The History of the Deseret String Band
by Leo Coulson, proprietor of Intermountain Guitar and BanjoI met the Deseret String Band in 1973, when they were putting the finishing touches on their first LP, Utah Trails. (This and all subsequent albums were recorded on our own label, Okehdokee Records.) Steve Jardine had departed on his LDS Mission, while Hal Cannon, Mark Jardine and Rich McClure, in a rented house in Moab, Utah, sought to gain inspiration for the project in the dry beauty of the desert.
I wanted to relocate from Rhode Island, and Steve's absence provided an opportunity to join the band. Within a few months old friend and great fiddler Skip Gorman moved to Salt Lake. Every Sunday night at Demet's Tavern we played an eclectic mix of Utah pioneer songs, Celtic tunes and old-time Southern dance music. Tours to California, dragging sheep-camps to the Weiser [Idaho] Fiddle Contest, and LP #2, Land of Milk and Honey, soon followed. One night, after a square dance in the Wasatch Mountains, we decided it would be cool to go to the Fleadh [All-Ireland Music Festival]; six months later, after an appearance at the National Folk Festival in Washington, D.C., we were touring Great Britain and Ireland...and the Fleadh.
Membership changed again. Ron Kane replaced Mark on the fiddle around 1975. Skip was to leave shortly for school back East, but not before a tour of Switzerland allowed us to take Utah abroad once more. Centered in Lausanne, we traveled out every day to schools and folk clubs, performed at the Epalange Folk Festival, and spent a chilling night in the Maoist Feminist Headquarters on the Rue de Industrie.
The late '70s found the DSB travelling the remote parts of Utah. Tom Carter joined the group and our musical focus began to shift toward a more Western flavor. A concert at the Hotel Utah around 1978, entitled "Round-Up," marked this change. Soon after Rich McClure was diagnosed with MS and was forced to leave the band. It was a big blow. Somehow, by shuffling musical roles, we managed to produce our next album, untitled but referred to as the "Western tape," which pointed the direction the DSB would follow for the next 20 years. This "Round-Up" collection of music chronicles the development of our own Western String Band style.
In the Winter of 1982 a trio of Hal, Leo and Mark toured Alaska for six weeks and survived bush planes, Hal's walrus liver paté, and a King Crab Thanksgiving in Dutch Harbor. Shortly thereafter, Hal, Leo, Ron and Tom assumed the pseudonym "Bunkhouse Orchestra," becoming a Cowboy/Western String Band in earnest. Two albums were produced during this period: Red Steer and Old-Time Cowboy Songs. Throughout the late 1980s and early '90s we performed at Cowboy Poetry Gatherings; played for America's Cup events in California and New England; and represented the Salt Lake Olympic Committee at bid events in Salt Lake City and Birmingham, England.
With the 1990s came some big changes. The addition of guitarist/fiddler and singer Meghan Merker brought both diversity and charm to the Old Boys' Club. In 1996 Roll On, Little Dogies was released. We took the music of Utah and the West to a tent in Central Park, where we played for the Nature Conservancy's "Last Great Party to Save the Last Great Places," sharing tent space with a falcon and a desert tortoise. A Celebrity Cutting Horse Rodeo in Telluride, Colorado, where we performed the National Anthem, was followed a few months later by a celebrity wedding-on-skis atop a Telluride mountain.
The 1996 Utah State Centennial and the 1997 Sesquicentennial of the settling of Utah forced the band to examine its roots and reinvent a pioneer repertoire, leading to the Utah: Songs of Statehood CD and a companion video produced by public television station KUED. When the Sesquicentennial wagon train reached the Utah border after many months on the trail, the DSB performed with the Utah Symphony to celebrate the event. I'll never forget chatting with one of the wagoneers while around the vast field full of wagons and handcarts his yoked team of oxen grazed like Siamese twins.
In 1998 the band traveled to the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, to help the Salt Lake Olympic Committee showcase the passing of the Olympic Torch to Salt Lake City. Once again the "magic realism" of an 1880s cow camp band became the meeting-ground for diverse cultures; and our own interest and commitment has been renewed. Stay tuned....
- Leo Coulson
Hal Cannon Hal's Music The Deseret String Band Discography
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