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This is me, Mary Overlie, and my cousin, Geoff Taylor. Two Taylors on Taylor Avenue, as it were. Born to an ancestral line of musicians, we craft the songs in our hands and hearts, making mud harmonies as the duo, Augmeanted.
About 6 blocks from this photo, I grew up underneath Makoshika's muddy, gumboed, webby feet. If you stand atop the Park’s highest plateau and look down into town, you can see the backyard where I used splay myself out for quiet hours watching contrails from pilots stationed in Minot or Great Falls or Rapid City garland the sky. That's likely true for many of you reading this too. Yet, it’s come time for my family to sell that family home, the one situated at the end of a dead-end street that used to be nothing but mud, and still does nothing but return to mud, getting slaked in Makoshika's run off at the close of each bone-shaking thunderstorm. I was given so unspeakably much as a child by growing up in the shelter of Makoshika's ridges and swales, it's all I can do to put it into song. As this chapter of life finds its close, it only seems right to do what I can to give a little, if only incomparably, back. So, please join us for this benefit concert for Friends of Makoshika to ensure the Park's muddy, gumboed, webby feet breathe life into generations to come. Every single dollar from tickets & donations goes to the Friends. We’ll be playing original tunes inspired from the clay of these lands, including a new one co-written with you. Keep scrolling to learn more. |
Mother..Broken..Earth..Burnt.
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I was driving back to Glendive from Billings when fire ignited Makoshika last July. I initially thought the brilliant orange glow along the face of the hillside was the moon rising. I counted each of my lucky stars I could see such a thing in addition to the lightning storm we’d surfed the entire way home.
Yet, as I saw its glow light up the far side of Dove addition rounding the bend toward home, I spent the night loosely falling back to sleep, wondering if we would be evacuating our southside burrow in the middle of the night. Thanks to everyone, like you, who loves these lands, coupled with Nature's quenching rain, we we're spared the generationally devastating event those days could've become. Makoshika takes its name from two Lakota words, Maka (mah-kah) and Sica (see-cha). Mother and Broken. Earth and Burnt.* These burned lands who water our souls here under this Big Sky have always been our Broken Mother. Generations of us have continually found ways to love her back the best ways we know how. With solitary sunrise hikes, soaking in a full moon’s rise, stopping to scent the sage as the train yards rumble below, and risking a little gumbo on our soles after a fresh spring deluge. At the concert, we’ll be releasing a song we’ve written, together with you, in honor of our Maka Sica. photo courtesy: West Glendive Fire Department * Sica (see-cha) is often translated as 'bad', as in bad-Earth or badlands. Yet the Lakota hand symbol for Sica refers more to the broken up nature of these lands, how they rise from the valleys and prairies to break up what we see. |
If you are unable to attend the concert, you can still support the Friends of Makoshika and their efforts by donating using the buttons below.
