An American Forrest is Western music. Country and folk. Ragged-voiced tales and wild, hybrid style, finger-picked and strummed guitar. Poetic incantations that conjure images: a lone rider silhouetted against a sunset, the days fading light, the unspoken bond between horses and people. Songs as detailed as tooled leather about old love, and new frontiers. An American Forrest is the words and music of Forrest Van Tuyl from the small town of Enterprise, Oregon. Lyrics fly upwards from his songs like sparks from a fire. Verses come delivered with the humor of cowboy poets. His riffs have the wood-and-wire wrangling prowess of the folk singers of the second revival. The sensation of his songs hang around like smoke long after the night is gone.
He’s been a songwriter for over a decade but fell off the map into the wilds of Eastern Oregon more recently than that. Fatefully, he fell in love with a woman who knew horses, and Cormac McCarthy novels. His interest piqued, he landed a job with a pack-outfit and got hooked on the lifestyle. Now he’s learning from older cowboys how to train horses, or leading pack mules laden with gear into the interior, and turning these experiences into songs. “My theory is that living out there six months out of year is bound to work its way into my songs. Western music is very closely tied to the landscape, and it’s a regional sound”.
For Van Tuyl that sound ranges from solo acoustic confessionals and covers to full band expositions. Stories of a man who left behind the comfort and security of modern life, for a job atop a horse. A man who returned from the wilderness a hardened, smoothed, tempered version of his former self. One who set about writing songs, recording the experience of finding himself on magnetic tape. Along the way he’s toured with Corb Lund, BJ Barham(American Aquarium), John Craigie, and Bart Budwig. During a particularly bleak winter off-season Van Tuyl found himself alone in the basement of the OK Theater in Enterprise, taking stock of his life and songs by recording demos to various older tape machines. Soon Van Tuyl had laid down demos for a full band to practice with.
Recorded at Mike Coykendall’s Blue Room studios O Bronder, Donder Yonder? features Coykendall (M Ward, Blitzen Trapper, Sallie Ford) on bass, and Barry Walker Jr (Roselit Bone) on pedal steel. It bursts open with a cannonade of pedal steel and drums. “Sam’s House” is turbulent with frequent tempo changes and atmospheric backing. Van Tuyl sings “Good horses die & we hang up their hides to scrape / Someday I’ll sing your name / Constance, is there justice on this Earth?”
The band goes four on the floor on “Rawhide” a song about being a greenhorn at every new phase in life and love. Van Tuyl is country gold when he sings of relationships “ninety-percent of love is reckless abandon / the other half is learnin’ not to run / keepin’ enough air to say ‘I love you’ in our lungs / & findin’ forgiveness for the wrongs we ain’t yet done / I made my share of mistakes & darlin you ain’t one,” all the while acknowledging love as “twice as dangerous as mama bears, and guns”.
And there’s plenty of Van Tuyl’s fingerwork on guitar. “Pendleton Overcoat” weaves strings and An American Forrest‘s free-verse lyricism; “if I could see the evergreen shine of your inland empire eyes each night / and spend my mornings alongside you with a loaf of bread and the sunrise / there ain’t no dollar I’d need to get, & no four-ten goodbye / the feelin of your free-wheelin fingers intertwined in mine”.
“Burnin’ Starlight” is the most traditional country tune of the bunch, and Van Tuyl is on the range, dreaming of being back home, wondering “lord if it’s darkness we shy from / is there darkness in these souls”. It’s a brisk three-minute gallop, with space for a pedal steel, electric, bass solo. It’s a tune which Van Tuyl will likely look back on as the moment when he became the cowboy he hastens to introduce himself as, singing “My remuda’s fit for workin’ and my saddles never cold!”
“Yonder Mountain” trots on at half time, with a deep bass groove, and gentle guitar and drums, easing the listener into a cosmic connection with nature’s slower pace.
O Bronder Donder Yonder is a natural wonder; a faithful depiction of a man finding his connection with the natural world. At best it honors the generations of folk singers and cowboy poets gone before him. What’s more, Van Tuyl is securing the legacy of future music with his lifestyle. “Horses helped me focus, to get my priorities straight”. With so much modern country being made in the cities about beer and bawling, who will rear the colts and keep faith with the rural hinterlands of the American West? An American Forrest knows. His pack outfit has made room for him to bring a guitar along on their excursions. At times he’s even invited to the boss’s house to play after dinner. “It’s mostly Ian Tyson covers, if I’m lucky enough to get to do that” he says, humbly.
His own songs continue to flourish in the off-season, on old tape recorders, in art spaces and at small shows about town, and there’s a full tour coming in support of O Bronder, Donder Yonder? this summer.