Download: Roll On Dungeness
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About Roll On Dungeness This song was shamelessly lifted from Woody Guthrie in what I humbly hope can be a tribute to the man's own tradition. I believe I first put the song together in about 1996. I don't recall if it was originally done for one of the first two Dungeness River Festivals, or for the Rainshadow Natural Science Foundation's Summer Science Camps I helped teach at Railroad Bridge Park for a few years. Anyway I wrote it in the spirit of the ol' Wood'...you see many of his songs borrowed melodies from other folk songs. I took the melody and concept of Roll On Columbia, and morphed it into Roll On Dungeness. However Woody borrowed Roll On Columbia's melody from Irene Goodnight, a tune of Huddy Leadbetter's (popularly known as "Leadbelly"). So with all due respects to the masters (known and unknown), I adapted the song for our local watershed.
ROLL ON DUNGENESS (adapted by Steve Koehler from Woody Guthrie's Roll on Columbia )
Chorus:
Roll on Dungeness roll on
Roll on Dungeness roll on
Your waters have formed the land we stand on
So roll on Dungeness roll on.Beginning high up in Olympic Mountains green
Leaving forest hills down a thousand streams
Bringing us pieces of the places you've been
So roll on Dungeness roll onChorus
The Greywolf & Royal Creek add their waters to you
Copper Creek & Silver Creek & Gold Creek too
They all end up in Juan de Fuca so blue
So roll on Dungeness roll onChorus
With dikes & dredgin' we've tried to change you
Dozin' you up to make a buck or two
But we never try to understand what you do
...roll on Dungeness roll onChorus
Chinook & humpies both spawn here
Steelhead & cutthroat from year to year
We can change what we do or they'll all disappear
So roll on Dungeness roll on© 1997 Steve Koehler