In the very first episode of River Town, we’re exploring how the Missouri River of today inspires artists -- from folk musicians, to watercolor painters with a penchant for pretzel paddle boating, to writers recounting their childhood “flood monster” memories. We want to know . . . no shame for this pun . . . How does the Missouri River help artists find their flow?
To see Michael Bauermeister’s work, go to www.michaelbauermeister.com
This project is a collaboration between KBIA, The Columbia Missourian, The Mississippi Basin Ag and Water Desk, The New Territory Magazine, and PRX. Music for River Town comes from Gloria Attoun. And from the Album Audionautix: Acoustic by Jason Shaw, via the Free Music Archive. Creative Commons 3.0 United States License.
Transcript:
[River water Sounds]
Tina Casagrand Foss: Hear that? That’s one of my favorite sounds on earth…the sound of the Missouri River. It’s what we’re here to talk about today -- and for the next four episodes of this podcast.
[Theme Song, guitar music plays]
Tina Casagrand Foss: River Town is a magical Disneyland log ride down the Missouri River. Along the way, we’ll get to see how this mighty waterway shapes the people and places it flows through.
I’m Tina Casagrand Foss… I’m the founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of The New Territory magazine. And I’ve spent my whole life near the Missouri River and the rivers that feed it. That’s great, because I love bird-watching, and I love rock formations, and I really love cleaning up trash with other people who love these sorts of things. Right now I can walk about a mile from my house in Jefferson City and see the Missouri River flow. I love how it makes me feel connected to good friends from St. Louis, all the way on up to Omaha. It gives me something to talk about with anyone from around there. And I’ve loved working on this show, and seeing the river through the fresh eyes of students at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. They are the newbies to town, and their perspective has taught me so much.
The Missouri River is the longest river in North America. It was the way that Lewis & Clark explored the Louisiana Territory. In the place where I live, it fed and transported the Osage Nation for thousands of years -- until their lands were reduced to the current Osage Reservation in Northern Oklahoma. The Missouri River holds history. Today, this river shapes where we drive, supplies the water we drink, and acts like a superhighway for many animal species. Despite all that, there are thousands of people who drive over The Missouri River every day, but don’t really know where it flows, how to get to it, or what it can offer. That’s what we’re here to learn.
Brett Dufur: It will always feed you. It will always feed you something. And you don’t always know what that’s going to be until you get there.
Ava: What’s your favorite thing about the Missouri River?
Student: My favorite about the Missouri River is…. cruising on the water!
Chris Kennedy: I can remember when you can set the river on fire … when you it was nothing to see raw sewage, constantly going down the river.
Mary Cullen: It's much easier to protect our water than to try to restore something that's been degraded.
Sheryl: Water has memory. So when we put the prayers in the water, you know, it joins with the ancestors and those yet to come.
Margot Vossenkemper: One thing about living in a river town, it gets in your blood.
Tina Casagrand Foss: From KBIA and The New Territory with PRX, this is River Town. Episode One: Flood Monster, Music and A Pretzel Boat.
[Theme Song]
Tina Casagrand Foss: The Missouri River has long been an artistic muse. Painters such as George Caleb Bingham have captured its history as an aquatic highway. Folk songs as old as they come draw inspiration from its size …
[Music: Oh Shenandoah, Across the wide Missouri]
And its rugged beauty and deep bends have been captured in photography and videography for decades.
In this episode of River Town, we’re exploring how the Missouri River of today inspires artists -- from folk musicians, to watercolor painters with a penchant for paddle boating. I want to know . . . no shame for this pun . . . How does the Missouri River help artists find their flow?
____
Gloria Attoun: Alright, let’s go. It’s such a pretty day, we really lucked out with this weather and being able to be outside in the afternoon with the sun shining on us. This beautiful bottom lands.
Tina Casagrand Foss: Meet Gloria Attoun. She and her husband Michael Bauermeister are both artists. She makes multimedia pieces, and he creates sculptural woodwork. They both write and perform folk music. They live in the beautiful bottomlands of Nona, Missouri. Nona is a historic settlement in St. Charles County, about a mile upstream of Augusta. Nona is so small, it doesn’t even show up on Google Maps. But it’s there, if you know where to look for it.
