Cowboy poet ropin’ and writin’ at Madison Elementary School
Madison students may be coming home speaking in rhyme later this month.
Cowboy poet and musician T.J. Casey will spend the week of Oct. 19-23 holding workshops for Madison Elementary School students as part of the South Dakota Arts Council’s Artists In Schools and Communities program.
Casey, 51, visits classrooms to educate children about poetry and Western and cowboy culture. He lives in rural Montana with his wife and horses.
The program is sponsored by the Madison Area Arts Council, with support provided by the SDAC with funds from the State of South Dakota, through the Department of Tourism and State Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Casey has strummed guitars and wrote poems and songs for more than 35 years. His second CD, “Pure ‘D’ Cowboy,” was named Country-Western CD of the Year through the National Traditional Country Music Association and the Rural Roots Music Commission in 2009.
Casey said he was ecstatic and honored to receive the award, which last went to a New Zealander.
The CD rose to #6 on the Western Music Charts, with the song “Cowboy, Don’t Change Your Ways” hitting #1.
“It’s In My Blood,” a song from the same CD, was nominated for a Native American Music Award. Casey is a quarter Cree and a quarter Algonquin.
“It made me feel really good,” Casey said. “Being nominated is just as special as winning the award.”
Casey was part of a select group of 140 cowboy poets published in the anthology “The Big Roundup” in 2002. He has written two poetry books.
Casey and his wife, Marcie, also do horseshoe, wood and cowboy rope art. They make tables, boot jacks, plant holders, and lamps and shades.
During school residencies, Casey teaches about the “history of the American cowboy, Western heritage and culture, and cowboy poetry’s role in preserving this part of American history,” as well as the process of writing cowboy poetry and how this self-expression can build confidence, according to his Web site, www.tjcasey.net.
“I want to leave there with every one of those kids with a poem in their hand,” Casey said.
He believes it’s important for students to learn about western American heritage.
“Without our heritage, our children lose focus. Without our children’s focus, we lose our world,” Casey says on his Web site.
Along with teaching students about poetry, Casey shares the Code of the West with them. The Code is made up of principles that “have to do with everything that made our frontier great,” Casey said.
He said students will end the week knowing at least three of those principles: If it’s not yours, don’t take it. If it’s not true, don’t say it. If it’s not right, don’t do it.
Casey learned that code early in life. Growing up on a Montana ranch 65 miles from town in a region called the Dryhead country, between the Pryor and Bighorn Mountains, Casey said daily life taught him about common sense and work ethic.
This way of life also led to his music and poetry. Without electricity, TV or radio, his family found ways to entertain themselves.
“My mom taught me my first three chords when I was 5 years old,” Casey said about learning to play the guitar. She once belonged to a musical group with her sisters, he said, and his father penned poems and songs.
On his next CD, Casey is reciting one of his father’s poems, called “Old Jake,” and setting it to music.
One could say his father inspired the first three lines of poetry that Casey ever wrote. After horsing around with his brothers till 4 a.m. when he was 14 years old, his father woke them at 5 a.m., and said if they could stay up all night, they could work all day. The boys spent the day moving railroad ties. Before finally turning in for the night, Casey wrote, “My back is sore, my eyes are red. I think it’s time I went to bed.”
Since then, Casey has written more than 2,000 songs and poems. He writes daily whenever an idea hits him.
Much of Casey’s inspiration comes from nature and the things he sees around him.
“America is a great place and if you open your eyes and look, you can write about it,” he said.
He described being at a school residency in Alaska recently where he observed a porcupine in a raspberry patch – a sight he’d never seen before – and two nearby ravens “complaining” and trying to get the porcupine to leave. The incident became material for one of several new poems and songs he wrote while in Alaska.
Casey finds something noteworthy in any landscape, but the Dryhead area where he grew up is a special place to him.
“That country inspires me more than any other country I’ve been in,” Casey said. “That’s what I love and I write a lot about that country.”
Casey frequently performs onstage and likes to see how his songs connect with the audience.
“When what I do from my heart touches somebody, that means everything to me,” he said.
MAAC will host a community reception for Casey Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Madison Public Library as part of the Chautauqua Series.
MAAC meetings are held the first Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. at the Madison Public Library. The public is invited to attend. Visit the MAAC Web site at www.madisonareaartscouncil.org for more community art news and events.
