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Going with the Flow. Music and Song on Augusta Canal
Enjoy a musical journey through time along the Augusta Canal with a collection of original music.
As part of Augusta, Georgia’s 2008 Westobou Arts Festival, area musicians with wide-ranging styles were challenged to create a song on an Augusta Canal theme. The tunes take you from the Canal’s early days and Civil War legacy, through hard times at the textile mills, up to today’s pleasurable rediscovery of the canal for rest and relaxation. The music styles run the gamut from traditional folk and bluegrass to pop, indie and smooth jazz.
1. Float on Down - Tara Scheyre (2:48) 
2. Arthur and Maude - The Wynns (4:06)
3. Colonel Rains' Recipe -The Wynns (2:23) written by Julie Boone
4. Hawk’s Gully - Eryn Eubanks (3:20)
5. Little Georgia Town - The Wynns (3:03) written by Julie Boone
6. Mill Worker Blues - The Wynns (2:08)
7. Lament for Patrick Walsh -Lillie Morris (4:26)
8. Westobou - Galen Kipar (3:17)
9. Along the Canal - Fred Williams (3:45)
10. Harrisburg Hornpipe - Henry Wynn, II I(1:34)
This project was funded in part by grants from the Porter Fleming Foundation and the Georgia Tourism Foundation/Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Copyright © 2009 Augusta Canal Authority
About the Music
The Augusta Canal has inspired many people. From Henry Cumming who encouraged Augusta’s citizens to build it in the 1840s, to the entrepreneurs and engineers who worked to construct the factories along its banks; from the farm hands who flocked to the cotton mills seeking better life for their families, to today’s families seeking recreation on and beside the canal’s flowing waters. Today the Canal also inspires creativity; witness this collection of lively original melodies.
In 2008, as part of the first Westobou Arts Festival, the Augusta Canal National Heritage Area challenged musicians to create new music inspired by the Augusta Canal’s rich history and scenery. Ten tunes are the result.
Several songs take their inspiration from the pages of the history books. In “Float on Down,” Tara Scheyre looks at the canal’s early days brining cotton from the Piedmont to the city. The Wynn Family (Henry, Cheryl and Henry II) tell the true story of a notorious murder at Sibley Mill in “Arthur and Maude” and remind us of the hard life of a factory hand in “Mill Worker Blues.” In two songs written by Augusta Canal tour boat guide Julie Boone, the Wynns share “Colonel Rain’s Recipe” for Confederate gunpowder and take a look at how the canal made this “Little Georgia Town.” The pulse and power of the canal can be heard in Eryn Eubank’s instrumental “Hawk’s Gulley” and Henry Wynn, III’s “Harrisburg Hornpipe.” Lillie Morris ads a Celtic note with “Lament for Patrick Walsh,” and Fred Williams and Galen Kipar share their modern day appreciations of the canal and its waters with “Along the Canal” and “Westobou.”
Thanks go first to all the talented musicians who contributed to this project. Thanks also to the Porter Fleming Foundation and the Georgia Tourism Foundation for providing funding and to the Westobou Festival and its staff for providing the platform upon which to build this idea. And a special thanks to Howard Lovett of Studio South for his supreme technical skill and utmost patience during recording process.
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