Gloria Attoun: So, if we walk down this farm road, we will get to the Katy Trail.
Tina Casagrand Foss: Gloria is walking toward just about the only piece of Nona history still standing…
Gloria Attoun: And then if we go right, we’ll see that old grain elevator and right past that is the old Nona General Store Building. And that’s where we used to live and where my husband has a studio right now.
Tina Casagrand Foss: The General Store Building is a bright blue two-story building with a big green awning. In 1987, when Gloria and Michael first saw it, they were struck by the building’s rural charm and bucolic setting… right next door to the Missouri River.
Gloria Attoun: We came across this place, and he thought, ‘This would be a great place for a woodshop.’ And, you know, we could live upstairs. So, Michael knocked on the door, and this woman answered. Her name was Virginia. And he said, ‘We would like to buy this building.’ She said, ‘Well, I would like to sell it because I just lost my husband, and it is really too much for me.’ So, we – she let us in, we looked around. It had all the original old wallpaper. And we fixed it all up and we moved in. And just shortly after that, the Katy Trail actually started happening. And we were really, really happy to be here – and to be part of that history of the Katy Trail, too.
Tina Casagrand Foss: The Katy Trail is a 240-mile bike and recreation path that follows the Missouri River across half of the state. Nona’s General Store building sits right on the path, which opened in 1990. For years, Gloria, Michael and their children lived upstairs and Michael had a woodworking studio and shop downstairs. Both artists found that living so close to the Missouri River had an impact on their artwork.
Gloria Attoun: I find that the river is a great place to go to be inspired. So, I have art pieces that are inspired by the, you know, the physical beauty of the river.
[music]
But also, there’s something about the sound, the peaceful ambience of being there in nature and with the river flowing, that is really inspiring in terms of me as a songwriter or as a person who likes to write words.
So, there’s just something about that. That sound and that beauty that will put me in a good state for creating things.
[music fades]
Gloria Attoun: Hi Hun [Hello!] Here’s Michael Bauermeister, he just got off the Katy Trail.
Bauermeister: I lost track of time.
Attoun: you wanna let us in your shop?
Bauermeister: Absolutely
Tina Casagrand Foss: Micheal Bauermeister, Gloria’s husband, plays and writes music with Gloria. But his shop is for his woodworking --
Michael Bauermeister: Here’s a piece that I’m in process on. This is – we’re looking at it upside down. But anyway, it’s a big carved panel that’s going to look like the surface of water when I get done with it…
Tina Casagrand Foss: We’ll put a link to his portfolio in the show notes. You’ll see: some of his sculptures are wall hangings so delicate they appear to be paintings. He carves gentle undulations in the wood and adds lacquers and stains of pale blues and greens. It looks just like light glinting off a flowing river and water trickling out between pebbles.
Michael Bauermeister: It’ll get a lot more color on there and some clear lacquer over that. But it’s all been carved with gouges by hand and kind of looks like little waves and big waves.
And then I’m gluing some wood together for some other projects I’m working on…
I think it’s pretty much all inspired by nature, which tends to be organic. And also, a reaction to the years I spent making cabinets and furniture where it was all straight lines and right angles. I’m just happy to not have to do that anymore.
Tina Casagrand Foss: Today, Michael’s woodshop is neat and smells warm and woodsy. It’s full of rounded wooden vases and bowls. They’re carved with seemingly NO right angles… echoing the fluid shapes carved by the water and wind right outside his shop’s window.
From this very shop, Michael and Gloria have seen firsthand how water has the power to not only create, but also to destroy.
In 1993, the Missouri River flooded 100,000 homes, including the old Nona General Store. We can’t talk about the Missouri River without talking about this flood. It’s the kind of event people still talk about in terms of “before” and “after.” You can put numbers on the flood, like how it caused around $15 billion dollars in damage or kept cities or towns underwater for up to 200 days in some parts of the Mississippi. But it’s the way people talk about the Great Flood that really gets me. I hear reverence and awe and exhaustion.
