Buffalo Skinner Blues
This song is a stab in the dark at what kind of music mighta been getting played back in the 20s and 30s around Alberta. I found this wonderful book of photos called Community Music in Alberta: Some Good Schoolhouse Stuff by George Lyon. It’s a book full of really illuminating pictures of musicians throughout the history of the province. It made me sad that there aren’t any recordings from the period, in comparison to the wealth of documentation found in places like Kentucky and Louisiana.
There was all sorts of interesting instruments lying around, steel guitars and mandolins and banjos, but also old world string instruments and jazz brass. I wanted to fill the silence I was hearing, and it occurred to me that two very, very old and distinct songs could be brought into one form. So I merged that “St. James Infirmary” with “The Plains of the Buffalo”, with a few additional ingredients, put together a set of verses with Old Calgary and the east village and the prairies in mind, and plunked on my banjo.
I realized once it was done that it’s a song with one foot in the past and one foot in the future, but applicable to current state of Alberta, a place where people come from far away to stake their claim on a young economy, with seemingly lots of resources, like Buffalo back in the day, and petroleum now, and who knows what when that runs out. Some people have very positive experiences here, and decide to settle down. Others, like Big Joe Stockard, get a different taste of life out here on the western prairies.
- Nathan M. Godfrey
