Last weekend, a dozen local residents of Bristol Bay took the stage to perform songs they wrote during a week-long songwriting class in Dillingham.
The Dillingham Arts Council hosted the non-credit class, led by Nashville songwriter Tim Easton and local musician Teresa Duncan. At the end of the week, students gave a public performance to debut their original work.
As community members settled into their seats for the performance inside the event space at University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Bristol Bay campus in Dillingham, co-teacher and Nashville songwriter Tim Easton took to the stage.
“These songs didn't exist a week ago,” Easton remarked regarding the class's never-before-heard set list.
Easton has spent the last several years recording original music, traveling internationally, and, more recently, teaching songwriting.
“Teaching is just a thing that comes naturally once you've played folk music, learning the folk music of the world as you go around,” Easton said. “Because we want to tell these stories and help younger people learn stories so that they can tell the stories.”
This month was Easton's first time in Dillingham, and on the plane, he says he was surrounded by camo-clad hunters coming in for moose season.
That's when he decided to call the class song hunting. Songwriting, he says, isn't all that different from hunting. They both require sitting patiently and creating something out of nothing.
“Really, what we are doing is we are getting together and we are creating something out of nothing,” Easton said. “When you go out hunting, you could have a whole day where you don't see anything that you are hunting for, and there's nothing there. Sometimes when you go to write a song, there's nothing there and you need to break down what you are trying to say.”
Students in the class ranged from high school-aged to 90-years-old. Easton says some participants had years of songwriting experience, while others had none.
“Anybody can show up, you don't even need to play an instrument to do this,” Easton said. “Deep down, it is about song hunting. It's about hunting for things that are inside you that you want to say.”
The group created eight original songs by the end of the week-long class. Some of the songs were about their individual experiences, like finding joy in the later years of life. Other songs spoke more generally to experiences unique to living in Bristol Bay, like a song about the proposed Pebble Mine project in the region, and two songs about commercial fishing.
“Write what you know, you know, that's an expression you hear about writing,” Easton said. “We just basically laid out ‘what are all of the things you associate with fishing and opening day?’ And expressions like ‘cork me out,’ “the slime line,” "things that are local to this area, all came up in those songs.”
At the concert, one after another, the students stepped onto the stage to sing their work and were greeted with pounding applause from the full audience.
Easton says he hopes to make the class an annual tradition and return next year for another song hunting season.
Find six of the students' original songs here.
