Houseboating on the Ozarks Song List

– All songs by Gary Forrester

1. Koori Man (dobro mix) click for complete song (2.43 MB)
2. Back in Illinois click for song excerpt (525 KB)
3. JFK click for song excerpt (705 KB)
4. Hanna Cried click for song excerpt (614 KB)
5. Kamara (live)
6. Alma Rose click for complete song (2.11 MB)
7. Singin’ in the Family Circle
8. Dust on the Bible
9. Jesus is a Travellin’ Man
10. Grampa Grundy
11. T.V. Preacher
12. Uluru
13. One Hundred Miles an Hour to the Throne
14. Talking in Tongues (sermon mix)
15. Elva
16. Mekong
17. Josephine
18. Seventh Heaven
19. Take Me Home
20. Matthew Chapter Three
21. King O’Malley
22. Come Home, Angeline
23. Walkin’ at Midnight

The songs on this album accompany the novel, Houseboating in the Ozarks, authored by Gary Forrester and published in 2006 by Dufour Editions, Inc., of Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. Each of the songs was penned by Gary Forrester, and recorded with his Australian bluegrass band, the Rank Strangers.

In the Random House publication Australian Country Music, the history of the Rank Strangers was summarized as follows:

By the time the Rank Strangers were formed in the late 1980s, bluegrass had become an international music tradition. The Rank Strangers already knew this fact, but it wasn’t really rammed home until their first album was narrowly beaten in an international bluegrass “album of the year” competition in Nashville by a group from Czechoslovakia; in third and fourth places were bands from France and Italy.

The Rank Strangers produced three award-winning record albums in the 1980s and 1990s – Dust on the Bible, Uluru, and Kamara. The most striking aspect of the albums, apart from their frequency, was the exceptionally high standard of songwriting. The songs presented here convey a musical immediacy that typifies the best of bluegrass, and recalls such founders as the Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe.

In 1989, the band toured the United States with the high point being an appearance at the International Bluegrass Music Association Fan Fest in Owensboro, Kentucky, where they played alongside bluegrass greats including Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas, Ralph Stanley, Peter Rowan, Emmylou Harris, and Bill Monroe. Enthusiastic reviews for their music have come from all over the world – including England, the United States, Germany, and Australia.

Fueled by many of the songs presented here, the novel, Houseboating in the Ozarks, is a shuffling odyssey through the heart of the American Midwest - a mini-van road trip to the Ozarks by Christian Leonard Hooker and his two youngest kids. During the travels, Hooker confronts his past, imagines his future, and redefines his love for his children. Or does he imagine his past, confront his future, and perplex his children? In a circular nine-day journey, Hooker stumbles through the disjointed epic of his life, looking in vain for signposts in broken memories of Australia, Italy, the Caribbean, and the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation.

But sometimes it takes a crooked path to guide you home. As it was for T .S. Eliot’s Little Gidding, so it is with Christian Leonard Hooker: the end of his exploring is to arrive where he started, and to know the place for the first time. Along the way, Christian Leonard Hooker, Everyman, is redeemed by his weaknesses, enlightened by his failures.