Background
Before making its world premier at the historic Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC in March of 2001, Songs From The Tall Grass was part of a journey of discovery, exploration, and one family's determination to make certain that a part of America's musical past not go lost and unnoticed.
The original idea for Songs From The Tall Grass began when, Randy Hale and his wife, Emily Corey, put their two young boys in the car and headed out to the Midwest. Hale, the great grandson of three sets of Oklahoma homesteaders, wanted to know if there were any unknown songs from the 1800s that were at risk of becoming lost because no one was singing them anymore. Their search took them first to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and then through the prairie states to university libraries, state historical archives, small back road museums, and to the kindness of a host of strangers who took a moment out of their busy day to remember an old song or two from their childhood. The family's travels unearthed a body of work that was the foundation for Hale's CD, Songs From The Tall Grass. The stage version of Songs From The Tall Grass emerged from that recording experience.
Poet Carl Sandburg once wrote, "When a society or civilization perishes, one condition can always be found - they forgot where they came from." Songs From The Tall Grass is a chance at remembrance and an opportunity to raise our voices in song together, just as our ancestors did so very long ago. 