The Prairie Landscape

People Involved: Folksongs of Illinois

Clark "Bucky" Halker, a Senior Program Officer at the Illinois Humanites Council, serves as the producer for the Folksongs of Illinois CD series and co-scholar for volumes 1 and 3. Halker received a Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Minnesota in 1984. He lectures and writes extensively on in the history of working-class protest music and American popular music, including For Democracy, Workers and God: Labor Song-Poems and Labor Protest (1991). Raised in Ashland, Wisconsin, Halker began performing in bands as a teenager. He remains an active performer, songwriter, and touring artist with more than a dozen recordings to his credit. His latest recording, Wisconsin 2.13.63, volume 1, is a collection of original songs released in 2007. Halker is on the roster of the Illinois Arts Council Artstour program.

Paul L. Tyler, the scholar for Folksongs of Illinois, volume 2 and a consultant for the project, holds a Ph.D. in Folklore-American Studies (1992) from Indiana University. Both a scholar and a fiddler, Tyler has taught at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago since 1990 and at National-Louis University since 1999. He specializes in courses on fiddle, mandolin, early country music and old time music. Tyler also conducted extensive fieldwork in Illinois and Indiana. He served as Program Director at the David Adler Cultural Center and as Curator for Collections and Exhibitions at the Old Town School.

Nicole Saylor began work on the Folksongs of Illinois as a researcher and later served as co-scholar for volumes 1 and 3. A native of Essex, Iowa, Saylor is a folklorist and digital librarian based in Iowa, where she currently coordinates digital collections for University of Iowa Libraries. She is also an affiliated folklorist at the Center for the Study of Upper Midwest Cultures at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she earned an M.A. with a concentration in archival administration from the School of Library and Information Studies and a Certificate in Folklore. Formerly a newspaper editor at the Kansas City Star and Wisconsin State Journal, she has also served as a field researcher and writer for several publications and websites.

Steve Rashid and Steve Yates served as the recording engineers for the Folksongs of Illinois CD series. Rashid holds an MFA in Music Composition from Northwestern University and has been the owner of Woodside Avenue Music, Evanston, Illinois, since 1991. He has engineered and produced more than 100 recordings and is a two-time Jeff Award winner. Yates has owned his own studio since 1984 in Morton Grove, Illinois. During that time he has also engineered and produced more than 100 recordings, including many of Chicago's most well known jazz artists.

The Folksongs of Illinois CD series was mastered at Colossal Mastering in Chicago by Dan Stout. Heather McAdams contributed the illustrations and lettering for the CD cover and booklet. Tom Greensfelder and Evan Sult did the graphic design. Charles Lee Mudd, Jr. served as legal representative throughout the series.

To order CDs, contact the University of Illinois Press (800) 621-2736 or (217) 244-4703 or visit their website.