Michael’s studio on the first level was completely underwater for 100 days. Gloria says the family got closer to the community during the flood’s slow unfolding:
Gloria Attoun: It doesn’t just come, you know, flooding in like a flash flood would. It kind of comes in – so you have a lot of warning. And there are a lot of people – the volunteer firefighters and a lot of people – the Levee District, all those people know when it’s time to get out of the house. So, we were really lucky that it was in that situation so that we can – we can really prepare, pack everything up, move everything up to the second floor so it wouldn’t get destroyed. And we had lots of help.
Christina Holzhauser: It was just wild. Like to have nature inside your home just seems so disorienting.
Tina Casagrand Foss: Christina Holzhauser was only 13 years old when the flood came to her small town of Portland, Missouri.
Christina Holzhauser: Floodwater? that smell is very distinctive to me… I can like smell anywhere and be like “it's flooded here recently….” It's almost like decomposition, but sweeter. And also sour at the same time. It's like a sour-sweetness.
Tina Casagrand Foss: Today, Christina’s creative nonfiction writing centers around her identity and growing up in her small town. She remembers scenes from the flood in vivid detail. Like seeing her neighbors drive boats to work. Or begging her parents to let her swim with the neighborhood kids in a big pond of dirty flood water.
Christina Holzhauser: And it was so muddy that when I came out there was just like a layer of like silt on my body. It was disgusting. And then I smelled like flood like I became a flood, flood monster… Maybe I learned my mortality then or I learned to be a little bit more afraid of natural disasters.
The river is part of us, but it also controls us. I feel like river people really respect the river. And they're also they know to be afraid of it, because it can totally change your landscape. I mean it's just a real reminder that things can change really quickly and things you know are familiar can just vanish.
Tina Casagrand Foss: That flood feeling -- of missing something you didn’t know could be gone so quickly, stuck with Gloria, too. She’s used it as inspiration in her songwriting, like for one tune called “When the Water Goes Down”
[Song: When the Water Goes Down]
I’m sitting on the porch watching that river rise.
Its creepin all around me right before my very eyes.
The river’s got the corn, it’s par for the track, now I wonder if I’ll get my baby back.
And I’ll see you when the water goes down.
Gloria Attoun: It is kind of a lighthearted sound and, I mean, it has a happy sound to it. And it’s kind of an old, bluesy melody. But it is about what happens when there’s a flood that goes on and on. And then the river, the bridge is closed, and the roads are closed so people are separated.
All my friends they’ve come to see
If the river’s got the best of me
[music fades into a new song]
Gloria Attoun: And then there’s another song called “Getting it Back” which is a sadder song
The river used to own it all and these days it’s getting it back.
Gloria Attoun: because it is really about the tragedy of what happens to a home and everything when there is a flood.
[music]
I’ve watched it break a levee, work a house until it’s gone, taking what it can and spittin’ out the bones…
Well you can’t blame the river for these ravaged sandy fields
You can’t blame its mightiness for the helplessness I feel
From the roads along the hills, to the endless freight line tracks??
The river used to own it all and these days it’s getting it back.
[music fades]
Tina Casagrand Foss: In Kansas City, Missouri, most artistic happenings take place on land. But if you head down to the river at sunset on a nice day, you might be lucky enough to catch the Kansas City Lady.
[Sounds of Kansas City lady pontoon boat on the water]
Tina Casagrand Foss: Former Navy corpsman Roger MacBride is captain of this pontoon boat. Today, he’s listening to WWOZ and bringing along River Town reporters Olivia Mizelle and Ailing Li
Roger MacBride: Ladies, welcome aboard the Kansas City Lady, welcome to the Missouri River.
Olivia Mizelle and Ailing Li: Thank you!
Olivia Mizelle: What excites you about the river? What keeps you coming out here?
Roger MacBride: Look around! Why would you spend hours driving to Lake of the Ozarks to be surrounded by too many people when you wanna relax, you know… Look at this. Who all do you see out there? How many boats do you see out there? Zero. And is it just not beautiful?
