel that way now," says Hale. "The message in this show is so strong, so powerful and so forgotten to us. You know you can become so hynotized turning on the television and forget who you are, what you are and where you come from. This show is life. It's how people dealt with the reality of the trouble of the day."

The musical 'Songs from the Tallgrass' is on stage through the end of this month at a Center for the Arts in Fergus Falls. Randy Hale has also produced a two cd set of songs.

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