BY KAREN BOSSICK
Travel through 240 years of the American West through music, film and historic photos when a dozen performers provide what they call a “time-traveling documentary concert” at Sun Valley.
“Romancing the West”—billed as “historic documentary meets live concert”—will take place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 26, at the Sun Valley Opera House.
Tickets are $22 per person, available online at www.sunvalley.com, at the Sun Valley Guest Information Center in the Sun Valley Village and at the door the day of the show.
The two-hour show will tell the story of Western expansionism, Native Americans and the Russian ships exploring the West Coast, the building of the Spanish missions in California, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the blazing of the Oregon and California trails, the emergence of Texas as a state, the Trail of Tears, the Gold Rush and the Chinese as they laid track for the railroad.
It will also whiz through the Roaring 20’s, Prohibition, the fight for women’s right to vote, the Great Depression, World War II, the post-war boom, the Cold War, the civil rights movement and Vietnam, arriving at the present age of political polarization.
It even doffs its cap to former President John Kennedy, who never had the chance to implement the New Frontier that he had hoped to create, and to former President Ronald Regan as a Western icon.
Above all, it will celebrate the triumph of the human spirit through such songs as “Wallowa Skies,” a tribute to Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe. And “California,” which tells of the Native Americans and Spanish who spent nearly 10 years building the monumental Great Stone Church at Mission San Juan Capistrano only to die in it six years later when the church collapsed on worshippers attending mass during an earthquake in 1812.
The show was co-produced by Christina Lynn Martin and cowboy poet and balladeer Butch Martin.
Joining them are such performers as Martin Gershwitz, keyboard player for the rock band Iron Butterfly; Woodstock’s Melanie Safka of “Brand New Key” fame; Christina Lynn Martin and Velvet Bleu of the retro duo Blue Delilahs; Sons of the Oregon Trail; Native American singer Thomas Morning Owl Jr. and Native American educator Jacque Nunez; the folk pop rock duo Gypsy Soul; Jesus Movement pioneer Chuck Girard of Love Song; singer/songwriter John Elliott; Nick Garrett Powell of The Fret Drifters; Grammy nominated singer /songwriter Pam Mark Hall and jazz pianist Patti Moran McCoy, who played with Duke Ellington.
The saga features original music of every era, including Celtic, ragtime, bluegrass, jazz, country, big band, pop, folk and rock, set against images of Native Americans, Chinese miners, pioneers, cowboys and rancheros, loggers, soldiers, prisoners of war and civil right leaders.
“Romancing the West,” which first took the stage five years ago, is the culmination of years of writing songs about the American West and nature.
“It’s a combination of my love of history and the regions in which I lived,” said Christina Lynn Martin.
Martin first began writing about the Rogue River and Applegate Valley of western Oregon. She added “Mission by the Sea” and other songs when she lived for several years in San Juan Capistrano.
“Romancing the West” had its genesis in the song “Oh Oregon,” which she wrote for Oregon’s 150th birthday, and a musical concert she co-produced for the 150th anniversary of the historic gold mining town of Jacksonville, Ore., with newly penned songs, such as “The Siskiyous Called Me Home.”
“During that exercise of telling a story over decades everyone said, ‘Why don’t you write a show that spans the whole West? I decided to do it in documentary form instead of a narrative because I had produced documentaries in the 1990s,” she said.
Martin went around the country visiting such historic sites as the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and the Nez Perce National Historic Park, which includes 38 sites in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, as she built a body of archival photos and films.
She also collected a treasure trove of inspirational stories, such as that of Freda Ehmann, a German farmer who launched California’s olive industry by perfecting a way to preserve olives for shipment.
“I was struck by the hospitality and love of Nez Perce Tribe after all they’d been through,” she said. “The people of that tribe are very much like their Chief Joseph—they have a hospitality that’s unmatched.”
Martin was also enamored with the Acjachemen Indians who built the earliest landmarks in what is now Orange County, including Mission San Juan Capistrano. They feasted on roasted acorns, wore sea otter capes and built tule boats out of cattails and vines to catch fish in coastal waters.
While they inhabited southern California for more than 10,000 years, they have no tribal land today because they are not a federally recognized tribe.
Telling the stories of those who have gone before has been a humbling experience for the performers.
“Remembrance is a powerful tool,” said Martin. “We feel the presence of these great leaders. We feel like we’re sharing the stage with all these great leaders—they’re as much stars of the show as we are.