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About Vernonia's voice. (Vernonia, OR) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (May 1, 2014)
12 community may1 2014 The Boys (and Girls) of Columbia County in the works at the Vernonia Grange sometime soon. Copies of the CD will be available for purchase at the Vernonia Pioneer Museum. The history of the songs Seamons and Timberbound have recorded flows deep and wide. Kim Cunnick is the widow of John Cunnick; the two lived together in Keasey, an old logging camp about twelve miles outside Vernonia. It was the mid-seventies and Kim and John, both musicians, lived in a wooden shack with no electricity or running water. Together they played music and wrote a small collection of folksongs. Kim mostly wrote the tunes and John provided the lyrics and some of the melodies. John died tragically in a car wreck at the age of thirty and was mourned by the wide circle of friends he made in his short time in Keasey. He was buried by his friends at the end of Keasey Road, his body wrapped in a quilt and placed in a handmade casket with a carved banjo of cherry wood on the lid, made by friend Tony Hyde. An apple tree was planted to mark John’s grave. Kim honored his legacy by forming the Timberbound Stringband (later shortened to just Timberbound) with some of their musician friends. They played some of the music John and she had written together at parties and a few paying gigs. The highlight of their career was touring with folk singer Mike Seeger and playing on Governor Robert Straub’s porch for 1000 Friends of Oregon. In 1977 Kim published the Timberbound Songbook. The songbook included photographs by Jenelle Wiggins, an accomplished local photographer, and captured John and Kim at the cabin in Keasey and other people and landscapes of the region. The cover artwork was created by Hyde. It contained the lyrics, music and introductions to the songs John and Kim had written and random notes that John had jotted down about being a musician. It even includes a photo of John’s casket at his funeral, a photo of Kim, Kytr and Berge playing together at the funeral and a photo of the Timberbound band together. It’s a wonderful tribute to a creative genius who lost his life much too early. Timberbound disbanded in 1978 having never entered a recording studio to memorialize John and Kim’s songs. Kim moved away and remarried; she currently is an innkeeper in Costa Rica. Kytr and Berge continued to play together occasionally and recorded the album Dog Salmon and Rutabagas in 1985, which featured songs about commercial fishing, logging and life in Judge Martwick gives back to the Community! She is dedicated to Equal Access to Justice: • She spent 17 years helping poor children, teens and adults gain fair and equal access to the judicial system. She is devoted to the education of our youth: • She is a volunteer speaker for the St. Helens High School civics class. • She invited all the local schools to bring their students into her courtroom. • She was a participant in multiple high school, college and law school mock trial competitions. • She helped children become active citizens by volunteering for the Classroom Law Project and the Oregon Youth Leadership seminar. • She was a volunteer judge for Beaverton Teen Court: teenagers who are cited for low level crimes are brought before a jury of their peers who impose a sentence. It is very effective. She helps children in need: • She worked directly with CASA and the Citizen Review Board on many dependency cases. She represented many children whose parents were unable to adequately care for them. • She also represented children of highly contested divorce for free. She helps people with disabilities: • She is the caregiver for her disabled veteran son. Through her son’s disability, she became a Family Education Teacher for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She represented many people in Civil Commitment Hearings. She helps people who struggle with addiction: • She served as a member of the Columbia County Drug Court and the Washington County Drug Court. She is the judge for the Columbia County Juvenile Drug Court. • She also served as a Board Member on the Columbia River Partnerships for Change which supports the Columbia County Drug Court She wants to help Veterans: • She hopes to start a Veterans’ Court in Columbia County. The Veterans’ Court would work as part of a coordinated service response to veterans who find themselves involved in the justice system. She helps the homeless pet population: • She was a long term board member and foster home for Animal Aid Inc. • She advocates for spaying and neutering. She also assists her son in fostering a disabled dog for Columbia County Dog Control. Paid for by the Elect Judge Jean Martwick Committee www.JudgeJeanMartwick.org continued from front page the Pacific Northwest. The music and stories, and especially the songbook that John left behind made him a local legend of sorts. Several musicians recorded his iconic song, ‘Boys of Columbia County,’ but beyond those few tributes to his life and the fading memories of his friends, the legend of John Cunnick laid dormant over the next thirty years. John had run away from his home in Ohio when he was a sophomore in high school but his friends knew him as self-educated, well read and very, very smart. He worked in sawmills Timberbound is Kate Sandgren, Gavin Duffy, Joe around Vernonia to make Seamons and Jenny Estrin. Photo by Emily Rome. money. His song lyrics were often about his work melodies were a bit rusty but the spirit experiences (‘Another Good Maul,’ was revived. Joe Seamons was there ‘LongHaired Worksongs.’ ‘Reotruck that weekend and was enraptured by Drivingman’) and about life at the cabin Kim’s stories. in Keasey (‘Vine Maple Valley Waltz,’ The Timberbound Project was ‘Same Old Wind,’ ‘The Winter Was born. Long’) The songs were a mix of ballads Seamons had studied music and upbeat bluegrass numbers with at Lewis and Clark College. “I was intricate and clever lyrics that mention already exploring and performing the a litany of local lore and landmarks - Timberbound songs at Lewis and Clark the Spar Tree Cafe, the Nehalem River, a couple years before the reunion,” says Lew’s Bar, Pittsburg and Keasey. Seamons. “I played both ‘Fisherman’s His writings in the songbook Life’ and ‘Timberbound’ at one of my reveal an intelligent, imaginative and music recitals where I was featuring the entertaining sense of humor. In Kim’s music I was interested in.” introduction to the songbook she As Seamons’ explorations and includes a description of John that he curiosity led him more deeply into wrote about himself: “...he has come to the Timberbound song lore, he came be known as the mad epistolator in some across some of the very few recordings circles as a result of cabin fever & the of John and Kim’s music that had been precipitous nature of Oregon winters.” made. In 1974, Alan Wax, a friend and I had to look up ‘epistolator’ in musician himself, brought a reel-to-reel the dictionary when I read that quote. tape recorder to the cabin at Keasey and An ‘epistolary’ is a writer of letters; recorded John and Kim. the word “epistolator appears to be of “Alan was one of the first people John’s own creation. That’s the kind to recognize how special they were of writer John was. The more time you and that what they were doing should spend contemplating John’s small body be captured,” says Seamons. Local of work, the more you come to recognize Vernonian Gary Everett gave a Joe a his creative genius and expansive view CD that included some of those first of the world he inhabited. recordings, as well as live recordings In June of 2010 Kim returned to of the Timberbound band playing at the the Keasey property where she and John Woodcracker Theater. Seamon says he had lived and joined Kytr, Berge and studied those recordings as he developed Loring for the weekend in a Timberbound the arrangements of the music that are reunion. They spent the time visiting on the new CD. with old friends, playing music and even Seamons began gathering went into a cabin and recorded some of musician friends and performing songs their songs. The musical playing and the continued on page 13 1984 mist drive, po box 321 vernonia, or 97064 MIKE PIHL LOGGING CO., INC Specializing in Private Timber Free Estimates 503-429-1470 cell 503.789.1268 fax 503.429.0252 mplogging@frontier.com
