'Timberbound'

“A timberbound tree is a curved one. They look reconciled to the shape they’re in, but cut into one and you’ll find they are under a great deal of stress half a century after they were first warped.”

 - Timberbound Songbook

When a timberbound log is run through a sawmill, it can create deadly situations as massive tension is suddenly released. Round about 1973, a musician and sawmill-worker by the name of John Cunnick wrote a song with his wife, Kim, called ‘Timberbound’. You can hear the song and read its lyrics below.

I. The Bards of Keasey Route

    John and Kim Cunnick lived together in the woods of Northwest Oregon in a place called Keasey. Keasey is a few miles outside the town of Vernonia, Oregon, and was once the site of the main sawmill of the Oregon American Lumber Company. By the time John and Kim lived there the mill was gone, all that was left was the old mill pond, second growth timber, and a few of the logger’s cabins and sheds. John and Kim lived in one of the cabins together for roughly five years, from 1970 – 1975. They had no running water, and thus they got water the old-fashioned way from Rock Creek, which ran just a few dozen yards from the house. By 1974 they had electricity, but they only used it for two overhead lightbulbs. All cooking and heating was done with a wood burning stove, John gathered most of the firewood. John worked in a sawmill part time, Kim worked in a cafeteria one day per week, and the two managed to live just the kind of life they desired, playing music together and writing songs.

    Tragedy struck on the fourth day of January, 1976. On Highway 47, between the towns of Clatskanie and Mist, John Cunnick’s old panel truck slid off of the road, went right between the guardrail and a giant fir tree, and dropped into the steep ravine below. It took five days for his friends to find him. They buried him in a meadow near the cabin at Keasey.

            “There’s an apple in the meadow

            Where the lupine it does grow,

            And down there lies a poet

            Buried six feet below.

            And if you should eat an apple

            Which that Gravenstein supply,

            Won’t you stop and take a rest boys,

            And think on one who died.”

            - “Trees”, by Hobe Kytr

II. Timberbound (the band)

    Kim and John had many musical friends, and soon after John died three of those friends formed a band with Kim. They called themselves Timberbound. The other three members of the band were Hobe Kytr (banjo and guitar), Dave Berge (guitar and autoharp), and Mark Loring (mandolin and harmonica). Everybody in the band sang. They performed many of John and Kim’s songs, which Kim published in 1976 in the Timberbound Songbook. Timberbound also performed a mix of traditional and gospel songs, as well as originals by Hobe Kytr (pronounced Hoe-Bee, ‘Kytr’ rhymes with ‘lighter’).

    Timberbound opened for national touring acts such as Mike Seeger, but the only recordings of them are live amateur recordings that were made by their friends. Due to their lo-fi quality, these recordings sound much older than they are. When you hear them, it is easy to imagine that you are listening to a long lost field recording made in a timber camp in the early 20th century. Besides the strength of the songs that they performed, Timberbound’s main asset was their sublime combination of voices. Kim Cunnick sang high harmonies that were downright haunting, while Dave Berge deployed his rich baritone/bass voice to great effect. Mark Loring mostly played mandolin, but he also sang with a clear tenor voice. Hobe Kytr sang baritone, and he told me recently that Kim always wanted him to sing at the upper end of his range.

Click here to read the whole pose about Timberbound.

III. The Songs

    Many of the Timberbound songs were collaborative efforts between John and Kim: he wrote the lyrics and she wrote the melodies. John captured this compositional arrangement in one of the finest Timberbound songs, “Vine Maple Valley Waltz”, which contains this refrain: “If you lend me a tune, love, I’ll give you my word.” This line begins to demonstrate John’s elegant and playful lyrical style. The Timberbound Songbook also contains an essay John wrote on various instruments used in folk music. The essay contains many insightful little nuggets of observation, and also gives us a sense of John’s brilliant sense of humor.

