Mark Twain's
America
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Travel across Mark Twain's America
in song.
Share his sorrows, his insights,
and his wonderful wit.
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Samuel Clemens lived in an America full of famous heroes and grand adventures. Mark Twain's America saw the age of steamboats on the great rivers of middle America; the turmoil of the Civil War; and the heyday of cowboys and lumberjacks. Mark Twain lived through the entire Victorian Era; and, to use a phrase he coined, the Gilded Age. Along the way Judy provides fascinating historical details to introduce the songs and to join them in a cohesive whole. Audience members are drawn into the experience and are encouraged to sing on the many choruses. They leave with a deeper understanding of Mark Twain's life and times.
An entertaining and informative mix of ballads, songs and stories from Mark Twain's America.
Program is typically one hour, but may be longer or shorter to suit your needs.
Multi-Media Option
For multi-media programs Judy dresses in 1860's style costume
and/or accompanies her songs with projected images.
Program selections include:
Frozen Logger: A tall tale song from the pen of
Jim Stevens, who wrote down the Paul Bunyan stories from the logging camps.
Cradle's Empty, Baby's Gone : A Victorian tear-jerker.
Donkey Song: A parody of Cradle's Empty...learned from a circus man
Glendy Burke : A Stephen Foster song about a Mississipi River boat.
Shingling the Rumseller's Roof: When Sam was 18 his mother made him promise never to drink a drop of liquor. A promise that he kept - for a time.
Shanty Boat'n: Dillon Buston wrote this song about two fellows floating down the Mississippi River - not on Huck’s raft, but on a shanty boat.
Zebra Dun : A wonderful cowboy ballad, that could have been one of the chapters of “Roughing It”
* Historical Societies * Arts Centers *
* Festivals * Folk Clubs*
* Museums * Concert Series *
* Libraries * House Concerts*
* How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.
* Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
* Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death.
* It is curious--curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.