Boombox Blitz: An American Forrest kneels upon ‘Yonder Mountain’
The western cowboy honors the beauty of his nature in his new music video.
Welcome to Boombox Blitz, an artist spotlight series showcasing overlooked singers, songwriters and musicians who are quietly taking over the world.
Cowboy poetry is as human ache and desire heaving and sighing out of the earth’s core. Born out of rugged living off the land and an allure ingrained in history, the words rise and fall as the sun and cast stark outlines of wide-brimmed hats and cattle drives. Steeped in tradition and the tumbling countryside of Enterprise, Oregon, a corner of the nation with less than 2,000 in population, real-life cowboy and musician An American Forrest (real name Forrest Van Tuyl) has tasked himself with keeping such traditional folk-telling alive and well. His song “Yonder Mountain,” which has been paired with a grainy, lo-fi visual kneeling at the altar of wondrous Mother Nature, underscores the ruggedly magical implications of such confessional stories, wrapped in the warmth of Van Tuyl’s scruffy yodel.
“All my sorrows, they’re here for the taken / I’m broken as the morning, forever awakening,” he sings, his warble penetrating right down to the soul. Percussion mimics the sturdy pitter-patter of horse shoes on rock and cracked dirt, and even as his voice seems to lean into the dusty ebb and flow, he soars high above and alights on the craggy mountaintops, looking down as a heavenly visage. “I can’t name a single song by The String Band. In the morning, when both your minds are clear, is my favorite time to work with a horse,” Van Tuyl says of the song, coarse and jagged, yet smoothly shimmering. “This is sort of a prayer or a koan inspired by the buddhist hermit poetry of StoneHouse, Han Shan, Li Po (Li Bai) and Gary Snyder. A common thread of asceticism and spiritual fulfillment in the wilderness unites their work and the work of cowboy poets.”
A performer at the 2019 National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, stepping onto the same stage as Colter Wall and Ian Tyson, Van Tuyl is a triumphant beacon of the kind of grittiness such a cowboy lifestyle must evoke. He tugs long-standing traditions into the 21st century with a durable appreciation for the truth and beauty, his boots kicking up the soil on his travels across the western frontier. At least, he does so in his songs. He’s a brawny herdsman as much as he is a sensitive narrator of a time and life indebted to the mystery that continues to cloud and mesmerize.
“Yonder Mountain” is lifted from Van Tuyl’s new album, O’Bronder, Donder Yonder?, out May 10.
Watch below:
Photo Credit: Nicole Freshley
Follow An American Forrest on his socials: Facebook | Instagram | Website
