Spoon River

#64 / Video Extra

“I like songs that delight in giving you a picture,” late songwriter Michael Peter Smith once commented. And, man, his compositions always did that. Take his great “Spoon River,” for instance, which carries us along from riverboat gamblers to dusty old dresses hanging in the attic, from the nightmare of war to the sweetness of a morning carriage ride and the sound of bells coming from the town.

As any book lover recognizes, Smith’s 1970s song was inspired by Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology,” the extraordinary 1915 collection of short free verse that collectively told the stories of a fictional small town named for the Spoon River, which runs near Masters' home town of Lewistown, Illinois.

“I love that book,” Smith told writer Paul Zollo. “I was 17 and it was just the right time to read that sort of thing.”

Discussing his song, Smith added, “For a long time I had this imagery of someone taking a carriage ride. I had that image for about two years, and when I thought of placing it in Spoon River, it seemed like the perfect emotional climate for it.”

Enter The Flood

The Flood learned “Spoon River” in 1975 from Steve Goodman’s wonderful “Jessie's Jig & Other Favorites” album. In fact, it was one of two Michael Smith tunes we learned that year. Roger Samples had already taught us “The Dutchman,” which he picked up from Goodman’s earlier “Somebody’s Else’s Troubles” LP.

At parties and shows throughout the late ‘70s and early 1980s, Rog and Charlie often performed the two songs in tandem.

In fact, a 1982 rendition of “Spoon River” is on the band’s official(ish) bootleg album, Hip Boots: The Flooded Basement Tape. Click here to read all about it.

And Today…

Our latest rendition of “Spoon River” — more than four decades after we learned it — was recorded by Pamela earlier this week on a spring evening at the Bowen House.