How They Came To Rootabaga Country

A happy Sunday to you all. Yours truly is a tad under the weather, as I mentioned in a recent comment. Nothing too serious, I’m quite sure, but I’m not operating on all cylinders, & will need to rest up this week with the Concil Mountain Music Festival coming up next weekend.

Since it’s Sunday, I have some music for your enjoyment. This is another piece from our Rootabaga Country soundtrack—the overture, in fact, written by Eberle. I’ve always really liked this one. Eberle is on the piano & I come in on the plectrum banjo, then later on the train whistle.

For those who haven’t checked out Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories yet, here’s an intro I wrote as a blurb to our self-produced cd:

Carl Sandburg is probably best known as a poet & a biographer of Abraham Lincoln, but he also authored a delightful collection of children’s tales called The Rootabaga Stories. Originally stories Sandburg told his two daughters, the tales describe an enchanted land populated by characters such as the Potato-Faced Blind Man, Deep Red Roses, Hatrack the Horse & Bozo the Button-Buster—but the ultimate backdrop of the stories also is recognizable as early 20th century America, just as the backdrop for the classic Grimm’s fairy tales is medieval Europe. In fact, Sandburg saw The Rootabaga Stories as “American fairy tales” that would be more suitable for American children than the more traditional stories of princes & princesses. The stories were first published in 1920.

Hope you enjoy the music.