A new album from Springfield folk duo The Creek Rocks gives fresh life to songs first recorded across the Ozarks nearly 90 years ago.
The project grew from the duo's selection as the first recipients of the American Folklife Center's Artist in Resonance Fellowship. The fellowship took Mark Bilyeu and Cindy Woolf to the Library of Congress, where they studied field recordings made by folklorist Sidney Robertson Cowell during her travels through southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas in the winter of 1936 and 1937. There, they listened to nearly 200 songs and instrumental tunes preserved in the national archives and selected songs and melodies to reinterpret for a new album.
"There was a woman named Sidney Robertson Cowell who came to Springfield in the 1930s," Bilyeu said. "The goal of the fellowship was to end up with an artistic product, in our case, an album of music based on what we had found at the Library of Congress."
Rather than simply recreate the original recordings, the duo used them as the foundation for new arrangements recorded in their home studio.
"We took the opportunity to flesh these arrangements out," Bilyeu said. "The people at the Library of Congress were like, 'Go crazy, go hog wild. Really bring your sense of musicality to it.' And so that's what we've tried to do."
For Woolf, hearing the original recordings in Washington was one of the project's defining moments.
"It was a thrill to actually sit there and listen to these old recordings," she said. "There were some that we knew immediately we wanted to include because the melodies sounded so ancient and so different from pretty much any music you would hear today."
Bilyeu said preserving and reinterpreting traditional music helps tell the story of the Ozarks.
"I tend to think the old folk music that's been recorded by these collectors illustrates what's really unique about whatever area you live in," he said. "It's really a window into the history of this area."
The Creek Rocks' new album will be released Aug. 15 on all major streaming platforms. The duo will celebrate with an album release concert that evening at Springfield's Historic Fox Theatre. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the show begins at 7:30 p.m.
More information about the project is available at TheCreekRocks.com, and tickets are available through HistoricFoxTheatre.org.
