The voice of experience

Published 6:00 pm Wednesday, May 18, 2005

After 40 years traveling the country with little more than a guitar and a low-slung hat, recording two dozen records, performing with Pete Seeger, and a Grammy nomination for best folk album, Rosalie Sorrels has earned her status as a folk legend.

Yet, she says she’s only written one folk song.

“It’s called ‘I’m Gonna Tell on You,’ and it’s about my kids arguing and carrying on when I was trying to paint the house,” Sorrels said. “People sing it to their children all over the country and write verses to that song all the time. But they don’t know that I wrote it, which is the first test of a folk song.”

For Sorrels, who performs Saturday at Island Center Hall, folk songs are ever-changing and owned by no one.

“Folk songs belong to the people,” the Idaho native said. “People often don’t know who wrote them, but they strike you close to the heart. They’re made by people that need them, who are homesick or working hard. They’re made by coal miners or cowboys or by types most people would probably be upset to have sitting in their living room.”

Sorrels prefers to be called a storyteller, bringing old, faded voices to life in song or digging deep in herself “to express something heartfelt,” she said.

Unlike many of the musicians lodged around her in the folk music bin, Sorrels sings of struggle and hard times as only an insider can.

She’s overcome enough in her 72 years to fill a dozen lifetimes, enduring rape in her teens, a hotel room abortion at 16, giving a child up for adoption, physical abuse, divorce, poverty, an aneurysm, a mastectomy, chemotherapy and the suicide of a son.

Brassy and textured, her voice testifies to these experiences and the strength it took to overcome them.

“I write songs when I need them, to help get along with life,” she said.

Sorrels got her start as a performer at age 33. Freshly divorced and with five kids in tow, she took to the stage to make ends meet.

Her early years traveling the 1960s folk music circuit was immortalized by Nanci Griffith in a song about a “salt of the earth” single mom “with a voice like wine, cruisin’ along in that Ford Econoline.”

Studs Terkel, Hunter S. Thompson and Beat poet Robert Creely were also impressed enough with the nomadic songstress to have put her life into print.

Terkel wrote, “Rosalie Sorrels sings songs the way you’ve always hoped they’d be sung – deeply felt, effortlessly and altogether lovely.”

Her first record, a collection of Utah and Idaho folk songs, was pressed in 1961. Besides numerous albums of original work, Sorrels has recorded old Mormon pioneer songs, labor union anthems, children’s stories and cowboy tunes.

Her 1996 collaboration with Utah Phillips, “The Long Memory,” won an Indie Award for best folk album while her 1999 article “Remembering Boise” won the best magazine writing prize from the Idaho Press Club.

Her most recent honor came last year when her album “My Last Go Round” was nominated for a Grammy.

“It was a big surprise,” she said. “I sure wasn’t expecting that.”

Sorrels, who lives in the Idaho cabin her father built, flew down to Los Angeles for the ceremony. The stage veteran was quite taken when James Brown slid into the spotlight during his Grammy performance.

“He was fabulous,” she said. “We’re about the same age and seeing him move around like he always has with all his energy was amazing. Sometimes I want to retire from the road, but after seeing him, I’m not complaining.”

The park district presents Rosalie Sorrels Saturday at Island Center Hall, starting at 7:30 p.m. Advance tickets at Glass Onion are $12 or $15 at the door. For more information, call 842-2306.