An American Forrest is Western music. Country and folk. Ragged-voiced tales and wild, hybrid style, finger-picked and strummed guitar. Poetic incantations that conjure images: a lone rider silhouetted against a sunset, the days fading light, the unspoken bond between horses and people. Songs as detailed as tooled leather about old love, and new frontiers. An American Forrest is the words and music of Forrest Van Tuyl from the small town of Enterprise in eastern Oregon. Lyrics fly upwards from his songs like sparks from a fire. Verses come delivered with the humor of cowboy poets. His riffs have the wood-and-wire wrangling prowess of the folk singers of the second revival. The sensation of his songs hang around like smoke long after the night is gone.
He’s been a songwriter for over a decade but fell off the map into the wilds of eastern Oregon more recently than that. Fatefully, he fell in love with a woman who knew horses, and Cormac McCarthy novels. His interest piqued, he landed a job with a pack-outfit and got hooked on the lifestyle. Now he’s learning from older cowboys how to train horses, or leading pack mules laden with gear into the interior, and turning these experiences into songs.
For Van Tuyl, that sound ranges from solo acoustic confessionals and covers to full band expositions. Stories of a man who left behind the comfort and security of modern life, for a job atop a horse. A man who returned from the wilderness a hardened, smoothed, tempered version of his former self. One who set about writing songs, recording the experience of finding himself on magnetic tape. During a particularly bleak winter off-season, Van Tuyl found himself alone in the basement of the OK Theater in Enterprise, taking stock of his life and songs by recording demos to various older tape machines. Soon Van Tuyl had laid down demos for a full band to practice with.
Recorded at Mike Coykendall’s Blue Room studios, O Bronder, Donder Yonder? features Coykendall (M Ward, Blitzen Trapper, Sallie Ford) on bass, and Barry Walker Jr (Roselit Bone) on pedal steel. The album is due May 10th. O Bronder Donder Yonder? is a natural wonder; a faithful depiction of a man finding his connection with the natural world. At best it honors the generations of folk singers and cowboy poets gone before him. What’s more, Van Tuyl is securing the legacy of future music with his lifestyle.
Today Glide is excited to premiere “Rawhide”, a song about being a greenhorn at every new phase in life and love. Simple and twangy, it’s a rambling country tune that finds Forrest singing with a touch of grit in his voice that gives just the right amount of weathered tone and lends itself naturally to the Barry Walker Jr’s shimmering pedal steel. The song brings to mind the folksy country sounds of artists like Robert Earl Keen, Blaze Foley, and Hayes Carll. He also proves adept at blending a wanderer’s stoicism and the playful nature of a good-hearted cowboy.
Forrest describes the song in his own words:
“‘Rawhide’ is soaked for a few days to allow the hair to loosen and ‘slip,’ then stretched and hung in a frame to dry and have the hair scraped off before getting cut into strings and braided into something useful like a bosal (halter) or a reata (catchrope). Similarly, I was born in the dark, damp, flood country and clearcut hills of western Washington and didn’t realize my full potential until I crossed the Cascades and found wide open cattle and horse country in eastern Oregon. Other than that it’s a full-on love song with everything I’ve learned in my 29 years crammed into 3 verses. The ending is a nod to John Prine’s ‘Illegal Smile’.”
LISTEN:
For more music and info visit americanforrest.bandcamp.com.
Photo Cred: Nicole Freshley
