Folk singer-songwriter Martha Scanlan’s contribution to modern music is one of timeless storytelling.
Bottle up her songs and bury them in a time capsule, and when they’re dug up in a hundred or 500 years, the melodies and words she’s written and recorded easily could sound like they’ll be recorded at whatever time they’re found.
Many Durango locals are familiar with her work with the old time and bluegrass band Reel Time Travelers. It was a lively outfit with a handful of public-domain songs and originals that were testaments to early mountain music.
Scanlan will return to Durango tonight, performing at the Durango Arts Center. Playing alongside her will be musical partner Jon Neufeld, who may be most notable as guitar player for Black Prairie.
Scanlan’s last record, “Tongue River Stories,” was written and recorded on a ranch in Montana. She took up residence there to write, but she ingrained herself in ranch life, as well. She’s not just sitting on a porch with a breathtaking view of rural Montana penning folk songs; her music work often comes second to moving cattle.
“Like most things in my life, it just kind of fell into my lap, and my life flowed into that place and in that direction in a funny way,” Scanlan said last month during a tour stop in Minnesota. “I’ve been stopping there when I was on tour for the last 10 years or so. I would stop there and help them work; I guess about five years ago, I said I’d spend the fall there. The fall is a work-intensive time, and I never left.”
Since embarking on her solo career, she’s quieted down from being a guitar player in a rowdy old-time band complete with clog dancing to a sentimental folkie, writing songs that capture feelings and emotion and sense of place.
Her interest now is to write and record wherever her head lies. As someone whose songs could be their own history lessons, she goes to a place rich with history. It’s a way to combine the crafts of someone who is just as much a storyteller as she is a songwriter and performer.
“They all kind of get mixed up together for me, especially where I’m living,” she said. “I spent a lot of time with an 83-year-old cowboy, and he tells me stories. They might have happened last week, or they might have happened 50 years ago, or they might have happened to his dad 100 years ago. It’s an interesting place for that.”
Her songs document life in a place where change comes much slower than in other parts of America. Drive down the street in the town you grew up in or Main Avenue in Durango and it can be hard to remember what the place looked like 20 years ago when storefronts and street corners were different. Her time and the story she’s creating for herself in Montana is different.
“It’s definitely unusual in that sense, where stories exist in the same place for the same bunch of people,” Scanlan said. “It’s unusual anymore in our culture.”
Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu. Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager.
Bryant’s Best
Today: Durango Discovery Museum singles mixer with Papa Otis and the Forbidden Romeos, 7 p.m. $15/$5, Durango Discovery Museum, 1333 Camino Del Rio, 259-9234.
Today: Folk music with Martha Scanlan, 7 p.m., $22, Durango Arts Center, 802 East Second Ave., 259-2606.