Balquhither & Yon by Forrest VanTuyl

Brownsville Girl, what is there to say? Written by Bob Dylan and Sam Shepard in the mid-80s, this is a long song, years long, meaningless, and full of meaning - everything you'll ever need from a song, driving across the desert, driving across Texas, lost in Mexico, what else do you need? This is like On The Road meets Cities of The Plain in verse. It took me three years to learn the words and ten years to learn to sing them (recite them?). Exercise, meditation, acting. Bart Budwig plays the trumpet.


Wild Mountain Thyme “is an old air” as Judy would say. I learned this from Judy, in her apartment in Bilbao, Paiz Vasco, the last winter that we could still travel. It’s a song of youthful yearning and moving on and been sung a million times; I’ve sung it horseback in the late spring when heather’s in the mountains and the grass, lupine, vetch, and clover are stirrup-high in the valley. My friend Ben Ziehm-Stephen, son of poet Ian Stephen of the Outer Hebrides, is featured reading the original verse upon which the song is based - Braes Of Balquhither By Robert Tannahill. Ben reads it in English/new Scots - "which people can actually understand."

Forrest VanTuyl is a Western songwriter, poet, and working cowboy based in the Inland Northwest. His work has been featured in the New York Times, at The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and he has written music for the US Forest Service.

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