Big Canoe Records

I was born and raised on the banks of the Missouri River in the historic Boonslick region of central Missouri. I have spent much of my life delving into the history and folklore of my native state and the great river that runs through it, as well as the history and folklore of the entire Mississippi River system. For the last twenty years I have been presenting history and folklore to both adults and children by combining my interest in poetry, folk music, history and storytelling. I call what I do "Songtelling."

The songs I perform, accompanied by guitar, are original folk-style ballads about the Osage and Missouri Indians, French voyageurs, Lewis and Clark, Mike Fink the "King of the Keelboatmen," pioneer settlers and politicians, legendary steamboats, ghosts, outlaws, the Civil War, Missouri artists George Caleb Bingham and Thomas Hart Benton, Jim the Wonder Dog, a Voodoo Doctor, an eccentric German utopian, the Santa Fe Trail, a wild child, the New Madrid Earthquake, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, the Pony Express, spring in the Ozarks, a summer drought, a Missouri River flood and the changing textures of the landscape moving through the seasons of the year.

I have recorded two collections of my songs—Songteller and River Runs Outside My Door—and have collaborated with my friends Cathy Barton, Dave Para, Paul and Win Grace, and others on three additional recordings—Johnny Whistletrigger, Rebel in the Woods, and Most Perfect Harmony. The first two of these are Civil War Songs from the Trans-Mississippi west, and the third is a collection of traditional and original songs related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. All five of these CDs have been released by my record company, Big Canoe Records. Several of my songs were featured in the University of Missouri System film Tom Benton's Missouri. The name "Big Canoe", comes from a translation of the word "Missouri." The Missouri Indians, for whom my native state and its great river were named, lived in villages on the river about half way between present day St. Louis and Kansas City. When the French first began exploring the river it was known as the Pekitanoui ("muddy water"), but after encountering the Missouri Indians they began calling the river the "Missouri" ("people who have big canoes").

Actually, the people the French called the "Missouris" seem to have called themselves the "Niutachi" or "people who live at the mouth of the river" but the French had originally learned about these people from their contact with the Illinois Indians, a confederacy of Algonquian-speaking tribes along the Mississippi River, and in their language they referred to the Indians on the River Pekitanoui as the "Missouris."

In addition to the recordings mentioned above I have also published a book of poetry entitled Oracle of the Turtle (based on the hexagrams of the I Ching), a history of my hometown entitled Boonville: An Illustrated History, an anthology of poems and stories about the great Missouri/Mississippi river flood of 1993 entitled Rising Waters (in collaboration with the poet, Walter Bargen), and an award winning book in the Missouri Heritage Series for the University of Missouri Press entitled Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri. And I am the co-author (along with the German historian Hans von Sachsen-Altenburg) of Duke Paul of Wuerttemberg on the Missouri Frontier: 1823, 1830 and 1851, as well as the writer and co-director (along with Michael Welber) of a film entitled Performing the Vision about the American epic poet, John Neihardt, a great teacher and friend who provided much of the inspiration for what I do in my life.

As part of the Missouri Artist-in-Education program and Young Audiences, Inc., I have conducted residencies, assemblies and workshops in many of Missouri's public schools, and have performed in a number of other settings. From 1999 until 2002 I was employed as "Riverlorian" for the Delta Queen Steamboat Company working on their boats the Mississippi Queen and the American Queen. I have a master's degree in English and I taught college English for 15 years prior to embarking on my career as a "Songteller."

My snail mail address is 513 High Street, Boonville, Missouri 65233 and my phone number is (660) 882-3353. My email address is: rdyer@classicnet.net