About the album
These are songs telling the history of the Records family — the name, the journey west from Minnesota to the Walla Walla Valley in 1901, the land at Umapine, and the people who worked it.
The songs were written by Jeff Records, with help from many in the family who have documented our story over the years — drawing on the writings of Ken Records, ca. 1992, among others.
The full album is planned as sixteen songs across four movements — the roots, the people who built it, Roger’s world, and the family gathered together. Five are recorded so far and are collected below.
Work in progress · 5 of 16 songs recorded
The songs
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Cause Records is My Name
Birthday Mix · the title track · 6:25
The front door of the whole record — a proud, warm, mid-tempo anthem written as a birthday gift for Roger. It introduces the name, the pride, and the mission of the album.
Lyrics transcript coming soon.
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Westward
The migration ballad · 5:38
Maryland to Oregon in four minutes — each verse a generation and a place, from Philip in Revolutionary Maryland to Charles Winfred reaching Umatilla County. A male–female duet that builds as the family grows.
Lyrics transcript coming soon.
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Twenty-Four Came West
A ballad of the Records family migration · 4:22
Old Chame Records and his four married sons riding the rail west out of Kirkhoven, Minnesota in 1901 — twenty-four Records bound for the Walla Walla Valley, six-week-old Gladys the youngest on the ride.
Lyrics
Words inspired by the writings of Ken Records, ca. 1992
Verse 1
Old Chame Records rode the train out in nineteen-oh-one,
Four married sons beside him, searching for the sun,
Left Kirkhoven, Minnesota, left the fields of snow,
Came to Walla Walla Valley where the blue mountains grow.Verse 2
They liked the smell of sage and soil, the orchards and the wheat,
The water running cold and clear, the summer’s gentle heat.
Rode back home to pack the wagons, told the family “We’ll go,”
Said goodbye to Vermillion County and the only life they’d known.Chorus
Twenty-four came west by the iron horse and rail,
Men rode with the cattle through the dust and mountain trail.
Gladys was six weeks old, the youngest on that ride,
From Pennsylvania Dutch blood to the Oregon countryside.Verse 3
Chame was sixty-eight, he’d floated down the Ohio as a child,
Built a raft in Crawford County when the frontier still was wild.
Fought the war between the states, buried one wife in the ground,
Still he said, “Look westward, boys,” and west is what they found.Verse 4
Eck could build a house from nothing, finest carpenter around,
William took the Grabner Road farm, one mile east of town.
Charlie’s place on Hodgen Road, the Pool folks right next door,
Roy and Edna raised their six where no one’d farmed before.Verse 5
No well upon the homestead, just a spring branch running low,
Eleven years of hauling water ’fore they dug down deep below.
Edna churned and baked the bread, cut aprons out for Gladys,
Roy shot rabbits for the pot pie, fixed the chair, and mended saddles.Bridge
They were not the covered-wagon kind, no Oregon Trail for them,
But pioneers don’t need a certain road to start again.
They came to see the Elephant, whatever that might be—
A valley full of promise and a family running free.Final Chorus
Twenty-four came west by the iron horse and rail,
Their names are in the valley like the fence posts and the trail.
Gladys was six weeks old, the youngest on that ride,
From Pennsylvania Dutch blood to the Oregon countryside.Outro
Freewater, Vincent, Umapine…
The Records are still here. -
Umapine
The place song · 3:53
An easygoing ode to the land itself — morning fog on the fields, dust on Records Lane, the Blue Mountains in the distance, and the crops changing across the decades from wheat to orchards to vineyards. The land keeps becoming something new, but it’s still Umapine.
Lyrics transcript coming soon.
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Government Mountain
“Mountain Wood” · the Records family cutting timber · 4:52
Three o’clock in the morning, hitch the wagon and drive twenty miles of rutted road to cut Tamarack on Government Mountain — an upbeat, stompy song of hard work, goose hunts, and the cabin past Big Meadows.
Lyrics
Words inspired by the writings of Ken Records, ca. 1992
Verse 1
Three o’clock in the morning, hitch the wagon to the team,
Load the kids and chickens up before the rooster’s dream.
Twenty miles of rutted road from Hodgen to the top,
Government Mountain’s calling and a Records boy don’t stop.Chorus
Cut it, split it, stack it high,
Tamarack logs against the sky!
Haul it down by horse and wagon,
Keep the home fires never laggin’.
Two-fifty an acre for the timber and the view,
Hundred-sixty acres and a world of work to do!Verse 2
Little Leavett’s up there riding with the men at half-past three,
Wouldn’t make it there ’til lunchtime if the Lord would let it be.
But a busted wheel or thrown shoe and you’re sleeping on the trail,
At the old Jepson farmstead with its dark and spooky tale.Verse 3
Jepson ran afoul of bootleggers, or so the neighbors say,
Found him in the well one morning, boots were thrown away.
Coyotes howling in the timber, wind against the door,
Young Lev pulled the blanket tight and prayed for morning more.Verse 4
Edna’s thirty-four, she bakes a chocolate birthday cake,
Roy pays off the mortgage, a thousand dollars’ sake.
Dean’s new shoes a dollar-seventy-five at the Walla Walla Fair Store,
Amy’s learning how to creep, and Milly wants to know what for.Verse 5
Roy and Wisenor and Wynans and old Messenger make a plan,
Going goose hunting on the river like a band of merry men.
Four days later they come straggling, not a feather to be shown,
Edna writes it in the diary: “Return of the goose hunters — Gooseless.”Bridge
They built a cabin past Big Meadows in the nineteen-thirties,
But the tent platforms came first, canvas walls and dirty.
Four-foot lengths of Tamarack stacked along the wall,
Every cord they ever burned was earned before the fall.Final Verse
Ninety years since Chame said, “Head west and stake your claim,”
The Umapine Hall is gone now but the bloodline stays the same.
From the Ohio to the Blue Mountains, from the plow blade to the pen,
A Records wrote it down for us so we’d remember them.Tag
Cut it, split it, stack it high,
Tamarack logs against the sky…
“They came to see the Elephant.”