Tina Casagrand Foss: If the secret of the Missouri river’s beauty got out… that wouldn’t really bother Roger. In fact, he’d welcome a bigger crowd out there. He’s on a mission to introduce people to the river.
Roger MacBride: Last night, I took out some folks that lived here their entire lives. Out of eight people, one person had been on the river once before, 20 years ago. No one else! their entire lives! We do this every day that it’s not raining or it’s not sweltering hot. We’ve been doing it for a minute. It’s one of the hidden jewels…
Tina Casagrand Foss: Roger’s rides usually go from Riverfront Park out to Kaw Point and back. He does it all for free. When he’s not out on the water, Roger is a sculptor and artist. His favorite trips are with other artists and musicians. People like him… who might be inspired by their introduction to the river.
Roger MacBride: Everything I do is community based. I want it to be free so everybody can be included. Back in the day, there was a lot of us crazy artists where you get huge buildings for next to nothing. Buildings that – we could rent 10,000 square feet for 800 bucks a month. You know, we could afford to be big sculptors and make big stuff because it was totally affordable.
Tina Casagrand Foss: He’s a founding member of the Crossroads Arts District, a stretch of studio spaces, galleries and small businesses just south of downtown KC. He loves to use found materials like old windows and doors, tires, and building materials -- and recycle them into sculptures. Maybe the best example of his work is his own property -- a sprawling collection of wooden buildings on a shady, tree-lined lot. One building, called the Raj Ma Hall, is like a grounded version of the Kansas City Lady.
Roger MacBride: And the Raj Mahal, as it’s known, is a classical dumpy place. You know, artists are welcome…During COVID, we opened up the COVID Concert Series where I built little private balcony boxes throughout my backyard. And then we did outdoor concerts. There weren’t that many places where you could see music at all. And we all worked together, all these artists. We gave the money all to the musicians that weren’t getting to do any music. And we were all going mad, missin’ seeing our favorite bands. And then so, then from that kind of grew out, we started doing music on this boat. Like we'd actually have like Calvin Arsineo and Kadesh Flow. Terry Quinn, you know, they all performed on this boat where we're going up to Kaw Point we would do outside free music from the boat, which was pretty wild. Yeah. And so we're gonna get some fun things lined up.
Tina Casagrand Foss: There’s another Kansas City-based artist who might enjoy the shenanigans Roger has up his sleeve… his name is Steve Snell. And Steve’s story of incorporating the river into his art is a long and winding tale. See, he’s always loved adventure. One day, while living in Nebraska City, Steve went for a run down by the Missouri riverbank.
Steve Snell: And I saw a kayak all loaded up with gear down by the boat ramp and I saw a man packing his stuff, he was getting ready to head off, and I just asked him – Where are you heading?’ And he just said, ‘The Gulf.’ And I’m like, ‘Of Mexico?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah!’ And I said, ‘I didn’t realize people did that.’ And he said, ‘Sure, you know, it’s like backpacking but you can carry three times as much gear.’ I love hiking, myself, I like the idea of being able to carry three times as much stuff in a canoe and camping out so I think that, in many ways, sparked for me the initial interest of like, ‘Wow I want to do something like that one day.’
Tina Casagrand Foss: This stranger introduced Steve to a Facebook group of Missouri River paddlers. The group helped him figure out how to do a long-haul journey down the river. His first try was in a cardboard replica of Lewis and Clark’s keelboat. That had its, um, challenges.
So he switched to a kayak… and started scheming about how to do a trip more like the one that stranger had told him about.
Steve Snell: It’d always seemed to me like float trips, whether it’s on the creek in my neighborhood growing up or on a big river, they never felt long enough. So, the idea of going on the longest river in North America, I felt like would maybe, hopefully fulfill that sense that it was long enough. Ironically, I could keep going, I don’t think it was long enough still.
Tina Casagrand Foss: Steve recently completed a float trip for a project he calls Adventure Art on the Mighty Mo’. He paddled from where the Missouri River starts in Montana to where it meets the Mississippi in St. Louis… that’s over 2,300 miles in total. It took him almost three months! Along the way, he filmed his journey and stopped to make watercolor paintings as the landscape changed. He’s exhibited the paintings and is releasing video episodes weekly.
