James Keelaghan, part 2: Squinting at the Mona Lisa

This is the second part of our conversation with James Keelaghan about his classic song “Cold Missouri Waters,” one of the most covered and admired folk story songs of our time. He wrote it about the Mann Gulch fire in western Montana in August 1949, which happened 75 years ago this month. He’s told the story of how he wrote the song before, but this may be the first time he’s done so for posterity. In this half, we’ll talk about how the narrator of the song managed to survive the fire by starting a fire of his own. He’ll […]