Arkansas is a natural for a new Sufjan Stevens album
BY JACK W. HILL

If Sufjan Stevens writes an album about Arkansas, will he sing about cotton?

Fans of the newly nonextinct ivory-billed woodpecker were no doubt pleased to hear and read of the new Sufjan Stevens song, “The Lord God Bird,” recently commissioned by National Public Radio, which then aired it and made it available on the Web site, www.npr.org (where it can still be heard).

And those of us who had begun noticing Stevens’ work through his new CD, Illinois the second in his series of CDs about the 50 states, were tingling with excitement over thoughts that our state might be the third such immortalized state, the first one having been Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State, which happens to be Stevens’ home state. Of that album’s 15 songs, about half seem to deal with geographical locations: Flint, Ypsilanti, the upper peninsula, Tahquamenon Falls, Holland, Detroit, Sault Sainte Marie, Muskegon.

With Illinois, Stevens ups the ante to 22 songs, many of which have very long names, in the process namechecking the towns Highland, Jacksonville, Decatur, Chicago, Bushnell and Metropolis.

We understand that Stevens will be out for some time promoting and performing the songs from the Land of Lincoln, but Arkie music fans still want to offer him our help in compiling a list of suggested song topics devoted to the Natural State, as our license plates now read. There’s a pretty fair chance he may think we’re a state full of nudists, thanks to that name, so we might as well expect a song, maybe with a colorful name like “Not Really All That Naked, After All.”

We have our own town of Jacksonville, so he could always do a “sequel” devoted to what he observes there, on what would surely be a fact-finding mission, even if he has been here before. There are the obvious topics, such as President Clinton, the Razorbacks, the Little Rock Central High School crisis of 1957, and some of our state’s musical innovators, like Johnny Cash, Levon Helm, Al Green, Glen Campbell and Louis Jordan. There are others he might want to check into: Ronnie Hawkins, Billy Lee Riley, Sonny Burgess and Sleepy LaBeef.

He could surely hear some tales about the White Water - Tavern, that is, rather than the land deal, although he still might want to take a look-see at the White River and that neighborhood, maybe angle for a trout or two, should he be so inclined. John Prine likes to do that, and he has written some great songs in his day, even if they’re more about states of mind, not states.

A trip to Fort Smith could inspire a song about Hanging Judge Parker, possibly, and surely the Fouke Monster would command some of his attention span. He might shy away from the congested Northwest Arkansas corridor, but then again, he might want to write about the world of the Waltons, Tysons, Hunts and so on. Maybe a visit to the other side of the state would suggest a song about cotton, rice or soybeans, and he might hear tales of those walking catfish. I still have a T-shirt depicting such an unusual activity if he needs a visual clue.

Hot Springs and Eureka Springs could inspire a songwriter with their natural beauty although he might be more excited about the Arkansas Oil and Brine Museum in Smackover - wait, it’s now called the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources, isn’t it? De Queen could be the sort of town name that would cause a detour, as might Marked Tree and Fordyce. He might want to see the place where two of the Rolling Stones spent more time than they probably intended to in the 1970s.

Arkansas City - there’s a unique name for a town in this state - might be worth Stevens’ attention, and a song about a historic flood could be just the dramatic thing he’d love to do, although he might be more interested in the state’s mass murderer of yore, R. Gene Simmons of Dover. After all, he did write one about Illinois’ even more noted man of death, John Wayne Gacy Jr., in a song of the same name.

Of course, most singer-songwriters have their own ideas about what they’re seeking, so please, Mr. Stevens, just come on down for a look-see. Call if you get a chance. Come for the woodpecker, stay for the barbecue. Maybe I should hasten to add, I mean beef, pork, ham, turkey and chicken. Not woodpecker.

This article was published on page 62 of the Sunday, July 24, 2005 edition in the Style section.