Spearfish Canyon

Song story & origins

Introduction

Spearfish Canyon is an instrumental I composed around 2005. It first appeared that year on Before the Great Divide, then came back—twice—on the 2015 remasters (paired with Circuitous and also collected on the all-instrumental album The Road Behind). I recorded it from my Dancin’ Moon studio in Spearfish, right on the banks of Spearfish Creek—which feels exactly right for a piece that’s meant to sound like water and stone in conversation.

Where the piece came from

When this music took shape, we were living in Canyon, Texas—a very dry, high-plains place that we loved in its own way—while working in the mountains of New Mexico. Canyon sits next to Palo Duro Canyon (they put on a big musical there every year); it’s beautiful country, but we were hoping to get back to Spearfish, the place we’d always wanted to be. Thinking about Spearfish Canyon brought back our family hikes—the girls in backpack, our dogs trotting ahead—and that’s the mood I wrote toward. The piece became a kind of homesong: composed at a distance, aimed at the canyon we missed.

Fast-forward to January 2020: Spearfish was named a finalist for the Small Business Revolution community program (a potential $500,000 boost for local businesses). I spent that week highlighting songs that celebrate our town and region, and this track naturally belonged in that little cycle—one more way of saying what home sounds like to us.

Music and arrangement

The foundation is finger-picked guitar—a simple, steady chord progression that feels like walking a familiar trail. Wanting the whole project to feel like a family album, I laid down the guitar and then asked Sheryl (who taught piano for many years and is a wonderful keyboardist) to see what she might add. What she gave back went way beyond “embellishment.” Those piano runs—cascading upward and then spilling back down—became my favorite thing in the track. If you know the canyon, you’ll hear what I heard: Bridal Veil Falls, Spearfish Falls, Roughlock Falls, plus the smaller, seasonal falls that appear after wet weather. Her part sounds like falling water.

A wooden flute completes the landscape. Work often took us to Santa Fe, where I fell in love with Indigenous flute music and eventually bought a flute of my own. On this piece, a touch of reverb lets the flute speak like canyon air—an echo across wide open spaces—answering the guitar and riding those piano cascades. In the end the arrangement is just three voices—guitar, piano, flute—braided like water, stone, and sky.

Why it stays with me

Because it carries a season of longing and return. We wrote it while looking back toward a place we loved; now we live in the canyon we were writing toward. Every time those piano falls meet that flute echo, I’m there again—feet on the path, creek beside me, and the sound of home filling the air.

Source: New Music Memoir (1).docx