    John dropped out of high school at the age of 15, but he was a voracious reader, and educated himself to great effect. One of the strongest literary influences evinced by the lyrics of the Timberbound songs is that of 19th-century poetry. Part of the delight of John’s lyrics is their range. He could be playfully hilarious in a song like “Boys of Columbia County”, for instance:

“When the Chinook rains come down on the Nehalem

It’ll take a hydroplane to get their kids to school.”

Or he could be astoundly delicate and sensitive, as in his song “Same Old Wind”:

            “If today could be dried like a flower,

            Tell me what secret place would it keep?

            Where it would not ashame us by morning,

            and by night would not trouble our sleep.”

John’s love of his home–and of the wild logger-characters he befriended in the area–shines throughout the Timberbound songs. Kim’s melodies frame John’s lyrics perfectly, and almost always lend themselves to multiple vocal harmony parts. The Timberbound songs are a remarkable collection, not only for their vivid depiction of life out at Keasey, but also for the range of emotions they express.

    Timberbound disbanded after Kim remarried and moved away, but the Timberbound songs were never given up. According to Hobe:  “I sang them, people in Vernonia sang them, and people in Portland and around the Northwest sang them… They were cherished and brought out at special events. Geno Leach, the cult hero of the Fisher Poets Gathering, specifically requested “Boys of Columbia County”, and any [other songs] I’d be willing to play from the Timberbound songbook specifically for the Fisher Poets Gathering. He had some of his old logger buddies in the audience.”

    Kim included Hobe’s song, ”The Ballad of John Cunnick” in the Timberbound Songbook, noting in the book’s introduction, “The last song in the book is the only one not written by John, but I included it because it is a good song written about him, by his song writing buddy Hobe Kytr (who, by the way, has got a bunch of good ones up his sleeve).” In 1986, Hobe amply demonstrated that he had “a bunch of good ones up his sleeve” when he recorded an album with Dave Berge called “Dog Salmon and Rutabagas.” The album contains a song written by Dave, a dozen of Hobe’s original songs, and one song from the Timberbound Songbook, “Old Hollow School”.

IV. The Next Generation

    As it turned out, Hobe wanted a bunch of his friends to sing on the chorus on the title track of “Dog Salmon & Rutabagas”, and my mother, Dee, was one of the bunch (she was also friends with Kim back in the mid-70′s). I was two years old at the time, and mom couldn’t find anyone to tend to me while she sang, and so she held me in her arms as she joined the chorus. That is why, if you listen close to the song, you can hear a little baby wailing between the song’s phrases. That’s me, in my first recorded appearance.

    When I turned 18 or so, I started to get wise, and recognize that I didn’t just love “Dog Salmon & Rutabagas” for purely nostalgic reasons. This was powerful, lucid, enduring folk music that vividly depicted the place where I came from. With Hobe as my guide, I began to cover some of his songs, as well as the song “Timberbound”. Dave also gave me his blessing to perform and record “Fisherman’s Life”, and I am honored to say that both men have become my friends. Hobe gave me one of the rare remaining copies of the Timberbound Songbook, and I proceeded to learn more of the Timberbound songs.

    In the summer of 2010, another descendant of the Keasey community, Michael Laird, had the bright idea of getting Timberbound back together and recording songs from the songbook. This was only the second time that the group had reunited since it split back in (roughly) 1977. Those amateur live recordings made in the 70′s have never been released. So, Kim came up from Costa Rica with her husband, daughter, and grandchildren, and everybody got together for a weekend party out at Keasey. Despite the fact that Hobe was the only member of the group that had been practicing the Timberbound songs on anything approaching a regular basis during the intervening years, the four old friends pulled together eight performances seated in front of Michael Laird’s camera and boom mic.

    So now, thanks to Michael, we have 8 of the Timberbound songs preserved on the internet, where everybody can share them and learn them.

    I was lucky enough to be in the room when these recordings were made, and it was a powerful experience. Here’s hoping that the Timberbound reunion becomes an annual event. Please give a listen to Timberbound’s recording of their namesake.

- Joe Seamons, 2010