Wisconsin Life

David HB Drake is a traveling man. My job is to drive around this lovely state and sing for people and they pay me to do this? He's a folk singer, storyteller and historian. I mean this is the coolest job in the world. He's turned his love for Wisconsin and background in musical theater into a career. Well, I mean I'm born and raised Wisconsin. On this day he performs for grade school kids in Muskego. Actually you get to sing along and here are the words. Try it again. All right. Inspired by his travels across Wisconsin, David's lyrical language evokes the impressions etched on our state's historical footprints. If you were walking through the fields and the valleys and around the lake maybe 500 years ago, you might hear music that sounds like this.

Native American flute notes

A Native American flute you just play it. Whatever comes out of you is what it was supposed to be. Where I grew up, we didn't have a TV set. We didn't have a telephone. We used to sing together and tell stories. And I just like doing it so much that I kept on doing it. Now David is helping teach Wisconsin history through his performance called "Wiscon-Sing." What Marquette wrote in his journal as the name of the river was O-I-S-C-O-N-S-I-N-G. Wisconsin. And when I saw that on a 300-year-old map, I went, "Wiscon-Sing." Ba-dump-bump. And you'll hear French names in this song because the French people made the maps. And you'll hear Native American names because they were here first to name the places. I'm going to play the song on an instrument we call a concertina.

concertina music

Here we go.

concertina music

You can be educated and entertained and not know the difference. To me, that's always been the breakthrough thing about teaching is... history can either be really boring or it could be really fun. It's all in presentation. What I'm trying to do here is not just present the songs of a long time ago in the history of Wisconsin, but what it actually sounded like. Break my back When I couldn't find an authentic old song that worked well as a sing-along, then I wrote my own. For mining and for the Great Lakes, I wrote my own songs. So, I literally took a tour of a mine in Platteville, Wisconsin, the Bevan's Mine. This is the trick of song writing, you write down the vocabulary. Came out of the mine, saw a flag of Wisconsin with a miner on it and went, there's the song. The land was sweet and good And I did what I could I've been doing this professionally, as my living for 35 years. My parents still want to know what I'm going to do when I grow up. (laughs) I'll be 70 next time around and doing this keeps you young, keeps you excited, keeps you interested.

banjo music