The Kansas Song Project
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The Kansas Song Project
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By Cally
Krallman www.callykrallman.com
In the fall of 2002, during a major change in my
life, I started writing song lyrics. One of the subjects I was drawn to was
Kansas history and particularly from 1850 to 1890’s. The biggest problem with
my songwriting endeavor was I did not play an instrument. I had recently seen
Pastense,
a local bluegrass band, perform at a coffee shop in Topeka. The fiddle player,
Diane Gillenwater was exceptional. I knew her father, a fellow artist. So I
called Diane, and arranged to have coffee with her, to meet her and share my
recent writings. We immediately clicked, and she looked at the “song” and
said that with a few changes, she thought she could set this to music. I started
taking fiddle lessons from her. But
after a brief time it was apparent that my instrument of choice was the pencil! So I decided to focus on writing. I began to
accumulate a lot of lyrics about Kansas and we decided to take it a step further
and this was the birth of "Prairie Glimpses - The Kansas Song Project". We felt this could be a great
way to promote
Kansas
history
and inspire others to check out different people and places
in our state. We began to talk to music friends of ours and
asked them if they would be interested in either singing or playing on the CD. I
had written lyrics for about 22 songs but we eventually narrowed it down. Our first recordings were at my cousin and her
husband‘s (Mitch and Ronette Rosenow of Sonic Sculptures) recording studio in
Lee’s Summit, MO. They are Kansans also and were excited to work on the
project. We eventually moved the recording with Randy Wills at Exceptions Studio
in Topeka. The 4 year project was released in spring 2007.
By Diane Gillenwater
When Cally called me in the fall of 2002 I had just been laid off my job at a local television station. I decided to try teaching private music lessons at my house, teaching alternative styles of violin, like bluegrass and Celtic music. I knew that if I was ever going to make my living doing what I loved, this was the time. The minute I declared myself a teacher the students started coming. Cally was one of the first ones.
My first memories of music
is my dad playing records of classical music and Broadway shows. My mother,
Shirley Meek, had been a music major at Washburn and my father, Fred Meek, had
been an art major at Washburn. His father, my grandpa, had been a musician,
having his own vaudeville show and traveling the northwest circuit. My uncle
George had a great record collection of Sousa Marches and my favorite was Alvin
and the Chipmunks. Because of my roots it's no surprise that I've been a musican
all my life. I learned piano first, because my parents both played. Then when I
was in the fourth grade you could pick an instrument to play in the school
strings/band. We had a violin that my mom had used in college, so that was how I
ended up playing the fiddle. Interestingly enough later on I discovered that my
mother's grandfather had also been a fiddler.
Musically, my first love was
the band, The Monkees. I was 10 years old and I knew I was destined to be a rock
and roll drummer. Then I heard Simon & Garfunkel, Peter Paul & Mary,
James Taylor, John Denver, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I bought my first
guitar when I was twelve years old and taught myself to play. I still remember
the first tune I learned, “Gentle on My Mind”. I played until I had to put
band-aids on my finger tips so I could keep playing. I started taking private
violin lessons when I was 13 and I was asked to join the Topeka Symphony when I
was fourteen. I went to Washburn University on a Topeka Symphony Scholarship and
graduated with a degree in Violin Performance in 1978.
I never did get to play the kind of music I
wanted on the violin with the exception of playing for musicals. I played in/for
many different musicals for various groups around the Topeka area. The good
thing about musicals is that I got to play a lot of different musical styles.
Finally, after turning twenty-six, I was able to meet up with some people that
played Bluegrass Music. As I mentioned, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s music was
the style that spoke right to my heart. It was kind of a soft rock/bluegrass
style. That was how my journey into Bluegrass Music began. I had to figure it
out for myself because there were no local instructors in roots style music in
the area. I played with a couple of different
bands before joining up with the bluegrass band, Pastense in the summer of 1995.
We have since recorded three CDs. I have become a fairly good bluegrass fiddler
and I won the Kansas Fiddling and Picking Championship in 2002.
All this leads up to the
style of music I composed for the Kansas Song Project. I have been influenced by
so many great artists over the years. I love the acoustic sound. I have used
guitar, fiddle, mandolin, piano, dobro, and banjo in different configurations. I
wanted this CD to have an totally acoustic sound. I wanted a common thread
running throughout all the songs. A sound like playing in your living room, or
being at a family gathering where several people played instruments and sang
songs together. I composed most of the songs with the help of the performing
artists assisting in the arrangements. I felt that I did not want to compose all
the songs on the CD because I didn’t want everything to sound alike. I also
wanted to allow the other performing artists to have ownership in the
arrangements of the songs. I stayed open to what other people might be hearing
in the music and what strengths they brought to the songs. It was important to
me from the start that we were all bringing something special to the project and
that we would all leave our own mark on the songs. That is what is so special
about this first CD.
We are all Kansas musical artists and we all have grown up here and been
influenced by things from here. We have all stayed or returned here and bring
all of our experiences to our music. We want to leave a lasting piece of history
to those to come after us about how it was for us in our time, especially
musically. We have included many songs about Kansas history. We weren’t able
to live through those experiences so we had to learn about them from the people
who did live through them and wrote about them. Now we have taken what we have
learned, put it in words and music, that added the emotion that we experience
when hearing and reporting these stories.
The songs aren’t written
to sound like the time period they happened in. They are in real time. Our time.
On one song, called Women of the Sojourn, Cally describes the pioneer women
giving up everything they had or wanted to follow their husbands dreams of going
west. As I took her lyrics and put them to music, I tried to capture how it
would feel to do this. It must have been very hard to leave everything you had
owned, known, and loved behind to do this. It would take nerves of steel and
endurance beyond what I would risk to knowing what I know she would have had to
endure. I had originally composed it for guitar, mandolin, bass and fiddle, but
then Randy worked in some piano to help the Faris brothers with the feel of the
song. It sounded so right for this song that we left the piano track. The piano
seems to add a lot the emotion. Terri Laddusaw adds the vocals to this song and
you can hear in her voice, one woman, alone but strong. Those women were so
brave, so devoted, so strong and because of them I had a future. I hope that in
a very small way I am creating a future for those who come after me. I hope that
we are preserving in this CD a testimony to all those who settled here, who live
here now, and those to come in the future. Kansas is a beautiful, unspoiled,
state rich in history and rich in opportunity. I hope this CD makes you proud to
be a Kansan. I also hope that you will listen to it more than once and let the
music and the words soak into your soul. To some extent it is honoring those who
experienced the unimaginable to us these days. They came through the experience
and are still teaching us today. Better yet, put the CD on in your car or truck
and take a ride through the Kansas countryside as you listen to the songs.
Enjoy.
Contact Information
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Web Site Design - Chris Krull
Send mail to ckrull61@att.net with
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Diane’s Story.