Steve Snell: I don’t necessarily separate what I like to do with my life from what I like to do in the studio, and I find that the river in particular is a way for me to bring both of those elements together in a way that I just genuinely enjoy.
Tina Casagrand Foss: When Steve set off for Adventure Art on the Mighty Mo’, he had big plans for exactly where he’d stop and exactly what he’d paint.
Steve Snell: So, in like, the upper Missouri breaks, for example, there were a lot of paintings of the rock formations by Karl Bodmer, who was a Swiss artist that went upriver in the 1830s and so that was a key spot that I really wanted to paint myself. Unfortunately, when I went through that area, the weather was pretty extreme and I was hardly able to stay in my boat, so I didn’t really get to paint some of those places that I thought I would be able to. Most of the places I ended up painting were based off the pragmatic needs of, ‘This is where I happened to stop for the day, and so here’s where my camp is, and the river’s right here so I’m not going to overthink it, I’m just going to paint.’
Tina Casagrand Foss: Steve’s Adventure Art on the Mighty Mo’ is a lot like Bob Ross meets Survivor. Steve made hundreds of watercolor paintings -- most of them with actual Missouri river water. They capture the serene, still beauty of the river. Some of them show gorgeous big bluffs, others just water, sky, and gentle banks.
But Steve also took tons of video footage… he documented basically everyday he was on the river. He’s been editing the video down into episodes with narratives about his trip.
Steve Snell: previously on the Mighty Mo I depart then Missouri River Headwaters on June 2nd in search of Adventure and art. Morale remains high, despite my fear of a nearby fugitive. I meet a puppy that will later be named Steve and become wind bound on Upper Lake Houser. I make it to the gates of the mountains Wilderness and take the time to paint.
Tina Casagrand Foss: And while he’s still got lots more video to work through, Steve’s already planning his next big float trip, which brings a new twist to paddling.
Steve Snell: What I want to do is build a pretzel-shaped boat. And I want to float it from Kansas City to St. Louis. And rather than it being a solo adventure, just by myself, I want to put together a whole rendezvous of folks to join me in celebrating the Missouri River through this spectacle of a group float on a giant pretzel across the state.
Kiana Fernandes: Why a pretzel?
Steve Snell: Well, I love snacks. That’s why a pretzel….To see a giant pretzel float by your riverfront would garner some attention that I could then translate into attention for the river and appreciation for it. And I’m just thinking, like, who would hate to see a pretzel float across the river?
[Music]
Tina Casagrand Foss: Whether by pretzel boat or a more traditional method, I hope you get a chance to visit the Missouri River soon. You never know. Maybe it’ll inspire your painting, or a poem, or a song… and if you start finding yourself dreaming of the river and smelling something sweet and sour… well, you might even be turning into a flood monster. We could all be so lucky.
[music]
That’s this edition of River Town. Next time…
CLIP: If your boat should capsize, remember to be calm. Relax.
Tina Casagrand Foss: We’ll learn a little bit about what people do for fun along the Mighty Missouri. And keep our life jackets on, of course! Don’t miss it.
[Music]
Check out our website at columbiamissourian.com/rivertown. And see more Missouri River stories from River Town and beyond at newterritorymag.com/rivertown.
River Town was reported by Tadeo Ruiz, Ailing Li, Ellie Lin, Kaylin Hellyer, Olivia Mizelle, Kiana Ferandes and Abby Lee. Abigail Keel is our producer and editor. Jessica Vaughn Martin is our project manager. Music for River Town comes from The Burney Sisters and from Jason Shaw.
Our audience teams and our photo teams are led by Professor Kara Edgerson and Professor Brian Kratzer at the Missouri News Network. Special thanks to the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk.
River Town is a collaborative project from KBIA, the Missouri School of Journalism’s Missouri News Network, and The New Territory magazine.
Executive producers of River Town are Janet Saidi, and me, Tina Casagrand Foss, in partnership with PRX.
