Willapa Hills' Portrait of Place: A labor of love

Willapa Hills recently released its second CD, A Portrait of Place, celebrating life on the Lower Columbia River with a mix of new and traditional songs.

Band members Andrew Emlen, Sunrise and Jessica Fletcher, Kerrie McNally, Fern Fey and Jennifer Hanigan have all moved to the area.

“Not one of us has been born in the county. There’s something to be said for that. We chose it with our eyes open,” said Emlen, who formed the band with musicians he’d performed with in the Skamokawa review after he moved to the area in 1999.

Band members are poetic about their relationship with the land.

Jessica Fletcher, who has lived at the end of Skamokawa’s Middle Valley for 39 years, said she’s sheltered by the valley. “I feel the valley’s loving arms.” Sunrise Fletcher calls the songs he writes eco-conscious, and his song, Columbia Pacific, is the story of the watershed, where rain flows from Montana, B.C. and Idaho, past local communities to the ocean.

For McNally, “once you step out of a pasture you’ve stepped through the edge. You’re crossing over--it’s not manicured, not tended. It’s like my church.”

The CD was produced with Ron Baldwin from Chinook and recorded at the Inn at Lucky Mud. Members play multiple instruments including Emlen cello, Fey piano and rain stick, Jessica Fletcher autoharp, Sunrise Fletcher tenor banjo, and McNally guitar. They also trade vocal lead with Hanigan.

Style ranges from folk, to rhythm and blues inspired Columbia Pacific, to the traditional spiritual Beach of Heaven, which takes its title from a poem in Irene Martin’s Beach of Heaven, a history of Wahkiakum County.

Songs like Swedish Walking Tune and Finnish Waltz honor local immigrants, while Old Miller Sands, written by J.J. Corcoran in the 1880’s, reflects conflict over Miller Sands salmon seining grounds.

Mary Garvey, a respected Long Beach songwriter, wrote Oystershell Road about women harvesting oysters during WWII blackouts, when neighbors honked their car horns to bring the workers in from the tide flats. Garvey’s poignant song, Tie it Up and Let it Rot, refers to the decline of the fishery around Puget Island.

Rain inspired songs like We Got Rain, by Ray Raihala of Brownsmead Flats or Emlen’s lyric in Beach of Heaven, “I said I wasn’t going to sing in the rain….”

McNally took up Emlen’s challenge to record local history and wrote her first songs. Ghosts of Alger Creek records her journeys with her husband through the hills around her home, where the “ridges taste the snow,” and the “cry of the red tail as it swoops beneath the firs” is found with remnants of logging.

McNally interviewed Roger Davis for Imperial, the story of the mail boat, then wrote the narrative with a girl’s point of view. McNally said she has several more songs in mind.

Band members come together with varied musical backgrounds. Emlen went to Whitman College on a cello scholarship. Fey has an undergraduate degree in music but said, “I was always the accompaniment, always in the background” until Willapa Hills. Fey is the “queen of harmony,” according to McNally. “The harmony for the Ghosts of Alger Creek sounded exactly like I wanted it to, with those spooky sounding train whistles.”

Members have been together since 1999, except for an interval when Hanigan was studying for the bar exam, Emlen said. Then Kristina Birchler, a violinist who now directs the SW Washington Youth Symphony stepped in. Emlen’s song about lovers Romeo and Juliann caught in the cultural divide Skamokawa and Cathlamet gives Hanigan the chance to sing “My daddy ...said I should steer clear of hippies, kayak guides and sawyers/ He said I should stick close to home and find myself a lawyer.”

The band members have woven music and history into their work lives, entertaining Rhodes Scholars, formerly Elder Hostel, tours every other week from April through October each year. The groups stay at the Fletcher’s Inn at Lucky Mud, kayak daily with Emlen and hear Willapa Hills perform at night.

Emlen is the leader and has the vision for the band, members say.

“Democracy is bad for a band. I’ve been a professional entertainer all my life,” Sunrise Fletcher said. The Fletchers recorded several albums, “one of those was vinyl,” Sunrise said.

Fey echoed other members when she said what she likes best is seeing the audience so touched that they weep.

“It is gratifying to get a response, that’s why we do it,” Emlen said.

Willapa Hills will perform a benefit for the Pioneer Church Association on February 19 at 7:30. Tickets are available for $10 at the Bank of the Pacific in Cathlamet.

A Portrait of Place is available from band members and from http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/willapahills