The Skally Line

Description

Join The Skally Line for foot-stomping old time music and sensation, salacious stories from and about Minnesota! It’s a summer reading kick-off musical celebration!

The Skally Line was a passenger rail started by the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad. While the ownership changed over the years,
the line ran from 1877 to 1967 connecting the Twin Cities with Duluth for nearly 100 years. But the Skally Line connected older roads. It paralleled the Government Road, a corduroy road finished in 1861 from Point Douglas to Superior. That road followed still older trails up the
St. Croix River used by Dakota, Ojibwe, and older peoples going back thousands of years.

Today, The Skally Line is Bill Cagley and Fred Keller. Fred is mandolin picker, songwriter, historian, and custodian of odd stories about Minnesota. Fred has played with Irish bands, bluegrass bands and oldtime bands going back to 1994. He’s steeped in various traditions (Irish, blues, bluegrass, Metis, and Appalachian) from time with bands like The Banshees and The Whistlepigs String Band.

A veteran of over forty years of picking, Bill is a full-time musician who bought his first guitar the day he graduated high school. He learned music in Waterloo and Iowa City, Iowa, by listening to recordings and playing with such masters as Al Murphy and Bob Black. He has been a full-time professional musician since 1987, performing at colleges and schools across the United States and many parks, including Yellowstone
National Park.

Come to a Skally Line show and we’ll time-travel together to strange corners of Minnesota and meet long lost ancestors. You might all wind up becoming voyageurs together singing a paddling song in French. You might learn to speak a few words of Ojibwe. You will all be smiling, tapping your feet, or clapping, we guarantee it. And if there’s enough room, we’ll have ourselves a little bit of dancing like people did long ago. There’s no better way to meet your neighbor.

Learn more about Skally Line at deepnorthmn.com.