Posts Tagged ‘state love song’
Montana’s Legislature is really busy
This story comes from Wednesday’s (1/21/09) Helena Independent Record. The four kids that spoke in opposition to this bill are awesome. I’m sure the guy who wrote the song is a good dude, but the legislator that introduced this bill should be ashamed. (The bill was officially rejected.)
State love song: Kid tested, but disapproved
By JENNIFER McKEE IR State Bureau – 01/21/2009
Jerry McGowan, a 60-year-old Boston transplant now living in Alberton, really loves Montana.
Some 12 years ago, he wrote a song about how much he loves Montana, and now he wants to give that song to the people of this state.
But he has to get past 9-year-old Thomas Ticknor first.
Ticknor, of Helena, and three of his older siblings were the only people to speak against designating McGowan’s song entitled “The Montana Song” as Montana’s official state love song.
Montana already has three official songs, the children testified before the House State Administration Committee Tuesday morning, and that seems just a little bit silly.
“It’s already excessive,” said Hannah Ticknor, 17, who added that lawmakers in 2009 have proposed no fewer than four bills to make the Legislature meet every single year, instead of every two years.
Maybe if lawmakers weren’t spending their time discussing possible state love songs, she suggested, they’d be able to get all their important work done more quickly.
McGowan, however, is undeterred. So, too, is Rep. Bill Nooney, R-Missoula, who sponsored House Bill 184, designating “The Montana Song” the state’s official love song.
As McGowan tells it, the song will make money for the state and it puts into words the powerful and complicated feelings so many Montanans feel for this place.
“If (Montana) doesn’t move you to tears, you’d better open your eyes wider,” he told the committee shortly before sitting down with his guitar and singing the song. “I seek nothing from this except to offer it to the state. This is a gift to Montana and it’s from the heart.”
McGowan met his wife, Beverly, in his native Boston. As a girl, she had traveled to Montana with her father, who was a tire salesman. She fell in love with it, McGowan said, and after they met and married, they talked often of returning.
They did in 1997, taking a week’s vacation and covering as much Montana ground as they could in seven days. Two weeks later, they sold their possessions and moved out here.
“We didn’t know where we’d live and it didn’t matter,” he told the committee.
They settled in Alberton, in far western Montana. McGowan wrote “The Montana Song” soon after.
Initially, the song didn’t mention much east of the Continental Divide. Earlier in the 2009 Legislature, he rewrote one of the verses after good-natured concern arose that the song didn’t encompass all the beauty of Montana, particularly her high, wide and handsome eastern plains.
McGowan envisions the song being used in tourism. He also told the committee he will pay the cost of producing a CD of the song, and proceeds from the sales will go back to the state’s tax coffers.
The committee didn’t make any decisions about the song.
