Concert Series to Honor Buffalo River Legends

Courtesy Photo
(from left) Kelly Mulhollan, Ken Smith and Donna Stjerna stand together near the Buffalo River. Ken Smith is the author of “Buffalo River Country,” and its contents were the inspiration for Still on The Hill’s “Still a River.”

The Buffalo River may be a favorite recreation spot for Arkansans, but few know the legends of the people who lived along the river and the stories behind the names of the landmarks and campgrounds.

Local folk duo Kelly and Donna Mulhollan, who perform as Still on the Hill, recorded an album in their home studio to do just that, celebrate and honor the people and stories that have stood the test of time along the river.

Thanks to funding from local water organizations and the National Parks Service, the duo is set to do a state-wide tour from the furthest backwoods of Arkansas to the streets of urban Arkansas. Many of the concerts will be at schools and one-room community buildings. At each concert, they’re giving away 100 free copies of CDs to each family in attendance.

The idea for the concert series is to celebrate the unadulterated Buffalo National River, and inspire those in attendance to be good stewards for the river, its history and its environment.

The songs are lush with impeccable bluegrass-style string picking, thick bowed strings and harmonica, and calm, light-hearted singing from both Mulhollans. There’s a wide variety of instruments heard on the recording used to set several moods throughout the album, including singing saws and bells. The recordings are authentic folktales set to music, like theme songs to each of the legends and landmarks along the river.

The album is a fun, educational experience in itself, full of melancholy, excitement, humor and mystery. Some tracks are even haunting. We got the chance to talk with Still on the Hill about the album, some of its stories and the upcoming state-wide concert series:

TFW: When and how did the idea for the “Still A River” album come together?

KELLY: The idea is over a year old now. It was inspired by our Once a River project. We felt good about our impact on that project. I think we discovered and realized the power of story telling to make people better stewards of where they live. That was quite accidental. We combined the magic combination of doing these concerts for free and giving out 100 copies of the CDs for free. That magical combination, truly, was possible because of these water organizations. After covering the White River and all the reservoirs that are attached to that, it made us appreciate all the more our Buffalo River, our single one unadulterated river.

DONNA: It’s apparently one of the only rivers in the lower 48 states that was not dammed. It’s also the first national river.

KELLY: I’ve always had a lot of misgivings for reservoirs in general and having grown up on Beaver Lake and we thought that needed to be celebrated. We thought about celebrating it in the same way. The first step was to approach our community at large for funding. We sent letters out to our community at large. We had a set amount of money we were trying to achieve, and we got a lot of donations from that. We also got a large amount of donations from the Ozark Society Foundation and the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance. Between those three things, we achieved our goal financially. We had also applied for a grant from the National Parks Service, and lo and behold, it came through. The whole thing got doubled. It’s much larger than we originally conceived.

DONNA: We haven’t even booked all of the concerts yet. We booked about 10 or 12 here in the region, and the next 20 concerts will be rural communities in the watershed and across the state. The next step was finding material for the songs of the river. When we first started this journey, my friend Teresa Turk, gave me Ken Smith’s book “Buffalo River Country,” it was written in the 70s. Ken Smith is one of the original pioneers who helped save the Buffalo River. He’s been building the Buffalo River trail for 35 years. His book is amazing. It was so poetic and beautiful about all the stories of the river and what it’s like to experience floating down the river and all the amazing places. I’ve read it through so many times. I started gleaning the stories from the book. It became the impetus for this album and the story songs on this project. Some of the songs I even pulled some of his lines and used them in the songs.

Courtesy Photo
Still on the Hill’s newest album, “Still a River,” celebrates the stories and people surrounding the landmarks and areas of The Buffalo River. Copies of the album are available for free at each of the upcoming concerts.

TFW: Could you share one of the stories you learned about the Buffalo River?

KELLY: Tyler Bend, the popular campground by the river, during the Civil War, the people who lived in the valley had no interest in participating in the war for the North or the South. They didn’t have slaves, and they didn’t want to get involved. There was so much consensus about this, 1,700 men formed a secret society they called the Arkansas Peace Society. That’s a lot of people. That’s probably most of the men living there. Lo and behold, the Confederate army did find out about the secret society and round up 100 men, Peter Tyler among them, and marched them in shackles for over a week all the way to Little Rock. There they were given the option of facing treason charges or joining the Confederacy. Twenty opted to face charges, the rest joined the Confederacy with the expectation they could escape. That was Peter Tyler’s fate. He did join the Confederacy.

In our song, it’s more personal, we write about how Peter Tyler married a native American woman named Eveline. The song is called “Eveline and Peter Tyler.” They were homesteading where Tyler Bend is now before getting caught up in all of this. He was forced and taken to Bowling Green, Kentucky. They never ascertained his fate, but it’s believed he fell ill. It’s a sad love story.

DONNA: This weekend there’s this big Ozark festival coming up at Tyler Bend and we’re playing it at 3 in the afternoon. We’re going to unveil the song there at Tyler Bend. It will be sweet to sing their love song right there on their land.

TFW: What are these shows like playing for these rural communities?

KELLY: It’s a family affair. It’s all ages. There’s elderly folks, and there’s young children. They’re pleased to see their place celebrated.

DONNA: We just did a show in Oark, Arkansas, at the school there. It’s one of the farthest, back in the hills places you can go in the state. We did an Ozark instrument maker show, and we told the kids we were going to do a show in Ponca soon after. Sure enough, we get set up in Ponca and there’s this little 12-year-old girl who’s brought her whole family from Oark. She told them about our show and they came and sat in the front row. They waited an hour before we even started. It was so sweet. For a lot of those kids, they maybe have never been out of Oark. It’s a rural place.

KELLY: Our desire is to bring all walks of life together. The back-to-the-lander hippies, the farmers, the working class folks — and what we’re finding, this is something we can all enjoy together with the history and legends of the Buffalo River, which is a jewel of the Ozarks. This first concert in Ponca makes it look like it’s going to work.