Some Music For My Students and Friends
From the office of the Geography Instructor at
Eastern Oregon University, La Grande, Oregon
Dr. M. Mustoe
Check and see if we have snow

Thanks Timothy!
More Music CKMT
MOON RIVER
Water Boxes I have Known NEW

"A whaling song and a good guitar" are not the ONLY THINGS I understand but, they are amongst the three or four things I do understand.......and here and there......while considering all the above... I have had the opportunity to play a few good guitars, as well as write a few good songs and a quite a few that smelled like (bad) fish. But fish is good on Fridays, so its all music to me.

I'd like to share two songs with you. These songs are Christmas folk songs that I have written and performed a few years ago on a compilation disc on Pristine Records from Waco, Texas. Originally, both songs were recorded at Airplay Recording Studios in Bryan, Texas in 1992. They were produced by Kevin Bomar. Kevin's studio is now located in Friendswood, Texas south of Houston. Now called South Coast Recorders, his studio has the largest SSL console in the state of Texas. Kevin helped tremendously in stretching my otherwise northern approach to folk music.

I have to also say that publishing goes partly to Kevin's publishing company KMB and to Bob Mercer's Right Hemisphere Productions, Hollywood, CA. Bob a former A and R man with Fantasy records now successfully represents groups all over Europe. He has been a real friend with lots of encouragement along the way.

In 1997 Christmas Eve on Highway 83 made it to the number 4 position on the national air play charts for holiday songs on independent labels. This was the first song I ever had played on the radio and it was an amazing experience.

Although the song is a fictitious tale of a truck driver....Highway 83 does exist. US highway 83 begins at the border of Mexico at Brownsville, Texas and ends north of Minot, North Dakota at the Canadian border. The highway continues into Manitoba, Canada as Provincial Route 83 and ends at Swan River, Manitoba. Today, this highway is a vital link in the evolving NAFTA program.

This song is a story about a close encounter of the reindeer kind. However, one person in the Dallas area who heard the song on KSKA, wrote to say that one snowy winter, a similar circumstance happened to her and she was rescued by someone in similar fashion to the truck driver in the song.

As a result of the release of Highway 83, I have had the honor to come in contact with some amazing radio personalities and talent. These folks on radio have really helped this song along. When the song was originally released (initially in 1993) I was a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M. Larry Scott (Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Fame) was working at KWKH in Shereveport, LA., they received the cassette (yes it was in a cassette format!) and started playing it. I couldn't believe it! I was singing on the station that started the Louisiana Hayride! I talked with Larry and was interviewed on KWKH, and I was honored to hear that he thought 83 was a great truck driving Christmas song! Larry is all over the airways these days and working with historic Texas Swing music.

A few years latter, Highway 83 was released in CD format on Pristine Records, an independent out of Waco, Texas and received airplay all over the world. Then, in the winter of 2000, while I was working as a professor of geography for UTPB in Odessa, TX I ran across another incredible radio talent.

I wrote this song in 1983 after some research I had completed on the Dust Bowl. The story in the Wooden Frog just came to me one afternoon....and as far as I know it is fictitious.

Place like western Kansas or Eastern Colorado were hard hit by droughts in the 1930s and 40s but areas even as far north as the Prairies of Canada were subject to these droughts. Sometimes there was snow....sometimes not. This song is about celebrating a snow-less Christmas. The song is about a farm family...from around the period of the 1930, perhaps later, .living in the dust bowl region. It is performed with just my twelve string guitar, a bass, and my 5 string banjo...being played Appalachian style.

This song, is one of my favorite songs. I liked the way it came along; it is true northern folk music which is my favorite style, and it says something to me, as if I were there. I have performed it at many grange halls and for folk festivals during Christmas Celebrations.

The Wooden Frog For Christmas won an award in the folk category at the Nashville Song Festival in 1987. It was released with the initial releases of Highway 83, and on the Pristine label in CD format. It has played around the world and I am glad that many folks seem to find some meaning in this song for themselves. To me, that is what writing songs is really all about.

Thank you for listening.....Have a roaring good holiday.....and