April 19, 2001

Plains Folk: Ranchers and Poets: Mustangs or Coyotes?

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

Cowboy poets are a lot like coyotes. There's more of them all the time, despite the urbanization of the country. They're always hungry and eat mostly meat, and they make a lot of noise when they get together.

D.W. Groethe of Bainville, Mont., is one of the singing poets, and his album, "There's a Place" (CD or cassette from Makoche Recording Co. of Bismarck), is worth more than a casual listen, for two reasons. First, Groethe is a good writer who represents both his crafts -- cowboy and versifier -- well. Second, his stuff exhibits the peculiarities of cowboy poetry on the northern plains.

What I mean by that is, his verse is not like old-fashioned cowboy verse and song from the open range. Like most cowboy poets today, Groethe has a strong historical sense. His "West River Tale" ballad on the current album shows this. It's a wonderful piece that hearkens back to the 1890s.

The big Texas outfits then were breaking up and being supplanted by smaller, family operations. Some of these were established by newcomers from the Midwest, but mixed in with them were Texas cowboys, former employees who stayed in the north and started operations of their own. "West River Tale" tells the story of two of these fellows, former cowboys who "called themselves ranchers."

That's the point. Cowboy poetry of the open range came from employees. It was like lumberjack ballads or miner songs, giving voice to a certain industrial class who happened to inhabit wide open spaces. Cowboy poetry today comes from ranchers. They husband the cowboy tradition, but they're different. They are capitalists, they have families, they are invested in a particular place, and they have different things on their mind.

That accounts for the semi-belligerent tone of some of Groethe's songs -- ones like "Hard, Wild and Free" and "Hell to Pay." These are songs from someone who tunes in the markets at six in the morning (seven Mountain Time) and worries about what environmentalist, animal rights, and consumer groups are up to. They are protest songs of a sort, but they offer no remedies for disgruntlement.

"Hell to Pay" includes both ranchers and farmers (often the same people anyway) in the discontent, and I suggest this is a song with visible roots in the northern plains, where we seem destined forever to nurse our colonial grievances against the powers that be somewhere else.

Besides the songs, another good thing about "There's a Place" is that it's not over-engineered. The settings are modest, even when plugged-in, showcasing Groethe's considerable talent for expression. He doesn't have a spectacular voice, but it's an expressive one, especially in the spoken pieces.

His impressive range has to do with words, not pitch. It ranges from simple spoof (the ecumenical carnivorousness of "I Eat Meat" -- this guy eats mutton) to layered lines that mean something different depending on when you hear them. "If you get to gathering up old memories," Grethe says, "Best be careful of what you might find lying around."

Traditional themes surface predictably here. Men are perplexed by women, take delight in horses ("If I weren't a man, I'd be a horse"), give advice to youth, raise hell in bars, and get sentimental about prairie landscapes.

Overall, the tone is tragic, having to do with ranchers as a dying breed. I'm not so sure. Groethe likens them to mustangs, but I still think they're coyotes.

###

Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865, gmoran@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

Click here for a TIF photo of Tom Isern that is suitable for printing. 
(1.5MB b&w photo)

Click here for a TIF photo of Tom Isern wearing a hat that is suitable for printing.
(1.3MB b&w photo)